The main goal of this monograph is to demonstrate how the classical rhetorical device known as enargeia is used in the Early Modern Age in Europe, ‘both in theories and in concrete examples of the various artes’ (p. 4). The study of pictorial vividness, enargeia, in Classical literary theory and practice has attracted the attention of many scholars during the last four decades. However, the novelty of P.'s book lies in the extension of the study of this concept from the Classical period to the Renaissance and Early Modern Age, and from literature to the visual arts and music.
The first chapter constitutes a brief discussion of the Greek notion of enargeia and its Latin counterparts, evidentia, illustratio, demonstratio. In the other fifteen chapters, P. unfolds many layers of meaning and multiple perspectives on enargeia as it may be found in humanist writings and its theoretical foundations (Chapters 2, 6); in Shakespeare's dramas (Chapters 3, 8, 14); in the ekphrastic description of places and pictures (Chapter 4); in the representations of persons (Chapter 5); in teichoscopy and the messenger's report (Chapter 7); in operatic libretti (Chapter 9); in mnemonics and meditation (Chapter 10); in the visual arts (Chapters 11, 12, 13, 15); and in music (Chapter 16).
The first chapter is strategic for P.'s ambition. It aims to widen the concept of enargeia so that it can be applied to arts other than literature. The essential idea of enargeia's definition is clearly stated by P. from Greek and Roman rhetorical sources (mainly Quintilian, Institutio oratoria; Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Lysias; and Demetrius, Peri hermeneias), that is to say, a process of inflating narratives with pictorial vividness, in order to cause emotional and visual impact in the minds of those listening or reading. This is achieved mainly through a detailed description that makes use of circumstantiae. Thus, the main function of enargeia is to make the listener see the subject with the mind's eye or use language so that the audience can imagine the scene and feel emotionally touched. P. indirectly invokes, through a quotation of Thomas Hobbes, the example of Thucydides as an admirable expert in this rhetorical artifice. Given P.'s interest in applying enargeia to the visual arts, he quickly abandons rhetorical writings and literary examples to introduce philosophical writings which emphasise the aesthetic value of imaginary panel paintings. This move provides the strategic introduction of ekphrasis into the semantic network of enargeia, namely by exploring the example of the painting known as The Calumny of Apelles, by means of a pictorial description made by the sophist Lucian of Samosata. Owing to the completely fictional character of the vivid immediacy activated by this rhetorical device, ‘enargeia can be viewed as the basic presupposition for the constitution of artes – of poetry, the visual arts and music – and for their rhetorical foundation in poetics and theories of art and music’ (p. 20). With these grounds as a starting point, when P. moves to the Renaissance and Early Modern Age, the term enargeia is easily applied to painting and music.
P. does not completely abandon the relationship between enargeia and literary texts. In fact, he establishes many good examples of enargeia in Shakespeare's dramas; in the descriptions of places (topographical ekphraseis) and pictures (mainly in Philostratus' Eikones); in the ekphrastic representation of characters (prosopographia); and in the dramatic narratio of things spatially and temporarily absent, which happens in messengers' reports and teichoscopy. However, it would be interesting to investigate enargeia in other kinds of texts, perhaps not as perceptibly connoted with ekphrasis, for example, historiography, political and military discourses, religious sermons and epistolography.
The pictorial character of enargeia allows one to maintain the existence of a natural tie between poetry and painting. This is corroborated by Simonides' maxim ‘painting is silent poetry and poetry is talking painting’, or by Horace's aphorism ut pictura poesis in the Ars poetica, whose reception in the Renaissance is discussed in Chapters 12 and 15. P. presents a considerable number of literary critical texts that support or contest this similarity. Inspired by these formulae, he tries to demonstrate the efficacy of enargeia in the emotional and visual effects produced in the imagination and memory by contemplating an image or a sculpture, by listening to music or by spiritual meditation. His final goal is to establish enargeia as a subject for comparative aesthetics, but only ‘in those artes that require the use of imagination and Quintilian's euphantasiotos as their originator and receiver’ (p. 197). However, if the dynamics of imagination and the production of mental images rely on enargeia, then enargeia becomes omnipresent to almost all cognitive and aesthetic activity and, by the same token, loses its specificity, if not its very relevance altogether. This is the most serious critical comment regarding P.'s hermeneutic and pragmatic enlargement of enargeia. The problematic unbounded character of enargeia that emerges conspicuously when P. applies this rhetorical device to almost any stylistic quality or instrument which places the receiver in the presence of any work of art, whether literature, music or painting, must be emphasised. By so doing, enargeia appears to include non-visual devices like apostrophes to an absent person, exclamatio and interrogatio in operatic libretti; the cernas formulae, used by artists and authors in order to activate the visual imagination of the person addressed; the imaginary work of the artist during the artistic creative process; the mediating deictic in a picture of a figure pointing to the essential element in the work. Despite this remarkable tour de force, it remains true nevertheless that enargeia is not referred to or, at least, is not self-evident at all in some modern texts that P. discusses, particularly those about visual art; therefore, it is hard to conceive enargeia as pertaining to a rhetorical effect of painting. In fact, in Classical Antiquity the basis for enargeia is always the text, oral or written, and its visual vividness. Furthermore, most of the examples cited in Progymnasmata to illustrate enargeia were taken from poets, orators and historians. True, P. explicitly acknowledges this tradition when he states that ‘in Classical Antiquity and the Early Modern Age enargeia or evidentia is not one stylistic concept among others, but the fundamental constituent of all verbal arts’ (p. 196). Consequently, P. opens up the semantic boundaries of enargeia, extending it far beyond the Early Modern enlargement of those boundaries. It hence follows, to my mind, that a legitimate application of enargeia to music and the visual arts requires a much deeper argument.
P. shows a good knowledge of authors and literary theorists, especially from the Renaissance and Early Modern Age, which he cites in their original languages with English translations. He also masters the immense academic studies that have been published on this subject in recent decades, although they are almost always cited in footnotes without integrating them into the reasoning chain of the book. In structural terms, the book's organisation appears to be unbalanced, for there are significant differences in the length of the chapters that lack clear justification. There are also chapters that, given their redundancy, could be merged together. Besides, one fails to understand the rationale adopted by P. to decide the sequence of the chapters. Notwithstanding, this book enriches in a challenging way the study of rhetoric with respect to enargeia and ekphrasis, and fulfils its general goal, as defined by P. in the foreword: ‘the intention is rather to stimulate and invite further studies to fill the lacunae that are undoubtedly present’.
