Chapter VIII

Theories of Poetry in the English Renaissance

1. The Rhetorical Period of English Criticism

Spingarn has carefully traced the introduction of the theories of poetry

formulated by the Italian critics into England at the end of the sixteenth

century. It is the purpose of this study not to go over the ground which

Spingarn has so admirably covered, but to point out in English renaissance

theories of poetry those elements which derive from the mediaeval

tradition and from the classical rhetorics, and to trace the gradual

displacements of these elements by the sounder classical tradition which

reached England from Italy.

"The first stage of English Criticism," say Spingarn, "was entirely given

up to rhetorical study."[193] In his period he includes Cox and Wilson,

the rhetoricians, and Ascham, the scholar. Of the second period, which he

characterizes as one of classification and metrical studies, he says, "A

long period of rhetorical and metrical study had helped to formulate a

rhetorical and technical conception of the poet's function."[194] These

two periods have so much in common that they may readily be considered

together.

Throughout this period in England there was no abstract theorizing on the

art of poetry. The rhetorics of Cox (1524) and Wilson (1553) were

rhetorics and made no pretence of treating poetry. This is significant of

a direct contact with classical rhetoric. Because Cox founded his treatise

on the sound scholarship of Melanchthon, and Wilson wrote with the text of

his Cicero and his Quintilian open before him, neither was so completely

under the mediaeval influence as were most of the subsequent writers on

rhetoric in England.

Another scholar in classical rhetoric was Roger Ascham, whose

_Scholemaster_ (1570) contains the first reference in England to

Aristotle's _Poetics_. But except as a teacher of language and of

literature Ascham does not treat of poetry. Following Quintilian, he

classifies literature into _genres_ of poetry, history, philosophy, and

oratory, each with its appropriate subdivisions. Both Ascham and

Quintilian are interested in literature as professors who must organize a

field for presentation to students; and as is frequently the case, the

result is apt to become arid, schematic, and lifeless. In his criticism of

individual poems, also, Ascham praises the authors less for creative power

than for adherence to certain formal tests. Watson's _Absolon_ and

Buchanan's _Iephthe_ he considers the best tragedies of his age because

only they can "abide the trew touch" of Aristotle's precepts and

Euripides's example. They were good because they were according to rule,

and in imitation of good models.[195] Watson he especially praises for his

refusal to publish _Absolon_ because in several places an anapest was

substituted for an iambus. Thus far we have the influence of classical

rhetoric urging as an ideal for poetry formal correctness.

The rhetoric of Gascoigne, however, was not derived from the classical

treatises, but from the middle ages. His _Certayne Notes of Instruction_

(1575) marks the beginning of the period of metrical studies. Now in the

English middle ages, prosody had consistently been treated as a part of

grammar, following the classical tradition; but in France prosody had

regularly been discussed in treatises bearing the name of rhetoric. As

Spingarn has shown, this tradition of the French middle ages persisted in

the works of Du Bellay and Ronsard, whose works in turn inspired

Gascoigne.[196]

Following Ronsard, Gascoigne devotes a great deal of attention to what,

borrowing the terminology of rhetoric, he calls "invention." But whereas

Ronsard had meant by invention high, grand, and beautiful conceptions,

Gascoigne means "some good and fine devise, shewing the quicke capacitie

of a writer." That Gascoigne takes invention to mean a search for fancies

is illustrated by his own example.

If I should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I would neither

praise her christal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are

_trita et obvia_. But I would either find some supernaturall cause whereby

my penne might walke in the superlative degree, or els I would undertake

to answer for any imperfection that shee hath, and thereupon rayse the

prayse of hir commendacion.[197]

By far the greater part of Gascoigne's treatise is devoted to metrics and

to style. One can use, he says, the same figures or tropes in verse as are

used in prose. It is noteworthy that in this treatise on making verses

Gascoigne restricts himself to externals of form and style. When he does

discuss the subject-matter of poetry, instead of emphasizing the

seriousness of content, he talks about his mistress' "cristal eye."

What has been said about Gascoigne applies almost equally well to the

_Schort Treatise_ (1584) of James VI which was modeled on it. Like

Gascoigne's _Notes_, it is rhetorical and concerned with only the

externals of poetry. The treatise is almost entirely a metrical study,

although the author does call attention to three special ornaments of

verse, which are comparisons, epithets, and proverbs. The other figures of

rhetoric which are so appropriate to poetry James says may be studied in

Du Bellay. In both these writers, poetry is treated in the categories of

the middle ages. Poetry to them is composed of subject-matter and style.

The characteristic structure and movement of poetry is not considered at

all.

2. The Influence of Horace

Thus far there had been no fundamental criticism of poetic in England, no

attempt to arrive at the basis of critical theory. Horace had been known

long before, but not until Drant's translation of the _Ars Poetica_ into

English in 1567 is its influence seen to be definite and extensive in

England. One of the earliest published evidences of this influence is

George Whetstone's _Dedication to Promos and Cassandra_ (1578). The

passage is short, but contains two very important points in the creed of

classicism. Whetstone inveighs against the English dramatist who "in three

howers ronnes throwe the worlde, marryes, gets children, makes Children

men, men to conquer kingdomes, murder Monsters, and bringeth Gods from

Heaven, and fetcheth Divels from Hel."[198] This is the earliest record in

England of an insistence on unity of time and place. Then he urges the

claims of decorum in comedy. The poet should not make clowns the

companions of kings, nor put wise counsels into the mouth of fools. "For,

to worke a comedie kindly, grave olde men should instruct, yonge men

should showe the imperfections of youth, Strumpets should be lascivious,

Boyes unhappy, and Clownes should speake disorderlye."[199]

It is interesting that this conception of the characters in a drama should

ultimately trace back through many perversions to Aristotle's rhetorical

theory. There are three kinds of proof, says Aristotle in the _Rhetoric_:

the character of the speaker, the production of a certain disposition in

the audience, and the argument of the speech itself. The last kind of

proof is derived from logic; the first two, from psychology.[200]

Consequently, Aristotle devotes almost a third of his _Rhetoric_, the

second book, to an elaborate exposition of the passions (πάθη) of men, so

that the orator may know how to excite or allay them according as the

necessities of his case demand, and a full explanation of the character (ᤦθος)

of men, that the speaker may know how to impress upon his audience his own

trustworthiness, and adapt his arguments to the character of the

particular audience which he is addressing. Varieties of character in an

audience depend upon its passions, its virtues and vices, its age or

youth, and its position in life.[201] Aristotle's generalizations on the

character of young people and old, of the wealthy, noble and powerful,

display penetrating acumen. That flesh and blood character realizations in

drama or story could be attained by this method Aristotle never intended.

He is talking of public address. But the study of characterization as part

of the education of an orator became fixed in the curriculum of rhetoric

schools. The boys were supposed to study certain types of persons and then

write character sketches to show their sharpness of observation.

Theophrastus, Aristotle's favorite student and successor as head of the

school in Athens, wrote his _Characters_ to show how it was done, and did

it with such ability as to elevate the school exercise to a literary

form. These "characters" were epitomized in the Latin rhetorics and the

school exercises continued. The rhetoric _Ad Herennium_ calls them

_notatio_,[202] Cicero, _descriptio_,[203] and Quintilian, _mores_.[204]

Quintilian furthermore makes interesting comments on the use of the

character sketches by the poets. Character (Greek: ᤦθος) in oratory, he

says, is similar to comedy, as the passions (πάθος) are to tragedy.[205]

Professor Butcher calls attention to the early influence of the character

sketches on the middle comedy. Here the "humours," to anticipate Ben

Jonson, give names not only to the characters of the play, but to the

plays themselves.[206] As adopted by the drama, the orator's view that

people of a certain age and rank are likely to behave in certain fashions

was perverted to the dramatical law of _decorum_, that people of certain

age or rank must on the stage act up to this generalization of what was

characteristic. This law of decorum was formulated by Horace in his _Ars

Poetica_,[207] whence it was derived by the renaissance. Thomas Wilson,

in his _Arte of Rhetorique_, gives a Theophrastian character sketch as an

illustration of the figure _descriptio_.

"As in speaking against a covetous man, thus. There is no such pinch

peney on live as this good fellowe is. He will not lose the paring of

his nailes. His haire is never rounded for sparing of money, one paire

of shone serveth him a twelve month, he is shod with nailes like a

Horse. He hath bene knowne by his coate this thirtie Winter. He spent

once a groate at good ale, being forced through companie, and taken

short at his words, whereupon he hath taken such conceipt since that

time, that it hath almost cost him his life."[208]

In 1592 Casaubon edited Theophrastus in Latin. Thereafter the character

sketch became a literary form, as in Hall, Overbury, and Earle, instead of

remaining merely a rhetorical exercise.[209] In the theory of the drama

the rhetorical method of characterization, fixed as the law of decorum,

flourished throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. In England

from Whetstone on it was made much of. Thus a rhetorical tradition of

classical pedagogy, derived ultimately from Aristotle, and a poetical

tradition of later classical drama, derived from Horace, coincide in the

English renaissance.

In _The Epistle Dedicatory to the Shepheards Calender_ (1579), for

instance, E.K. praises Spenser for "his dewe observing of decorum everye

where, in personages, in seasons, in matter, in speach."[210] The

archaisms are defended in the first place, indeed, because they are

appropriate to rustic speakers, but in the second because Cicero says that

ancient words make the style seem grave and reverend. Further praise E.K.

grants the author because he avoids loose sentence structure and affects

the oratorical period. "Now, for the knitting of sentences, whych they

call the ioynts and members thereof, and for all the compasse of the

speach, it is round without roughness."[211] The "ioynts and members" are

the _cola_ and _commas_ of the oratorical prose rhythm. Stanyhurst in the

_Dedication_ to his translation of Virgil (1582), like E. K., is concerned

with style rather than matter, and of course primarily with the revival

of classical meters, a subject already so thoroughly investigated that it

need not be gone into here.[212] Stanyhurst's praise of Virgil is largely

concerned with formal and rhetorical excellences.

Our _Virgil_ dooth laboure, in telling as yt were a _Cantorburye tale_,

too ferret owt the secretes of _Nature_, with woordes so fitlye coucht,

wyth verses so smoothlye slyckte, with sentences so featlye ordered,

with orations so neatlie burnisht, with similitudes so aptly applyed,

with eeche _decorum_ so duely observed, as in truth hee hath in right

purchased too hym self thee name of a surpassing poet, thee fame of an

od oratoure, and thee admiration of a profound philosopher.[213]

Thus in accord with the mediseval tradition he analyzes poetry into

profitable subject matter and style.

