Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance Part 1

Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance.

by Donald Lemen Clark.

Preface

In this essay I undertake to trace the influence of cla.s.sical rhetoric on the criticisms of poetry published in England between 1553 and 1641. This influence is most readily recognized in the use by English renaissance writers on literary criticism of the terminology of cla.s.sical rhetoric.

But the rhetorical terminology in most cases carried with it rhetorical thinking, traces of whose influence persist in criticism of poetry to the present day.

The essay is divided into two parts. Part First treats of the influence of rhetoric on the general theory of poetry within the period, and Part Second of its influence on the renaissance formulation of the purpose of poetry. This division is called for not by the logic of the material, but by history and convenience. A third phase of the influence of rhetorical terminology I have already touched on in an article on _The Requirements of a Poet[1]_, where I have shown that historically the renaissance ideal of the nature and education of a poet is in part derived from cla.s.sical rhetoric.

No writer today, who would treat of the criticism of the renaissance, can escape his deep indebtedness to Dr. Joel Elias Spingarn, whose _Literary Criticism in the Renaissance_ has so carefully traced the debt of English criticism to the Italians. In going over the ground surveyed by him and by many other scholars I have been able to add but slight gleanings of my own. In this field it is my privilege only to review and to supplement what has already been discovered. But whereas others have called attention to the cla.s.sical and Italian sources for English critical ideas, I am able to show that in addition to these sources, the English critics were profoundly influenced by English mediaeval traditions. That these mediaeval traditions derived ultimately from post-cla.s.sical rhetoric and that they were for the most part later discarded as less enlightened and less sound than the critical ideas of the Italian Aristotelians does not lessen their importance in the history of English literary criticism.

In so far as the text of quoted cla.s.sical writers is readily accessible in modern editions, I offer my readers only an English translation. For quotations difficult of access I add the Latin in a footnote. In the case of those English critics whose writings are incorporated in the _Elizabethan Critical Essays_ edited by Mr. Gregory Smith, or in the _Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century_, edited by Dr. J.E. Spingarn, I have made my citations to those collections in the belief that such a practice would add to the convenience of the reader.

The greatest pleasure that I derive from this writing is that of acknowledging my obligations to my friends and colleagues at Columbia University who have so generously a.s.sisted me. Professor G.P. Krapp aided me by his valuable suggestions before and after writing and generously allowed me to use several summaries which he had made of early English rhetorical treatises. Professor J.B. Fletcher helped me by his friendly and penetrating criticism of the ma.n.u.script. I am further indebted to Professor La Rue Van Hook, Dr. Mark Van Doren, Dr. S.L. Wolff, Mr. Raymond M. Weaver, and Dr. H.E. Mantz for various a.s.sistance, and to the Harvard and Columbia University Libraries for their courtesy. My greatest debt is to Professor Charles Sears Baldwin, whose constant inspiration, enlightened scholars.h.i.+p, and friendly encouragement made this book possible.

Part One

The General Theory of Rhetoric and of Poetry

Chapter I

Introductory

By definition the renaissance was primarily a literary and scholarly movement derived from the literature of cla.s.sical antiquity. Thus the historical, philosophical, pedagogical, and dramatic literatures of the renaissance cannot be accurately understood except in the light of the Greek and Roman authors whose writings inspired them. To this general rule the literary criticism of the renaissance is no exception. The interpretation of the critical terms used by the literary critics of the English renaissance must depend largely on the cla.s.sical tradition. This tradition, as the labors of many scholars, especially Spingarn, have shown, reached England both directly through the publication of cla.s.sical writings and to an even greater degree indirectly through the commentaries and original treatises of Italian scholars.

The indebtedness to the Italian critics is well known and has been widely discussed. Although the present study does not hope to add to what is known of the influence exerted on the literary criticism of the English renaissance by the Italians, it does propose to show the English critics to have been more indebted than has been supposed to the mediaeval development of cla.s.sical theory. For this relations.h.i.+p to be clear it will be necessary to review cla.s.sical literary criticism and to trace its development in post-cla.s.sical times and in the middle ages as well as in the Italian renaissance. Only by such an approach will it be possible to show in what form cla.s.sical theory was transmitted to the English renaissance.

