Malcolm Heath
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 3605829 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Malcolm Heath |
| NOMBRES | Malcolm |
| APELLIDO | Heath |
| FIRMA | HEATH M |
| AFILIACIONES | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-6757-2087 |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 46 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 103 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 45 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 1 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 1985 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2020 |
| ÍNDICE H | 6 |
Reading the Poetics in context
Why are mules sterile? Why do mole-rats have eyes that are covered by skin and useless for seeing? Why do elephants have toes? And why are lobsters not reliably right-handed? These are not the most obvious questions to pose at the start of a chapter on Aristotle’s Poetics. But they are all questions tackled by the author of the Poetics in other contexts 1 and illustrate the range of his interests. When we read the Poetics, we are reading somethin…
The Poetics in its Aristotelian Context
Poetics in Its Aristotelian Context
The Life of Texts
The ‘Social Function’ of Tragedy
Longinos
Cassius Longinos (born ca. 200–213 ce , died 273) was a highly respected scholar, who taught rhetoric, literature, and philosophy in Athens. None of his works survive (if, as most modern scholars believe, the attribution of On Sublimity to him is incorrect), but the range of his academic activity is reflected in the testimonia and fragments of his extensive written output. His disagreements with Plotinus placed him outside the dominant trends of …
Aristotle on the Best Kind of Tragic Plot
It is widely held that Aristotle presents two contradictory accounts of the best kind of tragic plot in chapters 13 and 14 of the Poetics. But an explicit cross-reference between the two chapters puts it beyond doubt that Aristotle regarded their conclusions as mutually supporting. Since Aristotle often expects readers to be willing to follow a prolonged and circuitous argument without drawing premature conclusions about his final conclusion, the…
Nikagoras of Athens
The Athenian sophist Nikagoras (b. ca. 190 CE; d. after 244) held one of the two chairs of rhetoric in Athens and was Sacred Herald of the Eleusinian mysteries. Although information about his professional activities is limited, sufficient evidence survives to trace his distinguished intellectual and family connections.
Unity, Wholeness, and Proportion
This chapter examines conceptions of the unity of literary texts and other artistic products in ancient philosophical aesthetics. It begins with the text as an appropriately organized whole in Plato's Phaedrus, and assesses the Neoplatonist theory that this criterion requires a single “target” (skopos). The discussion of unity in tragedy and epic in Aristotle's Poetics is interpreted in the light of the conceptual analyses of wholeness, unity, an…
A.1. Aristotle On Poets
This paper provides a critical examination of Richard Janko’s edition of the fragments of Aristotle On Poets (Janko 2011). Section 1 discusses passages preserved in late ancient texts which Janko assigns to On Poets. Section 2 identifies problems in the evidence preserved in the Philodemus papyri. Section 3 assesses indirect evidence for Aristotle’s theory of katharsis, and considers two contested points in Aristotle’s discussion of katharsis i…
Aristotle and the Value of Tragedy
This article explores Aristotle’s understanding of the value of tragedy. The primarily technical analyses of the Poetics are not sufficient for this purpose: they must be read in the context of Aristotle’s philosophical anthropology. An outline of Aristotle’s understanding of the structure of human motivation provides a framework within which to interpret his discussion of the uses of music, and in particular of music’s status as an intrinsically…
Ancient Philosophical Poetics
What is poetry? Why do human beings produce and consume it? What effects does it have on them? Can it give them insight into truth, or is it dangerously misleading? This book is a wide-ranging study of the very varied answers which ancient philosophers gave to such questions. An extended discussion of Plato's Republic shows how the two discussions of poetry are integrated with each other and with the dialogue's central themes. Aristotle's Poetics…
Ancient philosophical poetics
What is poetry? Why do human beings produce and consume it? What effects does it have on them? Can it give them insight into truth, or is it dangerously misleading? This book is a wide-ranging study of the very varied answers which ancient philosophers gave to such questions. An extended discussion of Plato's Republic shows how the two discussions of poetry are integrated with each other and with the dialogue's central themes. Aristotle's Poetics…
Aristotle and Homer
Response to Burian, Hesk, and Barker
This short chapter responds to chapters by Peter Burian, Jon Hesk, and Elton Barker on the discourse of Athenian tragedy.
