ABSTRACT
In his ‘Essay upon the Epic Poetry of the European Nations’, which first appeared in London in 1727, Voltaire reproaches ‘the greatest part of the critics [who] mistake commonly the beginning of an art, for the principles of the art itself’ and complains about their tendency to believe ‘that everything must be, by its own nature, what it was when contrived at first’. 1 Voltaire understands that, since all the inventions of art change because fancy and custom differ in time and from one nation to another, critics should find the nature and eternal rules of epic poetry in those features that have been common to the genre in different periods, peoples and literary traditions. Voltaire is probably referring to most of the authors of poetic treatises from the sixteenth century, because they share the conviction that the essential nature of poetry, as well as its purest and greatest forms, lie at its origins. Apparently, Voltaire's theoretical criteria are much more sensitive to historical and cultural change than those of the critics of whom he disapproves. However, the somewhat paradoxical fact is that this confusion between beginnings and principles ensured that early modern critics adopted historical approaches and methods for the study of literature.