3. The Influence of Aristotle

In 1579 the Puritan attack on poetry and the stage began with Gosson's

_School of Abuse._[214] and was answered by Lodge's _Defence of Poetry_ in

the same year. The attack and defense both rested on moral, not aesthetic,

sanctions and will be discussed in a later section. It is only in Sidney's

_Defense_ (c. 1583) and that of his follower Harington that theories of

the nature of poetry are included. And with Sidney the Aristotelianism of

the Italian renaissance makes its first appearance in English

criticism.[215]

"Poesie," writes Sidney, "therefore is an arte of imitation, for so

Aristotle termeth it in his word _Mimesis_, that is to say, a

representing, counterfeiting, or figuring forth: to speake metaphorically,

a speaking picture."[216] Thus not only Aristotle's imitation enters

English criticism, but Plutarch's speaking picture as well, with all the

power of its false analogy. That Sidney himself was not, however, carried

away by the analogy is apparent from other passages. Aristotle,

classifying poetic with music and dancing as a time art with its essence

in movement, had insisted that a poem must have a beginning, a middle, and

an end--qualities which do not exist in space. So in the most quoted

passage from Sidney's _Defense_, it is a "tale forsooth," which draws old

men from the chimney corner, and children from play,[217] and "the

narration" which furnishes the groundplot of poesie.[218] Thus he

introduces into English criticism, as an important element of poetry, the

essentially sound idea that the characteristic structure of poetry lies in

its narrative and dramatic movement. Poetry cannot lie because it never

pretends to fact. He establishes this assertion on Aristotle's "universal

not the particular" as the basis of poetic. Sidney had followed Scaliger

in classifying poets into three kinds: the theological, the philosophical,

and the right poets. The third class, the real poets, he says, "borrow

nothing of what is, hath been, or shall be: but range, onely rayned with

learned discretion, into the divine consideration of what may be, and

should be."[219]

In considering the vehicle of poetic Sidney parts company with Scaliger

and agrees with Castelvetro that verse is but an ornament and not the

characteristic mark of poetry. The _Cyropaedia_ of Xenophon, and the

_Theagines and Cariclea_ of Heliodorus are poems, although written in

prose, because they feign notable images of virtues and vices, "although

indeed the Senate of Poets hath chosen verse as their fittest

rayment."[220] Proceeding thence, he defends verse as being a far greater

aid to memory than prose, borrowing his terminology of "rooms," "places,"

and "seates," from the mnemonic system of Simonides usually incorporated

in the section on memory in the classical rhetorics.[221] Furthermore,

Sidney is the first in England to insist on the vividness of realization

which comes from the poet's being himself moved. Discussing lyric poetry,

Sidney says:

But truely many of such writings as come under the banner of

unresistable love, if I were a Mistres, would never perswade mee they

were in love; so coldely they apply fiery speeches, as men that had

rather red Lovers writings, and so caught up certaine swelling

phrases,... then that in truth they feele those passions, which easily

(as I think) may be bewrayed by that same forcibleness or _Energia_ (as

the Greeks call it), of the writer.[222]

Sidney's _Energia_ came to him from the rhetorics of Aristotle and

Quintilian via the _Poetice_ of Scaliger.[223] _Energia_, the vivifying

quality of poetry, had at the earliest age been adopted by rhetoric to

lend power to persuasion. Carefully preserved among the figures of

rhetoric, it had survived the middle ages, and appears in Wilson's _Arte

of Rhetoric_ as "an evident declaration of a thing, as though we saw it

even now done."

Sidney makes _energia_ an essential quality of poetic; but even with him

it seems to have a rhetorical cast. It is especially to be used, says

Sidney, by a lover to persuade his mistress, urging her to yield while yet

her beauty endures. This _genre_ of versified oration to one's mistress

was unusually popular in Elizabethan England. It may even be one reason

for Bacon's classification of lyric poetry as part of rhetoric.[224]

Although _energia_ does belong to both poetic and rhetoric, as

pseudo-Longinus implies,[225] there seems to be here a definitely

rhetorical conception of poetic style. Sidney, however, keeps the

classical distinction between rhetoric and poetic, although he was

conscious of their contact in diction. "Both," he says with Aristotle,

"have an affinity in this wordish consideration."[226] While many

renaissance critics interpreted this affinity as permitting rhetorical

elaboration in poetry as well as in prose, Sidney with innate good taste

pleaded for more restraint. The diction of the writers of lyrics is even

worse, he says, than their content.

So is that honny-flowing Matron Eloquence apparalled, or rather

disguised, in a Curtizan-like painted affectation: one time with so

farre fette words, they seem monsters, but must seem strangers to any

poore English man, another tyme with coursing of a Letter as if they

were bound to follow the method of a Dictionary; another tyme, with

figures and flowers extreamelie winter-starved.[227]

Prose writers, he adds, are as badly infected as "versers," even scholars

and preachers. That he himself was infected appears in the examples of

interminable "tropes" and "schemes" quoted by Fraunce in his _Arcadian

Rhetoric_ (1588) from Sidney's own _Arcadia_. But the concession of his

own style to the habit of his age did not involve any fundamental

confusion of rhetoric with poetic.

Thus Sidney's _Defense of Poesie_, by domesticating in England the

Aristotelian theories of the Italian critics, went far in displacing

mediaeval tradition by sounder classical criticism. To object that

Sidney's criticism contains elements which derive from the middle ages and

from the classical rhetorics would be captious. It is asking too much to

expect that a man can shake off at once the traditional habits of thought

which are part of the air he breathes. The important thing is that Sidney

instituted a tendency toward classicism which during the next fifty years

established itself in criticism. That this classicism tended in some cases

toward over-emphasis does not alter the fact that English criticism

profited greatly by the return to classical poetical theory. It is

interesting, however, that Sidney's influence did not at once dislodge the

mediaeval tradition. Although the manuals of Webbe and Puttenham do show

classical influence, their theories of poetry still show a notable

residuum of theory characteristically mediaeval.

4. Manuals for Poets

Before William Webbe wrote his _Discourse of English Poetry_ (1586) there

had been no attempt in England to compose a systematic and comprehensive

study of the art. The rhetorical studies of Ascham and Wilson merely

glanced at poetry as something related to rhetoric. Gascoigne and James

attempted no more than manuals of prosody. Lodge and Harington were

primarily interested in justifying poetry on moral grounds against the

Puritan attack; and Sidney, though he goes beyond this, still keeps it as

a main object. In his _Discourse_ Webbe modestly asserts that his purpose

in writing is primarily to stir up some one better than he to write on

English poetry so that proper criteria of judgment may be established to

discern between good writers and bad, and that the poets may thereby be

aided in the right practice and orderly course of true poetry. If as much

attention were devoted in England to poetry as to oratory, he thinks,

poetry would be in as good state as her sister "Rhetoricall _Eloquution_,

as they were by byrth Twyns, by kinde the same, by original of one

descent."[228] As an example of the high degree of excellence attained by

eloquence, he cites Lyly's _Euphues_.

Whose workes surely in respecte of his singuler eloquence and brave

composition of apt words and sentences, let the learned examine and make

tryall thereof through all the partes of Rethoricke, in fitte phrases,

in pithy sentences, in gallant tropes, in flowing speech, in plaine

sence.[229]

Thus rhetoric is considered merely as style; and the implication seems to

be that the poets who would improve their style might well imitate Lyly.

Webbe evidently means what he says in identifying poetry and rhetoric in

style. He adds:

Thus it appeareth both Eloquence and Poetrie to have had their beginning

and original from these exercises, beeing framed in such sweete measure

of sentences and pleasant harmonie called ῥυθμός which is an apt

composition of wordes or clauses, drawing as it were by force the hearers

eares even whether soever it lysteth, that _Plato_ affirmeth

therein to be contained γοητεία, an inchantment, as it were to

persuade.[230]

The confusion thus is carried pretty far by Webbe, who makes poetry and

rhetoric the same in style, both aiming at persuasion. Not only have

poetic and rhetoric for him a common ground in diction, but the ideal of

diction is the same for both. The diction of poetry is the same as the

diction of oratory. The only difference to him is that poetry is in verse

and oratory in prose.

Poetry, therefore, is where any worke is learnedly compiled in

measurable speech, and framed in wordes conteyning number or proportion

of just syllables, delighting the readers or hearers as well by the apt

and decent framing of wordes in equal resemblance of quantity--commonly

called verse, as by the skylfull handling of the matter.[231]

Webbe organizes his treatise in good rhetorical fashion. First come

seventeen pages of history, mentioning with perfunctory comment the best

known poets of classical antiquity and of England. The remainder of the

_Discourse_ is devoted to the theory of poetry, which he divides into

matter and form. Matter, which receives nineteen pages, is the mediæval

_doctrina_, for the whole gist of this section is that moral lessons are

derivable from the poets. By form he means verse, making no mention of the

figures of speech. English rimes receive half of this space, and classical

meters the remainder. Webbe's fund of critical opinion is not opulent. His

treatise is based on traditional English opinion of the middle ages, with

an increment of Horace, of whom he thinks so highly as to append to his

treatise an English translation of the "Cannons or generall cautions of

poetry," which Georgius Fabricius Chemnicensis (1560) had digested from

the _Ars Poetica_, and the _Epistles_.

Perhaps the author of _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589),

generally supposed to be Puttenham, had in mind to be the

some-one-better-than-Webbe, whom that worthy tutor hoped to stir up to

write a treatise for the benefit of poetry in England. At any rate,

Puttenham is primarily concerned with teaching his contemporaries how to

write verses. Like classical authors of text-books, he calls his treatise

an "Arte." Furthermore, as a courtier himself writing for courtiers,

Puttenham does not lay down rules for the drama or the epic, but devotes

most of his attention to occasional verse: lyrics, elegies, epigrams, and

satires. His structure is significant. The first book, 58 pages in the

Arber reprint, deals with definition, purpose and subject matter of

poetry. The poet, he says, is a maker who creates new forms out of his

inner consciousness, and at the same time an imitator. Thus he reconciles

Aristotle and Horace.[232] Moreover, Puttenham calls attention to the

importance of the imagination in the composition of poetry as well as in

war, engineering and politics.[234] That the art of poetry is eminently

teachable, Puttenham is entirely convinced, for he defines it as a skill

appertaining to utterance, or as a certain order of rules prescribed by

reason and gathered by experience.[233] It is verse, according to

Puttenham, not imitation, which is the characteristic mark of poetry. This

makes poetry a nobler form, for verse is "a manner of utterance more

eloquent and rethorical then the ordinarie prose, because it is decked and

set out with all manner of fresh colours and figures, which maketh that it

sooner invegleth the judgment of man." It is because poetry is thus so

beautiful, he says, that "the Poets were also from the beginning the best

persuaders, and their eloquence the first Rethoricke of the world."[235]

Rhetoric to Puttenham is beauty of speech: and because poetry is more

beautiful than prose, as being in this sense more rhetorical, it is better

able to persuade. The remainder of the book explains the nature and

history of the various poetical forms, as lyric, epic, tragedy, pastoral,

and so on. The second book, _Of Proportion_, 70 pages, is a treatise on

metrics. The first half, like the section in Webbe, is devoted to English

versing, dealing with stanza forms, meters, rime, and conceited figures

such as anagrams and verses in the form of eggs. The second half is

devoted to classical meters. In his third book, _Of Ornament_, 165 pages,

Puttenham gives an exhaustive and exhausting treatment of the figures of

speech. Of the 121 figures which Puttenham defines and illustrates,

Professor Van Hook has traced 107 to Quintilian's rhetoric[236]. Professor

Schelling refuses to treat this third book in his _Poetic and Verse

Criticism in the Reign of Elizabeth_, because, he says, it does not fall

within the scope of his purpose, being made up of matters rhetorical, as

applicable to prose as to verse[237]. That Puttenham did include it,

however, is most significant evidence that both the author and his reading

public considered these adornments an essential part of poetry. As the

ladies of the court, be they ever so beautiful, should be ashamed to be

seen without their courtly habiliments of silks, and tissues, and costly

embroideries, even so poetry cannot be seen if any limb be left naked and

bare and not clad in gay clothes and colors, says Puttenham.