Rhetorical Exercises from Late Antiquity
The first translation, produced by a team of eight scholars, of the Declamations and Preliminary Talks of the sixth-century sophist Choricius of Gaza. Declamations, deliberative or judicial orations on fictitious themes, were the fundamental advanced exercises of the rhetorical schools of the Roman Empire, of interest also to audiences outside the schools. Some of Choricius' declamations are on generic themes (e.g. a tyrannicide, a war-hero), whi…
Should There Have Been a Polis in Aristotle's Poetics
Aristotle’s Poetics is concerned with poetry as a universal human practice. Therefore, although Aristotle draws his evidence for tragedy from the Greek tradition, he legitimately abstracts from tragedy’s relationship to any particular social context (such as Athens). Tragedy may be seen as contingently local, but normatively universal: that is, it is a natural human good, which ought to develop in all human societies. That development is natural,…
Rhetorical Exercises from Late Antiquity
The first translation, produced by a team of eight scholars, of the Declamations and Preliminary Talks of the sixth-century sophist Choricius of Gaza. Declamations, deliberative or judicial orations on fictitious themes, were the fundamental advanced exercises of the rhetorical schools of the Roman Empire, of interest also to audiences outside the schools. Some of Choricius' declamations are on generic themes (e.g. a tyrannicide, a war-hero), whi…
Aristotle on Natural Slavery
Aristotle's claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle's argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in t…
Cognition in Aristotle's Poetics
This paper examines Aristotle's understanding of the contributions of perceptual and rational cognition to the composition and reception of poetry. An initial outline of Aristotle's cognitive psychology shows that Aristotelian perception is sufficiently powerful to sustain very rich, complex patterns of behaviour in human as well as non-human animals, and examines the interaction between perception (cognition of the particular and the 'that') and…
Sophocles' Ajax
This paper examines the staging of Sophocles’ Ajax, and some aspects of its treatment of the traditional story. Starting from Scullion’s argument against the standard assumption that there is a change of location after the exit of the chorus at 814, we work out the consequences of the single location for the play as a whole. In tracing the unfolding sequence of events on stage it becomes clear that Sophocles has organised this sequence in a way c…
Teaching Rhetorical Argument Today
Journal Article 6. TEACHING RHETORICAL ARGUMENT TODAY Get access MALCOLM HEATH MALCOLM HEATH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 50, Issue Supplement_96, August 2007, Pages 105–122, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2007.tb02485.x Published: 20 January 2014
Menander
This book reassesses the late 3rd-century Greek rhetorician Menander of Laodicea (Menander Rhetor). Menander is generally regarded as a specialist in epideictic, as such, he is often considered an exemplary rhetorician of an age which saw the triumph of epideictic eloquence. But detailed examination of the fragments shows that he was an expert on judicial and deliberative oratory whose most influential work was a commentary on Demosthenes. Source…
Pseudo-Dionysius Art of Rhetoric 8-11
This paper considers the date and authorship of chapters 8-11 of the Art of Rhetoric falsely attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Analysis of the two chapters on "figured speech" suggests that chapter 9 is an unfinished attempt by the author of chapter 8 to rework the material into a more radical (but, in fact, conceptually flawed) refutation of those who rejected the concept. Distinctive common features indicate that chapters 10-11, on decl…
Porphyry’s Rhetoric
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Hesiod's Didactic Poetry
In this paper I shall approach Hesiod's poetry from two, rather different, directions; consequently, the paper itself falls into two parts, the argument and conclusions of which are largely independent. In (I) I offer some observations on the vexed question of the organisation of Works and Days ; that is, my concern is with the coherence of the poem's form and content. In (II) my attention shifts to the function of this poem and of its companion,…
Epinician Performance
Should There Have Been a Polis in Aristotle's Poetics
Aristotle’s Poetics is concerned with poetry as a universal human practice. Therefore, although Aristotle draws his evidence for tragedy from the Greek tradition, he legitimately abstracts from tragedy’s relationship to any particular social context (such as Athens). Tragedy may be seen as contingently local, but normatively universal: that is, it is a natural human good, which ought to develop in all human societies. That development is natural,…
