From these texts we may deduce that Bacon was not yet acquainted with Moerbeke’s translation of the Rhetoric, which would not appear in fact until later and which he might perhaps have treated with greater indulgence. But Bacon’s strictures, which are extremely severe on almost all the translators without proposing new criteria for a correct translation (cf. Lemay 1997), indicate to us that, though they may have enjoyed some limited currency, Averroes’s texts were familiar to few, and viewed with suspicion by those who knew them. It appears that the translations were not readily available in university circles, though in any case Bacon operated outside of those circles. Thomas cites a brief excerpt from Hermann’s translation of the Rhetoric in the Contra Gentiles; and later, in Summa Theologiae I–II, 29, 6, he will quote it once more, but this time in Moerbeke’s version. Moerbeke’s translation will in fact enjoy greater popularity, it will circulate in numerous manuscripts, and it will form the basis for the commentary on the Rhetoric composed by Giles of Rome between 1272 and 1274.23
Precisely because he has available a less improbable translation than those that came earlier, Giles’s theory of metaphor strikes us as unquestionably more mature. In both Marmo (1998) and chapter 7 of Eco and Marmo (2005) (written entirely by Marmo), we see how Giles worked out a strategy of critical collation among the different versions.
But at this point we are nearing the end of the thirteenth century. Giles’s commentary will be followed by those of John of Jandun and Buridan,24 too late, we might say, for Aristotle’s theory of metaphor to have any decisive influence on scholastic thought. As will be seen in Chapter 3, medieval metaphorology will have other founding texts and other outcomes.
What we have attempted to demonstrate here is how the absence of a cognitive theory of metaphor in the golden age of scholasticism was largely due to the inadequacy of the existing translations.
Paper delivered at the Scuola Superiore di Studi Umanistici of the University of Bologna in March 2001 as part of a series of lectures on the fortunes of Aristotle’s theory of metaphor. Revised and expanded, especially as regards the contribution of Giles of Rome, and published as a collaborative effort by myself and Costantino Marmo with the title “La teoria aristotelica della metafora nel Medioevo,” in Lorusso (2005). The present version is a reelaboration of my 2001 paper, but takes into account observations and clarifications made by Marmo.
1. Boethius’s contributions were the Introductio in syllogismos categoricos, De categoricis syllogismis, De hypotheticis syllogismis, De divisione and De differentiis topicis (PL 64). Only in the thirteenth century would William of Moerbeke bring forth new translations of the Aristotelian treatises, in addition to a translation of Ammonius Hermiae’s Greek commentary on the De interpretatione.
2. Boethius’s translation of the Sophistical Refutations, for example, was revised by James of Venice in the twelfth century and retranslated in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. Its circulation, however, was modest.
3. It is only with the translation from the Greek by James of Venice (twelfth century), its revision by William of Moerbeke (thirteenth century), together with the translation from the Arabic by Gerard of Cremona (end of the twelfth century) and the commentary of Robert Grosseteste (ca. 1230), that this text will enter medieval culture, becoming fully integrated into the so-called Logica Nova.
4. Furthermore, only two manuscripts are known from this period. It is not until Giorgio Valla’s 1495 Latin translation from the Greek that the Poetics will enter the world of the Humanists. Valla was unaware of Moerbeke’s translation.
5. The quote from Thomas is from Quodlibet VII, q. 6 a. 3 ad 2 (http://www.corpusthomisticum.org/q07.html#68283). We will have more to say on this topic in Chapter 3.
6. The Middle Commentary on the Poetics appeared in English in Butterworth (1986). The text of Hermann can be found under the title Averrois expositio seu Poetria Ibn Rosdin in Minio-Paluello (1968). Citations from either work are to the pages of these modern editions.
7. “Postquam, cum non modico labore consummaveram translationem Rhetorice Aristotelis, volens mittere ad eius Poetriam, tantam inveni difficultatem propter disconvenientiam modi metrificandi in greco cum modo metrificandi in arabico, et propter vocabulorum obscuritatem, et plures alias causas, quod non sum confisus me posse sane et integre illius operis translationis studiis tradere latinorum” (“After having completed, with no small labor, my translation of Aristotle’s Rhetoric, and wishing to dedicate myself to his Poetria, I found myself confronted with enormous difficulties, because of the difference between Greek and Arabic metrical scansion, the obscurity of the terminology, and for a number of other reasons, so that I am not sure I can really offer the translation of that work to the schools of the Latins without misrepresentation”) (p. 41).
