Horace

• Horace's Art of Poetry was a work specifically devoted to poetry

• Horace's tone is discursive and informal, and his poem appears to have little structure, leaping from theme to theme in a seemingly chaotic fashion.

• Horace insists that dramatic characters should be true to life.

• Central to the theories of Plato and Aristotle, that poetry is an imitative art, Horace explicitly alludes to this idea when he declares that 'the skilled imitator should look to human life and character for his models, and from there derive a language that is true to life.

• Horace takes it for granted that the poet needs natural talent, but talent is nothing without training and labour.

• For Horace, poetry needs sophistication, refinement, and artistry. Poets must be prepared to take infinite pains over their work, revising, correcting and, above all, responding to the advice of the experienced critic.

• Poetry, for Horace, is above all a skilled craft, not amateur activity to be pursued by gentlemen of leisure spare time, or by those who think that they can be poets merely by looking the part

• For all Horace's emphasis on the technical aspects of the poet's craft, being a good poet is not merely a matter of technical expertise, for the poet will need to have a knowledge of moral philosophy and of life if he is to create convincing characters, and improve his audience in the process.

• He means primarily a knowledge derived from the study of ethics, which will enable the poet to set appropriate examples of human behavior before his audience.

• The emotional impact of poetry: Horace believes that the speaker (the poet) must feel the emotions he wishes to communicate in order to be convincing,

Longinus

• Longinus was a shadowy figure, of uncertain date and identity, whose treatise, On the Sublime, survived antiquity in a single, incomplete manuscript.

• On the Sublime, its subject is what he calls HUPSOS (height, grandeur, or sublimity) = quality of writing which he describes as the hallmark of great literature

• Sublimity is characterized by its ability to amaze and transport an audience, overwhelming them with its irresistible power.

• True sublimity stands up to repeated examination by the educated reader, and withstands the test of time, appealing to all people of all ages.

• Sublimity, Longinus says, is innate, an inborn gift, but it must be cultivated; art is necessary if the natural ability is to be used to the best effect

• The main body of Longinus' treatise is concerned with the discussion and illustration of five sources of sublimity:

• 1/ the first is grandeur of thought, the ability to form grand conceptions, which is a characteristic of natural greatness, excellence in literature depends upon the mental powers of the author, for 'sublimity is the echo of a noble mind'. Sublimity may also arise from the author's capacity to choose the most sticking details to describe a situation and to fuse them into a whole. Although greatness of mind is a natural capacity, the sublimity that results from it can be inspired by the imitation or emulation of previous writers who have shown themselves capable of achieving sublimity.

• 2/ another way of cultivating the capacity for sublimity is through Phantasia, or visualization, when the speaker imagines the scene he describes so vividly that he can bring it before the eyes of his audience. Powerful and inspired emotion is the second source of sublimity.

• 3/ the third is the effective use of stylish and rhetorical figures as a means of increasing the emotional impact of literature.

• 4/ the forth source is to be found in noble diction and phrasing, this includes the skillful use of metaphors and other figures of speech

• 5/ finally comes dignified and elevated composition, that is, an insistence on the most effective arrangement of words, and the well-established conception of organic unity.

• Great literature is not simply a stylistic quality, but an expression of the author's mind and character, "it is not possible for those whose thoughts and habits are mean and servile throughout their lives to produce anything that is remarkable or worthy of immortal fame; no, greatness of speech is the province of those whose thoughts are deep, and this is why lofty expressions come naturally to the most high-minded of men."