Common Books

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[Allegory is] a figurative narrative or description conveying veiled moral meaning; an extended metaphor.

Drabble, The Oxford Companion to English Literature. (via powersrichard)

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In France itself, [at the end of The Middle Ages] and north of The Alps in general, every kind of serious realism was in danger of being choked to death by the vines of allegory.

Auerbach, “Mimesis.”. (via powersrichard)

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[Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress] it and Spenser’s Faerie Queen use personifications of abstract qualities.

Drabble, The Oxford Companion to English Literature. (via powersrichard)

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Just think about those people in the Renaissance like Sir Philip Sydney and his sister Mary. Literary theory; creative writing; history of literature — all of these things were learned by translation. The little schoolkids, I guess they’d get up and do prayers before dawn and then they’d translate Greek hexameters into Latin elegiac couplets. The whole education was based on translation and they grew up to love learning. (Despite the brutality, in a way, of the learning process.) And they produced great literature. So translation — what does it do for one? — it is the highest form of study.

Robert Pinsky (”Upstairs at The Strand.” Pp. 156-7.)

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Samuel Johnson said a book should teach us how to escape existence or to endure existence.

David Shields,  “Upstairs at The Strand”  (P. 180). (via powersrichard)

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The wit of the Caroline poets is not the wit of Shakespeare, and it is not the wit of Dryden, the great master of contempt, or of Pope, the great master of hatred, or of Swift, the great master of disgust.

T. S. Eliot, “Andrew Marvell”; Selected Essays, p. 252. (via powersrichard)

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Out of that high style developed from Marlowe through Jonson (for Shakespeare does not lend himself to these geneologies) the seventeenth century separated two qualities: wit and magniloquence.

T. S. Eliot, “Andrew Marvell.”  P. 252. (via powersrichard)

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And of the magniloquence, the deliberate exploitation of the possibilities of magnificience in language which Milton used and abused.“

T. S. Eliot, “Andrew Marvell.”  Pp. 252-3. (via powersrichard)

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With our eye still on Marvell, we can say that wit is not erudition: it is sometimes stifled by erudition as in much of Milton. It is not cynicism, though it has a kind of toughness which may be confused with cynicism by the tender-minded. It is confused with erudition because it belongs to an educated mind, rich in generations of experience; and it is confused with cynicism because it implies a constant inspection and criticism of experience. It involves probably a recognition, implicit in the expression of every experience, of other kinds of experience which are possible, which we find as clearly in the greatest as in poets like Marvell.

T. S. Eliot, “Andrew Marvell”; P. 262. (via powersrichard)

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Emblem book: In its widest sense, an emblem is a visual representation carrying a symbolic meaning. Most often, however, the word refers to a genre of verbal-pictorial art which is particularly associated with the Renaissance. One source was hieroglyphics. The first emblem book 'Emblematum liber’ of Alioti was published in 1531. Each emblem consists of a motto, a symbolic picture, and an explanatory set of verses called an epigram. Spenser translated verses from Petrarch and Du Belloy (without the original plates) in ‘A Theatre For Wordlings’ (1569). The earliest English emblem book to contain illustrations as well as verses was Geoffrey Whitney’s 'A Choice of Emblems’ (1586), which distinguished three categories: natural, historical, and moral.

Drabble, p. 319. (via powersrichard)

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The history of all human culture writes Bacon, covers no more than twenty-five centuries, of which barely five have been favorable to the advancement of learning. The only three productive periods have been those of Greek, Roman and western European civilizations. All other epochs were dedicated to wars and strife and were entirely devoid of cultural value.

Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon:  from Magic to Science  (P. 45.)

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In Bacon this is a basic theme: The validity of a philosophy is identical with its ability to produce works and contribute to the welfare of humanity.

Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon:  from Magic to Science.  (P. 49.)

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Instead of rejoicing in the perfection of final solutions [a la Aristotle] we should see their value as merely verbal; preference should be given to empirical observations freed from the metaphysical presupositions that condition research and impose limits upon it.

Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: from Magic to Science.  (P. 49.)

[powersrichard-blog]

Instead of rejoicing in the perfection of final solutions [a la Aristotle] we should see their value as merely verbal; preference should be given to empirical observations freed from the metaphysical presupositions that condition research and impose limits upon it.

Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon: from Magic to Science.  (P. 49.)

[powersrichard-blog]

In Bacon this is a basic theme:  The validity of a philosophy is identical with its ability to produce works and contribute to the welfare of humanity.

Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon:  from Magic to Science.  (P. 49.)

[powersrichard-blog]

The history of all human culture writes Bacon, covers no more than twenty-five centuries, of which barely five have been favorable to the advancement of learning.  The only three productive periods have been those of Greek, Roman and western European civilizations.  All other epochs were dedicated to wars and strife and were entirely devoid of cultural value.

Paolo Rossi, Francis Bacon:  from Magic to Science  (P. 45.)

[powersrichard-blog]

Emblem book:  In its widest sense, an emblem is a visual representation carrying a symbolic meaning.  Most often, however, the word refers to a genre of verbal-pictorial art which is particularly associated with the Renaissance.  One source was hieroglyphics.  The first emblem book  'Emblematum liber' of Alioti was published in 1531.  Each emblem consists of a motto, a symbolic picture, and an explanatory set of verses called an epigram.  Spenser translated verses from Petrarch and Du Belloy (without the original plates) in 'A Theatre For Wordlings' (1569).  The  earliest English emblem book to contain illustrations as well as verses was Geoffrey Whitney's 'A Choice of Emblems' (1586), which distinguished three categories:  natural, historical, and moral.

Drabble, p. 319.