Renaissance literary theory and practice

by Charles Sears Baldwin

But the commonest sign of the times is the unabated vogue of Horace’s “Ars poetica”. It is gospel as much to the Renaissance as it had been to the Middle Age. The cynical explanation would be its very shallowness and conventionality; but probably the deeper reason is that Renaissance thinking on poetic, as Horace’s, was essentially rhetorical. Here, at any rate, is the main significance of these poetics. Various as they may be otherwise, they have this in common. Tasso stands out as an exception, in theory as in practice, by his clear view of poetic as a distinct art of composition; and he is supported by Castelvetro’s penetrative interpretation of the Poetic of Aristotle. But Vauquelin has not heard them; and even Sidney, though he sees the distinction, still falls back on rhetoric. Even to the end of the sixteenth century, Renaissance poetic was largely rhetoric.[68]

Chapter VIII
PROSE NARRATIVE

1. TALES

Nothing is more characteristic of the Renaissance than the abundance of tales. Printed in large collections, they evidently answered a steady demand; and they furnished many plots for the Elizabethan stage. Often significant of Renaissance taste in stories, they are generally less interesting in narrative art.

(a) Bandello

Bandello dedicates each of his 224 novelle to some friend in a prefatory letter which usually represents it as actually told in his hearing by a person whom he names (Le quattro parti de le novelle del Bandello riprodotte sulle antiche stampe di Lucca [1554] e di Lione [1573] a cura di Gustavo Balsamo-Crivelli, Turin, 1910). The stories are further documented by proper names; or Bandello tells us that he has substituted fictitious ones to shield well-known families. Novella 16, for instance, of Part I “happened last winter in this city of Mantua.” Though this and many others are conventional fabliaux or stock friar tales, they are all alike told for their news value, as striking or exciting. Bandello seems more intent on finding good stories than on making stories good. Hence he is more significant of the appetite and taste of his time than as a story-teller.

The Elizabethans, who often hunted in his collection, often through French or English translations, created from some of his persons characters as convincing as Juliet and the Duchess of Malfi; but characterization rarely detains Bandello himself. Since he may be content with a mere clever retort or a dirty trick, many of his tales are brief, and many of these are mere anecdote. Even so the obligatory introduction summarizing the situation may occupy a fourth, or even a third; and the rehearsal of the facts may suffice without the salience that would give them narrative interpretation.

Novella 9 of Part I in ten pages exhibits a husband so jealous as to violate the confessional and thereupon murder his wife. First displaying the luxury of Milan, the scene of the story, and even pausing to comment on the Milanese dialect, it proceeds to slow exposition of the situation, with dialogue of minor persons not active in the story, and with lingering over minor details. The only scene developed before our eyes is the violated confession. Thus bungled, the ugly story becomes more tedious than tragic.