Dionysius of Halicarnassus On Literary Composition

Dionysius of Halicarnassus On Literary Composition - Being the Greek Text of the De Compositione Verborum

A general account of the life and literary activities of Dionysius will be found in the volume entitled Dionysius of Halicarnassus: the Three Literary Letters, where the de Compositione Verborum is briefly described in connexion with the other critical essays of its author. Here a fuller summary of the treatise seems necessary before an attempt is made to estimate its value and to follow up some of the highly interesting questions which it raises. The date of the de Compositione is not known, but may be conjectured to lie between the years 20 and 10 B.C. The book is a birthday offering from Dionysius, as a teacher of rhetoric in Rome, to his pupil Rufus Metilius. The strong and the weak points of the de Compositione Verborum will appear from the foregoing summary, and still more from the treatise itself and the notes appended to it. Dionysius book is unique: no other of its kind has come down to us from classical antiquity. Its immediate subject is the Order of Words in Greek. But its author is happily led to raise fundamental questions such as the relations between Prose and Poetry, together with incidental points of Greek Pronunciation and Accentuation; and generally to take so wide a range that no English title less comprehensive than On Literary Composition seems to fit the contents of the work.[3] The discursive enthusiasm of the writer is obvious. Not less striking, however, is the sound literary taste which converts his quotations into a true anthology and preserves some priceless remains of Sappho and Simonides. It will be necessary to point out certain weaknesses of Dionysius from time to time. But his weaknesses are far more than counterbalanced by his great excellences. Some of his shortcomings are those of his age,an age which was a stranger to the modern method of comparison as applied to literary investigation. Others, again, are more apparent than real. When, for example, certain omissions are observable in some directions along with ample expatiations in others, it is to be remembered (1) that Dionysius is dealing with the department [11] of expression and not with that of subject matter, (2) that, in the department of expression, he is concerned with the composition (or arrangement) of words and not with their selection, and (3) that, in regard to composition, he is here interested primarily not in lucidity nor in emphasis, but in euphony. Hence we must not expect him to dwell on that great governing principle of literary composition,logical connexion. To its importance, however, he is fully alive, as is clear from a passage in his essay on Isocrates: The thought [in Isocrates, who pays excessive heed to smoothness of style and a pleasant cadence] is often the slave of rhythmical expression, and truth is sacrificed to elegance.... But the natural course is for the expression to follow the ideas, not the ideas the expression.[4] And though, in the de Compositione, it is his business to discourse rather upon sound than upon sense, yet the orderly way in which the subject matter of the treatise is presented shows in itself that Dionysius was well aware that the chief essential for a book is a basis of clear thinking and broad logical arrangement, and that, as a consequence, its excellence is to be sought even more in its chapters and its paragraphs than in its flowing periods.[5] It may be well to touch, with a similar regard to sequence and with occasional references to modern parallels or contrasts, upon one or two aspects of his main theme which his own treatment of it suggests as suitable for further discussion and elucidation. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 50212
Author: Dionysius, of Halicarnassus
Release Date: Oct 14, 2015
Format: eBook
Language: Greek, Ancient

Contributors

Editor: Roberts, W. Rhys (William Rhys), 1858-1929