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Evolutionary Thinking in Ancient Literary Theory: Quintilian’s Canon and the Origin of Verse Forms
- Classical World
- Johns Hopkins University Press
- Volume 110, Number 2, Winter 2017
- pp. 237-255
- 10.1353/clw.2017.0003
- Article
- Additional Information
- Purchase/rental options available:
Already in antiquity Quintilian developed a theory of canonization that resembles modern accounts of cultural evolution. Another ancient literary theorist, Terentianus Maurus, explains the broad diversity of metrical schemes by derivation from a single ancestor. As the latter even mentions verse forms that apparently died out quickly, parallels to evolution may be drawn. A canon (of authors, genres, verse forms) is established by imitation of nonconformist aspects that authors have brought into the literary system without being sure about the audience’s response to them; by being imitated these aspects finally become traditional and their inventors become classics.