Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance Part 8

Thus, why not change such a pa.s.sage as this, "That man is to be envied who so aims as to hit his wish," to read, "who so aims as to hit his advantage"? for to get and have things wrongly desired merits pity, not envy.[293]

But greater than the moral value of maxims in the poets is that of example. "Philosophers employ examples from history for our correction and instruction, and the poets differ from them only by inventing and presenting fict.i.tious narratives."[294] For instance, according to Plutarch, Homer introduces the story of Hera's vain endeavor to gain her ends from Zeus by means of wine and the girdle of Aphrodite to show that such conduct is not only immoral, but useless. Again we may conclude that frequenting women in the day time is a shame and a reproach because the only man who does such a thing in the _Iliad_ is that lascivious and adulterous fellow Paris.[295] It is interesting that this essay of Plutarch's, which gives probably the most complete cla.s.sical exposition of the moral use of poetry, should have been well known in the renaissance and translated into English by Philemon Holland in 1603.

The Romans had very much the same feeling about the moral value in poetry as had the Greeks. The only fundamental difference lay in that the Roman was less philosophical and more practical. This practical element in Roman criticism is well ill.u.s.trated by Horace, whose statements have sometimes been made to support opinions which Horace did not hold. Let it be noted, for one thing, that Horace is talking not about the purpose of poetry, but about the purpose of the poet.

Poets desire either to profit or to delight, or to tell things which are at once pleasant and profitable.

His reason for favoring the third view is important.

Old men reject poems which are void of instruction; the knights neglect austere poems: he who mixes the useful with the sweet wins the approval of all by delighting and at the same time admonishing the reader. This book makes money for the book-sellers, and pa.s.ses over the sea, and prolongs the reputation of the well-known author.[296]

But aside from the desirability of mingling pleasure with profit in his poetry in order to gain the greatest popularity, the poet does have an educational value in the training of youths by presenting in an attractive manner examples of n.o.ble conduct which the young people may desire to emulate.

His lessons form the child's young lips, and wean The boyish ear from words and tales unclean; As years roll on, he moulds the ripening mind, And makes it just and generous, sweet and kind; He tells of worthy precedents, displays The example of the past to after days, Consoles affliction, and disease allays.[297]

Moreover the consensus of conventional opinion in the Roman world was that the study of the poets did succeed in moulding the moral character of the youth. Apuleius, writing of a certain virtuous young man, the hero of one of the episodes of the _Metamorphoses_, makes the following incidental remark: "The master of the house had a young son well instructed in good literature, and consequently remarkable for his piety and modesty."[298]

Although Lucretius may not have been a.s.sured of the moral value, he was so convinced of the seductive powers of poetry that he deliberately utilized them to make palatable the forbidding thoughts of his essay _On the Nature of Things_. The long pa.s.sage is worth quoting entire because his comparison is borrowed so frequently by renaissance critics to ill.u.s.trate the poetic doctrine of pleasurable profit. Lucretius says:

But as physicians, when they attempt to give bitter wormwood to children, first tinge the rim round the cup with the sweet and yellow liquid of honey, that the age of childhood, as yet unsuspicious, may find its lips deluded, and may in the meantime drink the bitter juice of the wormwood, and though deceived, may not be injured, but rather, being recruited by such a process, may acquire strength; so now I, since this argument seems generally too severe and forbidding to those by whom it has not been handled, and since the mult.i.tude shrink back from it, was desirous to set forth my chain of reasoning to thee, O Memmius, in sweetly-speaking Pierian verse, and, as it were, tinge it with the honey of the Muses.[299]

From this survey of cla.s.sical opinion we may conclude that the public looked for two things in poetry: pleasure and profit. Eratosthenes took an extreme view in seeking pleasure alone. Both Aristotle and Horace emphasized the pleasure to be derived from poetry, although neither denied that poetry is beneficial. Horace takes almost a cynical view in suggesting that, as some readers seek pleasure in poetry and others improvement, a poet will be more popular and make more money for the book-sellers if he mingles both elements. The extreme view of the moral value of poetry was taken by the educators of youth. This view is well exemplified in the quotations from Aristophanes, Xenophon, Strabo, and especially Plutarch. But even Plutarch, who goes so far as to suggest emending the poets to make their effect more moral, does not suggest that the purpose of poetry is to afford moral instruction. He distinguishes; some poetry is distinctly immoral and should be enjoyed only for its art.

