Demetrius Third Century B. | G. M. A. Grube (essay date 1961)
G. M. A. Grube (essay date 1961)
SOURCE: An introduction to A Greek Critic: Demetrius On Style, University of Toronto Press, 1961, pp. 3-56.
[In the following essay, Grube offers background on the philosophical and rhetorical traditions of Greek literary criticism, examines the content, nature, and structure of On Style, and considers the problems of determining the authorship and date of composition of the work.]
The Background
Greek criticism of literature was derived from two distinct and independent sources, the philosophical and the rhetorical. The philosophers were first in the field. As early as 500 B.C. we find Xenophanes and Heraclitus vigorously censuring Homer for his immoral and untrue stories about the gods.1 Thus started what Plato was to call the ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy, in which the philosophers stressed the social responsibility of the poet, and the...
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