On its creative side the renaissance sought to produce in the vernacular a literature comparable to that of Greece or Rome. Thus literary criticism was prescriptive, and the typical treatises were text-books. Rhetoric, which had long been taught, very naturally furnished the methods, the teachers, and in many cases the subject matter for this instruction in poetry. As has been shown in the preceding section of this study, the renaissance theory of poetry was rhetorical in its obsession with style, especially the figures of speech, in its abiding faith in the efficacy of rules; and in its belief that the poet, no less than the orator, is occupied with persuasion. This latter rhetorical view that the poet's office is to persuade will be studied more fully in the following section on "The Purpose of Poetry." The traditional view is that by persuading the reader to adhere to the good and shun the evil the poet achieves the proper end of poetry--moral improvement.
Part Two
The Purpose of Poetry
Chapter I
The Classical Conception of the Purpose of Poetry
1. General
To say that poetry has a moral effect on the reader is not the same as to say that moral improvement is the purpose of poetry. The following section of this historical study will be devoted to tracing the substitution of the second assertion for the first.
As has been shown,[[263]] the classical critics were in substantial agreement with Aristotle in defining rhetoric as the faculty of discovering all possible means to persuasion. Although the consensus of classical opinion agreed that poetry does have a moral effect on the reader, it never defined poetry as an art of discovering all means to moral improvement. As will be shown, such a definition of poetry was not formulated previous to the renaissance. Then by combining Aristotle's definition of tragedy from the Poetics[[264]] with his definition of rhetoric, Lombardus defined poetic as
a faculty of finding out whatsoever is accommodated to the imitation of actions, passions, customs, in rhythmical language, for the purpose of correcting the vices of men and causing them to live good and happy lives.[[265]]
The same definition, derived as Spingarn has shown from the same sources, was formulated by Varchi.[[266]]
Poetic is a faculty which shows in what modes one may imitate certain actions, passions, and customs, with rhythm, words, and harmony, together or separately, for the purpose of removing the vices of men and inciting them to virtue, in order that they may attain their true happiness and beatitude.[[267]]
I propose, after reviewing the classical conception of poetry as an educational agent, to trace briefly the rise of allegorical interpretation of poetry in post-classical times and in the middle ages; to exemplify the tendency of renaissance criticism to borrow the terminology of classical rhetoric when it asserted that the purpose of poetry is moral improvement; and finally, to study in the literary criticism of the English renaissance those moral theories of poetry which derive from the middle ages, from the classical rhetorics, and from the criticism of the Italian renaissance.