The Middle Ages
1. The Decay of Classical Rhetorical Tradition
The seven liberal arts of mediaeval education carried the blending almost
to the absorption of poetic by rhetoric, and the debasement of rhetoric
itself to a consideration of style alone.
As for poetic, it had no distinct place except in the analyses of the
grammaticus, who from classical times had prepared boys for the schools of
rhetoric partly by analyzing with them the style of admirable passages.
These passages were commonly taken from the poets, whose art was thus
considered mainly as an art of words and applied to the art of the orator.
Consequently, as a result of this tradition, poetic in the middle ages was
commonly grouped with grammar or with rhetoric, although Isidore includes
it in his section on theology.[108]
The rhetorical treatises of the middle ages exhibit two phases. On the one
hand the earlier post-classical treatises composed by Martianus Capella,
Cassiodorus, and Isidore, all inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin, are
fairly close to the classical tradition of Quintilian. Their weakness
consists not in that they restricted rhetoric to style, but in that their
whole treatment of rhetorical theory was compact, arid, and schematic. The
second phase of mediaeval rhetoric is characteristic of a geographical
position more remote from the center of classical culture. Thus it is in
the rhetorical treatises of England and Germany in the middle ages that
rhetoric was to the greatest extent restricted to a consideration of
style. Illustrative of this tendency is the fact that the only surviving
rhetorical work by the Venerable Bede is a treatise on the rhetorical
figures.
But although the conventional study of rhetoric in such condensed
treatment as that of the sections in Martianus, Isidore, or Cassiodorus,
was definitely intrenched in the educational system of the seven liberal
arts, it had no vitality. In the first place these treatises gave only the
dry husks of rhetoric, the conventional analyses, the stock definitions.
In the second place rhetoric was little applied. The political life of
western Europe centered in the camp, not in the forum. The classical
tradition of trial by a large jury, as the Areopagus or the Centumviri,
had given place to trial before the regal or manorial court. Thus rhetoric
dried up and lost whatever reality it had possessed in imperial Rome.
But if the middle ages had no opportunity to apply rhetoric in its
function of persuasion in communal affairs, they did have real need of an
art of writing letters and of preparing lay or ecclesiastical documents,
such as contracts, wills, and records, and of preaching sermons. Thus in
the teaching of the schools, as well as in practice, the oration gave
place to the epistle and dictamen. "Dictare" was to write letters or
prepare documents. And the rhetorical treatise or "_ars rhetorica_" often
yielded to the "_ars prosandi_," or the "_ars dictandi_."[109]
A characteristic treatise of this sort is the _Poetria_ of the Englishman
John of Garland (c. 1270). In his introductory chapter John explains that
he has divided the subject into seven parts:
First is explained the theory of invention; then the manner of selecting
material; third, the arrangement and the manner of ornamentation; next,
the parts of a dictamen; fifth, the faults in all kinds of composition
(dictandi); sixth is arranged a treatise concerning rhetorical ornament
as necessary in meter as in prose, namely, the figures of speech and the
abbreviation and amplification of the material; seventh and last are
subjoined examples of courtly correspondence and scholastic dictamen,
pleasantly composed in verse and rhythms, and in diverse meters.[110]
Under the head of invention John gives definitions, several examples of
good letters, a long list of proverbs under appropriate captions so that
the letter writer can quickly find the one to fit his context, and an
"elegiac, bucolic, ethic love poem" in fifty leonine verses, accompanied
by an inevitable allegorical interpretation.[111] Then he comes to
selection. Tully, he admits, puts arrangement after invention, "but," he
pleads, "in writing letters and documents poetically the art of selection
after that of invention is useful."[112] For he thinks of selection only
as the selection of words. A writer, he says, should select his words and
images according to the persons addressed. The court should be addressed
in the grand style; the city, in the middle style; and the country, in the
mean style.[113] One should arrange in three columns in a note-book the
words and comparisons appropriate to each style so that the material will
be handy when he wishes to write a letter. These principles John
illustrates with leonine verses and ecclesiastical epistles. Under
arrangement he says that all material must be so arranged as to have a
beginning, a middle, and an end. Then there are nine ways to begin a poem
and nine ways to begin a dictamen or epistle. Next he states that there
are six parts to an oration: "exordium, narracio, peticio, confirmacio,
confutacio, conclusio."[114] As an example of this division of the oration
into parts he quotes a long poem which persuades its reader to take up the
cross. Still under the general head of arrangement John explains the ten
ways of amplifying material. The tenth, "interpretacio," he illustrates by
telling a joke, and then amplifying it into a little comedy. "Comedy," he
says, "is a jocose poem beginning in sadness and ending in joy: a tragedy
is a poem composed in the grand style beginning in joy and ending in
grief."[115] Next follow the six metrical faults, the faults of
salutations in letters, a classification of the different kinds of poems,
and further talk on different styles in writing. His sixth chapter, on
ornament in meter and prose, presents what he has up to this left unsaid
about style. It includes a list of fifty-seven figures of speech (_colores
verborum_) and eighteen figures of thought (_colores sententiarum_). This
is logically followed by the ten attributes of man. The seventh and final
chapter gives a long narrative poem of the horrific variety as an example
of tragedy and several letters as examples of dictamen.
