Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance Part 11

Sir John Harington[392] who published his _Brief Apologie of Poetrie_ in 1591, four years before the publication of Sidney's _Apologie_, based much of his treatise on Sidney. Unfortunately, he did not digest fully the arguments of the ma.n.u.script in his hand, and instead of a first-hand knowledge of Minturno and Scaliger had only the commonplaces of Plutarch.

In spite even of Plutarch, allegory, not moral example, is his main line of defence. His fundamental basis is the stock Horatian "omne tulit punctum qui miscuit utile dulci," or as Harington paraphrases, "for in verse is both goodness and sweetness, Rubarb and Sugarcandie, the pleasant and the profitable."[394] The objection that poets lie Harington meets as Sidney does, "But poets never affirming any for true, but presenting them to us as fables and imitations, cannot lye though they would."[395] At this point Harington parts company with his master and goes back to the middle ages.

The ancient Poets have indeed wrapped as it were in their writings divers and sundry meanings, which they call the senses or mysteries thereof. First of all for the litteral sence (as it were the utmost barke or ryne) they set downe in manner of an historie the acts and notable exploits of some persons worthie memorie: then in the same fiction, as a second rine and somewhat more fine, as it were nearer to the pith and marrow, they place the Morall sence profitable for the active life of man, approving vertuous actions and condemning the contrarie. Many times also under the selfesame words they comprehend some true understanding of naturall Philosophie, or sometimes of politike government, and now and then of divinitie: and these same sences that comprehend so excellent knowledge we call the Allegorie.[396]

Nothing could be more specifically mediaeval. He then proceeds to explain the historical, moral, and three allegorical senses of the story of Perseus and the Gorgon--the highest allegory being theological. Further, to defend the allegorical senses of poetry, which conceals a pith of profit under a pleasant rind, Harington explains fully how Demosthenes, Bishop Fisher, and the Prophet Nathan enforced their arguments by allegorical stories. To Harington, then, poetry is useful as an introduction to Philosophy. Paraphrasing Plutarch _On the Reading of Poets_, he says:

So young men do like best that Philosophy that is not Philosophie, or that is not delivered as Philosophie, and such are the pleasant writings of learned Poets, that are the popular Philosophers and the popular divines.[397]

_A Discourse of English Poetrie_ (1586) by the laborious but uninspired tutor, William Webbe,[398] is not a defense; but interspersed among his remarks advocating the reformed versifying, and his arid catalog of poets, ancient and modern, is a good deal about the moral purpose and value of poetry. A thoroughgoing Horatian, he cannot forbear to quote at length and comment upon the "miscere utile dulci," of his master. Poetry, in Webbe's conception, therefore, is especially effective in its "sweete allurements to vertues and commodious caveates from vices."[399] In appraising the methods of producing the moral effect, Webbe fails to share with his contemporaries their high opinion of moral example and their depreciation of precept. Poetry, he says, contains great and profitable fruits for the instruction of manners and precepts of good life[400]. And he finds much profit even in the most dissolute works of Ovid and Martial because they abound in moral precepts. He does not, however, entirely discount the moral effect of example. Ovid and Martial should be kept from young people who have not yet gained sufficient judgment to distinguish between the beneficial and the harmful, and Lucian should not be read at all. But he seems to fear the moral effect of bad example more than he applauds the effect of good. Thus his main reliance is upon allegory. The _Metamorphoses_ of Ovid, for instance,

though it consisted of fayned Fables for the most part, and poeticall inventions, yet being moralized according to his meaning, and the trueth of every tale beeing discovered, it is a worke of exceeding wysedome and sounde judgment [and the rest of his writings] are mixed with much good counsayle and profitable lessons, if they be wisely and narrowly read.[401]