Other poetry is moral in its effect, and consequently should be utilized extensively by the school-master in educating young men. For such purposes no poetry was thought to be better than Homer, whose epics furnish so many examples of heroic conduct.

3. Moral Improvement through Allegory

When the Roman arms conquered a new city, the story runs, the commander of the forces took over in the name of the Emperor the G.o.ds; but before the gates of Jerusalem this ceremony proved ineffective. The fathers of the Christian church, Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian, believing that all the truth was contained in Christianity, utterly condemned the philosophy and religion of the Greeks and consequently the poetry which, according to Greek popular belief, was the inspired vehicle for its presentation. Furthermore, the G.o.ds of the Greeks were immoral and furnished their worshippers with bad examples of conduct. Long before Tertullian the moral philosophers of antiquity had already attacked the poetry of Greece and Rome on the ground of immorality. Plato in his day called the war between philosophy and poetry "age-long." The ancient Greeks had considered Homer and Hesiod as the inspired recorders of the facts of religion. They had looked to the poets for moral dogma and example. Of necessity the philosophers condemned the poets for the immorality of their thievish, lying, and adulterous pantheon.

When the Christian fathers were confronted with the Syriac gospel of the youth of Jesus, they called a council to declare it apochryphal. Lest some devout reader should take literally the love poetry of the Canticles, the fathers allegorized it as the love of Christ for his Church.

Unfortunately for Greek religion the philosophers did not determine which episodes in the histories of the G.o.ds were valid as doctrine and which were fict.i.tious. They did, however, antic.i.p.ate the fathers in their allegorical interpretations. Socrates in the _Phaedrus_ laughs at allegory;[300] and Plutarch believes that the poets intended to teach a moral idea by example instead of expressing a hidden meaning by allegory.

For him allegory involved distortion and perversion. "For some men _distort_ these stories and _pervert_ them into allegories or what the men of old times called hidden meanings ?p????a?."[301] But allegory none the less flourished. Theognis of Rhegium, Anaxagoras, and Stesimbrotus of Thasos, were a.s.siduous and startling in their interpretations.[302] The Greek allegorical interpretations were of two kinds: one an explanation of the secrets of nature, the other the teaching of morality.[303]

Although the practice was very old, the word "allegory" is not recorded before Cicero, who says:

When the imagery of the metaphor is sustained for a long time, the nature of the style a.s.suredly becomes changed. Consequently the Greeks call this sort of thing allegory.... But he is nearer the truth who calls all of these metaphors.[304]

From Cicero on, allegory has a long history as a rhetorical figure--a trope.[305] St. Augustine recommends that students of the scriptures study the rhetorical figures so that they may be able to interpret the tropes in the Bible, such as allegory.[306]

The result will always be the same whenever the poets are considered theologians and moral teachers. They will be condemned or allegorized.

Fortunate are the poets when they are not believed. "How much better,"

exclaims St. Augustine, "are these fables of the poets" than the false religious notions of the Manichees. "But Medea flying, although I chanted sometimes, yet I maintained not the truth of; and though I heard it sung, I believed it not: but these phantasies I thoroughly believed."[307] For it is only when one believes devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae in a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such traffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[308] It is only when the poets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the clutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks that Aristotle a.s.serts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the particular.[309] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, "Poetry has little regard for the actuality of specific event, but aims at the reality of an eternal probability."[310]

4. The Influence of Rhetoric

Thus the general consensus of cla.s.sical opinion agreed that poetry has inescapable moral effects on those who listen or read. The moralists, especially the Stoics, when confronted with traditional poetry whose literal significance was immoral, leaned toward allegorical interpretations which brought out a kernel of truth. The greater number, however, of Greeks and Romans in the cla.s.sical period believed that poetry exerted the most potent influence for good when it enunciated crisp moral maxims and afforded examples of heroic conduct which young people could be induced to follow.

In all these respects the cla.s.sical view of poetic has much in common with cla.s.sical rhetoric. Allegory has been shown to have had a long history as an extended metaphor--a rhetorical figure. Maxims are considered fully by Aristotle as aids to persuasion in rhetoric.[311] The exemplum is obviously a stock means of rhetoric.

