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[1] [German version] I. General points The Greek word canon (κανών, kanṓn) was probably derived from κάννα ( kánna: ‘bulrush reed or rod’), a Semitic loan word in the Greek language. The original meaning of ‘straight reed, stick, rod (in different uses)’ developed into several more specific and technical meanings. As a result, the Greek word canon designates a carpenter's or bricklayer's measuring stick or square, a chronological or astrological table, a monochord in music terminology (from Euclides [3]) etc. In …

Vogt-Spira, Gregor (Greifswald) [German version] A.Subject and Significance (CT) The Homer-Virgil comparison is the conflict -- sometimes pursued with considerable passion -- about the relative position of the two greatest Classical poets. Because it provided a platform for the debate about central aesthetic concepts from the Roman Empire down to the end of the 18th cent., it represents one of the constants of European literary criticism. In the argument about precedence, which has its roots in the syste…

I. Greek [German version] A. Aesthetic experience and discursive practice In Graeco-Roman antiquity, literary theory (LT) is the realm of poets, their best-kept secret and a supplement to other disciplines. It is expressed implicitly rather than explicitly even by the literary critics and readers of antiquity. Since LT does not appear as an autonomous field with a claim to universality until the 20th cent., we can find (or at least sense) what we today consider the LT of antiquity in various contiguous di…

[German version] A. Existence The question whether literary history (LH) was known in antiquity depends on how LH is conceived and defined . Common opinion regards it as a type of historical understanding which, however, did not emerge as the dominant paradigm until the 18th cent. Judged from this point of view, ‘LH’ did not exist in antiquity as an independent subject of historical hermeneutics. The existence of LH in antiquity is therefore either rejected altogether or only accepted in the sense of a preliminary ph…