Perhaps because he was not pledged to defend poetry against the attacks of the Puritans, Webbe thus allows himself to admit "the very summe or cheefest essence of poetry dyd alwayes for the most part consist in delighting the readers or hearers with pleasure." Aside from his emphasizing allegory, which Plutarch had rejected, Webbe is thus closer to the doctrines of Plutarch than he is to the Italians. Poetry has, he believes, a moral effect, but he does not establish this moral effect as its motivating purpose[402]. And again, after descanting on the exhortations to virtue, dehortations from vices, and praises of laudable things which characterized the early poets, he defines the comical sort of poetry as containing "all such _Epigrammes_, _Elegies_, and delectable ditties, which Poets have devised respecting onely the delight thereof.[403]

Like Webbe, the author of _The Arte of English Poesie_ (1589) ascribed to Puttenham,[404] believes much in the pleasure of poetry. He does not, however, advance pleasure as the purpose any more than he does profit.

Instead of endeavoring to discover what the end or purpose of poetry may be, Puttenham explains why certain forms of poetry were devised, or what may be the intention of certain poets in certain poems. The pa.s.sage is worth quoting at length. The use of poetry, says Puttenham,

is the laud, honour, & glory of the immortall G.o.ds (I speake now in phrase of the Gentiles); secondly, the worthy gests of n.o.ble Princes, the memoriall and registry of all great fortunes, the praise of vertue & reproofe of vice, the instruction of morall doctrines, the revealing of sciences naturall & other profitable Arts, the redresse of boistrous & st.u.r.die courages by perswasion, the consolation and repose of temperate myndes: finally, the common solace of mankind in all his travails and cares of this transitorie life; and in this last sort, being used for recreation onely, may allowably beare matter not alwayes of the gravest or of any great commoditie or profit, but rather in some sort vaine, dissolute, or wanton, so it be not very scandalous & of evill example.[405]

The poems of "this last sort" which Puttenham had in mind were anagrams, emblems, and such trifling verse especially, which, as he says, have been objected to by some grave and theological heads as "to none edification nor instruction, either of morall vertue or otherwise behooffull for the commonwealth." These trifles "have bene in all ages permitted as the convenient solaces and recreations of man's wit."[406] But Puttenham does not advocate that these poems whose only aim is recreation should be released from the restraints of accepted morality. They may be vain, dissolute or wanton, but not very scandalous. They should not offer evil examples, nor should their matter be "unhonest."

Not all poetry, according to Puttenham, is given over to refres.h.i.+ng the mind by the ear's delight. Although the poet is appointed as a pleader of lovely causes in the ear of princely dames, young ladies, gentlewomen, and courtiers,[407] none the less much poetry has a didactic purpose. Satire was first invented to administer direct rebuke of evil, comedy to amend the manners of common men by discipline and example, tragedy to show the mutability of fortune and the just punishment of G.o.d in revenge of a vicious and evil life, pastoral to inform moral discipline, for the amendment of man's behavior, or to insinuate or glance at greater matters under the veil of rustic persons and rude speeches.[408] Here Puttenham pays his respects to all accepted methods of poetical instruction: in satire, to precepts; in comedy and tragedy, to example; in pastoral, to allegory. Yet it is in historical poetry, which may indifferently be wholly true, wholly false, or a mixture, the moral effect of example is most potent. Speaking of examples in poetry, he says, "Right so no kinde of argument in all the Oratorie craft doth better perswade and more universally satisfie then example."[409] It is on this account that historical poetry is, next the divine, the most honorable and worthy. For the historians have always been not so eager that what they wrote should be true to fact as that it should be used either for example or for pleasure.

Considering that many times it is seene a fained matter or altogether fabulous, besides that it maketh more mirth than any other, works no less good conclusions for example then the most true and veritable, but often more, because the Poet hath the handling of them to fas.h.i.+on at his pleasure.[410]

This conception of history as moral example is common enough. To Bude all history was a moral example[411] and Puttenham's inclusion of didactic fiction is in line with much renaissance thought, which regarded the two as almost interchangeable.[412]

Puttenham, like Webbe, was more in accord with Horace in admitting both the pleasant and profitable effects of poetry than he was with Minturno, Scaliger, and Sidney. He grants that some poetry exists only for pleasure, but he puts his emphasis on poetry as a power of persuasion[413]

accomplis.h.i.+ng the moral improvement of society. As late as the _Hypercritica_ (1618) of Bolton, history is defined as nothing else but a kind of philosophy using examples. Bolton enforces his view by quotation from Bede, William of Malmesbury, and Sir Thomas North.[414]

