A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance Part 13

A similar feeling of the distinct nationality of Italian literature is to be found in many of the prefaces of the Italian comedies of this period. Il Lasca, in the preface of the _Strega_ (_c._ 1555), says that "Aristotle and Horace knew their own times, but ours are not the same at all. We have other manners, another religion, and another mode of life; and it is therefore necessary to make comedies after a different fashion." As early as 1534, Aretino, in the prologue of his _Cortegiana_, warned his audience "not to be astonished if the comic style is not observed in the manner required, for we live after a different fashion in modern Rome than they did in ancient Athens."

Similarly, Gelli, in the dedication of the _Sporta_ (1543), justifies the use of language not to be found in the great sources of Italian speech, on the ground that "language, together with all other natural things, continually varies and changes."[304]

Although there is in Giraldi Cintio no fundamental opposition to Aristotle, it is in his discourse on the _romanzi_ that there may be found the first attempt to wrest a province of art from Aristotle's supreme authority. Neither Salviati, who had rated the Italian language above all others, nor Calcagnini, who had regarded it as the meanest of all, had understood the discussion of the importance of the Tuscan tongue to be concerned with the question of Aristotle's literary supremacy. It was simply a national question--a question as to the national limits of Aristotle's authority, just as was the case in the several controversies connected with Ta.s.so, Dante, and Guarini's _Pastor Fido_.[305] Castelvetro, in his commentary on the _Poetics_, differs from Aristotle on many occasions, and does not hesitate even to refute him. Yet his reverence for Aristotle is great; his sense of Aristotle's supreme authority is strong; and on one occasion, where Horace, Quintilian, and Cicero seem to differ from Aristotle, Castelvetro does not hesitate to a.s.sert that they could not have seen the pa.s.sage of the _Poetics_ in question, and that, in fact, they did not thoroughly understand the true const.i.tution of a poet.[306]

The opposition to Aristotelianism among the humanists has already been alluded to. This opposition increased more and more with the development of modern philosophy. In 1536 Ramus had attacked Aristotle's authority at Paris. A few years later, in 1543, Ortensio Landi, who had been at the Court of France for some time, published his _Paradossi_, in which it is contended that the works which pa.s.s under the name of Aristotle are not really Aristotle's at all, and that Aristotle himself was not only an ignoramus, but also the most villanous man of his age. "We have, of our own accord," he says, "placed our necks under the yoke, putting that vile beast of an Aristotle on a throne, and depending on his conclusions as if he were an oracle."[307] It is the philosophical authority of Aristotle that Landi is attacking. His att.i.tude is not that of a humanist, for Cicero and Boccaccio do not receive more respectful treatment at his hands than Aristotle does. Landi, despite his mere eccentricities, represents the growth of modern free thought and the antagonism of modern philosophy to Aristotelianism.

The literary opposition and the philosophical opposition to Aristotelianism may be said to meet in Francesco Patrizzi, and, in a less degree, in Giordano Bruno. Patrizzi's bitter Antiperipateticism is to be seen in his _Nova de Universis Philosophia_ (1591), in which the doctrines of Aristotle are shown to be false, inconsistent, and even opposed to the doctrines of the Catholic Church. His literary antagonism to Aristotle is shown in his remarkable work, _Della Poetica_, published at Ferrara in 1586. This work is divided into two parts,--the first historical, _La Deca Istoriale_, and the second controversial, _La Deca Disputata_. In the historical section he attempts to derive the norm of the different poetic forms, not from one or two great works as Aristotle had done, but from the whole history of literature. It is thus the first work in modern times to attempt the philosophical study of literary history, and to trace out the evolution of literary forms. The second or controversial section is directed against the _Poetics_ of Aristotle, and in part also against the critical doctrines of Torquato Ta.s.so. In this portion of his work Patrizzi sets out to demonstrate--_per istoria, e per ragioni, e per autorita de' grandi antichi_--that the accepted critical opinions of his time were without foundation; and the _Poetics_ of Aristotle himself he exhibits as obscure, inconsistent, and entirely unworthy of credence.

Similar antagonism to the critical doctrines of Aristotle is to be found in pa.s.sages scattered here and there throughout the works of Giordano Bruno. In the first dialogue of the _Eroici Furori_, published at London in 1585, while Bruno was visiting England, he expresses his contempt for the mere pedants who judge poets by the rules of Aristotle's _Poetics_.

