艾迪生的古典批评与十八世纪美学的起源

IF 0.2 2区 文学 0 LITERATURE
ELH Pub Date : 2023-09-01 DOI:10.1353/elh.2023.a907206
Paul Davis
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But long before he became Mr. Spectator, during the first phase of his literary career as a scholar-poet at Oxford in the 1690s, Addison produced two substantial critical works about classical poets: \"An Essay on the Georgics,\" prefixed to the translation of the poem in John Dryden's complete Works of Virgil (1697); and what I'll refer to as his \"Notes on Ovid,\" notes Addison appended to his translations from Books II and III of the Metamorphoses published in the fifth instalment of Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies (1704). These works were much admired in Addison's lifetime and for generations afterwards: Samuel Johnson found in the Ovid notes \"specimens of criticism sufficiently refined and subtle,\" while the \"Essay\" \"set the terms for discussion of georgic poetry for over a century.\"1 Today, though, they are little known, even to specialists in the period. What scholarly discussion they have received has sought to establish how far they anticipate Addison's later aesthetic principles. However, all these existing accounts are marred to a greater or lesser extent by mistakes and misconceptions about Addison's early career carried over from nineteenth-century sources. The first half of this article corrects these errors, particularly regarding the composition dates of the two works and the order in which they were written. The date usually given for the \"Essay\" is 1693 and for the \"Notes\" 1697. Drawing on a wealth of hitherto unreported evidence, I show that these dates are back to front: in fact, Addison wrote the \"Notes on Ovid\" in 1693–94 and the \"Essay on the Georgics\" in 1696–97. In the second half of the article, I use that revised chronology to offer a new account of the place of Addison's classical criticism [End Page 693] in his personal development as a critic and the history of criticism more generally around the turn of the eighteenth century. The five years from 1693 to 1697, often dismissed as the juvenile or student stage of Addison's career by commentators for whom everything he wrote before The Spectator is mere prelude, were in fact a richly productive and pivotal period in Addison's writing life, his heyday as a classical scholar-poet. Before 1693, he was indeed a novice writer, with only a couple of neo-Latin panegyrics to his name; but by 1697 he had produced all but one of his major classical translations, which won the respect of Dryden, and the set of eight boldly innovative neo-Latin imitations of Virgil and Horace which made his name in learned circles across Europe. Situating Addison's classical criticism correctly within this period of rapid creative growth is vital. Backdating the \"Notes on Ovid\" to 1693–4 does not make them juvenile works; on the contrary, as I suggest in a brief discussion, the earlier dating serves to reveal the full extent of their originality. But correcting the date of the \"Essay on the Georgics\" from 1693 to 1696–97 has more far-reaching implications, explored at length here. The mid-1690s were especially fertile years for critical thinking about Virgil in England, spurred by the great project of Dryden's Virgil. Addison capitalised on this boom in his \"Essay,\" drawing in particular on two works translated into English in 1694 and 1695 which offered advanced variants of neoclassical ideas about the Aeneid. In the final section of the article, by tracing Addison's debts to these works, and pinpointing where he went beyond them, I read the \"Essay on the Georgics\" as a watershed in his evolution as a critic and in the wider transition from neoclassicism to the psychological aesthetics of the coming age. I explain how it was that Addison effectively...","PeriodicalId":46490,"journal":{"name":"ELH","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2000,"publicationDate":"2023-09-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":"{\"title\":\"Addison's Classical Criticism and the Origins of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics\",\"authors\":\"Paul Davis\",\"doi\":\"10.1353/elh.2023.a907206\",\"DOIUrl\":null,\"url\":null,\"abstract\":\"Addison's Classical Criticism and the Origins of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics Paul Davis Joseph Addison's fame as a critic—like his literary reputation in general—rests on The Spectator. In particular, his series of Spectator papers on \\\"The Pleasures of the Imagination\\\" (June-July 1712) is