From goya@racine.vjf.cnrs.fr Sun May 26 01:48:50 2002 Received: from mailscan5.cac.washington.edu (mailscan5.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.14]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g4Q8mmw3008472 for ; Sun, 26 May 2002 01:48:48 -0700 Received: FROM mxu1.u.washington.edu BY mailscan5.cac.washington.edu ; Sun May 26 01:48:48 2002 -0700 Received: from smtp.noos.fr (lafontaine.noos.net [212.198.2.72]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g4Q8mll3032505 for ; Sun, 26 May 2002 01:48:47 -0700 Received: (qmail 35220027 invoked by uid 0); 26 May 2002 08:48:36 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO ?195.132.104.96?) ([195.132.104.96]) (envelope-sender ) by 212.198.2.72 (qmail-ldap-1.03) with SMTP for ; 26 May 2002 08:48:36 -0000 Mime-Version: 1.0 Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <000101c20423$16855b00$6cec1ec4@al40> References: <000101c20423$16855b00$6cec1ec4@al40> Date: Sun, 26 May 2002 10:51:44 +0100 To: classics@u.washington.edu From: goya@racine.vjf.cnrs.fr Subject: Re: Aristotle in English Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" >A brief addendum, offering no specific help on English versions: Gerald F. >Else (tr.), Aristotle: Poetics (Ann Arbor : University of Michigan Press >1967), p. 11 mentions a Latin translation by Giorgio Valla and published in >1498, but otherwise confirms Shepherd's indications that serious and >widespread interest therein, especially in the vernacular, began only some >time into the following century. In 1278, William of Moerbeke (13th C.) had >produced a Latin version, extant in MSS identified only in 1930, from an >otherwise unknown Greek original, and there was a paraphrase by Averroes >(Abu l-Walid Muhammad bin Ahmad bin Rushd, 12th C.), which seems to have >existed in both Arabic original and Latin, but these evidently did not >circulate widely prior to the broader rediscovery of the Poetics around the >end of the 15th C. (I take the details from F. L. Lucas, Aristotle: Poetics >[Oxford : Clarendon Press 1968], pp. xxii-v, and Brian P. Copenhaver and >Charles C. Schmitt, A History of Western Philosophy, 3: Renaissance >Philosophy [Oxford and New York : OUP 1992], pp. 8-9, 66-8, who offer >several references to secondary literature). There exists (so Else, p. 12, >Lucas, p. xxiii) also a 10th C. Arabic version by one Abu Bisr (two Latin >versions of which were produced in the 20th C.), translated from a Syriac >version, of which there is a fragment extant. M.C.: The Abu Bishr in question is the Nestorian Christian Abu Bishr Matta Ibn Yunus, who died in 940. In the "Baghdad controversy" of 937/938, Matta argues for the claims of Greek logic against al-Sirafi, who argues for Arabic grammar. Matta loses, but this may be due to the prejudice of al-Tawhidi (ob. 1023), who reports the controversy. There is evidence of other Arabic translations besides that of Matta, which has the reputation of not being very good . Ibn al-Nadim reports in his Fihrist that there was another, "better" translation by another Nestorian Christian, Yahya Ibn 'Adi; and Avicenna mentions yet another "better" translation of the Poetics in his _Kitab al-shi'r_, or section on poetics of his Shifa'. On all this see the superb work by Deborah Black, _Logic and Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics in Medieval Arabic philosophy_, Leiden, Brill, 1990. Averroes usually wrote three commentaries on each Aristotelian work : a short paraphrase, a brief commentary, and a longer commentary. In the case of the Poetics, only the middle commentary is extant. It wasn edited by Charles Butterworth, _Averrois Cordubensis Commentarium medium in Aristotelis De arte poetica liber_, Cairo 1986 ; English translation idem, _Averroes' Middle Commentary on Aristotle's Poetics_, Princeton 1986. A Latin version of this commentary "Iacob Mantino Hispano Hebraeo medico interprete" was published after the 1562 Venice edition by Fr. Heidenhain in the _Jahrbuecher fuer classische Philologie_, Supplementband XVII, 5, pp. 351-382, Leipzig : Teubner, 1889. For an imaginative account of Averroes' struggle with the Poetics, see Borges' story "La busca de Averroes", in his collection _El Aleph_. Best, Mike. -- Michael Chase (goya@vjf.cnrs.fr) CNRS UPR 76/L'Annee Philologique Viellejuif-Paris, France. .