His contention is that there are as many sorts of poets as there are human sentiments and ideas, and that poets, so far from being subservient to rules, are themselves really the authors of all critical dogma. Those who attack the great poets whose works do not accord with the rules of Aristotle are called by Bruno stupid pedants and beasts.

The gist of his argument may be gathered from the following pa.s.sage:--

"TANS. Thou dost well conclude that poetry is not born in rules, or only slightly and accidentally so; the rules are derived from the poetry, and there are as many kinds and sorts of true rules as there are kinds and sorts of true poets.

CIC. How then are the true poets to be known?

TANS. By the singing of their verses; in that singing they give delight, or they edify, or they edify and delight together.

CIC. To whom then are the rules of Aristotle useful?

TANS. To him who, unlike Homer, Hesiod, Orpheus, and others, could not sing without the rules of Aristotle, and who, having no Muse of his own, would coquette with that of Homer."[308]

A similar antagonism to Aristotle and a similar literary individualism are to be found in a much later work by Benedetto Fioretti, who under the pseudonym of Udeno Nisieli published the five volumes of his _Proginnasmi Poetici_ between 1620 and 1639.[309] Just before the close of the sixteenth century, however, the _Poetics_ had obtained an ardent defender against such attacks in the person of Frances...o...b..onamici, in his _Discorsi Poetici_; and three years later, in 1600, Faustino Summo published a similar defence of Aristotle. The attacks on Aristotle's literary dictatorship were of little avail; it was hardly necessary even to defend him. For two centuries to come he was to reign supreme on the continent of Europe; and in Italy this supremacy was hardly disturbed until the days of Goldoni and Metastasio.

FOOT-NOTES:

[298] De Sanctis, ii. 193 _sq._

[299] _Cf._ Bosanquet, _Hist. of aesthetic_, p. 152 _sq._

[300] _Cf._ Foffano, p. 151 _sq._

[301] Symonds, ii. 470.

[302] Baillet, iii. 70.

[303] Tiraboschi, vii. 1559.

[304] Several similar extracts from Italian comic prologues may be found in Symonds, v. 533 _sq._

[305] Foffano, p. 154 _sq._

[306] _Poetica_, p. 32.

[307] _Paradossi_, Venetia, 1545, ii. 29.

[308] _Opere_, ii. 315 (Williams's translation).

[309] _Cf._ the diverse opinions of Tiraboschi, viii. 516, and Hallam, _Lit. of Europe_, pt. iii. ch. 7.

PART SECOND

_LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE_

LITERARY CRITICISM IN FRANCE

CHAPTER I

THE CHARACTER AND DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH CRITICISM IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

LITERARY criticism in France, while beginning somewhat later than in Italy, preceded the birth of criticism in England and in Spain by a number of years. Critical activity in nearly all the countries of western Europe seems to have been ushered in by the translation of Horace's _Ars Poetica_ into the vernacular tongues. Critical activity in Italy began with Dolce's Italian version of the _Ars Poetica_ in 1535; in France, with the French version of Pelletier in 1545; in England, with the English version of Drant in 1567; and in Spain, with the Spanish versions of Espinel and Zapata in 1591 and 1592, respectively.

Two centuries of literary discussion had prepared the way for criticism in Italy; and lacking this period of preparation, French criticism during the sixteenth century was necessarily of a much more practical character than that of Italy during the same age. The critical works of France, and of England also, were on the whole designed for those whose immediate intention it was to write verse themselves. The disinterested and philosophic treatment of aesthetic problems, wholly aside from all practical considerations, characterized much of the critical activity of the Italian Renaissance, but did not become general in France until the next century. For this reason, in the French and English sections of this essay, it will be necessary to deal with various rhetorical and metrical questions which in the Italian section could be largely disregarded. In these matters, as in the more general questions of criticism, it will be seen that sixteenth-century Italy furnished the source of all the accepted critical doctrines of western Europe. The comparative number of critical works in Italy and in France is also noteworthy. While those of the Italian Renaissance may be counted by the score, the literature of France during the sixteenth century, exclusive of a few purely rhetorical treatises, hardly offers more than a single dozen. It is evident, therefore, that the treatment of French criticism must be more limited in extent than that of Italian criticism, and somewhat different in character.

The literature of the sixteenth century in France is divided into two almost equal parts by Du Bellay's _Defense et Ill.u.s.tration de la Langue francaise_, published in 1549. In no other country of Europe is the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance so clearly marked as it is in France by this single book. With the invasion of Italy by the army of Charles VIII. in 1494, the influence of Italian art, of Italian learning, of Italian poetry, had received its first impetus in France.