Aristotle on Natural Slavery
Aristotle's claim that natural slaves do not possess autonomous rationality (Pol. 1.5, 1254b20-23) cannot plausibly be interpreted in an unrestricted sense, since this would conflict with what Aristotle knew about non-Greek societies. Aristotle's argument requires only a lack of autonomous practical rationality. An impairment of the capacity for integrated practical deliberation, resulting from an environmentally induced excess or deficiency in t…
Menander
This book reassesses the late 3rd-century Greek rhetorician Menander of Laodicea (Menander Rhetor). Menander is generally regarded as a specialist in epideictic, as such, he is often considered an exemplary rhetorician of an age which saw the triumph of epideictic eloquence. But detailed examination of the fragments shows that he was an expert on judicial and deliberative oratory whose most influential work was a commentary on Demosthenes. Source…
The Substructure of stasis -theory from Hermagoras to Hermogenes
Stasis -theory seeks to classify rhetorical problems (declamation themes, or real forensic and deliberative situations) acccording to the underlying structure of the dispute that each involves. Such a classification is of interest to the practising rhetor, since it may help him identify an appropriate argumentative strategy; for example, patterns of argument appropriate to a question of fact (did the defendant do what is alleged?) may be irreleva…
The Universality of Poetry in Aristotle's Poetics
In chapter 9 of the Poetics Aristotle states that poetry is concerned with the universal (τ καθλου 1451b6–15). In this paper I shall consider three questions arising out of this statement. First, what does it mean? Secondly, what constraints does it impose on the construction of (in particular) tragic plots ? I shall consider this question with special reference to the possible role of chance in tragedy. Thirdly, why is poetry concerned with the …
Receiving the kwmos
Epinician poetry is associated with the komos that celebrated victory, and shares with other komastic poetry the reception-motif that points to the arrival of the komos at a temple or the victor's home as its typical context (although processional performance is possible in some cases). Komoi typically involved unison singing of traditional victory songs, but there is no compelling evidence to support the assumption that commissioned epinician po…
Aristotelian Comedy
My aim in this paper is to reconsider a number of aspects of Aristotle's thinking on comedy in the light of the acknowledged Aristotelian corpus. I shall have nothing to say about the Tractatus Coislinianus , an obscure and contentious little document which must (despite Janko's energetic attempt to restore its credit) remain an inappropriate starting-point for discussion. There is still, I believe, something to be learnt from the extant works
Sophocles' Ajax
This paper examines the staging of Sophocles’ Ajax, and some aspects of its treatment of the traditional story. Starting from Scullion’s argument against the standard assumption that there is a change of location after the exit of the chorus at 814, we work out the consequences of the single location for the play as a whole. In tracing the unfolding sequence of events on stage it becomes clear that Sophocles has organised this sequence in a way c…
Porphyry’s Rhetoric
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Aristotle and the Value of Tragedy
This article explores Aristotle’s understanding of the value of tragedy. The primarily technical analyses of the Poetics are not sufficient for this purpose: they must be read in the context of Aristotle’s philosophical anthropology. An outline of Aristotle’s understanding of the structure of human motivation provides a framework within which to interpret his discussion of the uses of music, and in particular of music’s status as an intrinsically…
Teaching Rhetorical Argument Today
Journal Article 6. TEACHING RHETORICAL ARGUMENT TODAY Get access MALCOLM HEATH MALCOLM HEATH Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 50, Issue Supplement_96, August 2007, Pages 105–122, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.2007.tb02485.x Published: 20 January 2014
Echoes of Longinus in Gregory of Nyssa
ECHOES OF LONGINUS IN GREGORY OF NYSSA BY MALCOLM HEATH 1. Gregory and Ca.s.siu.s Longinus In Against Eunomius Gregory of Nyssa repeatedly satirises his opponent's style.' Thc vocabulary used in the following passage is striking, and on closer investigation reveals something of Gregory's intellectual background (1.480): I put these things in my own words, not to distort his meaning, but to cor- rect the bombastic and impacted quality of his dicti…
Apsines and Pseudo–Apsines
