Harvard Lectures on Greek Subjects

by Samuel Butler

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1904 edition. Excerpt: ... VI GREEK LITERARY CRITICISM 'LITERATURE, ' said Goethe, 'is the fragment of fragments. The smallest part of what has been done and spoken is recorded, and the smallest part of what has been recorded has survived.' May we not add, from the Greek point of view, --' the smallest part of what has survived is literature '? The modern world in judging prose is often undecided as to what is literature and what is not. We are all agreed that we cannot include in literature every form of written or printed matter. But where does literature begin or end? Must we exclude almost all science, much history, most fiction? On one or two points at least the Greeks never wavered. When the early glamour--the sense of mystery and almost of magic--attaching to the discovery of writing had passed away, writing was at first thought of chiefly as a mechanical aid to memory. It saved from oblivion the inspirations of the Muse. Outside poetry its early uses were of the practical kind: it was employed for registering treaties and contracts and for keeping accounts.1 So far, however, as it was designed to serve purely material ends, it formed part of the prosaic order of life and lacked the dignity of art. In order to enter into the domain of art, in order to become literature, 1 Euripides notes accurately the early use of writing for practical purposes--letters or messages, wills, contracts, etc.; see Fr. (Palamedes) 578 Nauck: Tci i-i/s ye papfiaK bpdthaas pbvos &puva puivfyvra ovWaf3as rideis iriOpov civdpunroiai yp&fifiar elS vat, Wot' 01) irapbvra irovrias vrep nrXa/cos roiKei kar otKovs Ir&vt eirlaraadai KaQs, ircucriv re rbv BvtjoKovra 'xjpttfiarwv pjrpov ypapavras eliretv, rbv af3bvra 8' elStvai. a S' els tpiv irlirrovai v &vBpwiroi vtpi, 8itos Siatpei, ...

266 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1969

About the author

For the author of Hudibras, see Samuel Butler.

Samuel Butler was an iconoclastic Victorian author who published a variety of works, including the Utopian satire Erewhon and the posthumous novel The Way of All Flesh, his two best-known works, but also extending to examinations of Christian orthodoxy, substantive studies of evolutionary thought, studies of Italian art, and works of literary history and criticism. Butler also made prose translations of The Iliad and The Odyssey which remain in use to this day.

See also: Samuel H. Butcher, Anglo-Irish classicist, who also undertook prose translations of Homer's works (in collaboration with Andrew Lang.