Renaissance literary theory and practice

by Charles Sears Baldwin

This bewildering cross-division might serve as the reductio ad absurdum of the system of bringing on eloquence by topics if Camillo had not gone even further in a grandiose symbolistic scheme entitled L’idea del theatro (Florence, 1550). The theater here is not any actual stage; it is the manifold pageant of the world presented allegorically by topics for all literary purposes.

Starting from the medieval, or perhaps the neo-Platonic, premise that sacred things are not revealed, but figured, he divides his book into seven gradi. Seven is the perfect number; e.g., seven planets, Isaiah’s seven columns, Vergil’s terque quaterque, etc. Each grado is named after a planet, whose attributes are a mixture of astrology and mythology, as in the Middle Age, but again with a suggestion of orientalized Platonism. This general scheme constitutes the first section. The second is entitled Il convivio; the third, l’Antro; etc. A figure may appear in more than one grado.

Referring to this book in his treatise on imitation, he says: “By topics and images I have arranged all the headings that may suffice to group and to subserve all human conceptions.” In the same treatise he even thinks of painting and sculpture as proceeding by topics: genus, sex, age, function, anatomy, light and shadow, attitude and action, adaptation to place. Topics can no farther go. Camillo’s system, moreover, hardly touches composition; all its manifold application is to style. Thus the more readily he accepts the common Renaissance confusion of poetic with rhetoric.

Another Ciceronian treatise on imitation is Bartolomeo Ricci’s (Bartholomaei Riccii de imitatione libri tres ad Alfonsum Atestium Principem, suum in literis alumnum, Herculis II Ferrariensium Principis filium ... Venice, 1545). Written ostensibly for the guidance of his pupil Alfonso, it is a discussion, not a textbook; but in the back of the author’s mind is the prevalent conception of writing Latin as writing themes. The examples quote prose and poetry side by side without distinction of poetic from rhetoric. The usual complimentary references to contemporaries and to recognized previous humanists give the schoolmaster opportunity to exhibit his wide acquaintance. Poliziano is cited as challenging imitation; but his arguments are not given, nor the fact that his challenge was of Ciceronianism. Instead of citing his letter to Cortesi, Ricci merely praises Cortesi’s reply as elegant. The Ciceronianus of Erasmus is similarly dismissed as an attack on Longueil. The progress of the book is generally from definition of imitation (I) through application of it in composition (II) to application in style (III). Ciceronianism, implied throughout, first in classicism, then by increasing use of Cicero as a model, is explicitly declared in III and supported by a long defense of Longueil.

I. Imitation, practiced in all human activities, is accepted in literature. Though Catullus in the marriage of Thetis and in the desolation of Ariadne said the last word and every word, nevertheless Vergil imitated him in Dido; and each has his own merits. [The Catullus passages are stock citations of the period.] Cicero and Vergil both counseled and practiced imitation. Why reduce following nature to following yourself? Following nature demands no more than being natural, i.e., verisimilitude. [The quibble here between nature in the sense of human nature and nature in the sense of one’s own nature (ingenium) is unpardonable. Further, it is not clear what either has to do with imitation.] Imitate the best authors, each in his own kind. There follows a summary of Latin literature. [The book supplies no distinct definition of imitation as a means of advancing literary control. It shows, quite superfluously, that imitation is prevalent in the arts; it does not define the limits and the methods of practicing it in writing.]

II. A review of the revival of Augustan diction in a long list of humanists proves nothing specific concerning imitation, much concerning pride in humanistic Latin. Scholars, however, are not well paid. Doctors and lawyers write bad Latin. Teachers are incompetent. The vernacular has come even into the schools; and even Cicero is translated. Let us all combine to save Latin style. Imitation is not repetition, not copy; there must be variation. Imitation with Plautus and Terence was the taking of Greek plots Pharmaceutria of Theocritus. [He did not imitate it.] Vergil’s use of Cato and Varro adds beauty of style. [Is this imitation, or simply use of material?] Sallust’s Catiline is admirable; but it did not preclude Cicero’s. So, even after Lucretius, Ovid and Vergil treated the gods. [Here is mere confusion. Cicero did not imitate Sallust; he wrote on the same subject.] The exposure of Andromeda is told by Manilius, Ovid, and Pontanus; and the last did it best. Comparison of Vergil’s Dido with the Ariadne of Catullus is followed by another comparatio without enlightening us as to the nature or the method of imitation. Rehearsal of literary forms (history, exposition, pleading) leads to the assertion that Cicero is the best model in all three styles.

III. Let us take Cicero, then, for our model. Proverbs, epigrams, definitions may be lifted as familiar enough to be common property. How to make variations on the model is exemplified abundantly in sentence form and in diction by both prose and verse. The book closes with many analyzed examples from Longueil, to rebut the charge that his writing is mere cento, or pastiche, and to exhibit him as the perfect Ciceronian. Ricci appends a practical hint from his own experience. His habit is to start boys with Terence because the plots are interesting, then to add some Cicero, and finally to give them Cicero alone.

The demonstration of Longueil’s eloquence is rather an epilogue than a conclusion. It does not suffice to justify Ciceronianism, much less to explain imitation. The character of imitation, its limits, its profitable methods, are left still vague.

Of the same year is Bernardino Tomitano’s Discussions of Tuscan (Ragionamenti della lingua toscana ... Venice, 1545). The sub-title goes on: “wherein the talk is of the perfect vernacular orator and poet ... divided into three books. In the first, philosophy is proved necessary to the acquisition of rhetoric and poetic; in the second are set forth the precepts of the orator; and in the third, the laws pertaining to the poet and to good writing in both prose and verse.”

A dialogue in form, with an academy setting, this is largely a monologue by Speroni with interruptions, and is devoted mainly to “the perfect orator and poet.” The book is a stilted and diffuse digest of conventional rhetoric jumbled with poetic, with examples under each conventional heading. Petrarch is made the exemplar of everything, even of argumentation. The idea of poetic as a distinct mode of composition never even enters.