But over half a century was to elapse before the effects of this influence upon the creative literature of France was universally and powerfully felt. During this period the activity of Budaeus, Erasmus, Dolet, and numerous other French and foreign humanists strengthened the cause and widened the influence of the New Learning. But it is only with the birth of the Pleiade that modern French literature may be said to have begun. In 1549 Du Bellay's _Defense_, the manifesto of the new school, appeared. Ronsard's _Odes_ were published in the next year; and in 1552 Jodelle inaugurated French tragedy with his _Cleopatre_, and first, as Ronsard said,

"Francois.e.m.e.nt chanta la grecque tragedie."

The _Defense_ therefore marks a distinct epoch in the critical as well as the creative literature of France. The critical works that preceded it, if they may be called critical in any real sense, did not attempt to do more than formulate the conventional notions of rhetorical and metrical structure common to the French poets of the later Middle Ages.

The Pleiade itself, as will be more clearly understood later, was also chiefly concerned with linguistic and rhetorical reforms; and as late as 1580 Montaigne could say that there were more poets in France than judges and interpreters of poetry.[310] The creative reforms of the Pleiade lay largely in the direction of the formation of a poetic language, the introduction of new _genres_, the creation of new rhythms, and the imitation of cla.s.sical literature. But with the imitation of cla.s.sical literature there came the renewal of the ancient subjects of inspiration; and from this there proceeded a high and dignified conception of the poet's office. Indeed, many of the more general critical ideas of the Pleiade spring from the desire to justify the function of poetry, and to magnify its importance. The new school and its epigones dominate the second half of the sixteenth century; and as the first half of the century was practically unproductive of critical literature, a history of French Renaissance criticism is hardly more than an account of the poetic theories of the Pleiade.

The series of rhetorical and metrical treatises that precede Du Bellay's _Defense_ begins with _L'Art de dictier et de fere chancons, balades, virelais et rondeaulx_, written by the poet Eustache Deschamps in 1392, over half a century after the similar work of Antonio da Tempo in Italy.[311] Toward the close of the fifteenth century a work of the same nature, the _Fleur de Rhetorique_, by an author who refers to himself as L'Infortune, seems to have had some influence on later treatises. Three works of this sort fall within the first half of the sixteenth century: the _Grand et vrai Art de pleine Rhetorique_ of Pierre Fabri, published at Rouen in 1521; the _Rhetorique metrifiee_ of Gracien du Pont, published at Paris in 1539; and the _Art Poetique_ of Thomas Sibilet, published at Paris in 1548. The second part of Fabri's _Rhetorique_ deals with questions of versification--of rhyme, rhythm, and the complex metrical form of such poets as Cretin, Meschinot, and Molinet, in whom Pasquier found _prou de rime et equivoque, mais peu de raison_. As the _Rhetorique_ of Fabri is little more than an amplification of the similar work of L'Infortune, so the work of Gracien du Pont is little more than a reproduction of Fabri's. Gracien du Pont is still chiefly intent on _rime equivoquee_, _rime entrelacee_, _rime retrograde_, _rime concatenee_, and the various other mediaeval complexities of versification. Sibilet's _Art Poetique_ is more interesting than any of its predecessors. It was published a year before the _Defense_ of Du Bellay, and discusses many of the new _genres_ which the latter advocates. Sibilet treats of the sonnet, which had recently been borrowed from the Italians by Mellin de Saint-Gelais, the ode, which had just been employed by Pelletier, and the epigram, as practised by Marot.

The eclogue is described as "Greek by invention, Latin by usurpation, and French by imitation." But one of the most interesting pa.s.sages in Sibilet's book is that in which the French morality is compared with the cla.s.sical drama. This pa.s.sage exhibits perhaps the earliest trace of the influence of Italian ideas on French criticism; it will be discussed later in connection with the dramatic theories of this period.

It is about the middle of the sixteenth century, then, that the influence of Italian criticism is first visible. The literature of Italy was read with avidity in France. Many educated young Frenchmen travelled in Italy, and several Italian men of letters visited France.

Girolamo Muzio travelled in France in 1524, and again in 1530 with Giulio Camillo.[312] Aretino mentions the fact that a Vincenzo Maggi was at the Court of France in 1548, but it has been doubted whether this was the author of the commentary on the _Poetics_.[313] In 1549, after the completion of the two last parts of his _Poetica_, dedicated to the Bishop of Arras, Trissino made a tour about France.[314] Nor must we forget the number of Italian scholars called to Paris by Francis I.[315]

The literary relations between the two countries do not concern us here; but it is no insignificant fact that the great literary reforms of the Pleiade should take place between 1548 and 1550, the very time when critical activity first received its great impetus in Italy. This Italian influence is just becoming apparent in Sibilet, for whom the poets between Jean le Maire de Belges and Clement Marot are the chief models, but who is not wholly averse to the moderate innovations derived by France from cla.s.sical antiquity and the Italian Renaissance.

