Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Alciphron: Letters From the Country and the Town, of Fishermen, Farmers, Parasites and Courtesans
Form in literature to the classical Greeks was a con trolling and dominating force. A writer could not alter his form to suit his own caprice, he worked always under definite rules Of style which traced back to immemorial antiquity. Poetry was older than prose and a poetical form was binding for all imaginative work. The language and the style appropriate for lyric, epic, and Ode were of very varying degrees of complexity and they were fixed beforehand for the poet. The difference between Timotheus and Sappho is not purely one of personal temperament; Timotheus is not elaborate and Sappho simple merely because they wish to be; they both are constrained by the convention of their literary form. So even the same author in the same composition was often compelled to use a different treatment; the dialogue Of tragedy is easier than the chorus, because the music of choral poetry was ruled by a convention extraordinarily subtle and difficult, the music of the Spoken word was comparatively simple. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
