A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance Part 14

It was at about this period that Aristotle's _Poetics_ first influenced French criticism. In one of the concluding chapters of the _Defense_ Du Bellay remarks that "the virtues and vices of a poem have been diligently treated by the ancients, such as Aristotle and Horace, and after them by Hieronymus Vida."[327] Horace is mentioned and cited in numerous other places, and the influence of the general rhetorical portions of the _Ars Poetica_ is very marked throughout the _Defense_; there are also many traces of the influence of Vida. But there is no evidence whatsoever of any knowledge of Aristotle's _Poetics_. Of its name and importance Du Bellay had probably read in the writings of the Italians, but of its contents he knew little or nothing. There is indeed no well-established allusion to the _Poetics_ in France before this time. None of the French humanists seems to have known it. Its t.i.tle is cited by Erasmus in a letter dated February 27, 1531, and it was published by him without any commentary at Basle in the same year, though Simon Grynaeus appears to have been the real editor of this work.

An edition of the _Poetics_ was also published at Paris in 1541, but does not seem to have had any appreciable influence on the critical activity of France. Several years after the publication of the _Defense_, in the satirical poem, _Le Poete Courtisan_, written shortly after his return from Italy in 1555, Du Bellay shows a somewhat more definite knowledge of the contents of the _Poetics_:--

"Je ne veux point ici du maistre d'Alexandre [_i.e._ Aristotle], Touchant l'art poetic, les preceptes t'apprendre Tu n'apprendras de moy comment jouer il faut Les miseres des rois dessus un eschaffaut: Je ne t'enseigne l'art de l'humble comoedie Ni du Meonien la muse plus hardie: Bref je ne monstre ici d'un vers horacien Les vices et vertus du poeme ancien: Je ne depeins aussi le poete du Vide."[328]

In 1555 Guillaume Morel, the disciple of Turnebus, published an edition of Aristotle's _Poetics_ at Paris. It is interesting to note, however, that the reference in the _Defense_ is the first allusion to the _Poetics_ to be found in the critical literature of France; by 1549 the Italian Renaissance, and Italian criticism, had come into France for good. In 1560, the year before the publication of Scaliger's _Poetics_, Aristotle's treatise had acquired such prominence that in a volume of selections from Aristotle's works, published at Paris in that year, _Aristotelis Sententiae_, the selections from the _Poetics_ are placed at the head of the volume.[329] In 1572 Jean de la Taille refers his readers to what "the great Aristotle in his _Poetics_, and after him Horace though not with the same subtlety, have said more amply and better than I."[330]

The influence of Scaliger's _Poetics_ on the French dramatic criticism of this period has generally been overestimated. Scaliger's influence in France was not inconsiderable during the sixteenth century, but it was not until the very end of the century that he held the dictatorial position afterward accorded to him. No edition of his _Poetics_ was ever published at Paris. The first edition appeared at Lyons, and subsequent editions appeared at Heidelberg and Leyden. It was in Germany, in Spain, and in England that his influence was first felt; and it was largely through the Dutch scholars, Heinsius and Vossius, that his influence was carried into France in the next century. It is a mistake to say that he had any primary influence on the formulation and acceptance of the unities of time and place in French literature; there is in his _Poetics_, as has been seen, no such definite and formal statement of the unities as may be found in Castelvetro, in Jean de la Taille, in Sir Philip Sidney, or in Chapelain. At the same time, while Scaliger's _Poetics_ did not a.s.sume during the sixteenth century the dictatorial supremacy it attained during the seventeenth, and while the particular views enunciated in its pages had no direct influence on the current of sixteenth-century ideas, it certainly had an indirect influence on the general tendency of the critical activity of the French Renaissance.

This indirect influence manifests itself in the gradual Latinization of culture during the second half of the sixteenth century, and, as will be seen later, in the emphasis on the Aristotelian canons in French dramatic criticism. Scaliger was a personal friend of several members of the Pleiade, and there is every reason to believe that he wielded considerable, even if merely indirect, influence on the development of that great literary movement.

The last expression of the poetic theories of the Pleiade is to be found in the didactic poem of Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, _L'Art Poetique francois, ou l'on peut remarquer la perfection et le defaut des anciennes et des modernes poesies_. This poem, though not published until 1605, was begun in 1574 at the command of Henry III., and, augmented by successive additions, was not yet complete by 1590.

