Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance Part 10

A more explicit influence on the renaissance belief that the function of poetry is to improve social morality is readily seen in the definitions of poetry which have already been quoted from Lombardus and Varchi, who formulated their definitions of poetry by combining Aristotle's definition of tragedy with his definition of rhetoric.[351] Another explicit borrowing from cla.s.sical rhetoric was of Cicero's three-fold aim of the orator: to teach, to delight, to persuade (_docere, delectare, permovere_).[352] Several important Italian critics carried this terminology over into their theories of poetry along with the purpose which has always animated rhetoric--persuasion.

Making Horace a point of departure, Daniello, in 1536, says that the function of the poet is to teach and delight, but more than that--to persuade. He must move his readers to share the emotions of his characters, to shun vice, and embrace virtue.[353] This extreme rhetorical parallel was further insisted on by Minturno (1559), who defined the duty of a poet as so to speak in verse as to teach, to delight, and to move.[354] And as Aristotle had affirmed in his _Rhetoric_ that the character of the speaker was one of the three essential elements in persuasion,[355] Minturno is constrained to make the moral character of the poet an indispensable quality of his poetry. Thus he borrows Cato's definition of the orator as a "good man skilled in public speech" (vir bonus dicendi peritus) from Quintilian,[356] and defines the poet as "a good man skilled in speech and imitation" (poeta vir bonus dicendi et imitandi peritus).[357]

Like Minturno, Scaliger insisted that poetry must teach, move, and delight.[358] It is thus the result in action which Minturno and Scaliger emphasize. The poet must work on the feelings of his reader so that he shall embrace and imitate the good, and spurn the evil. Philosophy, oratory, and poetry have thus one end--and only one--persuasion.[359]

Without the "movere," the incentive to action, of course poetry could not serve its purpose of moral improvement on which the renaissance so sternly insisted. A reader might enjoy a story, play, or poem which presented impeccable examples of virtue rewarded and vice punished, or which abounded in n.o.ble plat.i.tudes gilded with wit, and still smile and be a villain. It was thus inevitable that an acceptance of the moral purpose of poetry should sooner or later drive any logical minded critic of poetry completely into the camp of rhetoric. There the poet would find a complete panoply of arms forged for the arousing of the feelings in an audience, and for stirring the springs of action. He could make his readers hate sin by the same means Demosthenes made his hearers hate Philip, and love any virtue by appropriating the methods of Cicero _Pro Archia_. According to this belief, the difference between poetic and rhetoric was minimized. In theory a poem or a speech might indifferently be composed either in prose or in verse. Both endeavored to teach, to please, and to move. Both looked toward persuasion as an object. The speech used the enthymeme and the example as proofs, while the poem used the example to a greater, and the enthymeme to a lesser degree. Both in theory and in practice the example was regarded as being a pleasanter argument than the precept, as well as being more effective. This was the age of Ciceronianism. The school-masters of Europe had recently rediscovered imitation as the royal road to learning, and in their system of language teaching emphasized imitation of cla.s.sical authors more than following the precepts of the grammarians or of the rhetoricians. The epigram of Seneca, "longum iter per praecepta, breve per exempla," was the popular catchword of the age. The example was popular.

Thus by the end of the sixteenth century, the Italian critics had formulated a logical and self-consistent theory of the purpose of poetry.

Inheritors of the allegorical theory of the middle ages, which they in part discarded, and discoverers of cla.s.sical rhetoric which they carried over bodily into their theories of poetry, they pa.s.sed on to France, Germany, and England their rhetorical theories. The purpose of poetry, as well as of rhetoric, was to them persuasion--to teach, to please, to move.

The instrument of poetry was the rhetorical example.

Chapter IV

English Renaissance Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry

In England the Italian interpretations of the literary criticism of Greece and Rome made slow headway against the established traditions of the middle ages. In particular the vogue of allegory did not yield to the idea of the moral example transferred from rhetoric to poetic.

1. Allegory and Example in Rhetoric

When Thomas Wilson published the first edition of his _Arte of Rhetorique_ in 1553, the corpus of Greek criticism in the Aldine _Rhetores Graeci_ had been in print forty-five years, and the commentaries of Dolce, Daniello, Robortelli, and Maggi were available. But Wilson wrote a very good rhetoric with no books before him but Quintilian, Cicero and the rhetoric _Ad Herennium_, which he thought to be Cicero's, Erasmus, Plutarch _De audiendis poetis_, and St. Basil. His treatment of poetry is quite naturally, then, that of a rhetorician who had been reared in the mediaeval tradition of allegory.