As the restoration of the Stuarts to the throne of England inaugurated a new period in English criticism, during which English critical theories were largely influenced by French criticism, this study will stop short of this, restricting itself to the years between the publication of Thomas Wilson's _Arte of Rhetorique_ in 1553 and that of Ben Jonson's _Timber_ in 1641. Throughout this period the English mediaeval tradition of cla.s.sical theory was highly important, losing ground but gradually as the influence first of the rhetoric newly recovered from the cla.s.sics and then of Italian criticism produced an increasingly stronger effect on English criticism. I hope to show that the English critics who formulated theories of poetry in the renaissance derived much of their critical terminology, not directly from the rediscovered cla.s.sical theories of poetry, but through various channels from cla.s.sical theories and practice of rhetoric.

The tendency to use the terminology of rhetoric in discussing poetical theory did not originate in the English renaissance, but is largely an inheritance from cla.s.sical criticism as interpreted by the middle ages.

Both in England and on the continent this mediaeval tradition persisted far into the renaissance. Renaissance English writers on the theory of poetry use to an extent hitherto unexplored the terminology of rhetoric. This rhetorical terminology was derived from three sources: directly to some extent from the cla.s.sical rhetorics themselves; indirectly through the influence of cla.s.sical rhetoric upon the terminology of the Italian critics of poetry; and indirectly, to a considerable extent, through the mediaeval modifications of cla.s.sical and post-cla.s.sical rhetoric.

1. The Distinction between Rhetoric and Poetic

Aristotle wrote two treatises on literary criticism: the _Rhetoric_ and the _Poetics_. The fact that he gave separate treatment to his critical consideration of oratory and of poetry is presumptive evidence that in his mind oratory and poetry were two things, having much in common perhaps, but distinguished by fundamental differences. With less philosophical basis these fundamental differences were maintained by nearly all the cla.s.sical literary critics. It is important, therefore, to review briefly what the cla.s.sical writers meant by rhetoric and by poetic, and to trace the modifications which these terms underwent in post-cla.s.sical times, in the middle ages, and in the renaissance, in order better to show that in the literary criticism of the English renaissance the theory of poetry contained many elements which historically derive from cla.s.sical and mediaeval rhetoric.

Literature--the spoken and the written word--was divided by the cla.s.sical critics into philosophy, history, oratory, and poetry. Thus Aristotle, in addition to treating the theory of poetry and the theory of oratory in separate books, a.s.serts that even though the works of philosophy and of history were composed in verse, they would still be something different from poetry.[2] Lucian severely criticises the historians whose writings are like those of the poets.[3] Quintilian advises students of rhetoric against imitating the style of the historians because it is too much like that of the poets.[4] Clearly these critical writers are insisting on some fundamental difference between the forms of communication in language--a difference which they thought their contemporaries were in some danger of ignoring.

If the number of critical writings devoted to these different forms of communication is taken as a criterion, rhetoric ranks first, poetry second, and history third. This preponderance of rhetoric may be one reason for the tendency of the critics who wrote on the theory of poetry to use much of the terminology of rhetoric, and for the ease with which a modern student can formulate the cla.s.sical theory of rhetoric, as compared with the difficulty he has in formulating the theory of poetry.

To the Greeks and Romans rhetoric meant the theory of oratory. As a pedagogical mechanism it endeavored to teach students to persuade an audience. The content of rhetoric included all that the ancients had learned to be of value in persuasive public speech. It taught how to work up a case by drawing valid inferences from sound evidence, how to organize this material in the most persuasive order, how to compose in clear and harmonious sentences. Thus to the Greeks and Romans rhetoric was defined by its function of discovering means to persuasion and was taught in the schools as something that every free-born man could and should learn.

In both these respects the ancients felt that poetic, the theory of poetry, was different from rhetoric. As the critical theorists believed that the poets were inspired, they endeavored less to teach men to be poets than to point out the excellences which the poets had attained.

Although these critics generally, with the exceptions of Aristotle and Eratosthenes, believed the greatest value of poetry to be in the teaching of morality, no one of them endeavored to define poetry, as they did rhetoric, by its purpose. To Aristotle, and centuries later to Plutarch, the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of poetry was imitation. Not until the renaissance did critics define poetry as an art of imitation endeavoring to inculcate morality. Consequently in a historical study of rhetoric and of the theory of poetry separate treatment of their nature and of their purpose is not only convenient, but historical. The present discussion, therefore, considers various critics' ideas of the nature of poetry in Part I, and then separately in Part II their ideas of its purpose. The object of this division is not to make an abstract distinction between nature and purpose. Such a distinction cannot, of course, be made. It is to approach the subject first from one point of view and then from the other because it was in fact thus approached successively, and because also the intention of the successive writers can thus be better understood.

