Poetry and Philosophy from Homer to Rousseau: Romantic Souls, Realist Lives

229 Pages·2005·0.76 MB·English

by  Simon Haines

Poetry and Philosophy from
Homer to Rousseau
Romantic Souls, Realist Lives
Simon Haines
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
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First published 2005 by
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ISBN 1–4039–4418–0 hardback
This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully
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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 1–4039–4418–0
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
Printed and bound in Great Britain by
Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne
For Jane,
Catherine, William and Edmund
and in memoriam
Nicolas Haines, 1918–2000, philosopher
Shelagh Haines, 1925–2000, teacher of literature
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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