neo-classicism
neo-classicism,in literature, the habit of imitating the great authors of antiquity (notably its poets and dramatists) as a matter of aesthetic principle; and the acceptance of the critical precepts which emerged to guide that imitation. Medieval writers had often used classical works for models, but Petrarch in the 14th cent. was the first to do so because he considered it the only way to produce great literature; and where he led a host of later authors followed. The epic, eclogue, elegy, ode, satire, tragedy, comedy, and epigram of ancient times all found imitators, first in Latin, then in the vernaculars, and eventually practice was succeeded by precept. At the beginning of the 16th cent. the recovery of the previously neglected Poetics of Aristotle provoked an attempt to establish rules for the use of the ancient genres. The Poetics itself was repeatedly edited, translated, and supplied with commentaries, the most popular...
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