This ornament is given to it by figures and figurative speaches, which

be the flowers, as it were, and colours that a Poet setteth upon his

language of arte, as the embroderer doth his stone and perle or

passements of gold upon the stuffe of a Princely garment[238].

The figures Puttenham divides according to his own scheme. First come the

figures _auricular_ peculiar to the poets, then the figures _sensable_

common to the poets and the rhetoricians, and finally the figures

_sententious_ appropriate to the orators alone. After he has explained the

first two varieties, however, and enters on the third, Puttenham says:

Now if our presupposall be true, that the Poet is of all other the most

auncient Orator, as he that by good and pleasant perswasions first

reduced the wilde and beastly people into publicke societies and

civilitie of life, insinuating unto them, under fictions with sweete and

coloured speeches, many wholesome lessons and doctrines, then no doubt

there is nothing so fitte for him, as to be furnished with all the

figures that be _Rhetoricall_, and such as do most beautifie language

with eloquence and sententiousness. So as if we should intreate our

maker to play also the Orator, and whether it be to pleade, or to

praise, or to advise, that in all three cases he may utter and also

perswade both copiously and vehemently[239].

Puttenham was writing in the same age and with the same tradition which

defined Rhetoric as the art of ornament in speech. The only difference

between oratory and poetry lay in that the latter was composed in verse.

5. Rhetorical Elements in Later English Classicism

From Puttenham to Bacon no serious contributions were made to the general

theory of poetry. Critical attention was absorbed by controversies of

Campion and Daniel over native and classical versification, and the

flyting of Harvey and Nash. Harvey was a classical scholar and rhetorician

who knew that poetry and oratory were different things, and believed verse

to be the mark of the first and prose of the latter[240]. He preferred the

periodic style of Isocrates and Ascham to the tricksy pages of

Euphues[241]. Chapman, likewise, considered verse the mark of poetry, and

prose of rhetoric[242].

In the _Advancement of Learning_ (1605) Bacon clears up some of the

misconceptions of the English renaissance by judicious borrowing from the

Italian. He says:

Poesie is a part of Learning in measure of words for the most part

restrained, but in all other points extremely licensed, and doth truly

referre to the Imagination, which, beeing not tyed to the Lawes of

Matter, may at pleasure joyne that which Nature hath severed, & sever

that which Nature hath joyned, and so make all unlawful Matches &

divorses of things: It is taken in two senses in respect of Wordes or

Matter. In the first sense it is but a _Character_ of stile, and

belongeth to Arts of speeche. In the later, it is, as hath beene saide,

one of the principall Portions of learning, and is nothing else but

_Fained History_, which may be stiled as well in Prose as in Verse.[243]

Bacon's focus of attention on the substance of poetry is in keeping with

his attack on mere sophistication of style in rhetoric. Poetry as style

does not interest him. Like Castelvetro and Sidney, he considers the

vehicle of verse not essential to poetry, which, as a product of the

imagination, he considers to be occupied with fiction. To Bacon, perhaps,

the imagination seems to be too much the organ of make-believe, imaging

things which never were on land or under the sea. Nevertheless his claim

for the imagination is fortunate in ruling out those theories of art which

set up slavish fidelity to fact, under the name of imitation, as the

essence of poetry. Bacon was not concerned with formulating a complete

theory of poetry, but his pithy _obiter dicta_ were influential in further

establishing the sounder criticism of the Italian classicists.

As Spingarn points out, Ben Jonson was first led to classicism in poetical

theory by the example of Sidney.[244] But during the intervening years

the scholars of Holland had supplanted those of Italy; and whereas Sidney

derived his Aristotelianism from Scaliger and Minturno, Jonson derived his

even more from Pontanus, Heinsius, and Lipsius and from the Latin

rhetoricians, Cicero and Quintilian.

A Poet (says Jonson) is a Maker, or a fainer: His Art, an Art of

imitation or faining, expressing the life of man in fit measure,

numbers, and harmony.... Hence hee is called a _Poet_, not he which

writeth in measure only, but that fayneth and formeth a fable, and

writes things like the truth. For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were,

the form and Soule of any Poeticall worke or Poeme.[245]

So convinced was Jonson that the essence of poetry does not lie in verse

but in fiction that Drummond reports, "he thought not Bartas a Poet, but a

Verser, because he wrote not fiction."[246] Jonson was misled by the false

analogy of poetry and painting.

_Poetry_ and _Picture_ are Arts of a like nature, and both are busie

about imitation. It was excellently said of _Plutarch, Poetry_ was a

speaking Picture, and _Picture_ a mute _Poesie_. For they both invent,

fame, and devise many things.[247]

This structural and static conception of poetry is well exemplified by his

comparisons. Whereas Aristotle classified poetry with music and dance,

Jonson compares the epic or dramatic plot to a house. The epic is like a

palace and so requires more space than a drama. The influence of Jonson

was beneficial, however, in that he did emphasize in poetry the element of

structure which the middle ages had largely neglected.[248] In his ideals

of style Jonson is rhetorical. In the twelve sections of _Timber_ which he

devotes to rhetoric he incorporates a sound treatise on prose style,

urging restraint and perspicuity as especial virtues. In his nine sections

on poetry he says nothing about style, except to quote Oicero to the

effect that "the _Poet_ is the nearest Borderer upon the Orator, and

expresseth all his vertues, though he be tyed more to numbers." It would

seem that the section on style in oratory was meant to serve for poetry as

well. Jonson's own methods of comparison, as related to Drummond, would

bear this out: "That he wrote all his (verses) first in prose."[249] From

the same authority one may learn that "He recommended to my reading

Quintilian, who, he said, would tell me the faults of my Verses as if he

lived with me," and "That Quintilian's 6, 7, 8, bookes were not only to be

read, but altogether digested,"[250] Though Jonson makes no more

distinction than Petrarch, between Horace, Cicero, or Quintilian as

authorities on poetical style,[251] his rhetorical cast does not imply the

style advocated by Webbe and Puttenham. This was the exuberant style of

mediaeval rhetoric, whereas by temperament and scholarly training Jonson

threw his influence in favor of the classical rhetorical style of the best

period.

The influence of Bacon in favor of the sound rhetoric of Cicero and

Quintilian, seconded by that of Jonson, finally did away with the

mediaeval ideal of rhetoric as being one with aureate language and

embroidered style. The stylistic exuberance of the Elizabethans gave place

to a more restrained and polished phrase in the reign of Charles. Bolton,

for instance, in his _Hypercritica_ (c. 1618) warns the historians against

the style of the _Arcadia_. "Solidity and Fluency," he says, "better

becomes the historian, then Singularity of Oratorical or Poetical

Notions."[252] Henry Reynolds, in his _Mythomystes_ (c. 1633), although he

goes wool-gathering with mystical interpretations of poetry, yet evinces

the same reaction against the ornate style in terming the flowers of

rhetoric and versification as mere accidents of poetry.[253] In his

_Anacrisis_ (1634) the Earl of Stirling likewise urges that "language is

but the Apparel of Poesy."[254] The "but" marks the difference between the

ideals of two ages. Fiction remains for him the essence of poetry, for

fiction in prose is poetry. But he will not go the whole way with Jonson

and deny the name of poet to one whose material is not fictitious.[255]

Unfortunately, for English criticism, Milton wrote very little on the

theory of poetry. His casual remarks, however, show such enlightened

scholarship and keen insight that what little he did write makes up in

importance what it lacks in bulk. In the Treatise _Of Education_ (1644) he

refers to the sublime art of poetry "which in _Aristotle's poetics_, in

_Horace_, and the _Italian_ commentaries of _Castelvetro, Tasso, Mazzoni_,

and others, teaches what the laws are of a true _Epic_ poem, what of a

_Dramatic_, what of a _Lyric_, what decorum is, which is the grand master

peece to observe."[256] His rhetoric, also, he knew at first hand from the

best classical sources. He gives as his authorities Plato, Aristotle,

Phalereus,[257] Cicero, Hermogenes, Longinus.[258] This is the first time

that an English critic mentions the treatise _On the Sublime_ in

connection with poetry. It can thus hardly be a coincidence that Milton,

while citing the only surviving literary critic of classical antiquity who

gave proper emphasis to the importance of passion in poetry,[259] should

himself be the first English critical writer to urge for passion the same

importance. This he does in his famous differentiation of rhetoric and

poetic. In the educational scheme, he says, after mathematics should be

studied logic and rhetoric "To which Poetry would be made subsequent or

indeed rather precedent, as being lesse suttle and fine, but more simple,

sensuous, and passionate."[260] Milton has sometimes been thought to be

here defining poetry, but he is only distinguishing it from rhetoric. A

definition of poetry he never attempted. Meter he deemed essential to

poetry,[261] but rime he disliked. Thus, as far as he goes, Milton

represents the best in English renaissance criticism. He knew at first

hand the best classical treatises on poetic and on rhetoric; and he

recognized the distinctions which the ancients had made between them.

With the English literary criticism in the second half of the Seventeenth

Century, when the influence of French classicism was in the ascendant,

this study is not concerned. In the period which has just been surveyed

three points are noteworthy: the character of the English critics, the

slowness with which the classical theories penetrated English thought, and

the modifications which they underwent in the process. Gregory Smith calls

attention to the influence of Sidney and Daniel in establishing "the claim

of English criticism as an instrument of power outside the craft of

rhetoricians and scholars."[262] Of the English critical writers Ascham

is the foremost of the scholarly type; Harvey is the only other example.

Thomas Wilson, although he wrote a rhetoric, wrote a better one in many

ways because he was not a professional rhetorician, but a man of affairs.

Gascoigne, Lodge, Spenser, were poets who incidentally wrote on the

technic of their art or in defence of its value. Sidney, the poet,

courtier, and soldier, wrote not from the musty alcoves of libraries.