widely recognised as marking the epochal transition from the author-centered neoclassical poetics of England's Augustan age to the new reader-centered, psychological mode of eighteenth-century aesthetics. But long before he became Mr. Spectator, during the first phase of his literary career as a scholar-poet at Oxford in the 1690s, Addison produced two substantial critical works about classical poets: \\\"An Essay on the Georgics,\\\" prefixed to the translation of the poem in John Dryden's complete Works of Virgil (1697); and what I'll refer to as his \\\"Notes on Ovid,\\\" notes Addison appended to his translations from Books II and III of the Metamorphoses published in the fifth instalment of Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies (1704). These works were much admired in Addison's lifetime and for generations afterwards: Samuel Johnson found in the Ovid notes \\\"specimens of criticism sufficiently refined and subtle,\\\" while the \\\"Essay\\\" \\\"set the terms for discussion of georgic poetry for over a century.\\\"1 Today, though, they are little known, even to specialists in the period. What scholarly discussion they have received has sought to establish how far they anticipate Addison's later aesthetic principles. However, all these existing accounts are marred to a greater or lesser extent by mistakes and misconceptions about Addison's early career carried over from nineteenth-century sources. The first half of this article corrects these errors, particularly regarding the composition dates of the two works and the order in which they were written. The date usually given for the \\\"Essay\\\" is 1693 and for the \\\"Notes\\\" 1697. Drawing on a wealth of hitherto unreported evidence, I show that these dates are back to front: in fact, Addison wrote the \\\"Notes on Ovid\\\" in 1693–94 and the \\\"Essay on the Georgics\\\" in 1696–97. In the second half of the article, I use that revised chronology to offer a new account of the place of Addison's classical criticism [End Page 693] in his personal development as a critic and the history of criticism more generally around the turn of the eighteenth century. The five years from 1693 to 1697, often dismissed as the juvenile or student stage of Addison's career by commentators for whom everything he wrote before The Spectator is mere prelude, were in fact a richly productive and pivotal period in Addison's writing life, his heyday as a classical scholar-poet. Before 1693, he was indeed a novice writer, with only a couple of neo-Latin panegyrics to his name; but by 1697 he had produced all but one of his major classical translations, which won the respect of Dryden, and the set of eight boldly innovative neo-Latin imitations of Virgil and Horace which made his name in learned circles across Europe. Situating Addison's classical criticism correctly within this period of rapid creative growth is vital. Backdating the \\\"Notes on Ovid\\\" to 1693–4 does not make them juvenile works; on the contrary, as I suggest in a brief discussion, the earlier dating serves to reveal the full extent of their originality. But correcting the date of the \\\"Essay on the Georgics\\\" from 1693 to 1696–97 has more far-reaching implications, explored at length here. The mid-1690s were especially fertile years for critical thinking about Virgil in England, spurred by the great project of Dryden's Virgil. 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引用次数: 0

摘要

艾迪生的古典批评与十八世纪美学的起源——保罗·戴维斯约瑟夫·艾迪生作为评论家的名声——就像他在文学上的一般名声一样——有赖于《旁观者》。特别是,他在《观察家》上发表的一系列关于“想象的乐趣”的论文(1712年6月至7月)被广泛认为标志着英国奥古斯都时代以作者为中心的新古典主义诗学向18世纪以读者为中心的新心理美学模式的划时代转变。但早在他成为“旁观者”先生之前,也就是17世纪90年代,在他文学生涯的第一阶段,作为牛津大学的一名学者诗人,艾迪生就出版了两部关于古典诗人的重要批评著作:《论格鲁吉亚》,在约翰·德莱顿(John Dryden)的《维吉尔全集》(1697)中这首诗的翻译之前;我将称之为他的“奥维德笔记”,这是艾迪生对《变形记》第二卷和第三卷的翻译后的注释,发表在雅各布·汤森的《诗学杂记》第五期(1704)中。这些作品在艾迪生在世时以及后世都备受推崇:塞缪尔·约翰逊在《奥维德笔记》中发现了“足够精炼和微妙的批评样本”,而《随笔》“为一个多世纪以来关于格鲁吉亚诗歌的讨论奠定了基础”。然而,今天它们却鲜为人知,即使是当时的专家也不知道。他们所接受的学术讨论试图确定他们对艾迪生后来的美学原则的预测有多远。然而,所有这些现存的描述都或多或少地被错误和误解所破坏,这些错误和误解是从19世纪的资料中流传下来的。本文的前半部分纠正了这些错误,特别是关于这两部作品的写作日期和写作顺序。“论文”的写作日期通常是1693年,“笔记”的写作日期通常是1697年。根据大量迄今为止未被报道的证据,我表明这些日期是颠倒的:事实上,艾迪生在1693-94年写了《奥维德笔记》,在1696-97年写了《随笔》。在文章的后半部分,我使用修订后的年表,对艾迪生的古典批评在他作为批评家的个人发展中所处的地位,以及在18世纪之交更普遍的批评史上所处的地位,进行了新的描述。从1693年到1697年的这五年,评论家们常常认为是艾迪生职业生涯的少年或学生阶段,对他们来说,他在《旁观者》之前写的所有东西都只是序曲,实际上是艾迪生写作生涯中富有成果和关键的时期,是他作为古典学者诗人的全盛时期。1693年以前,他确实是个新手作家,只写过几首新拉丁语的赞美诗;但到1697年,他除了一部重要的经典译著外,其他所有作品都完成了,这部译著赢得了德莱顿的尊重,他还创作了八部大胆创新的新拉丁语版的维吉尔和贺拉斯的作品,这使他在欧洲学术界名声鹊起。在这一创造性快速成长的时期,正确定位艾迪生的古典批评是至关重要的。将《奥维德笔记》追溯至1694年并不能使它们成为青少年作品;相反,正如我在简短的讨论中所建议的那样,早期的年代有助于揭示它们的独创性的全部程度。但是,把《随笔》的日期从1693年改到1696-97年有更深远的意义,这里将详细探讨。1690年代中期是英国对维吉尔批判性思考的丰年,受德莱顿的《维吉尔》这一伟大工程的推动。艾迪生在他的《随笔》中充分利用了这一热潮,他特别引用了1694年和1695年翻译成英文的两部作品,这两部作品提供了新古典主义关于埃涅伊德的观点的先进变体。在文章的最后一部分,通过追溯艾迪生对这些作品的贡献,并指出他在哪些方面超越了这些作品,我将《论格鲁吉亚》视为他作为评论家的演变以及从新古典主义向即将到来的时代的心理美学的更广泛过渡的分水岭。我解释了艾迪生是如何有效地…
