The Project Gutenberg EBook of De Carmine Pastorali (1684), by Rene Rapin

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Title: De Carmine Pastorali (1684)

Author: Rene Rapin

Release Date: December 28, 2004 [EBook #14495]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK DE CARMINE PASTORALI (1684) ***

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Series Two:
_Essays on Poetry_

No. 3

Rapin's _De Carmine Pastorali_,
prefixed to Thomas Creech's translation
of the _Idylliums_ of Theocritus (1684)

With an Introduction by
J.E. Congleton
and
a Bibliographical Note

The Augustan Reprint Society
July, 1947
Price: 75c

* * * * *

GENERAL EDITORS

RICHARD C. BOYS, University of Michigan
EDWARD NILES HOOKER, University of California, Los Angeles
H.T. SWEDENBERG, JR., University of California, Los Angeles

ADVISORY EDITORS

EMMETT L. AVERY, State College of Washington
LOUIS I. BREDVOLD, University of Michigan
BENJAMIN BOYCE, University of Nebraska
CLEANTH BROOKS, Louisiana State University
JAMES L. CLIFFORD, Columbia University
ARTHUR FRIEDMAN, University of Chicago
SAMUEL H. MONK, University of Minnesota
JAMES SUTHERLAND, Queen Mary College, London

Lithoprinted from copy supplied by author
by
Edwards Brothers, Inc.
Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A.
1947

* * * * *

INTRODUCTION

Recent students of criticism have usually placed Rapin in the School
of Sense. In fact Rapin clearly denominates himself a member of that
school. In the introduction to his major critical work, _Reflexions
sur la Poetique d'Aristote_ (1674), he states that his essay "is
nothing else, but Nature put in Method, and good _Sense_ reduced to
Principles" (_Reflections on Aristotle's Treatise of Poesie_, London,
1731, II, 131). And in a few passages as early as "A Treatise de
Carmine Pastorali" (1659), he seems to imply that he is being guided
in part at least by the criterion of "good _Sense_." For example,
after citing