3. The Displacement of Allegory by Example

A most interesting view of the purpose of poetry was evolved in the brain of Francis Bacon--that baffling complexity of mediaeval tradition and penetrating original thought. To him the use of feigned history, as he defines poetry, "hath beene to give some shadowe of satisfaction to the minde of man in those points wherein the Nature of things doth deny it."[415] That is, poetry represents the world as greater, more just, and more pleasant than it really is. "So as it appeareth that _Poesie_ serveth and conferreth to Magnanimitie, Moralitie, and to delectation."

Here Bacon seems to imply that the essential pleasure of poetry is in affording vicarious experience through imaginative realization. Poetry does this by "submitting the shewes of things to the desires of the minde." It truly makes a world nearer to our heart's desire. But while Bacon derives the moral benefit of poetry from examples of conduct and outcomes of events more nearly just than those of actual life, when he a.n.a.lyses poetry into its kinds, he makes a place for allegory. In this division he provides for narrative, drama, and allegory. But with penetration he sees what few renaissance critics had noted before--that allegory is of two varieties. The first variety is essentially the same as a rhetorical example; it is an extended metaphor used as an argument to enforce a point and thus persuade an audience. The fables of Aesop are such allegories or examples; and they are useful because they make their point more interestingly than other arguments and more clearly. The other sort of allegory, says Bacon, instead of illuminating the idea, obscures it. "That is, when the Secrets and Misteries of Religion, Pollicy, or Philosophy, are involved in Fables or Parables." He then gives political allegorical interpretations of the myths of Briareus and of the Centaur and suddenly adds: "Nevertheless in many the like incounters, I doe rather think that the fable was first and the exposition devised than that the Morall was first and thereupon the fable framed."[416] Bacon's final conclusion seems to be that, although allegorical poetry does exist, allegory is not essential to poetry and that the wholesale allegorizing of the middle ages was far off the mark. In his suspicion that in most cases the fable was first and the interpretation after, Bacon was in complete agreement with Rabelais in the prologue of _Gargantua_.[417] At any rate Bacon seems to have given the _coup de grace_ to allegory in England.

Under the influence of Pico della Mirandola it was resurrected from its tomb by Henry Reynolds; but it was a much less moral allegory and a more mystical. In his _Mythomystes_ (licensed 1632) Reynolds admits, that the ancients mingled moral instruction in their poetry, but reprehends this as an abuse. Prose is the proper vehicle of moral doctrine and should have been employed by Spenser. The true function of poetry, then, is to give secret knowledge of the mysteries of nature to the initiated. Thus the story of the rape of Proserpine signifies, when allegorically interpreted; "the putrefaction and succeeding generation of the Seedes we commit to Pluto, or the earth."[418] This is the most plausible example of mystical interpretation to be found in the whole treatise.

To the allegorist, the fable or plot in epic or dramatic poetry was only a rind to cover attractively the kernel of truth. It was a means to an end, not an end in itself. As the influence of Aristotle's _Poetics_ spreading through Italy, Germany, France, and England, gave the plot or fable more importance, allegory lost its hold on the minds of the critics. When Ben Jonson writes in his _Timber_ "For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were, the forme and Soule of any Poeticall worke or _Poeme_"[419] the change had come. Jonson, like Sidney, was steeped in cla.s.sical criticism as interpreted and spread abroad by the sixteenth-century critics of the continent. But while Sidney made a place for allegory in his scheme of poetry, Jonson does not so much as mention it. His idea of the teaching power of poetry, for to him poetry and painting both behold pleasure and profit as their common object,[420] is rhetorical--depending on precept and example--and attaining its true aim when it moves men to action. Poesy is "a dulcet and gentle _Philosophy_, which leades on and guides us by the hand to Action with a ravis.h.i.+ng delight and incredible Sweetnes."[421]