Apsines and Pseudo–Apsines Malcolm Heath This essay addresses a problem with the authorship of the rhetorical treatise traditionally attributed to Apsines,1 and explores the possibilities which open up if we reject that attribution. We know that a great deal of rhetorical literature was in circulation in late antiquity without reliable indication of authorship. Some texts, such as the Anonymus Seguerianus, have survived with no name attached. Oth…
Hesiod's Didactic Poetry
In this paper I shall approach Hesiod's poetry from two, rather different, directions; consequently, the paper itself falls into two parts, the argument and conclusions of which are largely independent. In (I) I offer some observations on the vexed question of the organisation of Works and Days ; that is, my concern is with the coherence of the poem's form and content. In (II) my attention shifts to the function of this poem and of its companion,…
Political Comedy in Aristophanes
This paper argues that Aristophanic comedy, although it takes contemporary political life as its point of departure, is not political in the sense of aiming to influence politics outside the theatre. Brief discussions of Clouds, Knights, Lysistrata and Acharnians are used to cast initial doubt on interpretations that attribute serious intent to Aristophanes. It is then argued that Aristophanes' treatment of the poet's role as adviser, abuse of th…
Jure Principem Locum Tenet’
‘JURE PRINCIPEM LOCUM TENET’: EURIPIDES' HECUBA Get access Malcolm Heath Malcolm Heath University of St Andrews Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Bulletin of the Institute of Classical Studies, Volume 34, Issue 1, December 1987, Pages 40–68, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-5370.1987.tb00553.x Published: 12 March 2010
Euripides' Telephus
Whom did Telephus defend in Telephus ? We know that he defended himself; fr. 710 proves that. It is widely, and I believe rightly, held that he defended the Trojans also; but this has been denied by some scholars, most recently by David Sansone in an article on the date of Herodotus' publication. In the first part of this paper I shall comment on Sansone' arguments and offer a defence of the conventional view; I shall then make some rather specul…
Receiving the kwmos
Epinician poetry is associated with the komos that celebrated victory, and shares with other komastic poetry the reception-motif that points to the arrival of the komos at a temple or the victor's home as its typical context (although processional performance is possible in some cases). Komoi typically involved unison singing of traditional victory songs, but there is no compelling evidence to support the assumption that commissioned epinician po…
Aristotelian Comedy
My aim in this paper is to reconsider a number of aspects of Aristotle's thinking on comedy in the light of the acknowledged Aristotelian corpus. I shall have nothing to say about the Tractatus Coislinianus , an obscure and contentious little document which must (despite Janko's energetic attempt to restore its credit) remain an inappropriate starting-point for discussion. There is still, I believe, something to be learnt from the extant works
The Universality of Poetry in Aristotle's Poetics
In chapter 9 of the Poetics Aristotle states that poetry is concerned with the universal (τ καθλου 1451b6–15). In this paper I shall consider three questions arising out of this statement. First, what does it mean? Secondly, what constraints does it impose on the construction of (in particular) tragic plots ? I shall consider this question with special reference to the possible role of chance in tragedy. Thirdly, why is poetry concerned with the …
Epinician Performance
ΣTaΣIΣ-Theory in Homeric Commentary
(i) Analysis of the small number of references to the rhetorical theory of stasis (issue-theory) in the Homeric scholia shows that they assume a modified version of the theory of Athenaeus, a contemporary and rival of Hermagoras of Temnos. (ii) In his discussion of Agamemnon's speech in Iliad 3.456-60 Eustathius follows the discussion in Plutarch Quaestiones convivales 9.13, rather than that in the scholia. It is shown that this is justified on t…
The Substructure of stasis -theory from Hermagoras to Hermogenes
Stasis -theory seeks to classify rhetorical problems (declamation themes, or real forensic and deliberative situations) acccording to the underlying structure of the dispute that each involves. Such a classification is of interest to the practising rhetor, since it may help him identify an appropriate argumentative strategy; for example, patterns of argument appropriate to a question of fact (did the defendant do what is alleged?) may be irreleva…
Hermogenes On Issues
A new English translation, with commentary, of the treatise On Issues by Hermogenes of Tarsus (AD C.160-225). The book is intended to make sophisticated theories of argument developed by Greek teachers of rhetoric in the second century AD accessible both to specialist and non-specialist readers. Of interest to scholars of all types of Greek literature.
