Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance Part 3

In these declamation schools under the Empire the boys debated such imaginary questions as this: A reward is offered to one who shall kill a tyrant. A. enters the palace and kills the tyrant's son, whereupon the father commits suicide. Is A. ent.i.tled to the reward? In the repertory of Lucian occurs a show piece on each side of this proposition. For two hundred years there had been no pirates in the Mediterranean; yet in the declamation schools pirates abounded, and questions turned upon points of law which never existed or could exist in actual society. The favorite cases concerned the tyranny of fathers, the debauchery of sons, the adultery of wives, and the rape of daughters. In the procedure of the declamation schools the boys arose and delivered their speeches with frequent applause from the other students and from their parents. The master would criticise the speeches and, when the students had finished, would himself deliver a speech which was supposed to outs.h.i.+ne those of his pupils and give promise of what he could teach them.[99]

The utter unreality and hollowness of such rhetoric could show itself no better than in contrast with the practical oratory of the law courts.

Albucius, a famous professor of the schools, once pleaded a case in court.

Intending to amplify his peroration by a figure he said, "Swear, but I will prescribe the oath. Swear by the ashes of your father, which lie unburied. Swear by the memory of your father!" The attorney for the other side, a practical man, rose--"My client is going to swear," he said. "But I made no proposal," shouted Albucius, "I only employed a figure." The court sustained his opponent, whose client swore, and Albucius retired in shame to the more comfortable shades of the declamation schools, where figures were appreciated.[100] But in spite of the ridiculous performance of the professors of the schools when they did come out into the sunlight, in spite of the protests of Tacitus who complained justly that debased popular taste demanded poetical adornment of the orator,[101] style continued to be loved for its own sake, extravagant figures of speech were applauded, and verbal cleverness and point were strained for. As Bornecque has shown, the fact that the rhetoric of the declamation schools was so unreal, so preoccupied with imaginary cases, and so given over to attainment of stylistic brilliancy, in no small measure explains the loss in late Latin literature of the sense of structure. "It is not surprising," says Bornecque, "that during the first three centuries of the Christian era the sense of composition seems to have disappeared from Latin literature."[102] Thus Quintilian lamented that in his day the well constructed periods of Cicero appealed less to the perverted popular taste than the brilliant but disjointed epigrams of Seneca.

4. The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric

As style gained this preponderence in rhetoric, it continued to increase its hold on poetic. While the rhetoricians were exemplifying from the poets their schemes and tropes, their well joined words, "smooth, soft as a maiden's face,"[103] the poets on their part were a.s.siduously practicing all the rhetorical devices of style. Thus the literature of the silver-age is rhetorical. The custom of public readings by the author encouraged clever writing and a declamatory manner,[104] even had the poets not received their education in the only popular inst.i.tutions of higher instruction--the declamation schools. The fustian which pa.s.sed for poetry and equally well for history is well ill.u.s.trated by the contempt of the hard-headed Lucian for those historians who were unable to distinguish history from poetry. "What!" he exclaims, "bedizen history like her sister? As well take some mighty athlete with muscles of steel, rig him up with purple drapery and meretricious ornament, rouge and powder his cheeks; faugh, what an object one would make of him with such defilements!"[105] But meretricious ornament was popular, and poets, historians, and orators alike scrambled to see who could most adorn his speech. Quintilian's pleas for the purer taste of a former age fell on deaf ears, and despite his warnings orators imitated the style of the poets, and the poets imitated the style of the orators.[106] Gorgias may or may not have learned his style from the ancient poets of Greece, but the poets of the silver age learned from the tribe of Gorgias.

Not only did poetry and oratory suffer from the same bad taste in straining for brilliance of style, but in practice, as Bornecque has shown, both poetry and oratory suffered for lack of structure. The poets paid so much attention to style that they neglected plot construction and the vivid realization of character and situation. The orators paid so much attention to style that they lost the art of composing sentences, and of arranging sound arguments in such a way as to persuade an audience. In effect there was a tendency for the late Latin writers to ignore those elements of structure and movement wherein poetry and oratory most differ, and stress unduly the elements of style wherein they have the most in common. Indeed, so completely did any fundamental distinction between poetic and rhetoric become blurred that in the second century Annaeus Florus was able to offer as a debatable question, "Is Virgil an orator or a poet?"[107]

Chapter V

The Middle Ages

1. The Decay of Cla.s.sical Rhetorical Tradition

The seven liberal arts of mediaeval education carried the blending almost to the absorption of poetic by rhetoric, and the debas.e.m.e.nt of rhetoric itself to a consideration of style alone.