Allegory in the sense of Quintilian as a trope, an extended metaphor, Wilson mentions only once. His instance will bear quotation:

It is evil putting strong Wine into weake vesselles, that is to say, it is evil trusting some women with weightie matters. The English Proverbes gathered by John Heywood, helpe well in this behalfe, the which commonly are nothing els but Allegories, and darke devised sentences.[360]

Allegory in its more general mediaeval sense of the kernel of moral truth within the brilliant husk of the poet's fables he discusses at greater length elsewhere with full exemplification.

For by them we may talke at large and win men by persuasion, if we declare beforehand that these tales were not fained of such wis.e.m.e.n without cause.

This obvious rhetorical discussion of the use of poetical ill.u.s.trations by orators leads him to express his conviction of the moral value of poetry.

That poetry did have this improving effect he is quite sure.

For undoubtedly there is no one tale among all the Poetes, but under the same is comprehended something that parteineth, either to the amendment of maners, to the knowledge of the trueth to the setting forth of Nature's work, or els the understanding of some notable thing done....

As Plutarch saieth: and likewise Basilius Magnus:[361] In the _Iliades_ are described strength, and valiantnesse of the bodie: In the _Odissea_ is set forth a lively paterne of the minde. The Poetes were wis.e.m.e.n, and wished in hart the redresse of things, the which when for feare, they durst not openly rebuke, they did in colours painte them out, and tolde men by shadowes what they should doe in good sooth, or els because the wicked were unworthy to heare the trueth, they spake so that none might understand but those unto whom they please to utter their meaning.[362]

Wilson seems to mean not only that poetry has a moral effect, but that the moral value is the main intention. He then proceeds to elucidate the story of Danae as signifying that women have been and will be overcome by money.

The story of Io's seduction by the bull shows that beauty may overcome the best of women. From Icarus we should learn that every man should not meddle with things above his compa.s.s, and from Midas, to avoid covetousness. As a Protestant he explains St. Christopher and St. George in like manner allegorically.

But Wilson is a rhetorician, not a theorist of poetry; he is not concerned with the moral example as the purpose of poetry. In his section on example as a rhetorical argument he shows how stories and fables may enliven and enforce a point. He ill.u.s.trates by Pliny's story of the grateful dragon, and by Appian's story of the grateful lion, how a speaker may enlarge on the duty of grat.i.tude among men. But though he does not postulate pleasurable instruction as the aim of poetry, he clearly implies it in his comment on the use of stories in argument.

Nor does Roger Ascham in his _Scholemaster_, written between 1563-1568 and published posthumously in 1570, concern himself with the purpose of poetry. His interest in poetry seems to be confined to prosody. As a school-master himself he is interested in guiding grammar-school boys in their mastery of Latin prose. "I purpose to teach a yong scholer, to go, not to dance: to speake, not to sing."[363] That he is not blind to the fact that poetry does influence the character of a reader, whether that be its purpose or not in the mind of G.o.d, he shows by his comment on Plautus.

The language, Ascham says, is good and worthy of imitation; but the master must choose only such pa.s.sages as contain honest matter.[364] And the same fear of the possible evil moral influence of fiction is evinced in his famous condemnation of the _Morte Darthur_ "the whole pleasure of which booke standeth in two speciall poyntes, in open mans slaughter, and bold bawdrye,"[365] and in his attacks on English translations of Italian poems and stories. In this his position is substantially that of Savonarola, Loyola and Vives.[366] Nowhere does Ascham advance the claims of allegory as cloaking moral truth under the guise of fiction. He is too good a cla.s.sicist and Ciceronian. What he fears from poetry is evil example. If he believed that the purpose of poetry was to teach truth by example pleasantly, at least he does not say so. Ascham represents the advance guard in England against allegory. But since he was not writing on the theory of poetry primarily, he did not endeavor to establish that the function of poetry is to teach by example.

2. Allegory and the Rhetorical Example in Poetic

Thus far we have had to draw inferences from the asides of rhetorician and school-master. But in 1575, five years after the publication of Ascham's treatise, George Gascoigne, a poet, published his _Certayne Notes of Instruction Concerning the Making of Verse or Ryme_.[367] The t.i.tle is not misleading. Gascoigne is concerned with the style of poetry, not with its philosophy. His only reference to either example or allegory is in a pa.s.sage where he recommends methods of avoiding triteness in the praise of his mistress.

