User talk:Daniel.luxemburg

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It's great to see someone going right into serious philosophical stuff. Geogre (talk) 12:09, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Genius
I do 18th c. British literature quite a bit, and the distinction between the genius and the critic seems to be fully formed in Alexander Pope's Essay on Criticism. In a sense, the distinction between the "regular poet" (Ben Jonson) and the "natural poet" (Shakespeare) that we find in Dryden (and others) is a form of it. However, by Swift's Battle of the Books, it's quite fully formed in the argument/anecdote of the spider and the bee. The spider is the critic, and he consumes corpses and spins his web out of his own guts (reads books and formulates out of received wisdom), while the bee gathers from nature and produces honey (which is utile et dulce).

I want to be clear that I have no problem with your additions to the Genius (literature) article whatsoever. I'm just wondering about the idea that this distinction begins with Lessing, or even Kant. Kant definitely made it ... respectable, permanent, clear ... but Swift's A Tale of a Tub hammers at almost nothing but the idea of learning from nature (geniuses like Virgil) and learning from indexes (modern critics). Geogre (talk) 11:39, 9 July 2008 (UTC)

Let me also say that I understand that these tropes can recede into the distance. The moment we say "first," we end up having to qualify. While I see this distinction first in the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, it's probably found in the arguments around Horace. My Latin is weak enough now that I cannot ground myself as well as Swift and the others did, but I have a sneaking sensation that the observation/reflection metaphor goes to the Maecenas circle. Geogre (talk) 12:09, 9 July 2008 (UTC)