SOURCE: Herrick, Marvin T. Introduction to The Fusion of Horatian and Aristotelian Literary Criticism, 1531-1555, pp. 1-6. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1946.

In the following essay, Herrick states that literary criticism in western Europe is based on the principles of Horace and Aristotle, respectively from the Ars Poetica and Poetics, citing commentaries on the Ars Poetica from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.

It is well known that formal literary criticism in western Europe stems from Horace and Aristotle. As Spingarn and others have pointed out, the beginnings of formal criticism in Italy, France, and England fairly coincided with the first translations of Horace's Ars Poetica into the vernacular: Dolce's Italian version in 1535, Pelletier's French version in 1545, and Drant's English version in 1567.

Translations of Aristotle's Poetics into the vernacular lagged behind translations of the Ars Poetica. Bernardo Segni's Rettorica et Poetica d'Aristotile appeared in 1549, but there were no French...