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228 Pages·2005·0.9 MB·English
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Poetry and Philosophy from Homer to Rousseau Other publications by Simon Haines SHELLEY’S POETRY: The Divided Self Poetry and Philosophy from Homer to Rousseau Romantic Souls, Realist Lives Simon Haines Australian National University © Simon Haines 2005 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2005 978-1-4039-4418-4 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1T 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2005 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin’s Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries. ISBN 978-1-349-52241-5 ISBN 978-0-230-50277-2 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230502772 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Haines, Simon, 1955– Poetry and philosophy from Homer to Rousseau : romantic souls, realist lives / Simon Haines. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-349-52241-5 1. Poetry—History and criticism. 2. Self (Philosophy) in literature. 3. Self (Philosophy) I. Title PN1083.S46H35 2005 809.1′9384—dc22 2004051744 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 For Jane, Catherine, William and Edmund and in memoriam Nicolas Haines, 1918–2000, philosopher Shelagh Haines, 1925–2000, teacher of literature v Contents Acknowledgements ix Preface x 1 Homer: Passion in the Iliad 1 2 Sophocles’ Antigone and Thucydides’ Athens: Romanticism and Realism in Politics 17 Antigone 17 Thucydides 23 3 Plato and Aristotle: Concept and Passion 33 Socrates and early Plato 33 Plato: Meno, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Symposium 36 Plato: Gorgias, Republic 39 Aristotle: Organon, Physics, Metaphysics, De Anima 42 Aristotle: Ethics, Politics, Poetics 45 4 The Inheritance of Augustine: Confessions 53 Confessions (1) 53 Virgil: Aeneid IV 55 Ovid 57 Augustine and Platonism 58 St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans 60 St Mark’s Gospel 62 Confessions (2) 64 5 Aquinas and the Realist Revival 71 Boethius: Consolation of Philosophy 72 Abelard – and Heloise 73 Aquinas: God and the soul 75 Aquinas: Ethics 78 Chaucer: the wife and the clerk 84 6 Dante and Medieval Romanticism 90 Beowulf 90 La Chanson de Roland 91 Chrétien de Troyes and Courtly Love 94 The Roman de la Rose 96 Dante’s Divine Comedy 98 vii viii Contents 7 Renaissance, Reformation and Shakespeare’s Realism 109 Machiavelli 110 Humanism 115 Luther 116 Shakespeare: Coriolanus 118 8 Romanticism from Descartes to Rousseau 131 Recapitulation 131 Descartes’ eye 132 Hobbes’s blobs 135 Leibniz and Spinoza 138 Locke’s liberal self 141 Vico: realism romanticised 146 France: sensation and sentiment 151 Britain: sympathy and sentiment 154 Hume’s realism 160 Rousseau’s romanticism 163 Notes 175 Bibliography 197 Index 205 Acknowledgements I am grateful to my colleagues in the English Department and to successive Deans of Arts at the Australian National University for allowing me the time to work on this book in parts of 1997–1999 and 2002–2004. The Acting Director of the Humanities Research Centre and the Head of the Social and Political Theory Program in the Research School of Social Sciences at the University kindly granted me Visiting Fellowships (and with them the stimulating company of some exceptional colleagues) during 2002 and 2003–2004 respectively. I am grateful to staff at the British Library, the Chifley and Menzies Libraries at the ANU, and the libraries of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and Université Libre de Bruxelles for their assistance. Versions of three chapters of the book appeared as articles in the Critical Review, and I thank the editor for permission to use this material in a revised form. Anonymous readers of the manuscript made several invaluable sugges- tions. A substantial portion of the book has been presented as papers read to colleagues in the HRC and the School of Humanities at ANU, to the 1999 Martha Nussbaum Conference on Ethics and Literature at the ANU, to the 2003 British Association of Romantic Studies conference at Bologna and to the 2003 Australian Homer conference; many helpful suggestions were made on all those occasions. Discussions of Rousseau, Machiavelli and Shakespeare at several Liberty Fund conferences in Australia were enor- mously stimulating: thanks to organisers, participants and Fund. The book would never have been finished without the forbearance, advice and com- panionship of many friends, colleagues and students, including Kathie Barnes, Mary Besemeres, Geoffrey Brennan, Richard Campbell, Axel Clark, Andrew Clissold, Conal Condren, Lilla Crisafulli, Graham Cullum, Sonja Doyle, Keir Elam, Madeleine Forey, Richard Freadman, Chandran Kukathas, Niki Lacey, Fred Langman, Richard Lansdown, Owen Larkin, Tori McGeer, Elizabeth Minchin, Michael O’Neill, Heather Nash, David Parker, Philip Pettit, Stephen Prickett, Adam Shoemaker, John Stephenson, David Soskice, Paul Thom, Susan Tridgell, David Walsh, Anna Wierzbicka and, above all, Jane Adamson and Chris Miller, without whose inspiring and enlightening friendship I could scarcely even have started it. Its deficiencies, of course, are owed solely to its author. I am particularly indebted to members of the Departments of English, Classics and Philosophy at the ANU in 1972–1975, who introduced me to so many of the writers discussed here. My greatest debts are recorded in the Dedication. ix

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