M. Brunetiere, in a very suggestive chapter of his History of French Criticism, regards the _Defense_ of Du Bellay, the _Poetics_ of Scaliger, and the _Art Poetique_ of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye as the most important critical works in France during the sixteenth century.[316]

It may indeed be said that Du Bellay's _Defense_ (1549) is not in any true sense a work of literary criticism at all; that Scaliger's _Poetics_ (1561) is the work, not of a French critic, but of an Italian humanist; and that Vauquelin's _Art Poetique_ (not published until 1605), so far as any influence it may have had is concerned, does not belong to the sixteenth century, and can hardly be called important. At the same time these three works are interesting doc.u.ments in the literary history of France, and represent three distinct stages in the development of French criticism in the sixteenth century. Du Bellay's work marks the beginning of the introduction of cla.s.sical ideals into French literature; Scaliger's work, while written by an Italian and in Latin, was composed and published in France, and marks the introduction of the Aristotelian canons into French criticism; and Vauquelin's work indicates the sum of critical ideas which France had gathered and accepted in the sixteenth century.

With Du Bellay's _Defense et Ill.u.s.tration de la Langue francaise_ (1549) modern literature and modern criticism in France may be said to begin.

The _Defense_ is a monument of the influence of Italian upon French literary and linguistic criticism. The purpose of the book, as its t.i.tle implies, is to defend the French language, and to indicate the means by which it can approach more closely to dignity and perfection. The fundamental contention of Du Bellay is, first, that the French language is capable of attaining perfection; and, secondly, that it can only hope to do so by imitating Greek and Latin. This thesis is propounded and proved in the first book of the _Defense_; and the second book is devoted to answering the question: By what specific means is this perfection, based on the imitation of the perfection of Greek and Latin, to be attained by the French tongue? Du Bellay contends that as the diversity of language among the different nations is ascribable entirely to the caprice of men, the perfection of any tongue is due exclusively to the diligence and artifice of those who use it. It is the duty, therefore, of every one to set about consciously to improve his native speech. The Latin tongue was not always as perfect as it was in the days of Virgil and Cicero; and if these writers had regarded language as incapable of being polished and enriched, or if they had imagined that their language could only be perfected by the imitation of their own national predecessors, Latin would never have arrived at a higher state of perfection than that of Ennius and Cra.s.sus. But as Virgil and Cicero perfected Latin by imitating Greek, so the French tongue can only be made beautiful by imitating Greek, Latin, and Italian, all of which have attained a certain share of perfection.[317]

At the same time, two things must be guarded against. The French tongue cannot be improved by merely translating the cla.s.sic and Italian tongues. Translation has its value in popularizing ideas; but by mere translation no language or literature can hope to attain perfection. Nor is a mere bald imitation sufficient; but, in Du Bellay's oft-cited phrase, the beauties of these foreign tongues "must be converted into blood and nourishment."[318] The cla.s.sics have "blood, nerves, and bones," while the older French writers have merely "skin and color."[319] The modern French writer should therefore dismiss with contempt the older poets of France, and set about to imitate the Greeks, Latins, and Italians. He should leave off composing rondeaux, ballades, virelays, and such _epiceries_, which corrupt the taste of the French language, and serve only to show its ignorance and poverty; and in their stead he should employ the epigram, which mingles, in Horace's words, the profitable with the pleasant, the tearful elegy, in imitation of Ovid and Tibullus, the ode, one of the sublimest forms of poetry, the eclogue, in imitation of Theocritus, Virgil, and Sannazaro, and the beautiful sonnet, an Italian invention no less learned than pleasing.[320] Instead of the morality and the farce, the poet should write tragedies and comedies; he should attempt another _Iliad_ or _aeneid_ for the glory and honor of France. This is the gist of Du Bellay's argument in so far as it deals in general terms with the French language and literature. The six or seven concluding chapters treat of more minute and detailed questions of language and versification. Du Bellay advises the adoption of cla.s.sical words as a means of enriching the French tongue, and speaks with favor of the use of rhymeless verse in imitation of the cla.s.sics. The _Defense_ ends with an appeal to the reader not to fear to go and despoil Greece and Rome of their treasures for the benefit of French poetry.[321]