Vauquelin makes the following explicit acknowledgment of his indebtedness to the critical writers that preceded him:--

"Pour ce ensuivant les pas du fils de Nicomache [_i.e._ Aristotle], Du harpeur de Calabre [_i.e._ Horace], et tout ce que remache Vide et Minturne apres, j'ay cet oeuvre apreste."[331]

Aristotle, Horace, Vida, and Minturno are thus his acknowledged models and sources. Nearly the whole of Horace's _Ars Poetica_ he has translated and embodied in his poem; and he has borrowed from Vida a considerable number of images and metaphors.[332] His indebtedness to Aristotle and to Minturno brings up several intricate questions. It has been said that Vauquelin simply mentioned Minturno in order to put himself under the protection of a respectable Italian authority.[333] On the contrary, exclusive of Horace, Ronsard, and Du Bellay, the whole of whose critical discussions he has almost incorporated into his poem, Minturno is his chief authority, his model, and his guide. In fact, it was probably from Minturno that he derived his entire knowledge of the Aristotelian canons; it is not Aristotle, but Minturno's conception of Aristotle, that Vauquelin has adhered to. Many points in his poem are explained by this fact; here only one can be mentioned. Vauquelin's account, in the second canto of his _Art Poetique_, of the origin of the drama from the songs at the altar of Bacchus at the time of the vintage, is undoubtedly derived from Minturno.[334] It may have been observed that during the Renaissance there were two distinct conceptions of the origin of poetry. One, which might be called ethical, was derived from Horace, according to whom the poet was originally a lawgiver, or divine prophet; and this conception persists in modern literature from Poliziano to Sh.e.l.ley. The other, or scientific conception, was especially applied to the drama, and was based on Aristotle's remarks on the origin of tragedy; this attempt to discover some scientific explanation for poetic phenomena may be found in the more rationalistic of Renaissance critics, such as Scaliger and Viperano. Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, the disciple of Ronsard and the last exponent of the critical doctrines of the Pleiade, thus represents the incorporation of the body of Italian ideas into French criticism.

With Vauquelin de la Fresnaye and De Laudun Daigaliers (1598) the history of French criticism during the sixteenth century is at an end.

The critical activity of this period, as has already been remarked, is of a far more practical character than that of Italy. Literary criticism in France was created by the exigencies of a great literary movement; and throughout the century it never lost its connection with this movement, or failed to serve it in some practical way. The poetic criticism was carried on by poets, whose desire it was to further a cause, to defend their own works, or to justify their own views. The dramatic criticism was for the most part carried on by dramatists, sometimes even in the prefaces of their plays. In the sixteenth century, as ever since, the interrelation of the creative and the critical faculties in France was marked and definite. But there was, one might almost say, little critical theorizing in the French Renaissance.

Excepting, of course, Scaliger, there was even nothing of the deification of Aristotle found in Italian criticism. To take notice of a minute but significant detail, there was no attempt to explain Aristotle's doctrine of _katharsis_, the source of infinite controversy in Italy. There was no detailed and consistent discussion of the theory of the epic poem. All these things may be found in seventeenth-century France; but their home was sixteenth-century Italy.

FOOT-NOTES:

[310] _Essais_, i. 36.

[311] On these early works, see Langlois, _De Artibus Rhetoricae Rhythmicae_, Parisiis, 1890.

[312] Tiraboschi, vii. 350.

[313] _Ibid._ vii. 1465.

[314] Morsolin, _Trissino_, p. 358.

[315] Egger, _h.e.l.lenisme_, ch. vii.

[316] Brunetiere, i. 43.

[317] _Cf._ Horace, _Ars Poet._ 53 _sq._

[318] _Defense_, i. 7.

[319] _Ibid._ ii. 2.

[320] _Ibid._ ii. 4.

[321] _Cf._ Vida, in Pope, i. 167.

[322] Lanson, _op. cit._, p. 274.

[323] _Cf._ T. Ta.s.so, xxiii. 97.

[324] H. Chamard, "Le Date et l'Auteur du Quintil Horatian," in the _Revue d'Histoire litteraire de la France_, 1898, v. 59 _sq._

[325] _Ibid._ v. 54 _sq._

[326] _Ibid._ v. 62; 63, n. 1.

[327] _Defense_, ii. 9.

[328] Du Bellay, p. 120.

[329] Parisiis, apud Hieronymum de Marnaf, 1560.

[330] Robert, appendix iii.

[331] _Art Poet._ i. 63.

[332] Pellissier, pp. 57-63.

[333] Lemercier, _etude sur Vauquelin_, 1887, p. 117, and Pellissier, p.

57.

[334] Minturno, _Arte Poetica_, p. 73; _De Poeta_, p. 252. _Cf._ Vauquelin, Pellissier's introduction, p. xliv.

CHAPTER II

THE THEORY OF POETRY IN THE FRENCH RENAISSANCE

IT is in keeping with the practical character of the literary criticism of this period that the members of the Pleiade did not concern themselves with the general theory of poetry. Until the very end of the century there is not to be found any systematic poetic theory in France.

