In his study of the function of poetry in the literary criticism of the Italian renaissance, Spingarn has shown[[339]] that the characteristic opinions reflect the ideas of Horace in his famous line,
Aut prodesse volunt aut delectare poetae.
The purpose of poetry, they thought, was to please, to instruct, or to combine pleasure and instruction. He goes further to show that with the notable exceptions of Bernardo Tasso and Castelvetro, who claimed no further function for poetry than delight and delight alone, the general conception was ethical. "Even when delight was admitted as an end, it was simply because of its usefulness in effecting the ethical aim.[[340]]" This chapter, resuming briefly the results of Spingarn's investigations where they help the reader to understand better the situation in English criticism, will bring into sharper relief than has heretofore been done two influences which affected the renaissance view not a little--scholastic philosophy and the classical rhetorics.
To St. Thomas Aquinas, logic was the art of arts, because in action we are directed by reason. Thus all arts proceed from it, and rhetoric is a part of it.[[341]] The Thomistic philosophy which included rhetoric and poetic in logic, whereas Aristotle had classified the three arts as coördinate within the same category, seems, says Spingarn, "to have been accepted by the scholastic philosophers of the middle ages."[[342]] The appearance of this scholastic grouping in the renaissance criticism is parallel with a gradual abandonment of the popular mediaeval preoccupation with allegory, in favor of the classical view which considered example as the best vehicle for moral improvement.
In the age of the Medicis, when refined courts of Italy were so greatly delighted at the recovery of the least edifying literary monuments of classical antiquity, allegorical interpretation had probably so often become but a cloak for licentiousness in poetry that it was becoming discredited. At any rate, Loyola rejected allegorical interpretation of classical literature for the Jesuit colleges. He based moral education on example, and expurgated any element which he thought might have a pernicious effect on young people. For instance, except in the most advanced class, the Dido episode was deleted from the Æneid.[[343]]
Savonarola rejected allegory and considered logic, rhetoric, and poetic as parts of philosophy. Logic proceeds by induction and syllogism, rhetoric by the enthymeme, and poetic by the example. Therefore the office of the poet is to teach by examples, to induce men to virtuous living by fitting representations. Because our minds delight greatly in song and harmony, the early poets used meter and rhythm better to incline the soul of man to virtue and morality. It is impossible, however, for a person ignorant of logic to be a true poet. A mere concern with rhythm and the composition of sentences profits nothing, for what is the use of painting and decorating a ship if it is going to be swamped in the storm and never come to port? The poets who endeavor to place their poems on a par with the Scriptures overlook the fact that only the sacred writings can have an allegorical, parabolical or spiritual meaning. Since Dante had made all these claims, the inference is that Savonarola declined to accept poetry as part of theology, and rejected both Dante and the popular mediaeval tradition. Poets, he goes on to say, use metaphors because of the weakness of their material. If you took away the verbal ornament, you would not read the poets, because there would be nothing left. The theologian uses metaphor only as an adornment to his solid matter. The poet who sings of love, praises idols, and narrates lies has a very bad effect on young men. He incites to lust and immorality. But poets who describe in verses moral actions and the deeds of brave men should not on that account be condemned.[[344]]
1. The Scholastic Grouping of Poetic, Rhetoric and Logic
The scholastic grouping of logic, rhetoric, and poetic which Savonarola derived from St. Thomas Aquinas[[345]] persisted for four centuries, rejuvenated by contact with the richer classical scholarship of the renaissance. B. Lombardus, for instance, in his preface to Maggi's edition of Aristotle's Poetics (1550), differentiates logic, rhetoric, and poetic by the same criteria. Logic, he says, proves by syllogism, and in this is different from both rhetoric and poetic, which use enthymeme and example as more appropriate to a popular audience, while poetic uses example almost entirely and scarcely ever enthymeme.[[346]]
Spingarn calls attention to a similar distinction in the Lezione (1553) of Benedetto Varchi. Varchi says:
Just as the logician uses for his means the noblest of all instruments, that is, demonstration or the demonstrative syllogism; so the dialectician, the topical syllogism; and the sophist, the sophistical, that is, the apparent and deceitful; the rhetorician, the enthymeme, and the poet, the example, which is the least worthy of all. So the subject of poetry is the feigned fable and the fabulous, and its means or instrument is the example.[[347]]