Fictor o poeta? La figura del poeta nelle glosse all’Ars poetica di Orazio

Abstract

Lisa Ciccone: Fictor or poeta? The concept of a poet in the glosses to  Horace’s Ars poetica

This essay examines the presence of the term poet in Late antique and Medieval glosses to Horace’s Ars poetica. It is one of the first results of the work carried out for the Thesaurus Glossarum et Commentariorum, a new research tool being developed at the University of Zurich
as part of the project The Ancient World seen from medieval glosses.  In the Pseudoachrones and Porphyryon the lemma poet is used almost only to paraphrase the Horatian text; in the glosses of the 11th and 12th centuries it appears in teachings that are in fact addressed to the orator or at least to the author of prose; in the 14th century it finally corresponds to such a precise identity that it can also be distinguished from the lemma auctor; in the commentary of the humanist Cristoforo Landino the name poet finally indicates a creator who, given due pro-portion, imitates God. The evolution of the idea of the poet strongly depends on the new consideration of poetry, which in Dante’s era is considered an autonomous science with respect to both grammar and rhetoric and is counted among the sciences useful for the formation of the medieval learner, belonging as much to the sermocinal part as to the moral and natural part of philosophy.