La poesía y sus constitutivos esenciales según Feijoo

Abstract

Throughout his essays, Feijoo makes numerous references to his own definition of poetry. He argues that the essential constituents of poetry must be «enthusiasm» (intensity) and «versification» (rhythm). Feijoo considers that non-fiction should be regarded as another relevant constitutive of poetry, because non-fiction facilitates the teaching ability and usefulness of poetry. On account of his defense of non-fiction as a way to emphasize the docere, Feijoo came to prefer Lucan’s Pharsalia above Virgil’s Aeneid. Finally, Feijoo also maintained that naturalness was the last requisite of poetry, so he criticized the excesses of Baroque and he defended the literary models and the classical composition strategies that Neoclassicism would soon recover.