Webbe, it is true, was a pedant, but certainly not a scholar. Puttenham

was a bad poet, a well-read man, and a courtier. Jonson's scholarship was

thorough, but sweetened and ventilated by his activities as poet and

dramatist. Bacon was a scholar, but even more a philosopher and a

statesman. Milton, our most scholarly poet, during most of his life could

not keep his mind and pen from church and national politics. Indeed,

during the entire English renaissance there was no professional critic.

Literary criticism was not a field to be tilled, but a wood to be explored

by busy men who could find time for the exploit.

This amateur character of English critics accounts in a measure for the

slowness with which classical and Italian renaissance critical theories

filtered into England; for a statesman or a soldier is less likely to be

up-to-date on theories of poetry than is a professional critic whose

business it is to know what is written on his specialty. Another powerful

influence in the same direction was the characteristic English

conservatism which preferred the traditional paths of thought to Italian

innovations.

This same common-sense conservatism accounts also for the modifications of

Italian renaissance critical theories before they were incorporated into

the fund of English criticism. Classical meters, slavish imitation of the

ancients, close adherence to the rules of unity and decorum never made

much headway in the English renaissance. Such contaminations of poetic by

rhetoric as are clearest seem to arise not from the new Italian influence,

but from the mediaeval tradition.

To sum up, classical critics had recognized two categories of literature:

a fine art, poetic; and a practical art, rhetoric. Poetic they thought

characterized by narrative or dramatic structure or movement, and by

vividness of realization, and by passion. Rhetoric was characterized by a

logical structure determined by the necessity of persuading an audience.

Although most classical critics accepted prose as characteristic of

rhetoric, and verse of poetry, Aristotle pointed out that the distinction

was far more fundamental. As these two kinds of literature had a common

ground in diction, there was a tendency from very early times for them to

merge. In the artistic degeneracy of late Latin literature both rhetoric

and poetic paid less attention to structure and other elements which

distinguished them, and more attention to style, which they had in common.

Moreover, under the influence of sophistical rhetoric, preoccupied with

style, poetic and rhetoric practiced the same rhetorical artifices. As a

result Virgil might be either an orator or a poet. This was the rhetoric

which the middle ages inherited. To them rhetoric was synonymous with

stylistic beauty. Poetry was a compound of _doctrina_ and _eloquentia_, in

other words of theology and style, in verse. In England this mediaeval

tradition persisted into the seventeenth century, as the school rhetorics

and the treatises on poetry show. The English renaissance poetic never

freed itself from this influence of mediaeval rhetoric until the middle of

the seventeenth century. With the recovery of classical literature and

literary criticism, the new theories were interpreted in the light of the

old ideas.

On its creative side the renaissance sought to produce in the vernacular a

literature comparable to that of Greece or Rome. Thus literary criticism

was prescriptive, and the typical treatises were text-books. Rhetoric,

which had long been taught, very naturally furnished the methods, the

teachers, and in many cases the subject matter for this instruction in

poetry. As has been shown in the preceding section of this study, the

renaissance theory of poetry was rhetorical in its obsession with style,

especially the figures of speech, in its abiding faith in the efficacy of

rules; and in its belief that the poet, no less than the orator, is

occupied with persuasion. This latter rhetorical view that the poet's

office is to persuade will be studied more fully in the following section

on "The Purpose of Poetry." The traditional view is that by persuading the

reader to adhere to the good and shun the evil the poet achieves the

proper end of poetry--moral improvement.

Part Two

The Purpose of Poetry

Chapter I

The Classical Conception of the Purpose of Poetry

1. General

To say that poetry has a moral effect on the reader is not the same as to

say that moral improvement is the purpose of poetry. The following section

of this historical study will be devoted to tracing the substitution of

the second assertion for the first.

As has been shown,[263] the classical critics were in substantial

agreement with Aristotle in defining rhetoric as the faculty of

discovering all possible means to persuasion. Although the consensus of

classical opinion agreed that poetry does have a moral effect on the

reader, it never defined poetry as an art of discovering all means to

moral improvement. As will be shown, such a definition of poetry was not

formulated previous to the renaissance. Then by combining Aristotle's

definition of tragedy from the _Poetics_[264] with his definition of

rhetoric, Lombardus defined poetic as

a faculty of finding out whatsoever is accommodated to the imitation of

actions, passions, customs, in rhythmical language, for the purpose of

correcting the vices of men and causing them to live good and happy

lives.[265]

The same definition, derived as Spingarn has shown from the same sources,

was formulated by Varchi.[266]

Poetic is a faculty which shows in what modes one may imitate certain

actions, passions, and customs, with rhythm, words, and harmony,

together or separately, for the purpose of removing the vices of men and

inciting them to virtue, in order that they may attain their true

happiness and beatitude.[267]

I propose, after reviewing the classical conception of poetry as an

educational agent, to trace briefly the rise of allegorical interpretation

of poetry in post-classical times and in the middle ages; to exemplify the

tendency of renaissance criticism to borrow the terminology of classical

rhetoric when it asserted that the purpose of poetry is moral improvement;

and finally, to study in the literary criticism of the English renaissance

those moral theories of poetry which derive from the middle ages, from the

classical rhetorics, and from the criticism of the Italian renaissance.

2. Moral Improvement through Precept and Example

The ancients believed that great poetry produces moral improvement in the

reader. Before the judgment seat of Dionysos, as is recorded in _The

Frogs_ of Aristophanes, Aeschylus and Euripides engage in an interesting

and instructive dispute. "Come," says Aeschylus, "tell me what are the

points for which we praise a noble poet." Euripides replies, "For his

ready wit and his wise counsels and because he trains the townsfolk to be

better citizens and worthier men."[268] Aeschylus then goes on to show

that he has merited well of his countrymen because he has preached the

military virtues and his dramas have been full of Ares. Euripides he

accuses of softening the moral fibre of the Athenians by introducing on

the stage immoral plots and love-sick women. Such drama Aeschylus asserts

to be immoral in its effect. "For boys a school teacher is provided; but

we, the poets, are teachers of men."[269]

This represents the well-nigh universal Greek opinion. Poetry inspires,

teaches, makes better men. A further example of this idea is furnished by

Timocles. "Our spirit," says one of the characters in the drama,

"forgetting its own sorrows in sympathizing with the misfortunes of

others, receives at the theatre instruction and pleasure at one

time."[270]

The real opinions of Plato are here difficult to discover. In the

_Protagoras_, however, he puts into the mouth of that famous sophist an

exposition of the conventional Greek opinion.

When a boy has learned his letters and is beginning to understand what

is written, as before he understood only what was spoken, they put into

his hands the works of great poets, which he reads sitting on a bench at

school; in these are contained many admonitions, and many tales, and

praises, and encomia of ancient famous men, which he is required to

learn by heart, in order that he may imitate them and desire to become

like them.[271]

It is in the _Republic_, of course, that Plato enunciates his capital

objections to poetry. The first objection is that poetry as an imitative

art is three removes from truth. The divine powers, for instance, create

the idea of a table--the only true table. A carpenter makes a particular

table which is not the real, but only an appearance. A graphic artist

making a picture of this appearance is only an imitator of appearances.

"And the tragic poet is an imitator and therefore thrice removed from the

king and from the truth."[272] The second objection which Plato raises

against poetry is that poetry is addressed to the passional element in

man. The man of noble spirit and philosophy will not lament his

misfortunes, especially in public, while the lower orders of intellect are

likely to express all their feelings with greater freedom, and thus

furnish the poet with easier subjects for imitation. Consequently poetry

has the power of harming the good, for a good man will be in raptures at

the excellences of the poet who stirs his feelings most by representing a

hero in an emotional condition. As a result, when he himself suffers

sorrow or is moved by his own passions, it becomes more difficult for him

to repress his feelings.[273] Plato thus examines the popular contention

that the study of poetry educates the moral character of a man, and still

maintaining that it should be a moral force for good, demonstrates to his

own satisfaction that it fails to have the supposed beneficial effect

because it is three removes from truth, and because it encourages

unrestrained emotionalism in conduct. Plato's moral standard of poetry is

even better illustrated, perhaps, by the kind of poetry which he does not

ban from his ideal commonwealth. "We must remain firm in our conviction,"

he says, "that hymns to the gods and praises of famous men are the only

poetry which ought to be admitted into our state." As his utmost

concession to poetry, he will admit her if her defenders can prove "not

only that she is pleasant, but also useful to states and to human

life."[274] According to a later view, to be sure, Plato has been thought

to justify pleasure of a most refined and exalted variety as an end of

art. "The view which identifies the pleasant and the just and the good and

the noble has an excellent moral and religious tendency."[275] In view,

however, of other pronouncements, such an endeavor to father upon him the

hedonistic theory of the purpose of art seems strained and ineffective.

It was to justify poetry against the attacks of Plato that Aristotle

advanced a hedonistic view of poetry and propounded his theory of

katharsis. Nowhere in the _Poetics_ does Aristotle explicitly state that

the function of poetry is to give pleasure. Indirect evidence, however, is

plentiful. For instance, Aristotle justifies poetry as an imitative art

because children learn by imitation and the pleasure in imitation is

universal.[276] Furthermore, plot in tragedy is more important than

character; for in painting, a confused mass of colors gives less pleasure

than a chalk drawing of a portrait.[277] Beauty in any art depends in a

measure on magnitude; therefore a play must not be too short.[278] Most of

the tragic poets of Greece derived their plots from a limited number of

well known stories. But Aristotle justifies Agathon for departing from

this custom and making both his plot and characters fictitious, for the

plays of Agathon give none the less pleasure.[279] But not all pleasure,

he says, is appropriate to tragedy. In comedy we are pleased to see

enemies walk off the stage as friends, but in tragedy the "pleasure which

the poet should afford is that which comes from pity and fear through

imitation."[280] Marvels, too, and wonders in poetry he justifies because

"the wonderful is pleasing; as may be inferred from the fact that everyone

tells a story with additions of his own, knowing that his hearers like it.

It is Homer who has chiefly taught other poets the art of telling lies

skilfully."[281] And at the very end of the _Poetics_, where he is

endeavoring to prove that tragedy is a higher art than epic, he does so by

showing that drama has all the epic elements, and in addition music and

spectacle, which produce the most vivid of pleasures. Moreover the drama

is more compact; "for the concentrated effect is more pleasurable than one

which is diluted."[282] Thus, in the _Poetics_, Aristotle takes a

non-moral attitude toward literature, although in the _Politics_[283] he

grants that poetry and music are eminently serviceable in conveying moral

instruction to young people. His mature attitude is well illustrated in

contrast with that of Aristophanes. Aristophanes criticises Euripides

severely as a perverter of Athenian morality. Aristotle mentions Euripides

about twenty times in the _Poetics_, and frequently criticises him

adversely, not, however, for his evil moral influence, but because he uses

his choruses badly, and is faulty in character-drawing.

In answer to Plato's second objection to poetry, that it encourages

unrestrained emotionalism, Aristotle propounded his theory of katharsis.