8. P. 42. On the circulation of these canonical examples, see Chapter 3.
9. Borges probably got his information from Marcelino Menendez y Pelayo’s meticulous summary of the two commentaries in volume 1 of his Historia de las ideas estéticas en España (1883).
10. For Averroes, see Butterworth (1986: 75–79); for Hermann, see Minio-Paluello (1968: 48–49).
11. [Translator’s note: The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines “syncategorematic” as follows: “Of a word: having no meaning by itself, but only in conjunction with one or more other words or concepts.”]
12. For the fortunes of this thesis, see Marmo 1990.
13. Moerbeke’s translation of the Poetics also appears in Minio-Paluello (1968). The page references in parenthesis are to the pages of this edition.
14. For all this information and the passages cited, see Bogges (1971).
15. Textual references and page numbers are to Schneider (1978). References to the original are to Aristotle (1926).
16. See Barney, Lewis, Beach, and Berghof (2006, p. 79).
17. To find classifications that include poetics in an autonomous position, we must wait for Giles of Rome, though Dahan (1980: 178) already finds anticipations of this position in William of Conches and Richard of Saint Victor.
18. “Hoc argumentum utitur sermonibus pulchris et in fine decoris, ut rapiatur animus subito in amorem virtutis et felicitatis, et in odium vicii et pene perpetue que ei respondent. Et ideo sermones poetici qui sunt completi et pulchritudine et efficacia movendi animum debent esse ornati omni vetustate loquendi prosaice at astricti omni lege metri et ritmi, sicut Scriptura Sacra … ut decore et suavitate sermonis animus subito et fortiter moveatur” (“This is argument makes use of beautiful and decorous speech so that the soul will be immediately raised to the love of virtue and happiness and to the hatred of vice, and will scarcely ever be attracted to it. And so poetic speeches that are complete, beautiful and efficacious in moving the soul ought to be dressed out in all proper forms of prosaic speech, and abide by all the laws of meter and rhythm, just like Sacred Scripture … so that by the decor and sweetness of the language, the soul may be strongly and immediately moved”), (cf. Hackett 1997: 136, n. 6).
19. “Studiosi homines possunt a longe olfacere eius sentenciam, non gustare: vinum enim, quod de tercio vase transfusum est, virtutem non retinet in vigore” (“Learned men can get a distant whiff of his meaning, but not taste it. For a wine that has been poured into three successive containers does not keep its virtue in all its strength”) (Moralis Philosophia VI, 267, cited in Rosier-Catach (1998: 95), to whom we are also indebted for the references that follow).
20. “Moderni … duos libros logicae meliores negligunt, quorum unus translatus est cum Commentum Alpharabii super librum illum, et alterius expositio per Averroem facta sine textu Aristotelis est traslata” (“The Moderns neglect the two best books on logic, one of which has been translated with the commentary of al-Farabi, while the commentary on the other composed by Averroes has been translated without Aristotle’s text”).
21. “Quoniam autem libri Logica Aristotelis de his modis, et commentarii Avicennae, deficiuntur apud Latinos, et paucae quae translata sunt, in usu non habentur nec leguntur, ideo non est facile esprimere quod oporteat in hac parte” (“On the other hand, since the books of Aristotle’s Logic regarding these methods, together with Avicenna’s commentaries, are not available to the Latins, and the little that has been translated is not used or read, it is no easy matter to express what needs to be expressed in this part”).
22. “Quoniam vero non habemus in latino librum Aristotelis de hoc argomento ideo vulgus ignorat modum conponendi ipsum; sed tamen illi, qui diligentes sunt, possunt multum de hoc argumento sentire per Commentarium Averrois et [forse in] librum Aristotilis, qui habetur in lingua latina, licet non sit in usu multitudinis” (“Since we do not have, in Latin, Aristotle’s book on this subject [Bacon is alluding to the Poetics], most people therefore do not know the way it was composed; those, however, who are studious can learn much on this topic from Averroes’s Commentary and the book by Aristotle that we do possess in the Latin language, though not many people make use of it”).
23. Interest in the two Aristotelian texts apparently reawakens in the fourteenth century, when citations from Hermann’s translation appear in several florilegia; see Bogges (1970).
24. Still unpublished; see Marmo (1992).