Horace’s Ars Poetica and Some Anticlassical Lines in Contemporary Culture

Abstract

This work provides a reading of contemporary culture under the light of Horace’s Ars Poetica, and revisits Horace’s Ars Poetica in the light of contemporary culture, in which poetry ―or literature in a very wide sense―, art and media culture ―including advertising and other non-literary messages― are examined. The Horatian Ars Poetica is actually a treatise on creativity written by one of the great creators of human history. After reviewing the question of the monster and the principles of simplicity, appropriateness, prohibition of the cruel, and the theory of the mad poet, this article concludes the validity of Horace’s Ars Poetica as a theory of culture and ethical project. The idea of the internal coherence of his work is reinforced as well.