If I should disclose my pretence in love, I would eyther make a strange discourse of some intollerable pa.s.sion, or finde occasion to pleade by the example of some historie, or discover my disquiet in shadowes _per Allegoriam_.[368]

Slight as this is, it hints at the rhetoric of Ovid and the declamation schools. The poet is "to pleade by example." He is making a speech to his mistress trying to prove to her his undying pa.s.sion that she may grant him the ultimate favor. The genre is the same that includes the _Epistles_ of Ovid and the _Love Letters_ of Aristenetus. It is the genre of versified speech-making. Wilson recommended the _Proverbs_ of Heywood as furnishing "allegories" useful in the amplification of a point in a speech. In his _Euphues_ Lyly did use such "allegories" in what his contemporaries generally considered a poem. Lyly drew examples, anecdotes, and fables which he used as Gascoigne suggested, not only from Heywood, but from the _Similia_ and _Adagia_, of Erasmus, and from the _Emblems_ of Alciati.[369]

So far the moral example is counseled or practised only as a recognized device of rhetoric. It is not transferred to poetic until George Whetstone's _Dedication_ to his _Promos and Ca.s.sandra_. For Whetstone a.s.serts that in his comedy he has intermingled all actions "in such sorte as the grave matter may instruct, and the pleasant delight ... and the conclusion showes the confusion of Vice and the cherising of Vertue."[370]

That the philosophy of this moral improvement resides in the extreme application of poetic justice he shows as follows: "For by the reward of the good the good are encouraged in wel doinge: and with the scowrge of the lewde the lewde are feared from evill attempts." Whetstone's _Dedication_ was published in 1578, one year before Gosson launched his attack against poetry and poets in his _School of Abuse_, which was answered by Lodge and Sidney in their _Apologies_. In this controversy, in which Whetstone later took sides with the anti-stage party in his _Touchstone for Time_ (1584), the age-long conflict between the poets and the philosophers was renewed with vigor and acrimony. But both the attackers and the defenders argued from the same premise, that the purpose of poetry was to afford pleasant moral instruction. Gosson and the Puritans objected that current poetry and plays failed to afford this moral instruction and should consequently be condemned. Lodge, Sidney and the other defenders of poetry retorted that poetry had a n.o.ble function--the teaching of morality, and that an occasional poem which did not serve this purpose did not invalidate the claims of poetry as a whole.

Gosson writes:

The right use of auncient poetrie was to have the notable exploytes of worthy captaines, the holesome councels of good fathers and vertuous lives of predecessors set down in numbers, and sung to the instrument at solemne feastes, that the sound of the one might draw the hearers from kissing the cup too often, and the sense of the other put them in minde of things past, and chaulke out the way to do the like.[371]

The benefit, according to Gosson, which poetry should produce is that of good moral example. Moral doctrine, he believes accessible in the churches, and against the poets he urges that the evil social environment of the theatre offsets the benefit to be derived even from good plays.

What profits the moral lesson of such a play if after witnessing the performance a man walk away with a woman whose acquaintance he has just made in the theatre.[372] He may drink wine, he may play cards, he may even enter a brothel.

In his _Defence of Poetry_ (1579), Lodge retreats to the caverns of the middle ages to equip himself with arms. Under the influence of Campano, who died in 1477, he advances allegory as the explanation which makes the apparently light and trifling poets moral teachers of the utmost seriousness. Addressing Gosson he exclaims:

Did you never reade that under the persons of beastes many abuses were dissiphered? Have you not reason to waye that whatsoever ether Virgil did write of his gnatt or Ovid of his fley was all covertly to declare abuse?... You remember not that under the person of Aeneas in Virgil the practice of a dilligent captaine is described; you know not that the creation is signified in the Image of Prometheus; the fall of pryde in the person of Narcissus.[373]

And he quotes Lactantius as comparing poetry with the Scriptures. If either are taken literally, they will seem false. We should judge by the poet's hidden meaning.[374] The purpose of the poets, to Lodge, was "In the way of pleasure to draw men to wisdome." When he defends comedy, Lodge drifts away from allegory. Terence and Plautus he praises for furnishing examples of virtue and vice upon the boards, thus to amend the manners of his auditors. He believed that poetry did amend manners, and correct abuses--if properly used. But he is very quick to admit the very abuses which Gosson attacked.

I abh.o.r.e those poets that savor of ribaldry: I will admit the expullcion of such enormities, poetry is dispraised not for the folly that is in it, but for the abuse whiche manye ill Wryters couller by it.[375] I must confess with Aristotle that men are greatly delighted with imitation, and that it were good to bring those things on stage that were altogether tending to vertue; all this I admit and hartely wysh, but you say unlesse the thinge be taken away the vice will continue. Nay I say if the style were changed the practise would profit.[376]

Thus he defends poetry bcause it teaches morality by example and by allegory.