"Tragedy," he says, "is an imitation of an action ... through pity and

fear effecting the proper purgation of these emotions."[284] That

Aristotle had in mind an analogy with medicine is better understood from a

passage in the _Politics_ which describes the beneficial effect of music

on patients suffering from religious ecstasy. The stimulating music

furnishes the patient with an outlet for the expression of his religious

fervor. Afterwards, says Aristotle, the patients "fall back into their

normal state, as if they had undergone a medical or purgative

treatment."[285] Thus the theory of katharsis seems to have the same basis

as the modern psychological theory which encourages the expression of

emotions in their milder form lest, if inhibited, they gather added power

and finally burst disastrously through all restraints. Consequently,

although hedonist theorists have been anxious to establish katharsis on a

purely aesthetic foundation, it seems that the theory has inescapable

moral implications. To be sure, Aristotle in the same section of the

_Politics_ says that the emotional result of katharsis is "harmless joy,"

and in the _Poetics_ he says that pity and fear produce the appropriate

pleasure of tragedy. Nevertheless Aristotle is answering Plato's

objections to unrestrained emotionalism, and by his theory of katharsis

endeavors to show not only that the emotional excitation of tragedy is

harmless to the spectator, but that it is actually good for him.

But if the spectator is to derive these emotional excitations from

tragedy, his aesthetic experience cannot be passive. Aristotle recommends

as the ideal tragic hero a man not preeminently good nor unusually

depraved, but a man between these extremes; "for pity is aroused by

unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like

ourselves."[286] Evidently, then, through his imagination the spectator

must in a lively fashion participate in the action of the drama. Not only

is he present at the action, even when he reads the drama, but he

identifies himself with the hero and vicariously experiences his emotions.

But neither the hedonism of Aristotle, nor his defense of poetry on moral

grounds through his theory of katharsis, is usual in Greek criticism.

Isocrates and Xenophon adhere to the usual opinion. Isocrates believes

that Homer was prized by the earlier Greeks because his poems instilled a

hatred of the barbarians, and kindled in the hearts of the readers a

desire to emulate the heroes who fought against Troy.[287] One might think

that the hatred of the barbarians was not the highest degree of morality,

but perhaps for the political integrity of Greece it was. That Homer

especially was supposed to have a moral influence is illustrated also by

Xenophon. Niceratus, in the _Symposium_, is telling the diners of what

knowledge he is most proud. "My father," he says, "in his pains to make me

a good man, compelled me to learn the whole of Homer's poems."[288]

Strabo in a famous passage records an exceptional hedonism in Greek

thought and goes on to expound the conventional belief.

Eratosthenes says that the poet directs his whole attention to the

amusement of the mind, and not at all to its instruction. In opposition

to this idea, the ancients define poesy as a primitive philosophy,

guiding our life from infancy, and pleasantly regulating our morals, our

tastes, and our actions. The Stoics of our day affirm that the only wise

man is the poet. On this account the earliest lessons which the citizens

of Greece convey to their children are from the poets; certainly not for

the purpose of amusing their minds, but for their instruction.[289]

This same moral and educational view of poetry so permeates Plutarch's

essay _On the Study of Poetry_ that it is difficult to quote from him

without reproducing the whole treatise. The young man who is being taught

poetry, Plutarch believes, should be made "to indulge in pleasure merely

as a relish, and to seek for the useful and the wholesome,"[290] in his

reading. Some believe that, because some of the pleasures of poetry are

pernicious, young men should not be allowed to read. This, Plutarch

believes, would be every whit as foolish as to cut down the vineyards

because some people are addicted to drunkenness. Young men should be

taught to use poetry intelligently. "Poetry is not to be scrupulously

avoided by those who intend to be philosophers, but they are to make

poetry a fitting school for philosophers, by forming the habit of seeking

and gaining the profitable in the pleasant."[291] The profit of poetry he

believes to come from two sources: maxims and examples. He praises very

highly such _sententiae_ as "Virtue keeps its luster untarnished," and

"know thyself."[292] Indeed, the moral value of such precepts weighed so

heavily with Plutarch that he advocated emending the poets to bring them

in more strict accord with the ethics of the Stoic philosophy. For

instance:

Thus, why not change such a passage as this, "That man is to be envied

who so aims as to hit his wish," to read, "who so aims as to hit his

advantage"? for to get and have things wrongly desired merits pity, not

envy.[293]

But greater than the moral value of maxims in the poets is that of

example. "Philosophers employ examples from history for our correction

and instruction, and the poets differ from them only by inventing and

presenting fictitious narratives."[294] For instance, according to

Plutarch, Homer introduces the story of Hera's vain endeavor to gain her

ends from Zeus by means of wine and the girdle of Aphrodite to show that

such conduct is not only immoral, but useless. Again we may conclude that

frequenting women in the day time is a shame and a reproach because the

only man who does such a thing in the _Iliad_ is that lascivious and

adulterous fellow Paris.[295] It is interesting that this essay of

Plutarch's, which gives probably the most complete classical exposition of

the moral use of poetry, should have been well known in the renaissance

and translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1603.

The Romans had very much the same feeling about the moral value in poetry

as had the Greeks. The only fundamental difference lay in that the Roman

was less philosophical and more practical. This practical element in Roman

criticism is well illustrated by Horace, whose statements have sometimes

been made to support opinions which Horace did not hold. Let it be noted,

for one thing, that Horace is talking not about the purpose of poetry, but

about the purpose of the poet.

Poets desire either to profit or to delight, or to tell things which are

at once pleasant and profitable.

His reason for favoring the third view is important.

Old men reject poems which are void of instruction; the knights neglect

austere poems: he who mixes the useful with the sweet wins the approval

of all by delighting and at the same time admonishing the reader. This

book makes money for the book-sellers, and passes over the sea, and

prolongs the reputation of the well-known author.[296]

But aside from the desirability of mingling pleasure with profit in his

poetry in order to gain the greatest popularity, the poet does have an

educational value in the training of youths by presenting in an attractive

manner examples of noble conduct which the young people may desire to

emulate.

His lessons form the child's young lips, and wean

The boyish ear from words and tales unclean;

As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind,

And makes it just and generous, sweet and kind;

He tells of worthy precedents, displays

The example of the past to after days,

Consoles affliction, and disease allays.[297]

Moreover the consensus of conventional opinion in the Roman world was that

the study of the poets did succeed in moulding the moral character of the

youth. Apuleius, writing of a certain virtuous young man, the hero of one

of the episodes of the _Metamorphoses_, makes the following incidental

remark: "The master of the house had a young son well instructed in good

literature, and consequently remarkable for his piety and modesty."[298]

Although Lucretius may not have been assured of the moral value, he was

so convinced of the seductive powers of poetry that he deliberately

utilized them to make palatable the forbidding thoughts of his essay _On

the Nature of Things_. The long passage is worth quoting entire because

his comparison is borrowed so frequently by renaissance critics to

illustrate the poetic doctrine of pleasurable profit. Lucretius says:

But as physicians, when they attempt to give bitter wormwood to

children, first tinge the rim round the cup with the sweet and yellow

liquid of honey, that the age of childhood, as yet unsuspicious, may

find its lips deluded, and may in the meantime drink the bitter juice of

the wormwood, and though deceived, may not be injured, but rather, being

recruited by such a process, may acquire strength; so now I, since this

argument seems generally too severe and forbidding to those by whom it

has not been handled, and since the multitude shrink back from it, was

desirous to set forth my chain of reasoning to thee, O Memmius, in

sweetly-speaking Pierian verse, and, as it were, tinge it with the honey

of the Muses.[299]

From this survey of classical opinion we may conclude that the public

looked for two things in poetry: pleasure and profit. Eratosthenes took an

extreme view in seeking pleasure alone. Both Aristotle and Horace

emphasized the pleasure to be derived from poetry, although neither denied

that poetry is beneficial. Horace takes almost a cynical view in

suggesting that, as some readers seek pleasure in poetry and others

improvement, a poet will be more popular and make more money for the

book-sellers if he mingles both elements. The extreme view of the moral

value of poetry was taken by the educators of youth. This view is well

exemplified in the quotations from Aristophanes, Xenophon, Strabo, and

especially Plutarch. But even Plutarch, who goes so far as to suggest

emending the poets to make their effect more moral, does not suggest that

the purpose of poetry is to afford moral instruction. He distinguishes;

some poetry is distinctly immoral and should be enjoyed only for its art.

Other poetry is moral in its effect, and consequently should be utilized

extensively by the school-master in educating young men. For such purposes

no poetry was thought to be better than Homer, whose epics furnish so many

examples of heroic conduct.

3. Moral Improvement through Allegory

When the Roman arms conquered a new city, the story runs, the commander of

the forces took over in the name of the Emperor the gods; but before the

gates of Jerusalem this ceremony proved ineffective. The fathers of the

Christian church, Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian, believing

that all the truth was contained in Christianity, utterly condemned the

philosophy and religion of the Greeks and consequently the poetry which,

according to Greek popular belief, was the inspired vehicle for its

presentation. Furthermore, the gods of the Greeks were immoral and

furnished their worshippers with bad examples of conduct. Long before

Tertullian the moral philosophers of antiquity had already attacked the

poetry of Greece and Rome on the ground of immorality. Plato in his day

called the war between philosophy and poetry "age-long." The ancient

Greeks had considered Homer and Hesiod as the inspired recorders of the

facts of religion. They had looked to the poets for moral dogma and

example. Of necessity the philosophers condemned the poets for the

immorality of their thievish, lying, and adulterous pantheon.

When the Christian fathers were confronted with the Syriac gospel of the

youth of Jesus, they called a council to declare it apochryphal. Lest

some devout reader should take literally the love poetry of the Canticles,

the fathers allegorized it as the love of Christ for his Church.

Unfortunately for Greek religion the philosophers did not determine which

episodes in the histories of the gods were valid as doctrine and which

were fictitious. They did, however, anticipate the fathers in their

allegorical interpretations. Socrates in the _Phaedrus_ laughs at

allegory;[300] and Plutarch believes that the poets intended to teach a

moral idea by example instead of expressing a hidden meaning by allegory.

For him allegory involved distortion and perversion. "For some men

_distort_ these stories and _pervert_ them into allegories or what the men

of old times called hidden meanings ὑπόνοιαι."[301] But allegory none the

less flourished. Theognis of Rhegium, Anaxagoras, and Stesimbrotus of

Thasos, were assiduous and startling in their interpretations.[302] The

Greek allegorical interpretations were of two kinds: one an explanation

of the secrets of nature, the other the teaching of morality.[303]

Although the practice was very old, the word "allegory" is not recorded

before Cicero, who says:

When the imagery of the metaphor is sustained for a long time, the

nature of the style assuredly becomes changed. Consequently the Greeks

call this sort of thing allegory.... But he is nearer the truth who

calls all of these metaphors.[304]

From Cicero on, allegory has a long history as a rhetorical figure--a

trope.[305] St. Augustine recommends that students of the scriptures study

the rhetorical figures so that they may be able to interpret the tropes in

the Bible, such as allegory.[306]

The result will always be the same whenever the poets are considered

theologians and moral teachers. They will be condemned or allegorized.

