Metaphors of construction in ancient poetics

Abstract

The analogy between the activity of poet and that of a blacksmith or builder characterizes the origin of aesthetics in western culture and influences the idea of kósmos, as structure ordered solely with the purpose of the effect of beauty. Although the metaphor of poet-blacksmith occurs only after the 5th century BC, the image of poet-architect or builder dates back to the Indo-European period. Archaic poets (Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, etc.) already described their method of procedure through the comparison with techniques of naval carpentry and building construction: this association is applied both to production and reception of the text, as it is useful to illustrate structural order together with emotional and illusionistic effects of a work. In the classical age, the analogy can be found, in a more pervasive and explicit form, in the treatises of rhetoric which deal with stylistic composition, formulating doctrines which were to influence Vitruvian precepts. The centuries-old validity of comparison between poetry and architecture is also shown by the role which the notion of composition has in Medieval (for example in Dante poetics) and Renaissance poetics, and also in the reflections of contemporary poets (such as Pound, Valéry).