Two passages in pseudo-Xenophon
This sentence has long been regarded as problematic; Kirchhoff's emendation is palaeographically simple and has met with general approval, but if ίερά is taken to mean ‘temples’, as is usual, the phrase is not without its difficulties. ỉστασθαι is normally used of inscriptions, statues and trophies rather than buildings; LSJ cite only one instance of the latter usage, Thucydides 1.69.1, and there it might be argued that the Long Walls were not a …
Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period (330 B.C.- A.D. 400)
This detailed reference work provides a comprehensive and wide-ranging introduction to classical rhetoric as it was practised in the hellenistic period (330 B.C.-A.D.400). In three sections, it provides a thorough description and analysis of the standard categories of thought, terminology, and theoretical and historical developments of classical rhetoric, as well as providing useful bibliographies. The three sections of essays define the major ca…
Oratory and Declamation
Apsines and Pseudo–Apsines
Apsines and Pseudo–Apsines Malcolm Heath This essay addresses a problem with the authorship of the rhetorical treatise traditionally attributed to Apsines,1 and explores the possibilities which open up if we reject that attribution. We know that a great deal of rhetorical literature was in circulation in late antiquity without reliable indication of authorship. Some texts, such as the Anonymus Seguerianus, have survived with no name attached. Oth…
Sophocles’ Philoctetes
Thus Oliver Taplin. I concur, and propose in this paper to examine some of the problems which the Philoctetes poses. This may seem a paradoxical aim, in view of the footnote attached to Taplin’s statement: ‘I am not persuaded that I should give up this sort of interpretation by M. Heath’s The Poetics of Greek Tragedy .. .’. But although, on rereading that book a decade after publication, I can see how readily it lends itself to misconstruction, i…
Echoes of Longinus in Gregory of Nyssa
ECHOES OF LONGINUS IN GREGORY OF NYSSA BY MALCOLM HEATH 1. Gregory and Ca.s.siu.s Longinus In Against Eunomius Gregory of Nyssa repeatedly satirises his opponent's style.' Thc vocabulary used in the following passage is striking, and on closer investigation reveals something of Gregory's intellectual background (1.480): I put these things in my own words, not to distort his meaning, but to cor- rect the bombastic and impacted quality of his dicti…
Longinus, on Sublimity
Until the beginning of the nineteenth century the treatise On sublimity was universally attributed to the third-century critic, rhetorician and philosopher Cassius Longinus. Weiske's edition, first issued in 1809, marked a turning-point in the trend of scholarly opinion, and Longinus' claim to authorship is now generally rejected, often summarily. A variety of alternative attributions have been canvassed; most commonly the work is assigned to an …
Longinus, On Sublimity 35.1
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Interpreting classical texts
How should I interpret a classical text? However I interpret it, someone else will so do differently, and even the nature of the interpreter's task is a matter of dispute; consensus is not a realistic prospect. Malcolm Heath sees the inevitability of such disagreements, not as a problem to be deplored, but as a constructive force, at once an essential part of the process of enquiry and a reflection of the endless diversity of the questions that i…
Notes on Pseudo-Apsines
The paper discusses problems of text and interpretation in the rhetorical treatise traditionally attributed to Apsines: (i) two declamation themes mentioned in 1.33 are clarified; (ii) in 1.44 emendation of πoιει to παιει is proposed; (iii) points of rhetorical theory in 4.15 and 5.10 are explained, leading to a defence of the transmitted text; (iv) an explanation is offered of the concepts of 'leading' and 'necessary' arguments in 10.3, and the …
Pseudo-Dionysius Art of Rhetoric 8-11
This paper considers the date and authorship of chapters 8-11 of the Art of Rhetoric falsely attributed to Dionysius of Halicarnassus. Analysis of the two chapters on "figured speech" suggests that chapter 9 is an unfinished attempt by the author of chapter 8 to rework the material into a more radical (but, in fact, conceptually flawed) refutation of those who rejected the concept. Distinctive common features indicate that chapters 10-11, on decl…
Porphyry’s Rhetoric
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Menander
This book reassesses the late 3rd-century Greek rhetorician Menander of Laodicea (Menander Rhetor). Menander is generally regarded as a specialist in epideictic, as such, he is often considered an exemplary rhetorician of an age which saw the triumph of epideictic eloquence. But detailed examination of the fragments shows that he was an expert on judicial and deliberative oratory whose most influential work was a commentary on Demosthenes. Source…
Sophocles' Ajax
This paper examines the staging of Sophocles’ Ajax, and some aspects of its treatment of the traditional story. Starting from Scullion’s argument against the standard assumption that there is a change of location after the exit of the chorus at 814, we work out the consequences of the single location for the play as a whole. In tracing the unfolding sequence of events on stage it becomes clear that Sophocles has organised this sequence in a way c…
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