As to Curtius "getting his ideas," from someone, he might object to that
construction. On page 7 he is writing of Troeltsch and Toynbee with
approval: "The convergence of our knowledge of nature and our knowledge
of history into a new, 'open' picture of the universe is the scientific
aspect of our time. At the close of his /Historismus/ Troeltsch
outlines the task of a concentration, simplification, and deepening of
the intellectual and cultural content which the history of the West has
given us and which must emerge from the crucible of historism in a new
completeness and coherence: 'Most effectual would be a great artistic
symbol, such as the /Divina Comedia/ once was, and later /Faust/. . .
.' It is remarkable that in Toynbee too -- even though in an entirely
different sense -- poetic form appears as the extreme concept of
historism. His train of thought is as follows: The present state of our
knowledge, which takes in barely six millenniums of historical
development, is adequately served by a comparative method of
investigation which attains to the establishment of laws by the road of
induction. But if one imagines the stretch of history too be ten times
or a hundred times, the employment of a scientific technique becomes
impossible. It must yield to a poetic form of presentation: 'It will
eventually become patently impossible to employ any technique except
that of 'fiction.'"
Curtius dismisses Spengler, disbelieving his "laws." He hasn't
mentioned Marx and won't if his index is to be believed, but I'm sure he
would dismiss Marx's "laws" as well. Toynbee claimed no laws, using
only induction on the 21 Societies he examined and these are the ones
Curtius is primarily referring to in the above. If differences multiply
as time goes on, relationships viewed inductively must become more and
more tenuous and vague (assuming laws of history do not exist).
As to resorting to poems to sum up societal epochs, one perhaps has no
difficulty in accepting in a certain sense Homer as representing early
Greek society, Dante the 14th century in Italy, Cervantes and
Shakespeare 16th and 17th century Spain and England, and Goethe 18th
century Germany, but in thinking about them I don't believe they can be
said to "sum up" their various societies. On the other hand, if we add
significantly to them (all the other "poetry" being written), perhaps
that might work.
Earlier Curtius praises Toynbee by describing some of his ideas and then
writes, "These selected and isolated details cannot give even a remote
idea of the richness and illuminating power of Toynbee's work -- still
less of the intellectual strictness of its structure and of the precise
controls to which the material presented is subjected. I feel this
objection. I can only offer in reply that it is better to give even an
inadequate indication of the greatest intellectual accomplishment in the
field of history in our day than to pass it over in silence." I took
this to mean that Curtius would not be relying upon Toynbee to any great
extent in what follows. In his index Curtius has only one line of
references for Troeltsch, two lines for Toynbee as opposed to 5 for
Spenser, 10 for Shakespeare and 28 for Publius Papinius Statius.
Lawrence
On 3/17/2016 12:23 PM, (Redacted sender Jlsperanza for DMARC) wrote:
Or should it be "Topica"?
For the record, Curtius is indeed best known for his 1948 work "Europäische
Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter", a major study of the Medieval
Latin literature and its effect on subsequent writing in modern European
languages. Curtius argues that, first, the standard
"Classic-Medieval-Renaissance-Modern" division of literature is
counterproductive given the CONTINUITY
between those literatures -- say the Latin literature of Virgil and Seneca
and the Italian literature of Dante and Petrarch -- and second, that much
of Renaissance and later European literature cannot be fully understood
without a knowledge of that literature's relation to Medieval Latin rhetoric in
the use of commonplaces, metaphors, turns of phrase, or, to employ the
term Curtius prefers, topoi. Curtius's essay was largely responsible for
introducing the "literary topos" concept as a scholarly and critical discussion
of literary commonplaces.
And of course a 'topos' is not necessarily a 'schema' or figure.
To a philosopher, a 'topos' brings you first and foremost to Aristotle who
wrote the "Topica", which Loeb found it interesting enough to have it in
the Loeb Classical Library.
Liddell/Scott, "Greek dictionary" has as one use of 'topos':
"common-place" or element in Rhetoric,
“ὁ τοῦ μᾶλλον καὶ ἧττον τ.” Arist. Rh.1358a14, cf. 1396b30,
1397a7; τὸ αὐτὸ λέγω στοιχεῖον καὶ τ. ib. 1403a18: pl.,
Phld.Rh.1.226S.
Lewis/Short's "Latin Dictionary" is more specific about the specific
collocation "loci communes':
loci communes, general arguments, which do not grow out of the particular
facts of a case, but are applicable to any class of cases:
pars (argumentorum) est pervagatior et aut in omnis ejusdem generis aut in
plerasque causas adcommodata: haec ergo argumenta, quae transferri in
multas causas possunt, locos communis nominamus,
Cic. Inv. 2, 14, 47 sq.; cf. the passage at length; id. ib. 2, 16, 50 sq.;
2, 18, 56;
Auct. Her. 3, 8, 15;
Quint. 2, 1, 9; 3, 1, 12; 5, 1, 3; 5, 13, 57 al.—Sing.: vix ullus est tam
communis locus, qui possit cohaerere cum causa, nisi aliquo proprio
quaestionis vinculo copulatus, Quint. 2, 4, 30: locus, for communis locus, id.
4,
2, 117; 5, 7, 32.—
Now, the next thing would be to find out where Curtius got his idea from!?
Cheers,
Speranza