12mo, (142 x 88 mm). [8], 152 ff. Later stiff vellum, lightly darkened. Contemporary ownership inscriptions to title, restoration to gutter of title page, light foxing and occasional marginal damp, else very good.

“There is much value for us in the Arte de ingenio, apart from its utility as an indication of the nature of conceptist art, even as a guide to the conceit in all epochs… but these considerations are not likely to weigh with ´a reading public´-whom Gracian himself would have contemptuously ignored as ´vulgo´. What still is of value to all interested in questions of aesthetic, and the history of aesthetic theory, is the general ideas, explicit and implied, contained in this enormous volume. There remains one more source of interest and value in the Agudeza, for the modern reader. In it we have a highly trained workman in a tradition of no simple art standing at the end of one of the most brilliant, or at least, for the sake of the unsympathetic, let us call it glittering periods in any national literature.” (Sarmiento, E. “Gracián’s ‘Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio.’” The Modern Language Review 27, no. 4 (1932): 420–29. https://doi.org/10.2307/3715993.)

“Durante los periodos del Renacimiento y el Barroco, se encuentra que os preceptistas españoles teorizaron extensivamente los conceptos de la poesia… Para entender y evaluar la contribución de Baltasar Gracian, el mejor preceptista del Siglo de Oro, es neceario examinar las ideas mas importantes de la critica literaria hasta la Agudeza y arte de ingenio (1648), la obra maestra de la teoría literaria escrita por el jesuita aragonés” (Foster, Virginia Ramos. “BALTASAR GRACIÁN Y LOS CONCEPTOS DE LA POESÍA ANTES DE LA ‘AGUDEZA Y ARTE DE INGENIO.’” Hispanófila, no. 35 (1969): 33–43. http://www.jstor.org/stable/43807492.)

“The theory of wit attempted by Gracian in his Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio is not easy to understand; and there are signs that Gracian himself was not satisfied with it… He tries to treat of the conceit virtually in isolation, sharply separating the art of trope from that of wit, the latter being treated as a distinct and purely intellectual art, whilst trope is left on one side as a lower form, concerned with the merely sensuous. This is a limitation not altogether without advantages; but, lacking a precise theory of trope Gracian is not able, when the necessity arises, to mark clearly any boundary line between the two figures; nor, because of this lack, could he perceive what is the exact function of the simple trop when it is used, as it so often is, as a structural element within the conceit” (May, T. E. “An Interpretation of Gracián’s Agudeza y Arte de Ingenio.” Hispanic Review 16, no. 4 (1948): 275–300. https://doi.org/10.2307/470392.)

Gracian (1601-1658) was a Spanish Jesuit and baroque writer and philosopher, praised, amongst many others, by Schopenhauer and Nietzsche; he became rector of the Jesuit college at Tarazona, and was author of several works, some of which became highly influential in Spain and Europe.

Rare, according to OCLC we locate two copies in the United States, at Yale and University of Pennsylvania, plus Cambridge University (UK), Univ. of Mannheim, Mazarine (Paris) and BNF. We also locate copies at the BNE and Menendez Pelayo

Palau 106893. Not in Salvá.