Band V: Buch 6 und 7
Books 6 und 7 of the ›Poetics‹ conclude the edition of the text and the translation. The subject of the 6th book (Hypercriticus) is – much like the fifth – Latin poetry, and its goal is to give the budding poet examples which are worthy of imitation. There is a division into five eras: from the beginnings and Roman classicism to the decline during the Empire and late antiquity and then the revival after Petrarch. The normative, judgmental aspect predominates, which means that a historical approach as it is taken today was not yet possible. Of great significance is the 4th chapter, which contains an overview of modern Latin poetry. The short 7th book provides a number of addenda to the preceding books, as the title ›Epinomis‹ (appendix) indicates.
Reviews
»Die editorische Qualität läßt auch in diesem Band nichts zu wünschen übrig; die souveräne, gut lesbare Übersetzung steht ihr nicht nach. Eine herausragende wissenschaftliche Leistung.«
»This edition of Scaliger’s Poetics is a massive achievement. [...] The community of scholarly specialists in the European early modern period, in poetics and rhetoric, in the history of Latin letters, and in literary history more generally is deeply in debt to the publishers and editors. If Scaliger is gazing up or down on the results of their efforts, he can only swell further with pride. Few are the sixteenth-century scholars who have been given such a gift.«
»[The editor’s] long labour is nearly completed, and they are to be congratulated for having produced an edition which attains the highest scholarly standards, and has been beautifully produced by the publishers [...] May the excellence of this edition provoke scholars to give other Renaissance texts the same attention.«
»[...] nun liegt dieser fünfte Band vor, und damit ist eines der ambitioniertesten Editionsunternehmen dieser Tage von Texten der Frühen Neuzeit zu einem vorläufigen Abschluss gekommen. […] Mag man bei manch anderer Edition von neulateinischen Texten der letzten Jahre durchaus darüber streiten können, ob der edierte (und übersetzte Text) wirklich der Mühe wert war, ist mit dieser Ausgabe ein großes Desiderat erfüllt worden.«