Fortunate are the poets when they are not believed. "How much better,"

exclaims St. Augustine, "are these fables of the poets" than the false

religious notions of the Manichees. "But Medea flying, although I chanted

sometimes, yet I maintained not the truth of; and though I heard it sung,

I believed it not: but these phantasies I thoroughly believed."[307] For

it is only when one believes devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae

in a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such

traffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[308] It is only when the

poets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the

clutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks

that Aristotle asserts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the

particular.[309] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, "Poetry has little

regard for the actuality of specific event, but aims at the reality of an

eternal probability."[310]

4. The Influence of Rhetoric

Thus the general consensus of classical opinion agreed that poetry has

inescapable moral effects on those who listen or read. The moralists,

especially the Stoics, when confronted with traditional poetry whose

literal significance was immoral, leaned toward allegorical

interpretations which brought out a kernel of truth. The greater number,

however, of Greeks and Romans in the classical period believed that poetry

exerted the most potent influence for good when it enunciated crisp moral

maxims and afforded examples of heroic conduct which young people could be

induced to follow.

In all these respects the classical view of poetic has much in common with

classical rhetoric. Allegory has been shown to have had a long history as

an extended metaphor--a rhetorical figure. Maxims are considered fully by

Aristotle as aids to persuasion in rhetoric.[311] The exemplum is

obviously a stock means of rhetoric.

"Examples," says Aristotle, "are of two kinds, one consisting in the

allegation of historical facts, and the other in the invention of facts

for oneself. Invention comprises illustration on the one hand and ...

fables on the other." Then he tells how Aesop defended a demagogue by the

fable of the fox caught in the cleft of a rock. The fox was infested with

dog-ticks which sucked his blood. A benevolent hedge-hog offered to remove

the ticks, but the fox declined the kind offer on the ground that his

ticks were already full of blood and had ceased to annoy him much, whereas

if they were removed, a new colony of ticks would establish themselves and

thus entirely drain him of blood. "Yes, and in your case, men of Samos,"

said Aesop, "my client will not do much further mischief--he has already

made his fortune--but, if you put him to death, there will come others who

are poor and who will consume all the revenues of the state by their

embezzlements."[312] "Fables," continues the shrewd master of those who

know, "have this advantage that, while historical parallels are hard to

find, it is comparatively easy to find fables." Quintilian, like

Aristotle, believes in the persuasive efficacy of examples. But Quintilian

has less faith in the probative value of fictitious examples than he has

in those drawn from authentic history. He thinks that fables are most

effective with a rustic and ingenuous audience, which "captivated by their

pleasure in the story, give assent to that which pleases them."[313] Thus

Menenius Agrippa reconciled the people to the senators by telling them the

fable of the revolt of the members against the belly. And Thomas Wilson,

in his _Arte of Rhetorique_, repeats the story, in his section on

examples, and ascribes to Themistocles the fox story which Aristotle tells

of Aesop.[314]

But Aristotle, Quintilian, and Wilson are talking about rhetoric. Very

justly they believe that if one wants to persuade an audience to a course

of action, he must interest his audience sufficiently to hold their

attention. As Wilson sagely remarks, "For except men finde delite, they

will not long abide: delite them and winne them."[315] Cicero expressed in

memorable phrase the relationship between proof and pleasure as

instruments to persuasion and added a third element. He classified the

aims of an orator as "to teach, to please, to move" (_docere, delectare,

movere_). The teaching is the appeal to the intellect of the hearer by

means of proof. The pleasure is afforded by a euphonious style, and by

fables and stories. The audience is moved to action by the appeal to their

feelings.[316]

Not until the renaissance did writers on the theory of poetry carry over

Cicero's threefold aim of the orator and make it apply to the poet.[317]

But already in post-classical times rhetoric had, as Seneca the father

clearly shows, vitiated the Latin poetry of the Silver Age. Under the

Empire the declamation schools in Rome had a profound influence on

literature.[318] It could not be otherwise in a society where the school

of rhetoric was the only temple of higher education, for which the

grammaticus, or elementary professor of literature, was constrained to

prepare his students. Rhetoric was the organon of Roman education, and

declamation was the aim of rhetoric. It was such an educational system

which prepared Ovid and Lucan for their careers as poets and men of

letters. Seneca the father records the brilliant declamations of Ovid as a

schoolboy, quoting at some length his plea for a wife who threw herself

over a cliff on hearing of the death of her husband, and calling attention

to several passages in Ovid's poems where the poet has borrowed the clever

sayings of his professors in the school of rhetoric.[319] Ovid makes his

characters prove that they are moved by passion instead of being

passionate in word and deed. He vitiates his emotions with his wit. This

is characteristic of almost all the poets who attended the declamation

schools. They talk about situations and characters instead of realizing

them. They write as if they were speaking to an audience. One can almost

see the gestures, the wait for applause after the enunciation of a noble

platitude. Not only historically, but also in the worst modern sense this

is rhetoric. It is not unreasonable to conclude that such a preoccupation

with rhetoric, such a sustained search for all possible means of

persuasion, should have strengthened rather than weakened the utilitarian

theory of poetry. The school-master endeavored to mould the characters of

his students by examples from heroic poetry; the teacher of rhetoric, in

turn, taught them that to persuade an audience they must prove, please,

and move, and that ficticious examples were about as persuasive as

historical parallels and much easier to find. When the student left school

he continued to seek means of persuasion in canvassing votes, pleading in

the courts, or deliberating in the senate. If he became a poet, he did not

forget the lessons of his youth; or if he became a teacher of literature

or a professor of rhetoric, he perpetuated the tradition.

Chapter II

Mediaeval Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry

With the breaking up of the Empire the stream of classical culture was

restricted to a narrow channel--the Church. Opposed as it was to pagan

morals and theology, the church could honestly retain classical literature

only if it were allegorized. This explains the allegorical nature of

mediaeval poetry and of poetical theory.

From the beginning the learning of the Church was of pagan origin. St.

Augustine was a professor of rhetoric and the author of a treatise on

aesthetics before he wrote the _City of God_, and his _Confessions_. In

fact, he never quite got over being a professor of rhetoric. Clement of

Alexandria was a product of the same rhetoric schools and an excellent

teacher of his subject before he recognized the divine origin of

Christianity. St. Basil was a college friend of Gregory Nazianzen and of

Julian, later emperor and apostate, when the three studied rhetoric at

Athens. Indeed, the most cunningly cruel decree which Julian later

promulgated against the Christians forbade them the use of the ancient

pagan literature of Greece and Rome. This decree Basil bitterly resented.

"I forgo all the rest," he says, "riches, birth, honor, authority, and all

the goods here below of which the charm vanishes like a dream; but I cling

to oratory nor do I regret the toil, nor the journeys by land and sea,

which I have undertaken to master it."[320]

But within the Church the lovers of Greek literature did not have it all

their own way. Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian savagely

attacked profane poetry, and in defending it Basil, Athenagoras, Clement,

and Origen were forced not unwillingly to rely more and more on the

traditional moralistic theory of poetry which was so familiar to them. St.

Chrysostom records that in the fourth century Homer was still taught as a

guide to morals.[321]

1. Allegorical Interpretations in the Middle Ages

Allegorical interpretation was the main weapon of the apologists for

poetry. The basis, indeed, of the Gnostic heresies of the second and third

centuries was an allegorical interpretation of the Greek poets and

philosophers and of the Scriptures. This soon degenerated into an

extravagant system of speculative mysticism. Clement of Alexandria and

Origen rejected the extravagances, but sought to retain the mysticism of

the Gnostics. They reconciled Greek literature and the Scriptures by

allegorizing both, much as today Darwin and Genesis are reconciled by

allegorizing Genesis.[322] Thus in the declining years of the Roman Empire

the rhetoricians had become ecclesiastics, and the Church had adopted

pagan literature with allegorical interpretation.

This tradition dominated the middle ages; Lady Theology reigned over the

kingdom of the seven liberal arts, and to make Homer and Virgil

theological it was necessary that they be interpreted allegorically. As

Vossler has shown, theology and philosophy furnished, during the middle

ages, the subject matter of poetry; they were the _utile_ of Horace. The

_dulce_ became for them too exclusively the pleasing garment of style and

story.[323]

Throughout the middle ages, however, many continued to look askance at

poetry, and were skeptical as to its value. To Boethius, weeping in

prison, came Philosophy to console him. She found him surrounded by the

friends of his youth, the Muses, who now were inspiring him to write

dreary verses of complaint. But these poetical Muses Philosophy sent

packing. "Who has allowed," said she, "these common strumpets of the

theatre to come near this sick man? Not only do they fail to assuage his

sorrows, but they feed and nourish them with sweet venom. They are not

fruitful nor profitable. They destroy the fruits of reason, for they hold

the hearts of men."[324] Here Philosophy is voicing the objections of

Plato. The arts are attacked because they are not successfully

utilitarian, and because they appeal to the emotions instead of to the

reason. In a later book Boethius gives a clearer key to the objection. He

postulates four mental faculties: sensation possessed by oysters,

imagination possessed by higher animals, reason possessed by man,

intelligence possessed by God. Consequently man should aspire towards God

instead of indulging his faculties of sensation and imagination, which he

shares with the lower animals.[325]

But such objections as those of Boethius were usually explained away by

allegory. When Isidore of Seville (†633 or 636), for instance, was

compiling his book of universal knowledge, the _Etymologiae_, he

incorporated his section on the poets in the chapter entitled _Concerning

the Church and the Sects_. So between a section devoted to the

_Philosophers of the Gentiles_ and a section entitled _Concerning Sibyls_

he wrote concerning the poets as follows:

Sometimes, however, the poets were called theologians, because they used

to compose songs concerning the gods. In doing this, however, it is the

office of the poets to render what has actually been done in a different

guise with a certain beauty of covert figures.[326]

The poet, to Isidore, was the inspired bard who sings of the gods and the

eternal verities, not directly, but under the veil of a beautiful

allegory. Among these allegorical or indirect means of expression used by

the poet to veil truth are fables.

The poets invent fables sometimes to give pleasure; sometimes they are

interpreted to explain the nature of things, sometimes to throw light on

the manners of men.[327]

His illustrations of a fable show that he is talking about allegory. For

instance, the fable of the centaur was invented to show, by the union of

man and horse, the swiftness of human life.

It is very natural, then, that Dante should as the supreme poet of the

middle ages furnish the supreme example of allegory. In the _Convivio_ (c.