Such a digest shows better than any generalization a complete confusion of
poetic and rhetoric. Poems were to be written according to the formulae of
orations; allegory throve. Infinite pains were to be expended on the
worthless niceties of conceited metrical structure and rhetorical figures.
Garland has neither real poetic nor real rhetoric.
2. Rhetoric as Aureate Language
As to the late middle ages rhetoric had come to mean to all intents
nothing more than style, it is frequently personified in picturesque
mediaeval allegory, never as being engaged in any useful occupation, but
as adding beauty, color, or charm to life. In the _Anticlaudianus_ of
Alanus de Insulis, Rhetoric is represented as painting and gilding the
pole of the Chariot of Prudence.[116] In the rhymed compendium of
universal knowledge which its author, Thomasin von Zirclaria, justly calls
_Der Wälsche Gast_, for learning was indeed a foreign guest in thirteenth
century Germany, rhetoric appears in a similar rôle. "Rhetoric," says
Thomasin, "clothes our speech with beautiful colors,"[117] and he gives as
his authority, "Tulljus, Quintiljan, Sidônjus," although Apollinaris
Sidonius seems to be the only one of the trio he had ever read.[118] This
theory lived to a vigorous old age. Palmieri, in his _Della Vita Civile_
(1435), defines rhetoric as "the theory of speaking ornamentally."[119]
And Lydgate traces all the beauty of rhetoric to Calliope, "that with thyn
hony swete sugrest tongis of rethoricyens."[120]
The most complete example, however, of the mediaeval restriction of
rhetoric to style, and of the absorption of poetic by rhetoric is afforded
by Lydgate in his _Court of Sapyence._ The passages which refer to
rhetoric are given in full because they can otherwise be consulted only
in the Caxton edition of 1481 or in the black letter copy printed by
Wynkyn de Worde in 1510.[121]
_Introductory verses._
O Clyo lady moost facundyous
O ravysshynge delyte of eloquence
O gylted goddes gaye and gloryous
Enspyred with the percynge influence
Of delycate hevenly complacence
Within my mouth let dystyll of thy shoures
And forge my tonge to gladde myn auditoures.
Myn ignoraunce whome clouded hath eclyppes
With thy pure bemes illumynyne all aboute
Thy blessyd brethe let refleyre in my lyppes
And with the dewe of heven thou them degoute
So that my mouth may blowe an encense oute
The redolent dulcour aromatyke
Of thy deputed lusty rhetoryke.
_The section of rhetoric._
Dame Rethoryke moder of eloquence
Moost elegaunt moost pure and gloryous
With lust delyte, blysse, honour and reverence
Within her parlour fresshe and precyous
Was set a quene, whose speche delycyous
Her audytours gan to all Joye converte
Eche worde of her myght ravysshe every herte.
And many clerke had lust her for to here
Her speche to them was parfyte sustenance
Eche worde of her depured was so clere
And illumyned with so parfyte pleasaunce
That heven it was to here her beauperlaunce
Her termes gay as facunde soverayne
Catephaton in no poynt myght dystane.
She taught them the crafte of endytynge
Whiche vyces ben that sholde avoyded be
Whiche ben the coulours gay of that connynge
Theyr dyfference and eke theyr properte
Eche thynge endyte how it sholde poynted be
Dystynctyon she gan clare and dyscusse
Whiche is Coma Colym perydus.
Who so thynketh my wrytynge dull and blont
And wolde conceyve the colours purperate
Of Rethoryke, go he to tria sunt
And to Galfryde the poete laureate
To Janneus a clerke of grete estate
Within the fyrst parte of his gramer boke
Of this mater there groundely may he loke.