It is in dramatic criticism that this period has most to offer, and the dramatic criticism is peculiarly interesting because it foreshadows in many ways the doctrines upon which were based the dramas of Racine and Corneille.

I. _The Poetic Art_

In Du Bellay's _Defense_ there is no attempt to formulate a consistent body of critical doctrine; but the book exhibits, in a more or less crude form, all the tendencies for which the Pleiade stands in French literature. The fundamental idea of the _Defense_ is that French poetry can only hope to reach perfection by imitating the cla.s.sics. The imitation of the cla.s.sics implies, in the first place, erudition on the part of the poet; and, moreover, it requires intellectual labor and study. The poet is born, it is true; but this only refers to the ardor and joyfulness of spirit which naturally excite him, but which, without learning and erudition, are absolutely useless. "He who wishes poetic immortality," says Du Bellay, "must spend his time in the solitude of his own chamber; instead of eating, drinking, and sleeping, he must endure hunger, thirst, and long vigils."[335] Elsewhere he speaks of silence and solitude as _amy des Muses_. From all this there arises a natural contempt for the ignorant people, who know nothing of ancient learning: "Especially do I wish to admonish him who aspires to a more than vulgar glory, to separate himself from such inept admirers, to flee from the ignorant people,--the people who are the enemies of all rare and antique learning,--and to content himself with few readers, following the example of him who did not demand for an audience any one beside Plato himself."[336]

In the _Art Poetique_ of Jacques Pelletier du Mans, published at Lyons in 1555, the point of view is that of the Pleiade, but more mellow and moderate than that of its most advanced and radical members. The treatise begins with an account of the antiquity and excellence of poetry; and poets are spoken of as originally the _maitres et reformateurs de la vie_. Poetry is then compared with oratory and with painting, after the usual Renaissance fashion; and Pelletier agrees with Horace in regarding the combined power of art and nature as necessary to the fashioning of a poet. His conception of the latter's office is not unlike that of Ta.s.so and Sh.e.l.ley, "It is the office of the poet to give novelty to old things, authority to the new, beauty to the rude, light to the obscure, faith to the doubtful, and to all things their true nature, and to their true nature all things." Concerning the questions of language, versification, and the feeling for natural scenery, he agrees fundamentally with the chief writers of the Pleiade.

The greatest of these, Ronsard, has given expression to his views on the poetic art in his _Abrege de l'Art Poetique francois_ (1565), and later in the two prefaces of his epic of the _Franciade_. The chief interest of the _Abrege_ in the present discussion is that it expounds and emphasizes the high notion of the poet's office introduced into French poetry by the Pleiade. Before the advent of the new school, mere skill in the complicated forms of verse was regarded as the test of poetry.

The poet was simply a _rimeur_; and the term "_poete_," with all that it implies, first came into use with the Pleiade. The distinction between the versifier and the poet, as pointed out by Aristotle and insisted upon by the Italians, became with the Pleiade almost vital. Binet, the disciple and biographer of Ronsard, says of his master that "he was the mortal enemy of versifiers, whose conceptions are all debased, and who think they have wrought a masterpiece when they have transposed something from prose into verse."[337] Ronsard's own account of the dignity and high function of poetry must needs be cited at length:--

"Above all things you will hold the Muses in reverence, yea, in singular veneration, and you will never let them serve in matters that are dishonest, or mere jests, or injudicious libels; but you will hold them dear and sacred, as the daughters of Jupiter, that is, G.o.d, who by His holy grace has through them first made known to ignorant people the excellencies of His majesty. For poetry in early times was only an allegorical theology, in order to make stupid men, by pleasant and wondrously colored fables, know the secrets they could not comprehend, were the truth too openly made known to them.... Now, since the Muses do not care to lodge in a soul unless it is good, holy, and virtuous, you should try to be of a good disposition, not wicked, scowling, and cross, but animated by a gentle spirit; and you should not let anything enter your mind that is not superhuman and divine. You should have, in the first place, conceptions that are high, grand, beautiful, and not trailing upon the ground; for the princ.i.p.al part of poetry consists of invention, which comes as much from a beautiful nature as from the reading of good and ancient authors. If you undertake any great work, you will show yourself devout and fearing G.o.d, commencing it either with His name or by any other which represents some effects of His majesty, after the manner of the Greek poets ... for the Muses, Apollo, Mercury, Pallas, and other similar deities, merely represent the powers of G.o.d, to which the first men gave several names for the diverse effects of His incomprehensible majesty."[338]

In this eloquent pa.s.sage the conception of the poet as an essentially moral being,--a doctrine first enunciated by Strabo, and repeated by Minturno and others,--and Boccaccio's notion of poetry as originally an allegorical theology, are both introduced into French criticism.

Elsewhere Ronsard repeats the mediaeval concept that poets