Horace’s Ars Poetica (designated as AP hereafter) is a multifaceted verse-epistle that has had a conscious or unconscious influence on a variety of important literary critics and poets almost continuously from the ending of the first century B.C.E. through the 20th century. The greatest of the classical literary critics, Aristotle and Horace, have survived many changes of fashion and orientation in literary criticism and theory to stand, sometimes in alien landscapes, as beacons of enlightenment regarding the essential nature and ultimate goals of poetry. Because of the impressive role the AP has played for so long a period in the history of literary criticism there is every reason to expect that it …
1724 words
Citation: Golden, Leon. "Ars Poetica". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 26 April 2011 [https://staging.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=13377, accessed 24 November 2024.]