As for poetic, it had no distinct place except in the a.n.a.lyses of the grammaticus, who from cla.s.sical times had prepared boys for the schools of rhetoric partly by a.n.a.lyzing with them the style of admirable pa.s.sages.

These pa.s.sages were commonly taken from the poets, whose art was thus considered mainly as an art of words and applied to the art of the orator.

Consequently, as a result of this tradition, poetic in the middle ages was commonly grouped with grammar or with rhetoric, although Isidore includes it in his section on theology.[108]

The rhetorical treatises of the middle ages exhibit two phases. On the one hand the earlier post-cla.s.sical treatises composed by Martia.n.u.s Capella, Ca.s.siodorus, and Isidore, all inhabitants of the Mediterranean basin, are fairly close to the cla.s.sical tradition of Quintilian. Their weakness consists not in that they restricted rhetoric to style, but in that their whole treatment of rhetorical theory was compact, arid, and schematic. The second phase of mediaeval rhetoric is characteristic of a geographical position more remote from the center of cla.s.sical culture. Thus it is in the rhetorical treatises of England and Germany in the middle ages that rhetoric was to the greatest extent restricted to a consideration of style. Ill.u.s.trative of this tendency is the fact that the only surviving rhetorical work by the Venerable Bede is a treatise on the rhetorical figures.

But although the conventional study of rhetoric in such condensed treatment as that of the sections in Martia.n.u.s, Isidore, or Ca.s.siodorus, was definitely intrenched in the educational system of the seven liberal arts, it had no vitality. In the first place these treatises gave only the dry husks of rhetoric, the conventional a.n.a.lyses, the stock definitions.

In the second place rhetoric was little applied. The political life of western Europe centered in the camp, not in the forum. The cla.s.sical tradition of trial by a large jury, as the Areopagus or the Centumviri, had given place to trial before the regal or manorial court. Thus rhetoric dried up and lost whatever reality it had possessed in imperial Rome.

But if the middle ages had no opportunity to apply rhetoric in its function of persuasion in communal affairs, they did have real need of an art of writing letters and of preparing lay or ecclesiastical doc.u.ments, such as contracts, wills, and records, and of preaching sermons. Thus in the teaching of the schools, as well as in practice, the oration gave place to the epistle and dictamen. "Dictare" was to write letters or prepare doc.u.ments. And the rhetorical treatise or "_ars rhetorica_" often yielded to the "_ars prosandi_," or the "_ars dictandi_."[109]

A characteristic treatise of this sort is the _Poetria_ of the Englishman John of Garland (c. 1270). In his introductory chapter John explains that he has divided the subject into seven parts:

First is explained the theory of invention; then the manner of selecting material; third, the arrangement and the manner of ornamentation; next, the parts of a dictamen; fifth, the faults in all kinds of composition (dictandi); sixth is arranged a treatise concerning rhetorical ornament as necessary in meter as in prose, namely, the figures of speech and the abbreviation and amplification of the material; seventh and last are subjoined examples of courtly correspondence and scholastic dictamen, pleasantly composed in verse and rhythms, and in diverse meters.[110]

Under the head of invention John gives definitions, several examples of good letters, a long list of proverbs under appropriate captions so that the letter writer can quickly find the one to fit his context, and an "elegiac, bucolic, ethic love poem" in fifty leonine verses, accompanied by an inevitable allegorical interpretation.[111] Then he comes to selection. Tully, he admits, puts arrangement after invention, "but," he pleads, "in writing letters and doc.u.ments poetically the art of selection after that of invention is useful."[112] For he thinks of selection only as the selection of words. A writer, he says, should select his words and images according to the persons addressed. The court should be addressed in the grand style; the city, in the middle style; and the country, in the mean style.[113] One should arrange in three columns in a note-book the words and comparisons appropriate to each style so that the material will be handy when he wishes to write a letter. These principles John ill.u.s.trates with leonine verses and ecclesiastical epistles. Under arrangement he says that all material must be so arranged as to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. Then there are nine ways to begin a poem and nine ways to begin a dictamen or epistle. Next he states that there are six parts to an oration: "exordium, narracio, peticio, confirmacio, confutacio, conclusio."[114] As an example of this division of the oration into parts he quotes a long poem which persuades its reader to take up the cross. Still under the general head of arrangement John explains the ten ways of amplifying material. The tenth, "interpretacio," he ill.u.s.trates by telling a joke, and then amplifying it into a little comedy. "Comedy," he says, "is a jocose poem beginning in sadness and ending in joy: a tragedy is a poem composed in the grand style beginning in joy and ending in grief."[115] Next follow the six metrical faults, the faults of salutations in letters, a cla.s.sification of the different kinds of poems, and further talk on different styles in writing. His sixth chapter, on ornament in meter and prose, presents what he has up to this left unsaid about style. It includes a list of fifty-seven figures of speech (_colores verborum_) and eighteen figures of thought (_colores sententiarum_). This is logically followed by the ten attributes of man. The seventh and final chapter gives a long narrative poem of the horrific variety as an example of tragedy and several letters as examples of dictamen.

