Plutarch: How to Study Poetry ed. by Richard Hunter & Donald Russell (review)

Plutarch: How to Study Poetry( de audiendis poetis), edited by Richard Hunter and Donald Russell, offers a very attractive and accessible commentary on a little read textbook concerning ancient literary criticism. That Plutarch’s views on criticism have so little in common with modern ones makes the essay all the more valuable. And that Plutarch, in formulating his advice for the education of young men, draws on a critical tradition apparently based on Plato, the Homeric poetic critics, and on the Hellenistic philosophers, adds price to the value of this choice. In the very strangeness of much of Plutarch’s argument lies its attraction. Hunter and Russell have done a service by bringing the unusual How to Study Poetryinto the mainstream.

Plutarch: How to Study Poetryfollows the usual arrangement for a text and commentary within the “Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics” series: a full and restrained introduction (1–26) is followed by an attractive Greek text (31–69) and a lengthy, value-neutral commentary (70–209). The Introduction covers five topics: Plutarch; “How to study poetry”; Structure; Language and style (excellent on clausulae); and, very briefly, The text. The “eclectic” Greek text is Hunter’s and Russell’s own and is based not on their own collations, but rather on “the Teubner edition of Paton 1925, as revised by Gärtner 1974, from Valgiglio 1973, from Philippon 1987, and from Bernardakis 2008” (25). The commentary is helpfully arranged by chapter and with full and clear chapter summaries beginning each. The commentary is, in the main, exegetical and interpretative, but it offers confident help with the Greek when the going gets tough.

What makes Plutarch’s How to Study Poetrysuch an intriguing essay is its alarming—for a modern reader—approach to reading. Hunter and Russell (8-9) explain: “For P[lutarch], poetic interpretation is not, as it is sometimes for us, a ‘literary’ matter; rather, it is indeed a matter of moral health, and the pursuit of to chrêsimonin poetry . . . is part of a whole approach to life, not merely the choice of a particular mode of poetic interpretation.” An approach to poetry like this leads Plutarch to a variety of stratagems for the reclamation of the reading of poetry as a useful, moral pursuit. Plutarch allows that poetry will contain troubling “stories and ideas” (17) that poets know are false and others that poets believe (Chapters 1 and 2). But poetry is mimetic, hence immoral representations mirror real life, which is a mix of good and bad (Chapters 3 and 7). The young reader (for whose education How to Study Poetryaims to provide advice) should look behind the words for the poet’s implied, often moral view (Chapters 4 and 5). A careful understanding of words will help as well: “metaphor and metonymy of divine names” (18) indicate that behind the unflattering depiction of the divine may lay simple truth (so Bacchus means wine as well as the god, Chapter 6). The young should learn to be carefully critical of bad decisions by otherwise good characters in poetry (so Nausicaa’s desire to marry Odysseus, Chapters 8–9). The young reader should therefore seek out the good in poetry, in its characters and races (Chapter 10). They ought also to look to the depiction of the virtues and how they may control vice (Chapter 11), and “find what is morally valuable in suspect passages” (19) and, if that is impossible, parody or amend the text (Chapter 12), and they should focus when dealing with poetic characters not on their appearance or on their “accidents of fortune” (20) but on their moral actions, for this will allow them to live better (Chapter 13). Finally, what is morally useful in poetry should be strengthened by linking it to the “related doctrines of philosophy” (20)—especially Plato (Chapter 14).

Most...