To sum up, the two versions might have given some inkling of Aristotle’s position, but it is doubtful whether the meaning of the technical terms was immediately evident, and the translations of the examples were certainly of no help in understanding the definitions any better.
2.6. The Medieval Misfortunes of the
Poetics
and the
Rhetoric
The scant attention the Middle Ages paid to these two translations can be explained in a number of ways. In the first place, up until the twelfth century, rhetoric had belonged to the trivium, but poetics was not included. Thus, observes Dahan (1980), poetics is ignored by Alan of Lille (in his Anticlaudianus), Honorius of Autun, Hugh of Saint Victor, Robert Grosseteste (in his De artibus liberalibus), John of Dacia (in his De divisione scientiae), and many others.
Around the twelfth century, another division of the sciences becomes prevalent, one Stoic in origin, according to which philosophy is subdivided into logic, ethics, and physics, and at this point both poetics and rhetoric were considered part of logic. The idea is already present in Augustine, but see Isidore of Seville’s definition in Etymologiae II, 24, 3: “Philosophiae species tripartita est: una naturalis, quae graece physica appellatur …; altera moralis, quae graece ethica dicitur …; tertia rationalis, quae graece vocabulo logica appellatur” (“There are three kinds of philosophy: one natural [naturalis], which in Greek is ‘physics’ [physica] …; a second moral [moralis], which is called ‘ethics’ [ethica] in Greek …; a third rational [rationalis], which is named with the Greek term ‘logic’ [logica].”)16
Later in the twelfth century, through the agency of Gundisalvo, the Arabic classification, in which poetics and rhetoric are seen as an integral part of Aristotle’s Organon (see, for instance, Avicenna’s Shifa and the De scientiis of al-Farabi), becomes established in the West. It was in fact as an aid to students of logic that Hermann presented his translation: “suscipiant igitur, si placet, et huius editionis Poetriae translationem viri studiosi, et gaudeant se cum hac adeptos logici negotii Aristotilis complementum (“May then learned men, should it be deemed desirable, take up also the translation of this edition of the Poetria and rejoice to achieve with it a completion of the logical works of Aristotle”).
Though he did not know Aristotle’s Rhetoric, Albertus Magnus considers rhetoric a logical discipline (see, for instance, Liber de praedicabilibus I, 4); and in the Liber Primis Posteriorum Analyticorum he includes poetics under logic (cf. Dahan and Rosier-Catach 1998: 77, as well as Marmo 1990: 159–163).17
As parts of logic, poetics and rhetoric were understood to be persuasive discourses that could be used for political and moral ends, and it is in fact Gundisalvo who defines poetics as forming part of civil science, which is in its turn part of eloquence, whose purpose is to delight and instruct both in science and proper behavior.
The thinker who crystallizes the Arabic position (rhetoric and poetics as part of logic, and their moral and civic orientation) is Roger Bacon (cf. Rosier-Catach 1998). Bacon, inspired by Gerard of Cremona’s translation of al-Farabi’s De scientiis, is intent, in his Moralis Philosophia (the seventh part of his Opus Majus), on establishing a method for convincing the infidel of the superiority of Christianity, and he finds it in rhetorical and poetic discourse. He is seeking a “sermo potens ad inclinandum mentem” (“speech with the power to persuade the mind”); and language (he affirms in Opus Majus III) is more effective than any war. If dialectical and demonstrative arguments could move the speculative mind, poetics and rhetoric can move the practical intellect (Opus Majus III).
Poetic argument has nothing to do with truth or falsehood. Poetics is the study of ways of moving the listener emotionally by means of a magniloquent style, and the greatest example of poetic discourse is provided by the Holy Scriptures. In the Moralis Philosophia imitation (similitudo) is seen as the way of comparing, for instance, virtue to light and sin to things that are hideous.
It is Bacon again, in his Communia Matematica, who will state that poetic argument uses fine discourses so that the soul may be overcome by the love of virtue and learn to hate vice. To this end ornaments such as meter and rhythm can be useful, as is the case in the texts of Scripture.18
Independently of Bacon, the idea that poetics and rhetoric are part of logic and are concerned with moral and civil knowledge made more and more headway among those who approached the first translations of Aristotle. It is understandable, then, that the thinkers who debated such problems were not especially interested in the semiotics of elocutio, and hence in the technical study of metaphors, but focused their attention more on methods of argumentation.
Thomas demonstrates his familiarity with these translations (except, of course, Moerbeke’s translation of the Poetics), but, in his commentary on Posterior Analytics I, he sees logic as judicative (Prior and Posterior Analytics), sophistic (Sophistical Refutations) and inventive (Topics, Rhetoric, and Poetics). Hence, “poetae est inducere ad aliquod virtuosum per aliquam decentem representationem” (“the poet’s task is to lead us to something virtuous by some excellent description”).
Buridan will allude to the fact that poetics, while it doesn’t put things clearly like rhetoric does, still has the same educative intentions in mind, “scientiam delectabiler obscurare nititur, per verborum transumptionem,” “it endeavors to obscure knowledge delightfully by metalepsis” (cf. Dahan 1998: 186).
But Bacon is the one who points to another reason for the scant currency of these translations and interpretations of Aristotle: they were badly translated and hard to fathom. Bacon says that he knew Hermann personally. In Moralis philosophia VI he claims that Hermann confided in him (“dixit mihi”) that he was insufficiently versed in logic to translate the Rhetoric well, and for the same reasons had not dared to translate the Poetics, confining himself to translating Averroes’s commentary. So, Bacon observed, we can never really know what Aristotle thought about poetics, we can only “get a whiff” of it, not savor it, as is the case with wine that has been poured too many times from one container to another.19
Bacon claims in Opus Majus I that the moderns neglect two books of logic, one of them translated with a commentary by al-Farabi, the other an exposition of Aristotle by Averroes, translated without reproducing the philosopher’s original text.20 In Opus Majus III he points out once again that there are few Latin translations of Aristotle’s logic and Averroes’s commentaries, and that the few versions extant are not read.21 Again, in the Moralis Philosophia (V, 255), he cites Averroes’s commentary on the Poetics as the only available source for Aristotle’s text, but he recognizes that it too is known to only a few.22 In Opus Majus III he complains about the translations of Aristotle’s works, executed “cum defectu translationis et squalore,” (“crudely and with defective translation”)—with the result that nothing can be understood–and he remarks what a loss this has been for the culture of his time.