With that higher intelligence and learning which have already been contrasted with the unthinking acceptance of his times[377] Sir Philip Sidney wrote his _Apologie for Poetrie_. In this dignified and vigorous pamphlet, written about 1583, and published in 1595, Sidney presents the best and most consistent argument for the moral purpose of poetry that appeared in England. That the main line of his argument and his best material is drawn from Minturno and Scaliger, as Spingarn has demonstrated,[378] in no way invalidates his claim to distinction. The purpose of poetry is to Sidney, in the first place, to teach and delight,[379] "that fayning notable images of vertues, vices, or what els, with that delightfull teaching which must be the right describing note to know a poet by."[380] But as the end of all earthly learning is virtuous action, in Sidney's mind, he agrees with Minturno and Scaliger in borrowing from rhetoric Cicero's three-fold aim of the orator: to teach, to delight, to move. Sidney says that the poets "imitate both to _delight_ and _teach_, and delight to _move_ men to take the goodnes in hande ...

and _teach_, to make them know that goodnes whereunto they are mooved."[381] It is incredible that he did not know this terminology as rhetoric. Poetry, he believes, fails if it does not persuade its reader to abandon evil and adopt good.

And that _mooving_ is of a higher degree than _teaching_, it may by this appeare, that it is well nigh the cause of teaching. For who will be taught, if he bee not mooved with desire to be taught? and what so much good doth that teaching bring forth (I speak still of morall doctrine) as that it mooveth one to do that which it dooth teach?[382]

The effectiveness of poetry, then, in accomplishing this moral end lies in its pleasantness. The poet, says Sidney, in that most famous pa.s.sage which is too frequently quoted incompletely,

commeth to you with words sent in delightful proportion, either accompanied with, or prepared for, the well inchaunting skill of Musicke; and with a tale forsooth he commeth unto you, with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. And _pretending no more, doth intende the winning of the mind from wickedness to vertue_: even as the childe is often brought to take most wholsom things by hiding them in such other as have a pleasant tast.[383]

According to Sidney, then, it is the very purpose of poetry to win men to virtue by pleasant instruction. The argument of poetry in accomplishing this end is primarily the example. Sidney compares very elaborately philosophy, history, and poetry in an endeavor to show that poetry is the most effective instrument for forwarding virtue. In the first place poetry is better adapted than philosophy to win men to virtue because it persuades both by precepts and by examples, while philosophy persuades by precepts alone. His sanction for this high opinion of the persuasive power of example is the rhetorical commonplace of the renaissance that the way is long by precept and short by example.[384] To enforce this point he tells the story of how Menenius Agrippa won over the people of Rome to support the Senate by telling them the story of the revolt of the members against the belly. Quintilian[385] and Wilson[386] had already told this story to prove the effectiveness of the example as a rhetorical argument, a device of the public speaker.

The main advantage which poetry possesses over history, Sidney goes on, is that while the historian must stick to his facts, which too frequently are unedifying, the poet can and does create a world better than nature, and presents to his reader ideal figures of human conduct such as Pylades, Cyrus, and aeneas.[387] This is Sidney's application of Aristotle's a.s.sertion that history is particular and poetic universal; history records things as they are and poetic as they are, worse than they are, or better.

Lest his readers might fear that the arguments of the poet might lose some of their persuasive force from their being fict.i.tious, Sidney hastens to add: "For that a fayned example hath as much force to teach as a true example (for as for to moove, it is cleere, sith the fayned may be tuned to the highest key of pa.s.sion);"[388] and here he is drawing from Aristotle's _Rhetoric._[389] Through admiration of the n.o.ble persons of poetry, the reader is won to a desire for emulation. "Who readeth _aeneas_ carrying olde _Anchises_ on his back, that wisheth not it were his fortune to perfourme so excellent an acte?"[390]

Although Sidney believes the princ.i.p.al moral value of poetry to reside in its power to teach and move by the use of examples, he devotes at least half a page to the beneficent effect of parables and allegories. The parables which he uses, however, are all Christian, and the allegories are all the _Fables_ of aesop. From the allegorical interpretation of poetry current in the middle ages and to a scarcely less degree among his English contemporaries Sidney remains conspicuously aloof.

In answering the specific charges against poetry, that it is a waste of time, the mother of lies, the nurse of abuse, and rejected by Plato, Sidney a.s.serts that a thing which moves men to virtue so effectively as poetry cannot be a waste of time; that since poetry pretends not to literal truth, it cannot lie,[391] that poetry does not abuse man's wit, but man's wit abuses poetry, for "shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious?"[393] and that Plato objected not to poetry but to its abuse.