NATIONAL LITERATURE OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY
[Sidenote: Latin and the Vernaculars]
Latin had been the learned language of the middle ages: it was used in the Church, in the universities, and in polite society. If a lecturer taught a class or an author wrote a book, Latin was usually employed. In those very middle ages, however, the nations of western Europe were developing spoken languages quite at variance with the classical, scholarly tongue. These so-called vernacular languages were not often written and remained a long time the exclusive means of expression of the lower classes—they consequently not only differed from each other but tended in each case to fall into a number of petty local dialects. So long as they were not largely written, they could achieve no fixity, and it was not until after the invention of printing that the national languages produced extensive national literatures.
Just when printing was invented, the humanists—the foremost scholars of Europe—were diligently engaged in strengthening the position of Latin by encouraging the study of the pagan classics. Virgil, Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus, and the comedies of Plautus and Terence were again read by educated people for their substance and for their style. Petrarch imitated the manner of Latin classics in his letters; Erasmus wrote his great works in Latin. The revival of Greek, which was also due to the humanists, added to the learning and to the literature of the cultured folk, but Greek, even more than Latin, was hardly understood or appreciated by the bulk of the people.
Then came the sixteenth century, with its artistic developments, its national rivalries, its far-away discoveries, its theological debates, and its social and religious unrest. The common people, especially the commercial middle class, clamored to understand: and the result was the appearance of national literatures on a large scale. Alongside of Latin, which was henceforth restricted to the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church and to particularly learned treatises, there now emerged truly literary works in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese, German, English, etc. The printing of these works at once stereotyped their respective languages, so that since the sixteenth century the written forms of the vernacular tongues have been subject to relatively minor change. Speaking generally, the sixteenth century witnessed the fixing of our best known modern languages.
To review all the leading writers who employed the various vernaculars in the sixteenth century would encroach too much upon the province of professed histories of comparative literature, but a few references to certain figures that tower head and shoulders above all others in their respective countries may serve to call vividly to mind the importance of the period for national literatures.
[Sidenote: Italian Literature]
At the very outset, one important exception must be made in favor of Italy, whose poetry and prose had already been immortalized by Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio a hundred years and more before the opening of the sixteenth century. But that country, as we have already repeatedly observed in many kinds of art, anticipated all others in modern times. Italy, almost the last European land to be politically unified, was the first to develop a great national literature.
But Italian literature was broadened and popularized by several influential writers in the sixteenth century, among whom stand preeminent the Florentine diplomat Machiavelli (1469-1527), whose Prince really founded the modern science of politics, and who taught the dangerous doctrine that a ruler, bent on exercising a benevolent despotism, is justified in employing any means to achieve his purpose; Ariosto (1474-1533), whose great poem Orlando Furioso displayed a powerful imagination no less than a rare and cultivated taste; and the unhappy mad Tasso (1544-1595), who in Jerusalem Delivered produced a bulky epic poem, adapting the manner of Virgil to a crusading subject, and in Aminta gave to his countrymen a delightful pastoral drama, the exquisite lyrics of which were long sung in opera.
[Sidenote: French literature]
French literature, like other French art, was encouraged by Francis I. He set up printing presses, established the College of France, and pensioned native writers. The most famous French author of the time was the sarcastic and clever Rabelais (c. 1490-1553), whose memorable Gargantua comprised a series of daring fanciful tales, told with humor of a rather vulgar sort. The language of Gargantua is somewhat archaic—perhaps the French version of Calvin's Institutes would be a better example of the French of the sixteenth century. But France, thus seriously beginning her national literature, was to wait for its supremacy until the seventeenth century—until the institution of the French Academy and the age of Louis XIV.
[Sidenote: Spanish Literature]
Spanish literature flourished in the golden era when Velasquez and Murillo were painting their masterpieces. The immortal Don Quixote, which was published in 1604, entitles its author, Cervantes (1547-1616), to rank with the greatest writers of all time. Lope de Vega (1562-1635), far-famed poet, virtually founded the Spanish theater and is said to have composed eighteen hundred dramatic pieces. Calderon (1600-1681), although less effective in his numerous dramas, wrote allegorical poems of unequaled merit. The printing of large cheap editions of many of these works made Spanish literature immediately popular.
[Sidenote: Portuguese Literature]
How closely the new vernacular literatures reflected significant elements in the national life is particularly observable in the case of Portugal. It was of the wonderful exploring voyages of Vasco da Gama that Camoens (1524-1580), prince of Portuguese poets, sang his stirring Lusiads.
[Sidenote: German Literature]
In the Germanies, the extraordinary influence of humanism at first militated against the development of literature in the vernacular, but the Protestant reformer, Martin Luther, in his desire to reach the ears of the common people, turned from Latin to German. Luther's translation of the Bible constitutes the greatest monument in the rise of modern German.
To speak of what our own English language and literature owe to the sixteenth century seems superfluous. The popular writings of Chaucer in the fourteenth century were historically important, but the presence of very many archaic words makes them now difficult to read. But in England, from the appearance in 1551 of the English version of Sir Thomas More's Utopia, [Footnote: Originally published in Latin in 1516.] a representation of an ideal state, to the publication of Milton's grandiose epic, Paradise Lost, in 1667, there was a continuity of great literature. There were Cranmer's Book of Common Prayer and the King James Version of the Bible; Edmund Spenser's graceful Faerie Queene; [Footnote: For its scenery and mechanism, the Orlando Furioso of Ariosto furnished the framework; and it similarly shows the influence of Tasso.] the supreme Shakespeare; Ben Jonson and Marlowe; Francis Bacon and Richard Hooker; Thomas Hobbes and Jeremy Taylor; and the somber Milton himself.