In Tullius also moost eloquent
The chosen spouse unto this lady free
His gylted craft and gloyre in content
Gay thynges I made eke, yf than lust to see
Go loke the Code also the dygestes thre
The bookes of lawe and of physyke good
Of ornate speche there spryngeth up the flood.
In prose and metre of all kynde ywys
This lady blyssed had lust for to playe
With her was blesens Richarde pophys
Farrose pystyls clere lusty fresshe and gay
With maters vere poetes in good array
Ovyde, Omer, Vyrgyll, Lucan, Orace
Alane, Bernarde, Prudentius and Stace.
Throughout this passage rhetoric is never mentioned in any other context
than one of pleasure to the ear of the auditor. Of the three aims of
rhetoric which Cicero had phrased as _docere, delectare, et movere_, only
the _delectare_ remains in the rhetoric of Lydgate. From his initial
invocation to Clio, in which he prays that his style be illuminated with
the aromatic sweetness of her rhetoric, to the passage in which he refers
to his own writings for examples of ornate speech Lydgate never refers to
the logic or the structure of persuasive public speech. Rhetoric, in
Lydgate, is not used in its classical sense, but as being synonymous with
ornate language--style. Here and here only does Lydgate discuss any part
of rhetoric in its classical implications. When, in his poem, he discusses
the craft of writing as including "coulours gay," he refers to the figures
of classical rhetoric--Cicero's "_colores verborum_." And when he refers
to the "coma, colum, perydus," he is harking back to the classical
divisions of the rhythmical members of a sentence: the "comma, colon, et
periodus." In the classical treatises on rhetoric this division of
"elocutio" or style into two parts: (1) figures of speech and language,
and (2) rhythmical movement of the sentence, is universal. Lydgate's
rhetoric is thus a development of only one element of classical
rhetoric--style.
But Lydgate's rhetoric was not only restricted to style; it was expanded
to include the style of the poets as well as that of the prose writers, as
the last stanza shows. If Lydgate thought poetry to include anything more
than this style, he does not say so.
Lydgate does not present an isolated case of this meaning of rhetoric.
Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England the term
rhetoric and its related words regularly connoted skill in diction. A
rhetor was one who was a master of style.[122] Henryson, for instance,
calls rhetoric sweet, and Dunbar, ornate.[123] Chaucer admired Petrarch
for his "rethorike sweete" which illumined the poetry of Italy,[124] and
was himself in turn loved by Lydgate as the "nobler rethor poete of
brytagne,"[125] who is called "floure of rethoryk in Englisshe tong," by
John Walton.[126] According to James I both Gower and Chaucer sat on the
steps of rhetoric,[127] while Lyndesay includes Lydgate in the number and
asserts that all three rang the bell of rhetoric.[128] Bokenham calls
Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate the "first rethoryens";[129] and as late as
1590, Chaucer and Lydgate are called "The first that ever elumined our
language with flowers of rethorick eloquence."[130] The entire period was
thus in substantial agreement that rhetoric was honeyed speech exhibited
at its best in the works of the poets.
The best example of this view of rhetoric is furnished by Stephen Hawes in
his delectable educational allegory of the seven liberal arts which he
calls _The Pastime of Pleasure_ (1506). He begins, of course, with an
apology for
Thys lytle boke, opprest wyth rudenes
Without rethorycke or coloure crafty;
Nothinge I am experte in poetry
As the monke of Bury, floure of eloquence.[131]
And in another place, again addressing Lydgate, he exclaims:
O mayster Lydgate, the most dulcet sprynge
Of famous rethoryke, wyth balade ryall.[132]
The poem records the experiences of Grande Amour, who, accompanied by two
greyhounds, seeks knowledge. After visiting Grammar and Logic in their
rooms, he goes upstairs to see Dame Rhetoric. Rhetoric sits in a chamber
gaily glorified and strewn with flowers. She is very large, finely gowned
and garlanded with laurel. About her are mirrors and the fragrant fumes of
incense. Grande Amour asks her to paint his tongue with the royal flowers
of delicate odors, that he may gladden his auditors and "moralize his
literal senses." She pretends to understand him, but when he asks her what
rhetoric is,
Rethoryke, she sayde, was founde by reason
Man for to governe wel and prudently;
His wordes to ordre his speche to purify.[133]
It has five parts,--and so on. The introduction, however, to the
beflowered dwelling place of the fair lady and the request of Grande Amour
to have his tongue perfumed are much more characteristic of the temper of
the age than are the professed reasons for the origin of rhetoric.
