Roses of love. Ah! let us love betimes,
When loving we may still be loved again (xvi. 14-15).[39]
Scenery, handled with the usual Italian restraint, is often woven expertly into the narrative. We are made to feel Jerusalem before it is described; and the grave and restrained description of the great Mass is inseparable from the action. Tasso’s subordination of literary means to literary function dominates his style. The frequency of his classical similes is apparent only on review; it does not challenge attention, much less interrupt. His classical allusions are not extraneous decoration, much less parade. His word-play is used oftenest to mark the close of a stanza. His verse is harmonized. These are various aspects of artistic conscience. Tasso never plays the virtuoso; he is too great an artist.
The onwardness of the whole story, which is most distinctive in this achievement, could hardly be carried out in Tasso’s time with entire consistency. Though there is none of the former easy shifting from tale to tale, though tactics and strategy are made to control and subordinate the traditional single combats, there are a few interpolated tales: Sofronia and Olindo in Canto II; Sven, isolated and picturesque in Canto VIII; Clorinda’s origin in Canto XII. Canto X is less a stage than a pause to tell what was said and thought on one side and on the other. The enchantment of the wood in Canto XIII is a parenthesis in the siege. The most serious deviation is for Rinaldo and Armida. Armida has too much stage—as Dido has in the Aeneid, yes, but with less warrant. While the siege waits, Cantos XIV and XV detail the infatuation of Rinaldo and linger over the journey for his recall. Nothing of this counts for the sequence of the poem but his defection at a critical point and his return. The rest is dilated for its own picturesqueness and passion. But the flaw is conspicuous only because Tasso’s sequence is beyond any previous attempt. The Rinaldo episode could be added without disturbance, here or there, in Boiardo’s poem, Ariosto’s, or Spenser’s. Tasso has taught us to expect more.
To a degree hitherto unattained in the romances, and rarely even attempted, his persons are characterized for their function. Even Armida thus functions early (Canto V) in the whole scheme as disintegrating. She is more than a type of enchantress, more than a personification of lust. Though toward the end her despair at losing Rinaldo may be too oratorical and too much like Dido’s, her revenge breaks down for love. In other cases, too, magic and demons are more acceptable because the visible human motives and action reduce them almost to figures of speech. For instance, the magic borrowed from the Aeneid in Canto X is merely a device for having Soliman present, acting in his own fate. Personifications are rare; and even the stock hermit has more distinct function. Godfrey is much more than Arthur or Charlemagne. His largeness of view is at once intelligence and faith. A cardinal example of Tasso’s art is the creative use of the archangel St Michael. He comes as light and allies the heavenly host to the earthly. Jerusalem Delivered is not only the integration of the traditional hero stories; it is also the realization of the Renaissance dream of epic.
(b) Spenser
Spenser’s most obvious peculiarity of style is archaism. Some of the arts poétiques repeat perfunctorily the rhetorical advice to revive old words; but none of the other romancers follows it with conviction. Though archaism is historically one of the habits of sophistic oratory, with Spenser it was animated rather by the desire to revive the English poetic tradition. Failing in this through ignorance of language, he but made his diction more difficult.
The style of the Faerie Queene is of its time in decorative classical similes. In classical allusions Spenser leans more heavily on legend and mythology. Sometimes he inserts lore gratuitously. Throughout he throws together classical and medieval, Christian, and pagan.[40] Occasionally mythology is made a vehicle for contemporary politics and religion. Usually decorative, his mythology is generally incidental, not functional. Thus his angels, too, are disappointing beside Tasso’s.
Following thus generally the Renaissance habit of learned elegance, Spenser shows his own hand in concreteness. He is less often content with mere epithet. He specifies even the details of a kitchen; and he specifies habitually in abundant sensory images, even of ugliness.
Therewith she spewd out of her filthie maw