The result will always be the same whenever the poets are considered theologians and moral teachers. They will be condemned or allegorized. Fortunate are the poets when they are not believed. "How much better," exclaims St. Augustine, "are these fables of the poets" than the false religious notions of the Manichees. "But Medea flying, although I chanted sometimes, yet I maintained not the truth of; and though I heard it sung, I believed it not: but these phantasies I thoroughly believed."[[307]] For it is only when one believes devoutly that Zeus procured access to Danae in a shower of gold, that his action gives a divine sanction to such traffic in beauty on the agora or in the forum.[[308]] It is only when the poets make no pretense of recounting facts that they can escape the clutches of the philosophers. It was to save the poets from such attacks that Aristotle asserts that poetry deals with the universal, not with the particular.[[309]] Or, as Spingarn explains his meaning, "Poetry has little regard for the actuality of specific event, but aims at the reality of an eternal probability."[[310]]
4. The Influence of Rhetoric
Thus the general consensus of classical opinion agreed that poetry has inescapable moral effects on those who listen or read. The moralists, especially the Stoics, when confronted with traditional poetry whose literal significance was immoral, leaned toward allegorical interpretations which brought out a kernel of truth. The greater number, however, of Greeks and Romans in the classical period believed that poetry exerted the most potent influence for good when it enunciated crisp moral maxims and afforded examples of heroic conduct which young people could be induced to follow.
In all these respects the classical view of poetic has much in common with classical rhetoric. Allegory has been shown to have had a long history as an extended metaphor--a rhetorical figure. Maxims are considered fully by Aristotle as aids to persuasion in rhetoric.[[311]] The exemplum is obviously a stock means of rhetoric.
"Examples," says Aristotle, "are of two kinds, one consisting in the allegation of historical facts, and the other in the invention of facts for oneself. Invention comprises illustration on the one hand and ... fables on the other." Then he tells how Aesop defended a demagogue by the fable of the fox caught in the cleft of a rock. The fox was infested with dog-ticks which sucked his blood. A benevolent hedge-hog offered to remove the ticks, but the fox declined the kind offer on the ground that his ticks were already full of blood and had ceased to annoy him much, whereas if they were removed, a new colony of ticks would establish themselves and thus entirely drain him of blood. "Yes, and in your case, men of Samos," said Aesop, "my client will not do much further mischief--he has already made his fortune--but, if you put him to death, there will come others who are poor and who will consume all the revenues of the state by their embezzlements."[[312]] "Fables," continues the shrewd master of those who know, "have this advantage that, while historical parallels are hard to find, it is comparatively easy to find fables." Quintilian, like Aristotle, believes in the persuasive efficacy of examples. But Quintilian has less faith in the probative value of fictitious examples than he has in those drawn from authentic history. He thinks that fables are most effective with a rustic and ingenuous audience, which "captivated by their pleasure in the story, give assent to that which pleases them."[[313]] Thus Menenius Agrippa reconciled the people to the senators by telling them the fable of the revolt of the members against the belly. And Thomas Wilson, in his Arte of Rhetorique, repeats the story, in his section on examples, and ascribes to Themistocles the fox story which Aristotle tells of Aesop.[[314]]
But Aristotle, Quintilian, and Wilson are talking about rhetoric. Very justly they believe that if one wants to persuade an audience to a course of action, he must interest his audience sufficiently to hold their attention. As Wilson sagely remarks, "For except men finde delite, they will not long abide: delite them and winne them."[[315]] Cicero expressed in memorable phrase the relationship between proof and pleasure as instruments to persuasion and added a third element. He classified the aims of an orator as "to teach, to please, to move" (docere, delectare, movere). The teaching is the appeal to the intellect of the hearer by means of proof. The pleasure is afforded by a euphonious style, and by fables and stories. The audience is moved to action by the appeal to their feelings.[[316]]
Not until the renaissance did writers on the theory of poetry carry over Cicero's threefold aim of the orator and make it apply to the poet.[[317]] But already in post-classical times rhetoric had, as Seneca the father clearly shows, vitiated the Latin poetry of the Silver Age. Under the Empire the declamation schools in Rome had a profound influence on literature.[[318]] It could not be otherwise in a society where the school of rhetoric was the only temple of higher education, for which the grammaticus, or elementary professor of literature, was constrained to prepare his students. Rhetoric was the organon of Roman education, and declamation was the aim of rhetoric. It was such an educational system which prepared Ovid and Lucan for their careers as poets and men of letters. Seneca the father records the brilliant declamations of Ovid as a schoolboy, quoting at some length his plea for a wife who threw herself over a cliff on hearing of the death of her husband, and calling attention to several passages in Ovid's poems where the poet has borrowed the clever sayings of his professors in the school of rhetoric.[[319]] Ovid makes his characters prove that they are moved by passion instead of being passionate in word and deed. He vitiates his emotions with his wit. This is characteristic of almost all the poets who attended the declamation schools. They talk about situations and characters instead of realizing them. They write as if they were speaking to an audience. One can almost see the gestures, the wait for applause after the enunciation of a noble platitude. Not only historically, but also in the worst modern sense this is rhetoric. It is not unreasonable to conclude that such a preoccupation with rhetoric, such a sustained search for all possible means of persuasion, should have strengthened rather than weakened the utilitarian theory of poetry. The school-master endeavored to mould the characters of his students by examples from heroic poetry; the teacher of rhetoric, in turn, taught them that to persuade an audience they must prove, please, and move, and that ficticious examples were about as persuasive as historical parallels and much easier to find. When the student left school he continued to seek means of persuasion in canvassing votes, pleading in the courts, or deliberating in the senate. If he became a poet, he did not forget the lessons of his youth; or if he became a teacher of literature or a professor of rhetoric, he perpetuated the tradition.
Chapter II
Mediaeval Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry
With the breaking up of the Empire the stream of classical culture was restricted to a narrow channel--the Church. Opposed as it was to pagan morals and theology, the church could honestly retain classical literature only if it were allegorized. This explains the allegorical nature of mediaeval poetry and of poetical theory.
From the beginning the learning of the Church was of pagan origin. St. Augustine was a professor of rhetoric and the author of a treatise on aesthetics before he wrote the City of God, and his Confessions. In fact, he never quite got over being a professor of rhetoric. Clement of Alexandria was a product of the same rhetoric schools and an excellent teacher of his subject before he recognized the divine origin of Christianity. St. Basil was a college friend of Gregory Nazianzen and of Julian, later emperor and apostate, when the three studied rhetoric at Athens. Indeed, the most cunningly cruel decree which Julian later promulgated against the Christians forbade them the use of the ancient pagan literature of Greece and Rome. This decree Basil bitterly resented. "I forgo all the rest," he says, "riches, birth, honor, authority, and all the goods here below of which the charm vanishes like a dream; but I cling to oratory nor do I regret the toil, nor the journeys by land and sea, which I have undertaken to master it."[[320]]