"Examples," says Aristotle, "are of two kinds, one consisting in the allegation of historical facts, and the other in the invention of facts for oneself. Invention comprises ill.u.s.tration on the one hand and ...

fables on the other." Then he tells how Aesop defended a demagogue by the fable of the fox caught in the cleft of a rock. The fox was infested with dog-ticks which sucked his blood. A benevolent hedge-hog offered to remove the ticks, but the fox declined the kind offer on the ground that his ticks were already full of blood and had ceased to annoy him much, whereas if they were removed, a new colony of ticks would establish themselves and thus entirely drain him of blood. "Yes, and in your case, men of Samos,"

said Aesop, "my client will not do much further mischief--he has already made his fortune--but, if you put him to death, there will come others who are poor and who will consume all the revenues of the state by their embezzlements."[312] "Fables," continues the shrewd master of those who know, "have this advantage that, while historical parallels are hard to find, it is comparatively easy to find fables." Quintilian, like Aristotle, believes in the persuasive efficacy of examples. But Quintilian has less faith in the probative value of fict.i.tious examples than he has in those drawn from authentic history. He thinks that fables are most effective with a rustic and ingenuous audience, which "captivated by their pleasure in the story, give a.s.sent to that which pleases them."[313] Thus Menenius Agrippa reconciled the people to the senators by telling them the fable of the revolt of the members against the belly. And Thomas Wilson, in his _Arte of Rhetorique_, repeats the story, in his section on examples, and ascribes to Themistocles the fox story which Aristotle tells of Aesop.[314]

But Aristotle, Quintilian, and Wilson are talking about rhetoric. Very justly they believe that if one wants to persuade an audience to a course of action, he must interest his audience sufficiently to hold their attention. As Wilson sagely remarks, "For except men finde delite, they will not long abide: delite them and winne them."[315] Cicero expressed in memorable phrase the relationship between proof and pleasure as instruments to persuasion and added a third element. He cla.s.sified the aims of an orator as "to teach, to please, to move" (_docere, delectare, movere_). The teaching is the appeal to the intellect of the hearer by means of proof. The pleasure is afforded by a euphonious style, and by fables and stories. The audience is moved to action by the appeal to their feelings.[316]

Not until the renaissance did writers on the theory of poetry carry over Cicero's threefold aim of the orator and make it apply to the poet.[317]

But already in post-cla.s.sical times rhetoric had, as Seneca the father clearly shows, vitiated the Latin poetry of the Silver Age. Under the Empire the declamation schools in Rome had a profound influence on literature.[318] It could not be otherwise in a society where the school of rhetoric was the only temple of higher education, for which the grammaticus, or elementary professor of literature, was constrained to prepare his students. Rhetoric was the organon of Roman education, and declamation was the aim of rhetoric. It was such an educational system which prepared Ovid and Lucan for their careers as poets and men of letters. Seneca the father records the brilliant declamations of Ovid as a schoolboy, quoting at some length his plea for a wife who threw herself over a cliff on hearing of the death of her husband, and calling attention to several pa.s.sages in Ovid's poems where the poet has borrowed the clever sayings of his professors in the school of rhetoric.[319] Ovid makes his characters prove that they are moved by pa.s.sion instead of being pa.s.sionate in word and deed. He vitiates his emotions with his wit. This is characteristic of almost all the poets who attended the declamation schools. They talk about situations and characters instead of realizing them. They write as if they were speaking to an audience. One can almost see the gestures, the wait for applause after the enunciation of a n.o.ble plat.i.tude. Not only historically, but also in the worst modern sense this is rhetoric. It is not unreasonable to conclude that such a preoccupation with rhetoric, such a sustained search for all possible means of persuasion, should have strengthened rather than weakened the utilitarian theory of poetry. The school-master endeavored to mould the characters of his students by examples from heroic poetry; the teacher of rhetoric, in turn, taught them that to persuade an audience they must prove, please, and move, and that ficticious examples were about as persuasive as historical parallels and much easier to find. When the student left school he continued to seek means of persuasion in canva.s.sing votes, pleading in the courts, or deliberating in the senate. If he became a poet, he did not forget the lessons of his youth; or if he became a teacher of literature or a professor of rhetoric, he perpetuated the tradition.

Chapter II

Mediaeval Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry

With the breaking up of the Empire the stream of cla.s.sical culture was restricted to a narrow channel--the Church. Opposed as it was to pagan morals and theology, the church could honestly retain cla.s.sical literature only if it were allegorized. This explains the allegorical nature of mediaeval poetry and of poetical theory.

