3. The Displacement of Allegory by Example
A most interesting view of the purpose of poetry was evolved in the brain of Francis Bacon--that baffling complexity of mediaeval tradition and penetrating original thought. To him the use of feigned history, as he defines poetry, "hath beene to give some shadowe of satisfaction to the minde of man in those points wherein the Nature of things doth deny it."[[415]] That is, poetry represents the world as greater, more just, and more pleasant than it really is. "So as it appeareth that Poesie serveth and conferreth to Magnanimitie, Moralitie, and to delectation." Here Bacon seems to imply that the essential pleasure of poetry is in affording vicarious experience through imaginative realization. Poetry does this by "submitting the shewes of things to the desires of the minde." It truly makes a world nearer to our heart's desire. But while Bacon derives the moral benefit of poetry from examples of conduct and outcomes of events more nearly just than those of actual life, when he analyses poetry into its kinds, he makes a place for allegory. In this division he provides for narrative, drama, and allegory. But with penetration he sees what few renaissance critics had noted before--that allegory is of two varieties. The first variety is essentially the same as a rhetorical example; it is an extended metaphor used as an argument to enforce a point and thus persuade an audience. The fables of Aesop are such allegories or examples; and they are useful because they make their point more interestingly than other arguments and more clearly. The other sort of allegory, says Bacon, instead of illuminating the idea, obscures it. "That is, when the Secrets and Misteries of Religion, Pollicy, or Philosophy, are involved in Fables or Parables." He then gives political allegorical interpretations of the myths of Briareus and of the Centaur and suddenly adds: "Nevertheless in many the like incounters, I doe rather think that the fable was first and the exposition devised than that the Morall was first and thereupon the fable framed."[[416]] Bacon's final conclusion seems to be that, although allegorical poetry does exist, allegory is not essential to poetry and that the wholesale allegorizing of the middle ages was far off the mark. In his suspicion that in most cases the fable was first and the interpretation after, Bacon was in complete agreement with Rabelais in the prologue of Gargantua.[[417]] At any rate Bacon seems to have given the coup de grace to allegory in England.
Under the influence of Pico della Mirandola it was resurrected from its tomb by Henry Reynolds; but it was a much less moral allegory and a more mystical. In his Mythomystes (licensed 1632) Reynolds admits, that the ancients mingled moral instruction in their poetry, but reprehends this as an abuse. Prose is the proper vehicle of moral doctrine and should have been employed by Spenser. The true function of poetry, then, is to give secret knowledge of the mysteries of nature to the initiated. Thus the story of the rape of Proserpine signifies, when allegorically interpreted; "the putrefaction and succeeding generation of the Seedes we commit to Pluto, or the earth."[[418]] This is the most plausible example of mystical interpretation to be found in the whole treatise.
To the allegorist, the fable or plot in epic or dramatic poetry was only a rind to cover attractively the kernel of truth. It was a means to an end, not an end in itself. As the influence of Aristotle's Poetics spreading through Italy, Germany, France, and England, gave the plot or fable more importance, allegory lost its hold on the minds of the critics. When Ben Jonson writes in his Timber "For the Fable and Fiction is, as it were, the forme and Soule of any Poeticall worke or Poeme"[[419]] the change had come. Jonson, like Sidney, was steeped in classical criticism as interpreted and spread abroad by the sixteenth-century critics of the continent. But while Sidney made a place for allegory in his scheme of poetry, Jonson does not so much as mention it. His idea of the teaching power of poetry, for to him poetry and painting both behold pleasure and profit as their common object,[[420]] is rhetorical--depending on precept and example--and attaining its true aim when it moves men to action. Poesy is "a dulcet and gentle Philosophy, which leades on and guides us by the hand to Action with a ravishing delight and incredible Sweetnes."[[421]] Jonson evidently knew that he was merging oratory and poetry in their common purpose of securing persuasion; for he says:
"The Poet is the neerest Borderer upon the Orator, and expresseth all his vertues, though he be tyed more to numbers, is his equal in ornament, and above him in his strengths: Because in moving the minds of men, and stirring of affections, in which Oratory shewes, and especially approves her eminence, hee chiefly excells."[[422]]
In his dedication to Volpone he says this power of persuasion which the poet possesses to so eminent a degree is to be applied to the moral well-being of men, "to inform men in the best reason of living."[[423]] Himself a writer for the theatre, Jonson is naturally more concerned with comedy and tragedy than he is with any narrative forms of poetry. And to him the office of the comic poet is "to imitate justice and instruct to life--or stirre up gentle affections."[[424]] In Timber he iterates the same praise of poetry as being no less effective than philosophy in instructing men to good life, and informing their manners, but as even more effective in that it persuades men to good where philosophy threatens and compels. In order to accomplish this beneficial effect on public morals, the poet must have an exact knowledge of all virtues and vices with ability to render the one loved and the other hated.[[425]] As a natural result of this conception, so similar to Cicero's demand that the orator must know all things and in line with Aristotle's Rhetoric, Jonson concludes that the poet, like Quintilian's orator, must himself be a good man; for how else will he be able "to informe yong-men to all good disciplines, inflame growne-men to all great vertues, keepe old men in their best and supreme state."[[426]]
Aside from Sidney and Jonson no English critic, however, thought through to the logical conclusion that in moral purpose rhetoric and poetic are identical. The others continued to echo Horace, or lean toward allegory, or see profit in poetry from its moral example. For instance in his preface to his second instalment of Homer entitled Achilles' Shield (1598) Chapman dwells at length on the moral value and wisdom contained in the Iliad,[[427]] and enunciates the same idea in his Prefaces of 1610-16.[[428]] Peacham, in his Compleat Gentleman (1622), repeats the usual commonplaces to the effect that poetry is a dulcet philosophy, for the most part lifted from Puttenham.[[429]] In his Argenis (1621) Barclay reminds his reader of the children who for so many centuries had shunned the cup of physic until the bitter taste had been removed by sweet syrop. Thus also, says he, is it with the moral value of poetry disguised with sweet music. "Virtues and vices I will frame, and the rewards of them shall suite to both"; for it is on the moral example of poetic justice that Barclay depends. The models of virtue will be followed.[[430]]
The Earl of Stirling, in Anacrisis (1634?) acknowledges the works of the poets to be the chief springs of learning, "both for Profit and Pleasure, showing Things as they should be, where Histories represent them as they are." Consequently he has a high opinion of the Cyropaedia of Xenophon, the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, and other such poems, as "affording many exquisite Types of Perfection for both the Sexes."[[431]] These types the reader is expected to imitate in his own conduct, guided by the moral precepts with which the poet must not neglect to decorate his work.
Within the period of this study two views were taken of the moral element in poetry. With the exception of Sidney and Jonson, who knew the theories of the Italian renaissance, the English critics believed with Horace that poetry was at once pleasant and profitable, and agreed with Plutarch that poetry, if rightly used, would be of benefit in the education of youth. But there was little tendency to follow this to the conclusion of asserting that because poetry has a moral effect on the reader, it is the purpose of poetry as an art to exert this moral effect for the good of society. Most of these critics believed that the moral effect which poetry did exert came through allegory. In this respect, as has been shown, they were carrying on the traditions of the middle ages.