1306), Dante gives a very full and complete exposition of the proper

method of interpreting a text. Any writing, he says, should be expounded

in four senses. The first is the literal. The second is called the

allegorical, and is the one that hides itself under the mantle of these

tales, and is a truth hidden under beauteous fiction.[328] The reason

this way of hiding was devised by wise men he promises to explain in the

fourteenth treatise, which he never wrote. The third sense, he goes on to

say, is the moral, as from the fact that Christ took with him but three

disciples when he ascended the mountain for the transfiguration we may

understand that in secret things we should have but few companions. The

fourth sense is the analogical. Here the text may be literally true, but

contain a spiritual significance beyond. That to Dante, however, all but

the literal sense naturally coalesced as the allegorical is quite clear

from the close of the chapter and from the letter to Can Grande, in which

he discusses the interpretations of his _Commedia_. "Although these mystic

senses are called by various names, they may all in general be called

allegorical."[329] That the "beauteous fiction," the _bella menzogna_, of

allegory is rhetorical in origin is clear from a passage in the _Vita

Nuova_. Dante is defending his personification of Love as one walking,

speaking and laughing on the assumption that as a poet he is licensed to

use figures or rhetorical colorings. These colorings, however, must have a

true but hidden significance. The rhetorical figures are a garment to

clothe the nakedness of truth.[330]

2. Allegory in Mediaeval England

England as well as Italy furnished a congenial soil for allegory in the

thirteenth century. In his _Poetria_, John of Garland[331] explains

allegorically an "elegiac, bucolic, ethic, love poem" which he quotes.

"Under the guise of the nymph," he says, "is figured forth the flesh;

under that of the corrupt youth, the world or the devil; under that of the

friend, reason."[332] In another illustrative poem, this time introduced

to show the proper use of the six parts of an oration, John inserts

between the "_confirmacio_," and the "_confutacio_," an "_expositio

mistica_" in which the Trojan War is allegorized in this fashion: "The

fury of Eacides is the ire of Satan," etc.[333]

As late as 1506 Stephen Hawes's _Pastime of Pleasure_ is as mediaeval as

the _Romance of the Rose_.[334] In this allegory of the education and love

adventures of Grandamour the young man sits at the feet of Dame Rethoryke

to be instructed at great length in her art. To none other of the seven

liberal arts, in fact, does Hawes devote so much space. In the chapter on

_inventio_, however, the lady seems to have forgotten all about her

traditional past, for instead of discussing the method of finding all

possible arguments in favor of a case, she discusses the poets, their

purpose, and their fame.

The purpose of poetry is to her what it had been throughout the entire

period of the middle ages. The poet presents truth under the guise of

allegory.

To make of nought reason sentencious

Clokynge a trouthe wyth colour tenebrous.

For often under a fayre fayned fable

A trouthe appereth gretely profitable.[335]

This, says Dame Rethoryke, has the sanction of antiquity; for the old

poets, who are famous for their wisdom and the imaginative power of their

invention, pronounced truth under cloudy figures. This fortified the poets

against sloth.

The special treasure

Of new invencion, of ydleness the foo!

Then she addresses herself directly to the poets to laud their virtues.

Your hole desyre was set

Fables to fayne to eschewe ydleness,...

To dysnull vyce and the vycious to blame.

Furthermore she praises them for recording the honorable deeds of great

conquerors and for furnishing the modern poets with such illustrious

models of the poetic art. This praise of the poets is complementary to a

condemnation of the foolish public, whose limited intelligence prevents

them from seeing the cloaked truth of the poets. Thus the dull, rude

people, when they are unable to understand the moral implications of the

poet's allegory, call the poets liars, deceivers, and flatterers. This,

she insists, is the fault not of the poets, but of the people. If the

people would take the trouble to understand these clouded truths, they

would praise and appreciate the moral poets.

The conclusion is not difficult. The mediaeval poets are on the defensive,

as their brothers had been through all the past. To justify art, the

middle ages had to show its usefulness not only to morals, but to

theology. Thus Dame Rethoryke in her talk on _inventio_, is conducting a

defense of poetry on the following grounds: it teaches profound truth

under the guise of allegory; it blames the vicious and overcomes vice; it

is the enemy of sloth; it records the honorable deeds of great men.

The chapter on style only continues the song. It is the art, says Hawes,

to cloak the meaning under misty figures of many colors, as the old poets

did, who took similitudes from beasts and birds.

And under colour of this beste, pryvely

The morall sense they cloake full subtyly.[336]

The poets write, he continues, under a misty cloud of covert likeness. For

instance, the poets feign that King Atlas bore the heavens on his

shoulders, meaning only that he was unusually versed in high astronomy.

Likewise the story of the centaurs only exemplifies the skill of Mylyzyus

in breaking the wildness of the royal steeds. Pluto, Cerberus, and the

hydra receive like explanations. The poets feign these fables, of course,

to lead the readers out of mischief. A poet to be great must drink of the

redolent well of poetry whence flow the four rivers of Understanding,

Close-concluding, Novelty, and Carbuncles. These rivers are translatable

into: understanding of good and evil, moral purpose, novelty, rhetorical

adornment of figures and so forth.

The poets praised--Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate--deserve their fame, he

says, for their morality. They cleanse our vices. They kindle our hearts

with love of virtue. Lydgate's _Falls of Princes_ is an especially great

poem,

A good ensample for us to dispyse

This worlde, so ful of mutabilyte.[337]

Other cunning poets are, however, not so praiseworthy. Instead of feigning

pleasant and covert fables, they spend their time in vanity, making

ballades of fervent love and such like tales and trifles. This, he

insists, is an unfruitful manner in which to spend one's efforts.

This unanimous judgment of the middle ages that the purpose of poetry is

to teach spiritual truth and inculcate morality under the cloak of

allegory was perpetuated far into the renaissance, especially in England,

where, as has been shown, the recovery of classical culture made slow

progress.[338]

Chapter III

Rhetorical Elements in Italian Renaissance Conceptions of the Purpose of

Poetry

In his study of the function of poetry in the literary criticism of the

Italian renaissance, Spingarn has shown[339] that the characteristic

opinions reflect the ideas of Horace in his famous line,

Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae.

The purpose of poetry, they thought, was to please, to instruct, or to

combine pleasure and instruction. He goes further to show that with the

notable exceptions of Bernardo Tasso and Castelvetro, who claimed no

further function for poetry than delight and delight alone, the general

conception was ethical. "Even when delight was admitted as an end, it was

simply because of its usefulness in effecting the ethical aim.[340]" This

chapter, resuming briefly the results of Spingarn's investigations where

they help the reader to understand better the situation in English

criticism, will bring into sharper relief than has heretofore been done

two influences which affected the renaissance view not a

little--scholastic philosophy and the classical rhetorics.

To St. Thomas Aquinas, logic was the art of arts, because in action we are

directed by reason. Thus all arts proceed from it, and rhetoric is a part

of it.[341] The Thomistic philosophy which included rhetoric and poetic

in logic, whereas Aristotle had classified the three arts as coördinate

within the same category, seems, says Spingarn, "to have been accepted by

the scholastic philosophers of the middle ages."[342] The appearance of

this scholastic grouping in the renaissance criticism is parallel with a

gradual abandonment of the popular mediaeval preoccupation with allegory,

in favor of the classical view which considered example as the best

vehicle for moral improvement.

In the age of the Medicis, when refined courts of Italy were so greatly

delighted at the recovery of the least edifying literary monuments of

classical antiquity, allegorical interpretation had probably so often

become but a cloak for licentiousness in poetry that it was becoming

discredited. At any rate, Loyola rejected allegorical interpretation of

classical literature for the Jesuit colleges. He based moral education on

example, and expurgated any element which he thought might have a

pernicious effect on young people. For instance, except in the most

advanced class, the Dido episode was deleted from the _Æneid_.[343]

Savonarola rejected allegory and considered logic, rhetoric, and poetic as

parts of philosophy. Logic proceeds by induction and syllogism, rhetoric

by the enthymeme, and poetic by the example. Therefore the office of the

poet is to teach by examples, to induce men to virtuous living by fitting

representations. Because our minds delight greatly in song and harmony,

the early poets used meter and rhythm better to incline the soul of man to

virtue and morality. It is impossible, however, for a person ignorant of

logic to be a true poet. A mere concern with rhythm and the composition of

sentences profits nothing, for what is the use of painting and decorating

a ship if it is going to be swamped in the storm and never come to port?

The poets who endeavor to place their poems on a par with the Scriptures

overlook the fact that only the sacred writings can have an allegorical,

parabolical or spiritual meaning. Since Dante had made all these claims,

the inference is that Savonarola declined to accept poetry as part of

theology, and rejected both Dante and the popular mediaeval tradition.

Poets, he goes on to say, use metaphors because of the weakness of their

material. If you took away the verbal ornament, you would not read the

poets, because there would be nothing left. The theologian uses metaphor

only as an adornment to his solid matter. The poet who sings of love,

praises idols, and narrates lies has a very bad effect on young men. He

incites to lust and immorality. But poets who describe in verses moral

actions and the deeds of brave men should not on that account be

condemned.[344]

1. The Scholastic Grouping of Poetic, Rhetoric and Logic

The scholastic grouping of logic, rhetoric, and poetic which Savonarola

derived from St. Thomas Aquinas[345] persisted for four centuries,

rejuvenated by contact with the richer classical scholarship of the

renaissance. B. Lombardus, for instance, in his preface to Maggi's edition

of Aristotle's _Poetics_ (1550), differentiates logic, rhetoric, and

poetic by the same criteria. Logic, he says, proves by syllogism, and in

this is different from both rhetoric and poetic, which use enthymeme and

example as more appropriate to a popular audience, while poetic uses

example almost entirely and scarcely ever enthymeme.[346]

Spingarn calls attention to a similar distinction in the _Lezione_ (1553)

of Benedetto Varchi. Varchi says:

Just as the logician uses for his means the noblest of all instruments,

that is, demonstration or the demonstrative syllogism; so the

dialectician, the topical syllogism; and the sophist, the sophistical,

that is, the apparent and deceitful; the rhetorician, the enthymeme, and

the poet, the example, which is the least worthy of all. So the subject

of poetry is the feigned fable and the fabulous, and its means or

instrument is the example.[347]

This has its ultimate source in the _Rhetoric_ of Aristotle, who made the

following distinction between logic and rhetoric: Logic aims at

demonstration by the syllogism and by induction; rhetoric aims at

persuasion by the enthymeme and the example. The enthymeme is a

rhetorical syllogism, usually with the conclusion or either premise

unexpressed. Moreover the premises of an enthymeme are likely to rest on

opinion rather than on axioms. The example is a rhetorical induction,

usually from fewer cases than are necessary to scientific induction.[348]

The same scholastic grouping of logic, rhetoric, and poetic appears in the

treatise _On the Nature of the Art of Poetry_ (1647) of the Dutch scholar

Vossius, who writes:

As rhetoric is called by Aristotle the counterpart of dialect and that

especially because it teaches the manner by which enthymemes may be

utilized in communal matters, without a doubt poetic is also to be

thought a part of logic, because it discloses the use of examples in

fictitious matters.... But rhetoric and poetic seek not only to prove

something, but also to delight; they seek not only understanding, but

action as well. Wherefore poetic has this in common with rhetoric; that

both are the servants of the state.[349]

Vossius thus, like Scaliger, makes poetic and rhetoric one in their end to

promote desirable action.

