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The Lucretian “Return upon Ourselves” in Eighteenth-Century Theories of Tragedy
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
The complexity of human nature has always made difficult the task of the literary critic who would attempt to explain the nature of the pleasure that we derive from tragedy. The question has so many connections with speculations outside its own sphere—moral, psychological, political, economic, religious speculations—in short, the entire philosophy of an age—that some simplification, some focal point, is requisite for the historian of ideas who would attempt to record the changes in it through a given age. Since in the eighteenth century the question of tragic pleasure was a live one, in the very forefront of aesthetic speculation, the need for some kind of simplification, some kind of constant against which the evolution of doctrines can be seen, is particularly great. A convenient counter of this kind can be found in the Lucretian “return upon ourselves.”
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- Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1947
References
1 Lucretius, De rerum natura, trans. R. C. Trevelyan (Cambridge, 1937), ii, 1-8.
2 Lorenzo Giacomini Tebalducci Malespini, “Sopra la purgazione della tragedia,” Raccolto di prose fiorentine (Firenze, 1728), ii, iii, 214-215.
3 Since the Stoics of the sixteenth century wished the expulsion of all passion from the human breast and the glorification of reason, tragedy was said to be of assistance to morality in purging us of passions by accustoming us to the dismal events in life that are likely to arouse strong passion. Cf. Francisci Robortelli, In librum Aristotelis de arte poetica, explicationes (Florentiae, 1548), p. 53; Faustino Summo, Discorsi poetici (Padova, 1600), p. 23; J. Pontanus, Poeticarum institutionem libri III (Ingolstadii, 1594), pp. 108-122; Daniel Heinsius, De tragoedia constitutione (Lugduni Batavorum, 1643), pp. 12-13; Girardus Joannes Vossius, Poeticarum institutionum, libri tres (Amstelodami, 1647), ii, 65.
4 L. Castelvetro, Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta (Basilea, 1576), p. 117. Cf. H. B. Charlton, Castehetro's Theory of Poetry (Manchester, 1913), pp. 121-122.
5 Malespini, loc. cit.
6 Petrarch, “The Triumph of Chastity,” vv. 3-4, Works, Bohn ed., p. 361.
“Io presi esempio di loro stati rei
Facendomi profitto l'altrui male,
In consolar i casi, e dolor miei.“
7 Athanasius, The Deipnosophists, ed. Charles Burton Gulick (New York, 1929), pp. 5-7.
8 Paul Hamelius, Die Kritik in der englischen Literatur des. 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1897), p. 40.
9 C. D. Thorpe, The Aesthetic Theory of Thomas Hobbes, University of Michigan Publications in Language and Literature, xviii (Ann Arbor, 1940), pp. 143-144.
10 Edward Sherburne, The Tragedies of L. Annaeus Seneca Translated into English Verse “by Sir Edward Sherburne, Knight (London, 1702), pp. A4-A4 verso.
11 John Dennis, The Grounds of Criticism in Poetry (London, 1704), p. 86.
12 Ibid.
13 John Dennis, The Usefulness of the Stage, To the Happiness of Mankind. Occasioned by a Late Book by Jeremy Collier, M.A. (London, 1698), p. 57.
14 Joseph Trapp, “Notes to the Aeneis” in The Works of Virgil: Translated into English Blank Verse (London, 1731), ii, 195.
15 (London, 1702), p. 214. In another place, quoting from a French source, Boyer remarked, “We are so fond of every thing that is fresh and uncommon, that we take a secret Pleasure, and find entertainment even in the sight of the dismallest and most Tragicall Accidents; and that partly because they are new, and partly from a Principle of Ill-Nature that is in us” (p. 306).
16 “Letter to Mr. Bayne,” Letters by John Hughes, Esq. and Several Other Eminent Persons Deceased, ed. John Duncombe (London, 1773), i, 140.
17 Joseph Addison, Spectator 418. Cf. Marvin Theodore Herrick, The Poetics of Aristotle in England, Cornell Studies in English, xviii (New Haven, 1930), p. 106.
18 Jean Baptiste DuBos, Refléxions critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture (Paris, 1770), i, 28.
19 Ibid., pp. 28-29. Cf. Karl Borinski, Die Antike in Poetik und Kundsttheorie von Ausgang des klassischen Altertums bis auf Goethe und Wilhelm von Humboldt (Leipzig, 1942), ii, 128.
20 The fullest treatment of the influence of DuBos is to be found in A. Lombard, L'Abbé DuBos, un initiateur de la pensée moderne (Paris, 1913). Lombard points out (p. 206) that Addison agrees with Lucretius while DuBos does not.
21 Lombard, op. cit., p. 361.
22 Friedrich Braitmaier, Geschichte der poetischen Theorie und Kritik von den Diskursen der Maler bis auf Lessing (Frauenfeld, 1889), i, 120.
23 Lessing, Briefwechsel mit Mendelssohn und Nicolai über das Trauerspiel, ed. Robert Petsch (Leipzig, 1910). Cf. Lombard, op. cit., p. 364.
24 Aristotle, Rhetoric, trans. J. E. C. Welldon (London, 1886), pp. 82-83.
25 Tamworth Reresby, A Miscellany of Ingenious Thoughts and Reflections, in Verse and Prose (London, 1721), p. 357.
26 James Arbuckle, A Collection of Letters and Essays on Several Subjects, Lately Published in The Dublin Journal i, 86.
27 Mark Akenside, Pleasures of the Imagination, ii, 670-711. Prof. C. A. Moore, in his “Shaftesbury and the Ethical Poets in England, 1700-1760,” PMLA, xxxi (1916), 293, remarks that Akenside is arguing in this passage against Mandeville but does not point out the connection with Lucretius.
28 David Hartley, Observations on Man (London, 1834), p. 263.
29 John Upton, Critical Observations on Shakespeare (London, 1746), pp. 66-67.
30 Edmund Burke, Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, Works (Boston, 1871), i, 78.
31 Ibid., p. 79.
32 Ibid., p. 81.
33 Richard Hurd, “Notes on the Art of Poetry,” Works (London, 1811), i, 114-118.
34 [Samuel Derrick], A General View of the Stage (London, 1759), p. 36.
35 Pierre Brumoy, The Greek Theatre of Father Brumoy (London, 1759), i, xxxviii.
36 [William Richardson], Cursory Remarks on Tragedy, On Shakespeare, and on Certain French and Italian Poets, Principally Tragedians (London, 1774), p. 24.
37 William Cooke, The Elements of Dramatic Criticism (London, 1775), p. 31.
38 James Boswell, The Hypochondriack, ed. Margery Bailey (Stanford University Press, 1928), ii, 278-279.
39 Charles Batteux, Principes de la littérature (Lyon, 1802), iii, 56, 6.
40 Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues, Introduction à la connoissance de l'ésprit humain, suivie de reflexions et de maximes (Paris, 1747), p. 84.
41 Jean François Marmontel, “Tragédie,” Elémens de littérature, Œuvres complettés (Paris, 1787), vi, 282-284.
42 Louis Racine, Œuvres (Paris, 1808), vi, 359.