BARIGAZZI, A.,
La formazione spirituale di Menandro.
Bottega d'Erasmo, Torino, 1965. XVII,247p. Sewn wrps. Wrps bit worn. Pages bit yellowed. With a lot of pencil annotations from WGA. Different reviews loosely inserted. Personal summary from WGA loosely inserted. (Rare).
'Barigazzi's book on the 'spiritual moulding' of Menander is (...) dedicated to the preposition that 'Peripatetic philosophy has transmitted its spirit to Menander'. 'Two major faults (...) tend to undermine the foundations of the central thesis that Menander was the poet of the Peripatos. The first springs from an apparent unawareness of the nature of the dramatic process. The extant remains of Menander, from the smallest book fragment to the complete 'Dyskolos' are evaluated by Barigazzi as equally valid evidences of Menander's personal thought. To identify the views of a playwright from the testimony only of his complete dramatic works is a daunting enough enterprise, requiring from its undertaker a delicate sensitivity to every dramatic nuance. To assume, however, that a fragment of only a few lines' length, torn from a dramatic context that would establish whether its message was to be taken seriously, ironically, or humorously, must represent the author's own opinion, is both foolhardy and fallacious. It breeds the second major fault: that of exaggeration and distortion. On every occasion that some correspondence of language and thought emerges between Aristotle and Menander, it is argued that the poet's relationship to the philosopher is that of Mary's little lamb. But where is the allowance for, say irony or the cant use of Peripatetic slogans by superficializers? (...) Yet even while the absence of a more judicious restraint is mourned, the book can be said to justify itself for more than its thorough collection of evidence. Its picture may be distored, but few will doubt that this approximates more to the truth than to a caricature.' (W. GEOFFREY ARNOTT in The Classical Review (New Series), 1967, pp.149-51). From the library of the late Prof. W. Geoffrey Arnott.
€ 55.00
(Antiquarian)