From the beginning the learning of the Church was of pagan origin. St.

Augustine was a professor of rhetoric and the author of a treatise on aesthetics before he wrote the _City of G.o.d_, and his _Confessions_. In fact, he never quite got over being a professor of rhetoric. Clement of Alexandria was a product of the same rhetoric schools and an excellent teacher of his subject before he recognized the divine origin of Christianity. St. Basil was a college friend of Gregory n.a.z.ianzen and of Julian, later emperor and apostate, when the three studied rhetoric at Athens. Indeed, the most cunningly cruel decree which Julian later promulgated against the Christians forbade them the use of the ancient pagan literature of Greece and Rome. This decree Basil bitterly resented.

"I forgo all the rest," he says, "riches, birth, honor, authority, and all the goods here below of which the charm vanishes like a dream; but I cling to oratory nor do I regret the toil, nor the journeys by land and sea, which I have undertaken to master it."[320]

But within the Church the lovers of Greek literature did not have it all their own way. Tatian, Hermas, Theophilus, and Tertullian savagely attacked profane poetry, and in defending it Basil, Athenagoras, Clement, and Origen were forced not unwillingly to rely more and more on the traditional moralistic theory of poetry which was so familiar to them. St.

Chrysostom records that in the fourth century Homer was still taught as a guide to morals.[321]

1. Allegorical Interpretations in the Middle Ages

Allegorical interpretation was the main weapon of the apologists for poetry. The basis, indeed, of the Gnostic heresies of the second and third centuries was an allegorical interpretation of the Greek poets and philosophers and of the Scriptures. This soon degenerated into an extravagant system of speculative mysticism. Clement of Alexandria and Origen rejected the extravagances, but sought to retain the mysticism of the Gnostics. They reconciled Greek literature and the Scriptures by allegorizing both, much as today Darwin and Genesis are reconciled by allegorizing Genesis.[322] Thus in the declining years of the Roman Empire the rhetoricians had become ecclesiastics, and the Church had adopted pagan literature with allegorical interpretation.

This tradition dominated the middle ages; Lady Theology reigned over the kingdom of the seven liberal arts, and to make Homer and Virgil theological it was necessary that they be interpreted allegorically. As Vossler has shown, theology and philosophy furnished, during the middle ages, the subject matter of poetry; they were the _utile_ of Horace. The _dulce_ became for them too exclusively the pleasing garment of style and story.[323]

Throughout the middle ages, however, many continued to look askance at poetry, and were skeptical as to its value. To Boethius, weeping in prison, came Philosophy to console him. She found him surrounded by the friends of his youth, the Muses, who now were inspiring him to write dreary verses of complaint. But these poetical Muses Philosophy sent packing. "Who has allowed," said she, "these common strumpets of the theatre to come near this sick man? Not only do they fail to a.s.suage his sorrows, but they feed and nourish them with sweet venom. They are not fruitful nor profitable. They destroy the fruits of reason, for they hold the hearts of men."[324] Here Philosophy is voicing the objections of Plato. The arts are attacked because they are not successfully utilitarian, and because they appeal to the emotions instead of to the reason. In a later book Boethius gives a clearer key to the objection. He postulates four mental faculties: sensation possessed by oysters, imagination possessed by higher animals, reason possessed by man, intelligence possessed by G.o.d. Consequently man should aspire towards G.o.d instead of indulging his faculties of sensation and imagination, which he shares with the lower animals.[325]

But such objections as those of Boethius were usually explained away by allegory. When Isidore of Seville (633 or 636), for instance, was compiling his book of universal knowledge, the _Etymologiae_, he incorporated his section on the poets in the chapter ent.i.tled _Concerning the Church and the Sects_. So between a section devoted to the _Philosophers of the Gentiles_ and a section ent.i.tled _Concerning Sibyls_ he wrote concerning the poets as follows:

Sometimes, however, the poets were called theologians, because they used to compose songs concerning the G.o.ds. In doing this, however, it is the office of the poets to render what has actually been done in a different guise with a certain beauty of covert figures.[326]

The poet, to Isidore, was the inspired bard who sings of the G.o.ds and the eternal verities, not directly, but under the veil of a beautiful allegory. Among these allegorical or indirect means of expression used by the poet to veil truth are fables.

The poets invent fables sometimes to give pleasure; sometimes they are interpreted to explain the nature of things, sometimes to throw light on the manners of men.[327]