Rhetoric in their hearts they felt to be gay paint and sweet smells.
Hawes's five parts have the same names as the five parts of classical
rhetoric.[134] The first part of rhetoric, he says, is "Invencyon," the
classical _inventio_. It is derived from the "V inward wittes,"
discernment, fantasy, imagination, judgment, and memory. Anyone, however,
who is familiar with the _inventio_ of classical rhetoric, concerned as it
is with exploring subject matter, will be at a loss to see the connection
with Hawes. In fact the whole chapter, and the one following, are devoted
not to rhetoric, but to the theory of poetical composition, and
explanation of the allegorical conception of the end of poetry, and a
defense of the poets against detractors. The classical term _inventio_ is
thus lifted over bodily, with both change and extension in meaning, from
rhetoric to poetic.
In the chapter on Disposicion, instead of discussing the arrangement of a
speech, Hawes devotes most of his space to praise of the rhetoricians
because they turned the guidance of the drifting barge, the world, over to
competent pilots, the kings. Here, perhaps, Hawes is using the word
rhetorician more closely than usual in its classical sense. He may even
have known that the fact of kingship had robbed rhetoric of its purpose.
At any rate, his Disposicion is like the classical _dispositio_ only in
name, and again it is transferred from rhetoric to poetic.
Pronunciation (_pronuntiatio_), or delivery, of course applies to either
poets or orators. But whereas classical writers applied it to the orator's
use of voice and gesture, Hawes applies it only to the poet's reading
aloud. He recommends that when a poet reads his verses, he should make his
voice dolorous in bewailing a woeful tragedy, and his countenance glad in
joyful matter. It is important, however, that the reading poet be not
boisterous or unmannered. Let him be moderate, gentle, and seemly. The
final section, that on memory, comes closer to its classical sense than
does any other. Here the mnemonic system of "places," supposedly invented
by Simonides, is explained obscurely. Even more obscure is its
applicability to Hawes's subject.
It is noteworthy that the chapter on Elocution (_elocutio_),
or style, far outweighs all the others in scope and bulk.
Of the 108 seven-line stanzas which Hawes devotes to
rhetoric, 20 praise the poets; 7 define rhetoric; 13 explain
_inventio_; 12, _dispositio_; 40, _elocutio_; 8, _pronuntiatio_;
and 8, _memoria_. "Elocusyon," says Hawes, "exorneth the mater."
The golden rethoryke is good refeccion
And to the reader ryght consolation.[135]
Rhetoric and style, to Hawes and his contemporaries, mean the same thing.
Both have to do, in Hawes's own language, with choosing aromatic words,
dulcet speech, sweetness, delight; they are redolent of incense; they
gleam like carbuncles in the darkness; they are painted in hard gold. But
beyond these picturesque generalizations there is little trace in Hawes of
any discussion of style such as one would find in a classical treatise. A
few figures of speech are mentioned, but not dwelt upon. Hawes
consistently confines himself to poetry. Tully, the only orator mentioned,
shares a line with Virgil. The main concern is with the devices used by
the poets to cloak truth under the veil of allegory. Rhetoric is an
adjunct of the poet.
my mayster Lydgate veryfyde
The depured rethoryke in Englysh language;
To make our tongue so clerely puryfyed
That the vyle termes should nothing arage
As like a pye to chatter in a cage,
But for to speke with rethoryke formally.[136]
In a word, the whole traditional division of rhetoric is transferred to
poetry, and at the same time both rhetoric and poetic are limited to the
single part which they have in common--diction. The style cultivated by
this focus is ornamental and elaborate. If Lydgate or Hawes had believed
that rhetoric included more than aureate language, surely the scope of
their treatises would have afforded them opportunity to correct this
impression. Each of them is endeavoring to present a compendium of
universal knowledge according to the conventional analysis of the seven
liberal arts. Illustrative details might be omitted, but not important
sections of the subject matter.
The meanings of words change, and with such changes we have no quarrel. It
is important, however, that we should know what the English middle ages
meant by rhetoric if we are to appreciate how powerful was the tradition
of the middle ages and in what direction it influenced the literary
criticism of the English renaissance. To resume, the middle ages thought
of poetry as being composed of two elements: a profitable subject matter
(_doctrina_), and style (_eloquentia_). The profitable subject matter was
theoretically supplied by the allegory. This will be discussed in the
second part of this study, as historically being a phase of critical
discussions of the purpose of poetry. The English middle ages, as has been
shown, considered style synonymous with rhetoric.