From this a.n.a.lysis it will be seen that the _Defense_ is really a philological polemic, belonging to the same cla.s.s as the long series of Italian discussions on the vulgar tongue which begins with Dante, and which includes the works of Bembo, Castiglione, Varchi, and others. It is, as a French critic has said, a combined pamphlet, defence, and _ars poetica_;[322] but it is only an _ars poetica_ in so far as it advises the French poet to employ certain poetic forms, and treats of rhythm and rhyme in a concluding chapter or two. But curiously enough, the source and inspiration of Du Bellay's work have never been pointed out. The actual model of the _Defense_ was without doubt Dante's _De Vulgari Eloquio_, which, in the Italian version of Trissino, had been given to the world for the first time in 1529, exactly twenty years before the _Defense_. The two works, allowing for the difference in time and circ.u.mstance, resemble each other closely in spirit and purpose as well as in contents and design. Du Bellay's work, like Dante's, is divided into two books, each of which is again divided into about the same number of chapters. The first book of both works deals with language in general, and the relations of the vulgar tongue to the ancient and modern languages; the second book of both works deals with the particular practices of the vulgar tongue concerning which each author is arguing. Both works begin with a somewhat similar theory of the origin of language; both works close with a discussion of the versification of the vernacular. The purpose of both books is the justification of the vulgar tongue, and the consideration of the means by which it can attain perfection; the t.i.tle of _De Vulgari Eloquio_ might be applied with equal force to either treatise. The _Defense_, by this justification of the French language on rational if not entirely cogent and consistent grounds, prepared the way for critical activity in France; and it is no insignificant fact that the first critical work of modern France should have been based on the first critical work of modern Italy. Thirty years later, Henri Estienne, in his _Precellence du Langage francois_, could a.s.sert that French is the best language of ancient or modern times, just as Salviati in 1564 had claimed that preeminent position for Italian.[323]

It is not to be expected that so radical a break with the national traditions of France as was implied by Du Bellay's innovations would be left unheeded by the enemies of the Pleiade. The answer came soon, in an anonymous pamphlet, ent.i.tled _Le Quintil Horatian sur la Defense et Ill.u.s.tration de la Langue francoise_. Until a very few years ago, this treatise was ascribed to a disciple of Marot, Charles Fontaine. But in 1883 an autograph letter of Fontaine's was discovered, in which he strenuously denies the authorship of the _Quintil Horatian_; and more recent researches have shown pretty conclusively that the real author was a friend of Fontaine's, Barthelemy Aneau, head of the College of Lyons.[324] The _Quintil Horatian_ was first published in 1550, the year after the appearance of the _Defense_.[325] The author informs us that he had translated the whole of Horace's _Ars Poetica_ into French verse "over twenty years ago, before Pelletier or any one else," that is, between 1525 and 1530.[326] This translation was never published, but fragments of it are cited in the _Quintil Horatian_. The pamphlet itself takes up the arguments of Du Bellay step by step, and refutes them. The author finds fault with the constructions, the metaphors, and the neologisms of Du Bellay. Aneau's temperament was dogmatic and pedagogic; his judgment was not always good; and modern French critics cannot forgive him for attacking Du Bellay's use of such a word as _patrie_.

But it is not entirely just to speak of the _Quintil Horatian_, in the words of a modern literary historian, as full of futile and valueless criticisms. The author's minute linguistic objections are often hypercritical, but his work represents a natural reaction against the Pleiade. His chief censure of the _Defense_ was directed against the introduction of cla.s.sical and Italian words into the French language.

"Est-ce la defense et ill.u.s.tration," he exclaims, "ou plus tost offense et denigration?" He charges the Pleiade with having contemned the cla.s.sics of French poetry; the new school advocated the disuse of the complicated metrical forms merely because they were too difficult. The sonnet, the ode, and the elegy he dismisses as useless innovations. The object of poetry, according to Horace, is to gladden and please, while the elegy merely saddens and brings tears to the eyes. "Poetry," he says, "is like painting; and as painting is intended to fill us with delight, and not to sadden us, so the mournful elegy is one of the meanest forms of poetry." Aneau is unable to appreciate the high and sublime conception of the poet's office which the Pleiade first introduced into French literature; for him the poet is a mere versifier who amuses his audience. He represents the general reaction of the national spirit against the cla.s.sical innovations of the Pleiade; and the _Quintil Horatian_ may therefore be called the last representative work of the older school of poetry.