Such a digest shows better than any generalization a complete confusion of poetic and rhetoric. Poems were to be written according to the formulae of orations; allegory throve. Infinite pains were to be expended on the worthless niceties of conceited metrical structure and rhetorical figures.

Garland has neither real poetic nor real rhetoric.

2. Rhetoric as Aureate Language

As to the late middle ages rhetoric had come to mean to all intents nothing more than style, it is frequently personified in picturesque mediaeval allegory, never as being engaged in any useful occupation, but as adding beauty, color, or charm to life. In the _Anticlaudia.n.u.s_ of Ala.n.u.s de Insulis, Rhetoric is represented as painting and gilding the pole of the Chariot of Prudence.[116] In the rhymed compendium of universal knowledge which its author, Thomasin von Zirclaria, justly calls _Der Walsche Gast_, for learning was indeed a foreign guest in thirteenth century Germany, rhetoric appears in a similar role. "Rhetoric," says Thomasin, "clothes our speech with beautiful colors,"[117] and he gives as his authority, "Tulljus, Quintiljan, Sidonjus," although Apollinaris Sidonius seems to be the only one of the trio he had ever read.[118] This theory lived to a vigorous old age. Palmieri, in his _Della Vita Civile_ (1435), defines rhetoric as "the theory of speaking ornamentally."[119]

And Lydgate traces all the beauty of rhetoric to Calliope, "that with thyn hony swete sugrest tongis of rethoricyens."[120]

The most complete example, however, of the mediaeval restriction of rhetoric to style, and of the absorption of poetic by rhetoric is afforded by Lydgate in his _Court of Sapyence._ The pa.s.sages which refer to rhetoric are given in full because they can otherwise be consulted only in the Caxton edition of 1481 or in the black letter copy printed by Wynkyn de Worde in 1510.[121]

_Introductory verses._

O Clyo lady moost facundyous O ravysshynge delyte of eloquence O gylted G.o.ddes gaye and gloryous Enspyred with the percynge influence Of delycate hevenly complacence Within my mouth let dystyll of thy shoures And forge my tonge to gladde myn auditoures.

Myn ignoraunce whome clouded hath eclyppes With thy pure bemes illumynyne all aboute Thy blessyd brethe let refleyre in my lyppes And with the dewe of heven thou them degoute So that my mouth may blowe an encense oute The redolent dulcour aromatyke Of thy deputed l.u.s.ty rhetoryke.

_The section of rhetoric._

Dame Rethoryke moder of eloquence Moost elegaunt moost pure and gloryous With l.u.s.t delyte, blysse, honour and reverence Within her parlour fresshe and precyous Was set a quene, whose speche delycyous Her audytours gan to all Joye converte Eche worde of her myght ravysshe every herte.

And many clerke had l.u.s.t her for to here Her speche to them was parfyte sustenance Eche worde of her depured was so clere And illumyned with so parfyte pleasaunce That heven it was to here her beauperlaunce Her termes gay as facunde soverayne Catephaton in no poynt myght dystane.

She taught them the crafte of endytynge Whiche vyces ben that sholde avoyded be Whiche ben the coulours gay of that connynge Theyr dyfference and eke theyr properte Eche thynge endyte how it sholde poynted be Dystynctyon she gan clare and dyscusse Whiche is Coma Colym perydus.

Who so thynketh my wrytynge dull and blont And wolde conceyve the colours purperate Of Rethoryke, go he to tria sunt And to Galfryde the poete laureate To Janneus a clerke of grete estate Within the fyrst parte of his gramer boke Of this mater there groundely may he loke.