How persistent is this rhetorical view of poetry is well illustrated by

the _Ars Rhetorica_ of the Jesuit Martin Du Cygne, first published in

1666, and still used as a text-book in Georgetown University. He is

discussing the three kinds of argument: syllogism, enthymeme, and example,

or induction.

Induction is delightful and is appropriate to an ignorant audience

because of its similitudes and examples. This argument is frequently

used by rhetoricians and poets, especially Ovid; because it explains

attractively and clearly.[350]

Thus the grouping of poetic with rhetoric and logic naturally tended to

make it partake more and more of the nature of the other two. All of them

were taken to be occupied with proving something in an effort to make

other people good. They differed only because they used different kinds of

proof.

2. The Influence of the Classical Rhetorics

A more explicit influence on the renaissance belief that the function of

poetry is to improve social morality is readily seen in the definitions of

poetry which have already been quoted from Lombardus and Varchi, who

formulated their definitions of poetry by combining Aristotle's definition

of tragedy with his definition of rhetoric.[351] Another explicit

borrowing from classical rhetoric was of Cicero's three-fold aim of the

orator: to teach, to delight, to persuade (_docere, delectare,

permovere_).[352] Several important Italian critics carried this

terminology over into their theories of poetry along with the purpose

which has always animated rhetoric--persuasion.

Making Horace a point of departure, Daniello, in 1536, says that the

function of the poet is to teach and delight, but more than that--to

persuade. He must move his readers to share the emotions of his

characters, to shun vice, and embrace virtue.[353] This extreme rhetorical

parallel was further insisted on by Minturno (1559), who defined the duty

of a poet as so to speak in verse as to teach, to delight, and to

move.[354] And as Aristotle had affirmed in his _Rhetoric_ that the

character of the speaker was one of the three essential elements in

persuasion,[355] Minturno is constrained to make the moral character of

the poet an indispensable quality of his poetry. Thus he borrows Cato's

definition of the orator as a "good man skilled in public speech" (vir

bonus dicendi peritus) from Quintilian,[356] and defines the poet as "a

good man skilled in speech and imitation" (poeta vir bonus dicendi et

imitandi peritus).[357]

Like Minturno, Scaliger insisted that poetry must teach, move, and

delight.[358] It is thus the result in action which Minturno and Scaliger

emphasize. The poet must work on the feelings of his reader so that he

shall embrace and imitate the good, and spurn the evil. Philosophy,

oratory, and poetry have thus one end--and only one--persuasion.[359]

Without the "movere," the incentive to action, of course poetry could not

serve its purpose of moral improvement on which the renaissance so sternly

insisted. A reader might enjoy a story, play, or poem which presented

impeccable examples of virtue rewarded and vice punished, or which

abounded in noble platitudes gilded with wit, and still smile and be a

villain. It was thus inevitable that an acceptance of the moral purpose of

poetry should sooner or later drive any logical minded critic of poetry

completely into the camp of rhetoric. There the poet would find a

complete panoply of arms forged for the arousing of the feelings in an

audience, and for stirring the springs of action. He could make his

readers hate sin by the same means Demosthenes made his hearers hate

Philip, and love any virtue by appropriating the methods of Cicero _Pro

Archia_. According to this belief, the difference between poetic and

rhetoric was minimized. In theory a poem or a speech might indifferently

be composed either in prose or in verse. Both endeavored to teach, to

please, and to move. Both looked toward persuasion as an object. The

speech used the enthymeme and the example as proofs, while the poem used

the example to a greater, and the enthymeme to a lesser degree. Both in

theory and in practice the example was regarded as being a pleasanter

argument than the precept, as well as being more effective. This was the

age of Ciceronianism. The school-masters of Europe had recently

rediscovered imitation as the royal road to learning, and in their system

of language teaching emphasized imitation of classical authors more than

following the precepts of the grammarians or of the rhetoricians. The

epigram of Seneca, "longum iter per praecepta, breve per exempla," was the

popular catchword of the age. The example was popular.

Thus by the end of the sixteenth century, the Italian critics had

formulated a logical and self-consistent theory of the purpose of poetry.

Inheritors of the allegorical theory of the middle ages, which they in

part discarded, and discoverers of classical rhetoric which they carried

over bodily into their theories of poetry, they passed on to France,

Germany, and England their rhetorical theories. The purpose of poetry, as

well as of rhetoric, was to them persuasion--to teach, to please, to move.

The instrument of poetry was the rhetorical example.

Chapter IV

English Renaissance Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry

In England the Italian interpretations of the literary criticism of Greece

and Rome made slow headway against the established traditions of the

middle ages. In particular the vogue of allegory did not yield to the idea

of the moral example transferred from rhetoric to poetic.

1. Allegory and Example in Rhetoric

When Thomas Wilson published the first edition of his _Arte of Rhetorique_

in 1553, the corpus of Greek criticism in the Aldine _Rhetores Graeci_ had

been in print forty-five years, and the commentaries of Dolce, Daniello,

Robortelli, and Maggi were available. But Wilson wrote a very good

rhetoric with no books before him but Quintilian, Cicero and the rhetoric

_Ad Herennium_, which he thought to be Cicero's, Erasmus, Plutarch _De

audiendis poetis_, and St. Basil. His treatment of poetry is quite

naturally, then, that of a rhetorician who had been reared in the

mediaeval tradition of allegory.

Allegory in the sense of Quintilian as a trope, an extended metaphor,

Wilson mentions only once. His instance will bear quotation:

It is evil putting strong Wine into weake vesselles, that is to say, it

is evil trusting some women with weightie matters. The English Proverbes

gathered by John Heywood, helpe well in this behalfe, the which commonly

are nothing els but Allegories, and darke devised sentences.[360]

Allegory in its more general mediaeval sense of the kernel of moral truth

within the brilliant husk of the poet's fables he discusses at greater

length elsewhere with full exemplification.

For by them we may talke at large and win men by persuasion, if we

declare beforehand that these tales were not fained of such wisemen

without cause.

This obvious rhetorical discussion of the use of poetical illustrations by

orators leads him to express his conviction of the moral value of poetry.

That poetry did have this improving effect he is quite sure.

For undoubtedly there is no one tale among all the Poetes, but under the

same is comprehended something that parteineth, either to the amendment

of maners, to the knowledge of the trueth to the setting forth of

Nature's work, or els the understanding of some notable thing done....

As Plutarch saieth: and likewise Basilius Magnus:[361] In the _Iliades_

are described strength, and valiantnesse of the bodie: In the _Odissea_

is set forth a lively paterne of the minde. The Poetes were wisemen, and

wished in hart the redresse of things, the which when for feare, they

durst not openly rebuke, they did in colours painte them out, and tolde

men by shadowes what they should doe in good sooth, or els because the

wicked were unworthy to heare the trueth, they spake so that none might

understand but those unto whom they please to utter their meaning.[362]

Wilson seems to mean not only that poetry has a moral effect, but that the

moral value is the main intention. He then proceeds to elucidate the story

of Danae as signifying that women have been and will be overcome by money.

The story of Io's seduction by the bull shows that beauty may overcome the

best of women. From Icarus we should learn that every man should not

meddle with things above his compass, and from Midas, to avoid

covetousness. As a Protestant he explains St. Christopher and St. George

in like manner allegorically.

But Wilson is a rhetorician, not a theorist of poetry; he is not concerned

with the moral example as the purpose of poetry. In his section on example

as a rhetorical argument he shows how stories and fables may enliven and

enforce a point. He illustrates by Pliny's story of the grateful dragon,

and by Appian's story of the grateful lion, how a speaker may enlarge on

the duty of gratitude among men. But though he does not postulate

pleasurable instruction as the aim of poetry, he clearly implies it in his

comment on the use of stories in argument.

Nor does Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_, written between 1563-1568 and

published posthumously in 1570, concern himself with the purpose of

poetry. His interest in poetry seems to be confined to prosody. As a

school-master himself he is interested in guiding grammar-school boys in

their mastery of Latin prose. "I purpose to teach a yong scholer, to go,

not to dance: to speake, not to sing."[363] That he is not blind to the

fact that poetry does influence the character of a reader, whether that be

its purpose or not in the mind of God, he shows by his comment on Plautus.

The language, Ascham says, is good and worthy of imitation; but the master

must choose only such passages as contain honest matter.[364] And the same

fear of the possible evil moral influence of fiction is evinced in his

famous condemnation of the _Morte Darthur_ "the whole pleasure of which

booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold

bawdrye,"[365] and in his attacks on English translations of Italian poems

and stories. In this his position is substantially that of Savonarola,

Loyola and Vives.[366] Nowhere does Ascham advance the claims of allegory

as cloaking moral truth under the guise of fiction. He is too good a

classicist and Ciceronian. What he fears from poetry is evil example. If

he believed that the purpose of poetry was to teach truth by example

pleasantly, at least he does not say so. Ascham represents the advance

guard in England against allegory. But since he was not writing on the

theory of poetry primarily, he did not endeavor to establish that the

function of poetry is to teach by example.

2. Allegory and the Rhetorical Example in Poetic

Thus far we have had to draw inferences from the asides of rhetorician and

school-master. But in 1575, five years after the publication of Ascham's

treatise, George Gascoigne, a poet, published his _Certayne Notes of

Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme_.[367] The title is not

misleading. Gascoigne is concerned with the style of poetry, not with its

philosophy. His only reference to either example or allegory is in a

passage where he recommends methods of avoiding triteness in the praise of

his mistress.

If I should disclose my pretence in love, I would eyther make a strange

discourse of some intollerable passion, or finde occasion to pleade by

the example of some historie, or discover my disquiet in shadowes _per

Allegoriam_.[368]

Slight as this is, it hints at the rhetoric of Ovid and the declamation

schools. The poet is "to pleade by example." He is making a speech to his

mistress trying to prove to her his undying passion that she may grant him

the ultimate favor. The genre is the same that includes the _Epistles_ of

Ovid and the _Love Letters_ of Aristenetus. It is the genre of versified

speech-making. Wilson recommended the _Proverbs_ of Heywood as furnishing

"allegories" useful in the amplification of a point in a speech. In his

_Euphues_ Lyly did use such "allegories" in what his contemporaries

generally considered a poem. Lyly drew examples, anecdotes, and fables

which he used as Gascoigne suggested, not only from Heywood, but from the

_Similia_ and _Adagia_, of Erasmus, and from the _Emblems_ of

Alciati.[369]