The same essential difference between cla.s.sical rhetoric and poetic appears in the content of cla.s.sical poetic. Whereas cla.s.sical rhetoric deals with speeches which might be delivered to convict or acquit a defendant in the law court, or to secure a certain action by the deliberative a.s.sembly, or to adorn an occasion, cla.s.sical poetic deals with lyric, epic, and drama. It is a commonplace that cla.s.sical literary critics paid little attention to the lyric. It is less frequently realized that they devoted almost as little s.p.a.ce to discussion of metrics. By far the greater bulk of cla.s.sical treatises on poetic is devoted to characterization and to the technic of plot construction, involving as it does narrative and dramatic unity and movement as distinct from logical unity and movement.

It is important that the modern reader bear these facts in mind; for in the nineteenth century text-books of rhetoric came to include description of a kind little considered by cla.s.sical rhetoricians, and narrative of an aim and scope which they excluded. Thus the modern treatise on rhetoric deals not only with what the Greeks would recognize as rhetoric, but also with what they would cla.s.sify as poetic. Furthermore, narrative and dramatic technic, which the cla.s.sical critics considered the most important elements in poetic, are now no longer called poetic. What the ancients discussed in treatises on poetic, is now discussed in treatises on the technique of the short-story, the technique of the drama, the technique of the novel, on the one hand, and in treatises on versification, prosody, and lyric poetry on the other. As these modern developments were unheard of during the periods under consideration in this study, and as the renaissance used the words rhetoric and poetic much more in their cla.s.sical senses than we do today, it must be understood that throughout this study rhetoric will be used as meaning cla.s.sical rhetoric, and poetic as meaning cla.s.sical poetic.

Many modern critics have found the cla.s.sical distinction between rhetoric and poetic very suggestive. In cla.s.sical times imaginative and creative literature was almost universally composed in meter, with the result that the metrical form was usually thought to be distinctive of poetry. The fact that in modern times drama as well as epic and romantic fiction is usually composed in prose has made some critics dissatisfied with what to them seems to be an unsatisfactory criterion. On the one hand Wackernagel, who believes that the function of poetry is to convey ideas in concrete and sensuous images and the function of prose to inform the intellect, a.s.serts that prose drama and didactic poetry are inartistic.[5] He thus advocates that present practise be abandoned in favor of the custom of the Greeks. On the other hand Newman, while granting that a metrical garb has in all languages been appropriated to poetry, still urges that the essence of poetry is fiction.[6] Likewise under the influence of Aristotle, Croce differentiates between the kinds of literature not because one is written in prose and the other in verse, but because one is the expression of what he calls intuitive knowledge obtained through the imagination, and the other of conceptual knowledge obtained through the intellect.[7] Similar to the distinction expressed by Croce in the words imaginative and intellectual, is that expressed by Eastman in the words poetical and practical.[8] And according to Renard, Balzac distinguishes two cla.s.ses of writers: the writers of ideas and the writers of images.[9]

In view of these modern efforts to make a more scientific differentiation between kinds of literature than is possible on the basis of the traditional distinction between prose and poetry, the present historical study of the distinction made by Aristotle and other Greek writers between rhetoric and poetic may be suggestive.

Chapter II

Cla.s.sical Poetic

1. Aristotle

A survey of what Aristotle includes in his _Poetics_, what he excludes, and what he ignores, will be a helpful initial step in an investigation of what he meant by poetic. Five kinds of poetry are mentioned by name in the _Poetics_: epic, dramatic, dithyrambic, nomic, and satiric; and lyric is included by implication as a form of epic, where the poet narrates in his own person.[10]

The choruses, also, are lyric. Otherwise Aristotle does not discuss lyric poetry. Of the other five kinds, nomic, dithyrambic, and satiric poetry are mentioned only as ill.u.s.trative of something Aristotle wishes to say about epic or drama. Aristotle's _Poetics_ discusses only epic and, especially, drama. Thus of the twenty-six books into which the _Poetics_ is conventionally divided, five are devoted to the general theory of poetry, three to diction, two to epic, and sixteen to drama. Although Aristotle includes dithyrambic, nomic, satiric, and lyric poetry in his discussion, he practically ignores them.

On the other hand he specifically excludes from poetry such scientific works as those of Empedocles and historical writings as those of Herodotus.[11] The rhetorical element in the speeches of the characters of drama or epic, Aristotle calls Thought (d????a). Although Aristotle includes Thought as an element in drama, he does not discuss it in the _Poetics_, but refers his reader to the _Rhetoric_. Metrics, which occupies so large a place in modern treatises on the theory of poetry, Aristotle likewise mentions several times, but does not discuss. A metrical structure he accepts as the usual practice in poetical composition, but he rejects verse as the distinguis.h.i.+ng mark of poetic.

