A Remark on the Problem of Originality of Isidore of Seville (original) (raw)
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Estudio del uso de Agustín de Hipona por parte de Isidoro de Sevilla. Publicado en The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine, K. Pollmann (ed.), vol. 2, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013, pp. 1193-1196.
Visigothic Symposia 1, 2017
Several works of Bishop Isidore of Seville (c. ad 560-636) deal with the creation of the world and mankind, and subsidiary theological questions such as the relation between creator and creature, time and eternity, and fall and salvation. In De natura rerum, Etymologiae and even in the Sententiae Isidore occupies himself with these issues closely related to pastoral and doctrinal concerns. This paper focuses primarily on how Isidore, based on patristic and biblical sources, conceives the creation of man and its consequences. What was the place of man within the divine order? Made in the image of his Creator, man was also a creature, corruptible and mortal. The main question posed by this essay is how this special condition of man impacted Isidore’s thought.
Approach to the Eloquence in the Works of Isidore of Seville
Isidore of Seville, being out of polemics between rhetoric and philosophy or between “pagan” and Christian wisdom, used the concepts and arguments originated in these “quarrels” to build his own discourse. Thus he somehow summed up the results of them. The article analyzes Isidore’s approach to the eloquence in the light of the problem of using the source material. Two lines of correlation between the notion of eloquence and that of the wisdom are detected. One originates in the opposition of “pagan” and Christian wisdom, the other goes back to rhetoric / philosophy opposition. The first is ascetic developed in Sententiae by using the patristic argumentation against the “pagan” culture and by elaborating the ascetic concept of “speaking well” (bene loquor) concentrated on the matter of speaking not on its form. The second is presented in Differentae 2 and Etymologiae. In Differentiae 2 Isidore follows to Aulus Gellius and subjects eloquence to wisdom and rhetoric to dialectics. In Etymologiae he uses Quintilian’s concept of rhetoric and connects rhetoric and philosophy.
Conjectures on Unoriginal Compositions
Estetica. Studi e Ricerche, 1-2014, 23-24, 2014
At one time, a composer who worked within a tradition and borrowed freely from other composers could be thought to be highly creative and even a genius. Handel is the clearest example of such a composer. Starting in the eighteenth century (in Edward Young’s Conjectures on Original Composition) creativity and genius became identified with radical originality. By the early twentieth century this conception of genius was rampant and was influencing musical composition – and not for the better. This essay concludes by arguing that originality, far from being the key to creativity, can be an obstacle to genuine creativity, conceived of as the production of works with high aesthetic value.