Jonson evidently knew that he was merging oratory and poetry in their common purpose of securing persuasion; for he says:

"The _Poet_ is the neerest Borderer upon the Orator, and expresseth all his vertues, though he be tyed more to numbers, is his equal in ornament, and above him in his strengths: Because in moving the minds of men, and stirring of affections, in which Oratory shewes, and especially approves her eminence, hee chiefly excells."[422]

In his dedication to _Volpone_ he says this power of persuasion which the poet possesses to so eminent a degree is to be applied to the moral well-being of men, "to inform men in the best reason of living."[423]

Himself a writer for the theatre, Jonson is naturally more concerned with comedy and tragedy than he is with any narrative forms of poetry. And to him the office of the comic poet is "to imitate justice and instruct to life--or stirre up gentle affections."[424] In _Timber_ he iterates the same praise of poetry as being no less effective than philosophy in instructing men to good life, and informing their manners, but as even more effective in that it persuades men to good where philosophy threatens and compels. In order to accomplish this beneficial effect on public morals, the poet must have an exact knowledge of all virtues and vices with ability to render the one loved and the other hated.[425] As a natural result of this conception, so similar to Cicero's demand that the orator must know all things and in line with Aristotle's _Rhetoric_, Jonson concludes that the poet, like Quintilian's orator, must himself be a good man; for how else will he be able "to informe _yong-men_ to all good disciplines, inflame _growne-men_ to all great vertues, keepe _old men_ in their best and supreme state."[426]

Aside from Sidney and Jonson no English critic, however, thought through to the logical conclusion that in moral purpose rhetoric and poetic are identical. The others continued to echo Horace, or lean toward allegory, or see profit in poetry from its moral example. For instance in his preface to his second instalment of Homer ent.i.tled _Achilles' s.h.i.+eld_ (1598) Chapman dwells at length on the moral value and wisdom contained in the _Iliad_,[427] and enunciates the same idea in his _Prefaces_ of 1610-16.[428] Peacham, in his _Compleat Gentleman_ (1622), repeats the usual commonplaces to the effect that poetry is a dulcet philosophy, for the most part lifted from Puttenham.[429] In his _Argenis_ (1621) Barclay reminds his reader of the children who for so many centuries had shunned the cup of physic until the bitter taste had been removed by sweet syrop.

Thus also, says he, is it with the moral value of poetry disguised with sweet music. "Virtues and vices I will frame, and the rewards of them shall suite to both"; for it is on the moral example of poetic justice that Barclay depends. The models of virtue will be followed.[430]

The Earl of Stirling, in _Anacrisis_ (1634?) acknowledges the works of the poets to be the chief springs of learning, "both for Profit and Pleasure, showing Things as they should be, where Histories represent them as they are." Consequently he has a high opinion of the _Cyropaedia_ of Xenophon, the _Arcadia_ of Sir Philip Sidney, and other such poems, as "affording many exquisite Types of Perfection for both the s.e.xes."[431] These types the reader is expected to imitate in his own conduct, guided by the moral precepts with which the poet must not neglect to decorate his work.

Within the period of this study two views were taken of the moral element in poetry. With the exception of Sidney and Jonson, who knew the theories of the Italian renaissance, the English critics believed with Horace that poetry was at once pleasant and profitable, and agreed with Plutarch that poetry, if rightly used, would be of benefit in the education of youth.

But there was little tendency to follow this to the conclusion of a.s.serting that because poetry has a moral effect on the reader, it is the purpose of poetry as an art to exert this moral effect for the good of society. Most of these critics believed that the moral effect which poetry did exert came through allegory. In this respect, as has been shown, they were carrying on the traditions of the middle ages.

