From this brief summary, derived for the most part from the exhaustive studies of Vossler and Spingarn, one may recognize some of the rhetorical elements in the theories of poetry current in the Italian renaissance. The Aristotelian studies of the Italian scholars very largely accomplished the overthrow of the mediaeval theories of poetry and the re-establishment of the sounder critical theories of classical antiquity. Their service to subsequent criticism has been so great and their critical thinking on the whole so sound that it may seem ungracious to call attention to a few cases where they were unable to shake themselves entirely free from the mediaeval tradition of classical rhetoric.
Chapter VIII
Theories of Poetry in the English Renaissance
1. The Rhetorical Period of English Criticism
Spingarn has carefully traced the introduction of the theories of poetry formulated by the Italian critics into England at the end of the sixteenth century. It is the purpose of this study not to go over the ground which Spingarn has so admirably covered, but to point out in English renaissance theories of poetry those elements which derive from the mediaeval tradition and from the classical rhetorics, and to trace the gradual displacements of these elements by the sounder classical tradition which reached England from Italy.
"The first stage of English Criticism," say Spingarn, "was entirely given up to rhetorical study."[[193]] In his period he includes Cox and Wilson, the rhetoricians, and Ascham, the scholar. Of the second period, which he characterizes as one of classification and metrical studies, he says, "A long period of rhetorical and metrical study had helped to formulate a rhetorical and technical conception of the poet's function."[[194]] These two periods have so much in common that they may readily be considered together.
Throughout this period in England there was no abstract theorizing on the art of poetry. The rhetorics of Cox (1524) and Wilson (1553) were rhetorics and made no pretence of treating poetry. This is significant of a direct contact with classical rhetoric. Because Cox founded his treatise on the sound scholarship of Melanchthon, and Wilson wrote with the text of his Cicero and his Quintilian open before him, neither was so completely under the mediaeval influence as were most of the subsequent writers on rhetoric in England.
Another scholar in classical rhetoric was Roger Ascham, whose Scholemaster (1570) contains the first reference in England to Aristotle's Poetics. But except as a teacher of language and of literature Ascham does not treat of poetry. Following Quintilian, he classifies literature into genres of poetry, history, philosophy, and oratory, each with its appropriate subdivisions. Both Ascham and Quintilian are interested in literature as professors who must organize a field for presentation to students; and as is frequently the case, the result is apt to become arid, schematic, and lifeless. In his criticism of individual poems, also, Ascham praises the authors less for creative power than for adherence to certain formal tests. Watson's Absolon and Buchanan's Iephthe he considers the best tragedies of his age because only they can "abide the trew touch" of Aristotle's precepts and Euripides's example. They were good because they were according to rule, and in imitation of good models.[[195]] Watson he especially praises for his refusal to publish Absolon because in several places an anapest was substituted for an iambus. Thus far we have the influence of classical rhetoric urging as an ideal for poetry formal correctness.
The rhetoric of Gascoigne, however, was not derived from the classical treatises, but from the middle ages. His Certayne Notes of Instruction (1575) marks the beginning of the period of metrical studies. Now in the English middle ages, prosody had consistently been treated as a part of grammar, following the classical tradition; but in France prosody had regularly been discussed in treatises bearing the name of rhetoric. As Spingarn has shown, this tradition of the French middle ages persisted in the works of Du Bellay and Ronsard, whose works in turn inspired Gascoigne.[[196]]
Following Ronsard, Gascoigne devotes a great deal of attention to what, borrowing the terminology of rhetoric, he calls "invention." But whereas Ronsard had meant by invention high, grand, and beautiful conceptions, Gascoigne means "some good and fine devise, shewing the quicke capacitie of a writer." That Gascoigne takes invention to mean a search for fancies is illustrated by his own example.
If I should undertake to wryte in prayse of a gentlewoman, I would neither praise her christal eye, nor her cherrie lippe, etc. For these things are trita et obvia. But I would either find some supernaturall cause whereby my penne might walke in the superlative degree, or els I would undertake to answer for any imperfection that shee hath, and thereupon rayse the prayse of hir commendacion.[[197]]