In Tullius also moost eloquent The chosen spouse unto this lady free His gylted craft and gloyre in content Gay thynges I made eke, yf than l.u.s.t to see Go loke the Code also the dygestes thre The bookes of lawe and of physyke good Of ornate speche there spryngeth up the flood.

In prose and metre of all kynde ywys This lady blyssed had l.u.s.t for to playe With her was blesens Richarde pophys Farrose pystyls clere l.u.s.ty fresshe and gay With maters vere poetes in good array Ovyde, Omer, Vyrgyll, Lucan, Orace Alane, Bernarde, Prudentius and Stace.

Throughout this pa.s.sage rhetoric is never mentioned in any other context than one of pleasure to the ear of the auditor. Of the three aims of rhetoric which Cicero had phrased as _docere, delectare, et movere_, only the _delectare_ remains in the rhetoric of Lydgate. From his initial invocation to Clio, in which he prays that his style be illuminated with the aromatic sweetness of her rhetoric, to the pa.s.sage in which he refers to his own writings for examples of ornate speech Lydgate never refers to the logic or the structure of persuasive public speech. Rhetoric, in Lydgate, is not used in its cla.s.sical sense, but as being synonymous with ornate language--style. Here and here only does Lydgate discuss any part of rhetoric in its cla.s.sical implications. When, in his poem, he discusses the craft of writing as including "coulours gay," he refers to the figures of cla.s.sical rhetoric--Cicero's "_colores verborum_." And when he refers to the "coma, colum, perydus," he is harking back to the cla.s.sical divisions of the rhythmical members of a sentence: the "comma, colon, et periodus." In the cla.s.sical treatises on rhetoric this division of "elocutio" or style into two parts: (1) figures of speech and language, and (2) rhythmical movement of the sentence, is universal. Lydgate's rhetoric is thus a development of only one element of cla.s.sical rhetoric--style.

But Lydgate's rhetoric was not only restricted to style; it was expanded to include the style of the poets as well as that of the prose writers, as the last stanza shows. If Lydgate thought poetry to include anything more than this style, he does not say so.

Lydgate does not present an isolated case of this meaning of rhetoric.

Throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England the term rhetoric and its related words regularly connoted skill in diction. A rhetor was one who was a master of style.[122] Henryson, for instance, calls rhetoric sweet, and Dunbar, ornate.[123] Chaucer admired Petrarch for his "rethorike sweete" which illumined the poetry of Italy,[124] and was himself in turn loved by Lydgate as the "n.o.bler rethor poete of brytagne,"[125] who is called "floure of rethoryk in Englisshe tong," by John Walton.[126] According to James I both Gower and Chaucer sat on the steps of rhetoric,[127] while Lyndesay includes Lydgate in the number and a.s.serts that all three rang the bell of rhetoric.[128] Bokenham calls Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate the "first rethoryens";[129] and as late as 1590, Chaucer and Lydgate are called "The first that ever elumined our language with flowers of rethorick eloquence."[130] The entire period was thus in substantial agreement that rhetoric was honeyed speech exhibited at its best in the works of the poets.

The best example of this view of rhetoric is furnished by Stephen Hawes in his delectable educational allegory of the seven liberal arts which he calls _The Pastime of Pleasure_ (1506). He begins, of course, with an apology for

Thys lytle boke, opprest wyth rudenes Without rethorycke or coloure crafty; Nothinge I am experte in poetry As the monke of Bury, floure of eloquence.[131]

And in another place, again addressing Lydgate, he exclaims:

O mayster Lydgate, the most dulcet sprynge Of famous rethoryke, wyth balade ryall.[132]

The poem records the experiences of Grande Amour, who, accompanied by two greyhounds, seeks knowledge. After visiting Grammar and Logic in their rooms, he goes upstairs to see Dame Rhetoric. Rhetoric sits in a chamber gaily glorified and strewn with flowers. She is very large, finely gowned and garlanded with laurel. About her are mirrors and the fragrant fumes of incense. Grande Amour asks her to paint his tongue with the royal flowers of delicate odors, that he may gladden his auditors and "moralize his literal senses." She pretends to understand him, but when he asks her what rhetoric is,

Rethoryke, she sayde, was founde by reason Man for to governe wel and prudently; His wordes to ordre his speche to purify.[133]

It has five parts,--and so on. The introduction, however, to the beflowered dwelling place of the fair lady and the request of Grande Amour to have his tongue perfumed are much more characteristic of the temper of the age than are the professed reasons for the origin of rhetoric.