The opposing view derived ultimately from the cla.s.sical rhetorics, and entered England through the criticism of the Italian scholars--particularly Minturno and Scaliger. Starting from the saying of Horace that poets aim to please or profit, or please and profit together, these critics borrowed from rhetoric Cicero's three-fold aim of the orator: to teach, to please, to move, and applied these three aims to the poet. Accordingly, to them the poet has the same aim as the orator--persuasion. He pleases not for the sake of giving pleasure, but for the sake of winning his readers so that he may better attain his real object of teaching morality and moving men to action in its practice. The emphasis on the example as the means of attaining this end was further derived from scholastic philosophy which, as has been shown, cla.s.sed logic, rhetoric, and poetic together as instruments for attaining truth and improving the morality of the state. Furthermore, according to this scholastic view, the three arts differed only as they utilized different means to attain this end. Logic used the demonstrative syllogism and the scientific induction, rhetoric used the enthymeme or rhetorical syllogism and the example or popular induction, poetic used the example alone.

According to the renaissance developments of this last view, allegory was emphasized less and less as the example was felt to be more appropriate.

Thus Sidney and Jonson, the outstanding cla.s.sicists in English renaissance criticism, exhibit to the highest degree the influence of the most rhetorical of Italian renaissance critics. They alone in England a.s.sert that the purpose of poetry is to move men to virtuous action.

Thus a study of rhetorical terminology in English renaissance theories of poetry throws into sharp relief the fact that all criticism of the fine art of literature in England in the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century was profoundly influenced by rhetoric. This influence was two-fold. On the one hand the less scholarly critics perpetuated the popular traditions of rhetoric which they inherited from the middle ages.

These traditions of allegory and the ornate style were, as has been shown, in turn derived from post-cla.s.sical rhetoric. On the other hand the more scholarly critics applied to poetry the canons of cla.s.sical rhetoric which they derived in part from the cla.s.sics themselves and in part from the critics of the Italian renaissance.

In one sense this has been a study of critical perversions. Although many of the critics of the English renaissance are remarkable for their wisdom and discerning judgments, their writings are far less valuable than those of Longinus and Aristotle. But Aristotle and Longinus did not allow their theories of poetry to be contaminated by rhetoric. The best modern critics have studied and understood the cla.s.sical treatises on poetic and have consequently avoided the confusion between rhetoric and poetic into which many renaissance critics fell. Others have not been so fortunate. For these the object-lesson of renaissance failure should serve as a warning.

Index

Abelard Aeschylus Aesop Agathon Agricola, Rudolph Ala.n.u.s de Insulis Alciati Alcidamas Albucius Aldus Alfarabi Alstedius Anaxagoras Annaeus Florus Appian Apsinus Apthonius Apuleius Aristenetus Aristophanes Aristotle Aristides Ascham Athenagoras Augustine Averroes

Bacon, Francis Barclay, John Barton, John Basil the Great Bede Bokenham Boccaccio Bolton, Edmund Bornecque, Henri Boethius Brunetto Latini Butcher, S.H.

Buchanan, George Bude Butler, Charles

Can Grande Campano, G.

Campion, Thomas Casaubon Ca.s.siodorus Castelvetro Castiglione Cato Caussinus, N.

Chapman, G.

Chaucer Chemnicensis, Georgius Cicero Clement of Alexandria c.o.x, Leonard Croce, B.

Croll, Morris Curio Fortunatus

Daniel, Samuel Daniello Dante Darwin, Charles Demetrius Demosthenes de Worde, Wynkyn Dio Chrysostom Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus Dolce Drant, Thomas Drummond of Hawthornden DuBellay Ducas DuCygne, M.

Dunbar, William

Earle, John Eastman, Max Empedocles Emporio Erasmus Eratosthenes Estienne, Henri Etienne de Rouen Euripides

Farnaby, Thomas Fenner, Dudley Filelfo Fraunce, Abraham

Gascoigne George of Trebizond (Trapezuntius) Gorgias Gosson, Stephen Gower Gregory n.a.z.ianzen Guarino Guevara

Hall, Joseph Harington, John Harvey, Gabriel Hawes, Stephen Heinsius, D.

Henryson Heliodorus Herodotus Hermagoras Hermannus Allema.n.u.s Hermogenes Hilary of Poitiers Holland, P.

Homer Horace Hermas Hesiod Heywood, John