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The Plot of History from Antiquity to the Renaissance

The Plot of History from Antiquity to the Renaissance In the Poetics Aristotle introduced the notion of plot or mythos as a distinctly poetic form of rationality and coherence absent from history. In the course of antiquity and the Renaissance Aristotle's notion of plot underwent a curious inversion by which history came to supplant poetry as the main literary form of emplotment. To account for the readjustment or even reversal of Aristotle's distinction between history and poetry, we will examine the notions of order, causality, and chance expounded by classical historians and literary theorists before tracing their influence to Renaissance writers. In the Renaissance the transmission, conflation, and distortion of Aristotelian doctrine exerted a profound influence on historiography and literary criticism, particularly in the latter part of the sixteenth century. It is even possible to understand some of the new and hybrid forms of Renaissance fiction as a reaction to this transference of the idea of plot from poetry to history. While history may indeed possess no coherent plot, as Aristotle speculated, literary history can nevertheless reconstitute the genealogy of competing notions of plot and order in Renaissance narrative. We can situate Aristotle's definition of plot in the context of his inquiry into cause and coincidence. In http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Journal of the History of Ideas University of Pennsylvania Press

The Plot of History from Antiquity to the Renaissance

MacPhail, Eric
Journal of the History of Ideas , Volume 62 (1) – Jan 1, 2001
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Publisher
University of Pennsylvania Press
Copyright
Copyright © 2001 The Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.
ISSN
1086-3222
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Abstract

In the Poetics Aristotle introduced the notion of plot or mythos as a distinctly poetic form of rationality and coherence absent from history. In the course of antiquity and the Renaissance Aristotle's notion of plot underwent a curious inversion by which history came to supplant poetry as the main literary form of emplotment. To account for the readjustment or even reversal of Aristotle's distinction between history and poetry, we will examine the notions of order, causality, and chance expounded by classical historians and literary theorists before tracing their influence to Renaissance writers. In the Renaissance the transmission, conflation, and distortion of Aristotelian doctrine exerted a profound influence on historiography and literary criticism, particularly in the latter part of the sixteenth century. It is even possible to understand some of the new and hybrid forms of Renaissance fiction as a reaction to this transference of the idea of plot from poetry to history. While history may indeed possess no coherent plot, as Aristotle speculated, literary history can nevertheless reconstitute the genealogy of competing notions of plot and order in Renaissance narrative. We can situate Aristotle's definition of plot in the context of his inquiry into cause and coincidence. In

Journal

Journal of the History of Ideas – University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: Jan 1, 2001

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