Adams Introduction:
"poesy is a part of learning ... which, being not tied to the laws
of matter, may at pleasure join that which nature hath severed, and sever
that which nature had joined"
feigned history
"to give some shadow of satisfaction to the mind of man in those points
wherein the nature of things doth deny it, the world being in proportion
inferior to the soul; by reason whereof there is agreeable to the spirit
of man a more ample greatness, a more exact goodness, and a more absolute
variety than can be found in the nature of things"
"poesy feigneth acts and events greater and more heroical"
"poetry feigns them more just in retribution and more according to
revealed providence"
"magnanimity, morality, and to delectation"
"some participation of divineness"
"it doth raise and erect the mind, by submitting the shows of things
to the desires of the mind, whereas reason doth buckle and bow the mind
unto the nature of things"
"insinuations and congruities with man's nature and pleasure"
narrative, representative and allusive (parabolical)
divine poesy: "when the secrets and mysteries of religion, policy,
or philosophy are involved in fables or parables"
fable of giants and birth of fame from mother earth, political reading,
malignity of people bringing forth libels after suppression of rebellion
by princes
in many cases the fable comes first, then the interpretation
Stoic meaning in Homer; "I should without any difficulty pronounce,
that his fables had no such inwardness in his own meaning"
"expressing of affections, passions, corruptions and customs"