Thus he refuses to cla.s.sify as poetry the scientific writings which Empedocles had composed in meter as well as the histories of Herodotus, even if he had written them in verse. On the other hand, the mimes of Sophron and Xenarchus, although composed in prose, he considers within the scope of poetic.[12]

If to Aristotle, then, verse is not the characteristic quality of poetic, the next step in an investigation must be to discover the criterion by which he cla.s.sifies some literature as poetry and other as not poetry. The characteristic quality, according to Aristotle, which is possessed by the Socratic dialogs, by the Homeric epics, and by the dramas of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and which cla.s.sifies them together as poetic, is not verse but _mimesis_, imitation.[13] Exactly what Aristotle meant by imitation has furnished subsequent critics with an excuse for writing many volumes. The usual meaning of the word to the Greek, as to the modern, seems to be little more than an aping or mimicking. Aristotle himself uses imitate in this sense when he speaks of the delight children take in imitation.[14] But in establis.h.i.+ng imitation as the criterion of poetic, Aristotle seems to have injected something of a private, or at least a special scientific meaning into the word. As the characteristic quality of poetic, imitation to Aristotle evidently did not mean a literal copy.

Plato had attacked poetry as unreal, a thrice-removed imitation of the only true reality. To defend poetic against the strictures of his master Aristotle reads more into the word than that.

In discovering what Aristotle had in mind when he speaks of imitation, the student must read from one treatise to another, for few writers of any period are so addicted to the habit of cross-reference. In the _Psychology_ Aristotle states that all stimuli received by the senses at the moment of perception are impressed upon the mind as in wax. The images held by the image-forming faculty are thus the after effect of sensation.

These images remain and may be recalled by the image-forming faculty. From this store-house of images, or after effects of sensation, the reasoning faculty derives the materials for thought as well as those for artistic expression.[15] Imagination evidently has much to do with Aristotle's conception of the nature of poetic. Imitation, then, to him, meant a conscious selection and plastic mastery of the sense impressions stored as images by the image-forming faculty of the author, whose writings are addressed to the imagination of the reader or auditor. Furthermore, Butcher's interpretation of "imitation of nature" seems both sound and suggestive. According to him the imitation of nature is the imitation of nature's ways. In this sense the act of the poet may well be called creation.

As imitative arts Aristotle mentions poetry, dancing, music, and painting.

They differ, he says, in their medium, objects, and manner. Poetry, dancing, and music he cla.s.sifies together because they use the similar media of rhythm, language, or harmony either singly or combined. Music, for instance, uses both rhythm and harmony, dancing uses rhythm alone, and poetry uses language alone. Aristotle by this does not, as might seem, exclude rhythm and harmony from poetry. Indeed, he states explicitly that most forms of poetry do use all of the media mentioned: rhythm, tune, and meter. He is only insisting that imitation in unmetrical language is still poetry; that meter is not the characteristic element of poetic.[16] It is important to recognize that in cla.s.sifying poetry with music and dancing, Aristotle is insisting that the common element in these arts is movement.

Movement is characteristic of poetry, as color and form are characteristic of painting and sculpture. Thus in discussing the plot of tragedy, which he holds to be the highest and most characteristic form of poetry, Aristotle urges the necessity of unity and magnitude, both of which he defines in terms not of s.p.a.ce relations, but of movement. For instance, to possess unity a plot must have a beginning, a middle and an end.

A beginning is that which does not itself follow anything by causal necessity, but after which something naturally is or comes to be. An end, on the contrary, is that which itself naturally follows some other thing, either by necessity, or as a rule, but has nothing following it.

A middle is that which follows something as some other thing follows it.[17]

Furthermore, the magnitude which this dramatic movement should possess is also discussed not in terms of bulk, but of length.

As, therefore, in the case of animate bodies and organisms, a certain magnitude is necessary, and a magnitude which may be easily embraced in one view; so in the plot, a certain length is necessary, and a length which can easily be embraced by the memory.[18]

It is noteworthy that to Aristotle the characteristic movement of poetic depends on the dramatic unity and progression of a dramatic action, a plot. In the _Rhetoric_ he shows that the arrangement of the movement of a speech is governed by entirely different considerations. The unity of rhetoric is not dramatic, but logical. The order of the parts of a speech is determined not by a plot, but by the needs of presentation to an audience. For instance, a statement of the case is given first, and then the proof is marshalled.