"Greek: Aristotle, Hermogenes, Sopatrus, Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Demetrius Phal,[[173]] Menander, Aristides, Apsinus, Longinus De sublimitate, Theonus, Apthonius. Latin: Cicero, Quintilian, Martianus Capella, Curio Fortunatus, Mario Victorino, Victore, Emporio, Augustino, Ruffinus, Trapezuntius, P. Ramus, L. Vives, Soarez, J. C. Scaliger, Sturm, Strebaeus, Kechermann, Alstedius, N. Caussinus, J. G. Voss, A. Valladero."
Whether Farnaby had read the works of these gentlemen through from cover to cover is another matter. He at least knew their names, and had read in Vossius, whose footnotes would refer him to all these sources as well as to others, both classical and mediaeval.
With this evidence before us it is easy to understand why the traditions of the English middle ages persisted so long in the literary criticism of the English renaissance. The theories of rhetoric and of poetry in mediaeval England had in the first place, because of remoteness and the lack of easy transportation, become farther and farther removed from such classical tradition as was preserved in the Mediterranean countries. In the second place, the recovery of classical criticism in the Italian renaissance antedated by a hundred years the domestication of classical theory in England. Not until the seventeenth century, as has been shown, did rhetoric in England come again to mean what it had in classical antiquity. Subsequent chapters will show that classical theories of poetry, as published and interpreted by the Italian critics, made almost as slow head against English mediaeval tradition.
Chapter VII
Renaissance Poetic
1. The Reestablishment of the Classical Tradition
In concluding his authoritative study, A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance, Spingarn asserts that before the sixteenth century, "Poetic theory had been nourished upon the rhetorical and oratorical treatises of Cicero, the moral treatises of Plutarch (especially those upon the reading of poets and the education of youth), the Institutions Oratoriae of Quintilian, and the De Legendis Gentilium Libris of Basil the Great."[[174]] With the turn of the century, he goes on to say, a great change was brought about by the publication of the classical critical writings, especially the Poetics of Aristotle. Then the mediaeval criteria of doctrina and eloquentia were superseded by many new ones.
The development of Aristotelian poetic in the Italian renaissance is a separate inquiry, which has been made extensively, and need not be gone into here. The results which bear upon the present inquiry may be summarized as follows:
The recovery of Aristotle's Poetics brought about a complete change in poetical theory, and stimulated in Italy a great body of critical writing and discussion, the results of which did not reach England until almost a hundred years later.
The Poetics had been known to the middle ages only through a Latin abridgment by Hermannus Allemanus. This was derived from a Hebrew translation from the Arabic of Averroes, who, in turn, knew only a Syriac translation of the Greek.[[175]] Although the Poetics was not included in the Aldine Aristotle (1495-8), the Latin abstract by Hermannus was printed with Alfarabi's commentary on the Rhetoric for the first time at Venice (1481). Valla published a Latin translation in 1498. The Greek text was first published in the Aldine Rhetores Graeci (1508)[[176]] badly edited by Ducas. A Latin translation made by Pazzi in 1536 appears in the Basel edition of Aristotle's Opera (1538) with Filelfo's version of the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, falsely attributed to Aristotle, and George of Trebizond's (Trapezuntius) translation of the Rhetoric. Robortelli edited it in 1548. Segni translated it in 1549. It was edited again by Maggi in 1550, by Vettori in 1560, by Castelvetro in 1570, and by Piccolomini in 1575. It had inspired the De Poeta (1559) of Minturno and the Poetics (1561) of Scaliger. But in England its critical theories were ignored before Ascham, who cites them in the Scholemaster (1570), and never elucidated before Sidney's Defense of Poesie (c. 1583, pub. 1595).
But with all the changes which were worked in the literary criticism of the renaissance by the recovery of Aristotle's Poetics, renaissance theories of poetry were nevertheless tinged with rhetoric. Vossler has summarized renaissance theories of the nature of poetry as passing through three stages: of theology, of oratory, and finally of rhetoric and philology.[[177]] While the influence of Aristotle is most clearly seen in the new emphasis on plot construction and characterization, the importance the renaissance attached to style is in no small measure a survival of the mediaeval tradition of classical rhetoric. Moreover, as Spingarn has pointed out, there was a tendency in the renaissance for the classical theories of poetry to be accepted as rules which must be followed by those who would compose poetry. If a poet followed these rules and modeled his poem on great poems of classical antiquity, some critics suggested, he could not go far wrong. Thus one should follow the precepts of Aristotle for theory, and imitate Virgil for epic and Seneca for tragedy. The rhetorical character of these poetical models is significant. Both are stylists, of a distinct literary flavor. Both recommended themselves to the renaissance because they too were imitators of earlier literary models.