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
Addison's Classical Criticism and the Origins of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics
Addison's Classical Criticism and the Origins of Eighteenth-Century Aesthetics Paul Davis Joseph Addison's fame as a critic—like his literary reputation in general—rests on The Spectator. In particular, his series of Spectator papers on "The Pleasures of the Imagination" (June-July 1712) is widely recognised as marking the epochal transition from the author-centered neoclassical poetics of England's Augustan age to the new reader-centered, psychological mode of eighteenth-century aesthetics. But long before he became Mr. Spectator, during the first phase of his literary career as a scholar-poet at Oxford in the 1690s, Addison produced two substantial critical works about classical poets: "An Essay on the Georgics," prefixed to the translation of the poem in John Dryden's complete Works of Virgil (1697); and what I'll refer to as his "Notes on Ovid," notes Addison appended to his translations from Books II and III of the Metamorphoses published in the fifth instalment of Jacob Tonson's Poetical Miscellanies (1704). These works were much admired in Addison's lifetime and for generations afterwards: Samuel Johnson found in the Ovid notes "specimens of criticism sufficiently refined and subtle," while the "Essay" "set the terms for discussion of georgic poetry for over a century."1 Today, though, they are little known, even to specialists in the period. What scholarly discussion they have received has sought to establish how far they anticipate Addison's later aesthetic principles. However, all these existing accounts are marred to a greater or lesser extent by mistakes and misconceptions about Addison's early career carried over from nineteenth-century sources. The first half of this article corrects these errors, particularly regarding the composition dates of the two works and the order in which they were written. The date usually given for the "Essay" is 1693 and for the "Notes" 1697. Drawing on a wealth of hitherto unreported evidence, I show that these dates are back to front: in fact, Addison wrote the "Notes on Ovid" in 1693–94 and the "Essay on the Georgics" in 1696–97. In the second half of the article, I use that revised chronology to offer a new account of the place of Addison's classical criticism [End Page 693] in his personal development as a critic and the history of criticism more generally around the turn of the eighteenth century. The five years from 1693 to 1697, often dismissed as the juvenile or student stage of Addison's career by commentators for whom everything he wrote before The Spectator is mere prelude, were in fact a richly productive and pivotal period in Addison's writing life, his heyday as a classical scholar-poet. Before 1693, he was indeed a novice writer, with only a couple of neo-Latin panegyrics to his name; but by 1697 he had produced all but one of his major classical translations, which won the respect of Dryden, and the set of eight boldly innovative neo-Latin imitations of Virgil and Horace which made his name in learned circles across Europe. Situating Addison's classical criticism correctly within this period of rapid creative growth is vital. Backdating the "Notes on Ovid" to 1693–4 does not make them juvenile works; on the contrary, as I suggest in a brief discussion, the earlier dating serves to reveal the full extent of their originality. But correcting the date of the "Essay on the Georgics" from 1693 to 1696–97 has more far-reaching implications, explored at length here. The mid-1690s were especially fertile years for critical thinking about Virgil in England, spurred by the great project of Dryden's Virgil. Addison capitalised on this boom in his "Essay," drawing in particular on two works translated into English in 1694 and 1695 which offered advanced variants of neoclassical ideas about the Aeneid. In the final section of the article, by tracing Addison's debts to these works, and pinpointing where he went beyond them, I read the "Essay on the Georgics" as a watershed in his evolution as a critic and in the wider transition from neoclassicism to the psychological aesthetics of the coming age. I explain how it was that Addison effectively...
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