Renaissance literary theory and practice

by Charles Sears Baldwin

INTRODUCTION

When he died in 1936 Charles Sears Baldwin, Professor of Rhetoric and English Composition at Columbia University, left the unpublished manuscript which here appears in print. At the request of his family, I undertook to prepare the manuscript for publication and see it through the press. As a devoted student, colleague, and friend I have been happy to do so.

Baldwin’s Renaissance Literary Theory and Practice takes its place as the continuation of his previously published studies: Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic (1924) and Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic (1928), both published by the Macmillan Company. It takes up the story where Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic left off in 1400 and carries it on to 1600.

The first sentences of his preface to the first study suggest that Baldwin had the present study in mind before 1924. “To interpret ancient rhetoric and poetic afresh from typical theory and practice is the first step toward interpreting those traditions of criticism which were most influential in the Middle Age. Medieval rhetoric and poetic, in turn, prepare for a clearer comprehension of the Renaissance renewal of allegiance to antiquity.”

Like the two earlier studies, it is firmly based on the Aristotelian philosophy of composition embodied in the Rhetoric and the Poetic. Baldwin adheres to the sound rhetoric which aims at enhancing the subject and repudiates the sophistic rhetoric which aims at enhancing the speaker. Rhetoric and poetic are different in aim and different in their modes of composition. Consequently he considers poetic deviated when it becomes confused with rhetoric and perverted when controlled by sophistic.

Had he lived, Baldwin would have written more than here appears. He had planned a chapter on Renaissance education which would have demonstrated more fully the channels through which poetical theory reached poetical practice. In the chapter “Sixteenth Century Poetics” he had planned sections on Castelvetro and Sibillet which were never written. Other writers on literary theory he deliberately omitted as less typical, less significant, or less influential than the writers he discusses. His method was to go directly to the original sources, both for theory and for practice, to make his own translations, and to ignore secondary sources, which he rarely cites.

Although Chapters IV, V, VI, and VIII deal with literary forms: lyric, pastoral, romance, drama, tales, history, and essay, Baldwin was not attempting a history of Italian, French, and English literature in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. To have written such a history would have involved a completeness he never intended. He was assaying samples of literature for literary values. Especially was he tracing the influences of sound literary theory on sound literary practice, and the disastrous results in literature of the misapplication of rhetorical theory to poetic and the composition of story and drama. As literary critic and teacher of composition, he saw no good reason why modern literature, in theory or in practice, should make the same mistakes that were made in ancient times, the Middle Age, and the Renaissance. He believed that modern literature, modern criticism, and modern teaching should learn from the mistakes of others as well as from their own.

Before Baldwin’s death I had read the manuscript in two states as I had the two earlier works. Further, the manuscript was read and criticized by Dr. Caroline Ruutz-Rees of Rosemary Hall and Professor William G. Crane of The College of the City of New York. To these friends, and to the others whose aid I have been unable to discover, the author’s and the editor’s gratitude is due. Professor Marshall Whithed Baldwin, son of Charles Sears Baldwin, read both the galley and the page proofs. My colleagues, Professors Harry Morgan Ayres and Nelson Glenn McCrea, advised on the proofs and other details. I join with the Baldwin estate in gratitude to the generous assistance of the officers and editorial staff of the Columbia University Press.

Donald Lemen Clark

Columbia University
September, 1939