The opposing view derived ultimately from the classical rhetorics, and entered England through the criticism of the Italian scholars--particularly Minturno and Scaliger. Starting from the saying of Horace that poets aim to please or profit, or please and profit together, these critics borrowed from rhetoric Cicero's three-fold aim of the orator: to teach, to please, to move, and applied these three aims to the poet. Accordingly, to them the poet has the same aim as the orator--persuasion. He pleases not for the sake of giving pleasure, but for the sake of winning his readers so that he may better attain his real object of teaching morality and moving men to action in its practice. The emphasis on the example as the means of attaining this end was further derived from scholastic philosophy which, as has been shown, classed logic, rhetoric, and poetic together as instruments for attaining truth and improving the morality of the state. Furthermore, according to this scholastic view, the three arts differed only as they utilized different means to attain this end. Logic used the demonstrative syllogism and the scientific induction, rhetoric used the enthymeme or rhetorical syllogism and the example or popular induction, poetic used the example alone. According to the renaissance developments of this last view, allegory was emphasized less and less as the example was felt to be more appropriate. Thus Sidney and Jonson, the outstanding classicists in English renaissance criticism, exhibit to the highest degree the influence of the most rhetorical of Italian renaissance critics. They alone in England assert that the purpose of poetry is to move men to virtuous action.
Thus a study of rhetorical terminology in English renaissance theories of poetry throws into sharp relief the fact that all criticism of the fine art of literature in England in the 16th century and the first half of the 17th century was profoundly influenced by rhetoric. This influence was two-fold. On the one hand the less scholarly critics perpetuated the popular traditions of rhetoric which they inherited from the middle ages. These traditions of allegory and the ornate style were, as has been shown, in turn derived from post-classical rhetoric. On the other hand the more scholarly critics applied to poetry the canons of classical rhetoric which they derived in part from the classics themselves and in part from the critics of the Italian renaissance.
In one sense this has been a study of critical perversions. Although many of the critics of the English renaissance are remarkable for their wisdom and discerning judgments, their writings are far less valuable than those of Longinus and Aristotle. But Aristotle and Longinus did not allow their theories of poetry to be contaminated by rhetoric. The best modern critics have studied and understood the classical treatises on poetic and have consequently avoided the confusion between rhetoric and poetic into which many renaissance critics fell. Others have not been so fortunate. For these the object-lesson of renaissance failure should serve as a warning.
Index
Abelard
Aeschylus
Aesop
Agathon
Agricola, Rudolph
Alanus de Insulis
Alciati
Alcidamas
Albucius
Aldus
Alfarabi
Alstedius
Anaxagoras
Annaeus Florus
Appian
Apsinus
Apthonius
Apuleius
Aristenetus
Aristophanes
Aristotle
Aristides
Ascham
Athenagoras
Augustine
Averroes
Bacon, Francis
Barclay, John
Barton, John
Basil the Great
Bede
Bokenham
Boccaccio
Bolton, Edmund
Bornecque, Henri
Boethius
Brunetto Latini
Butcher, S.H.
Buchanan, George
Budé
Butler, Charles
Can Grande
Campano, G.
Campion, Thomas
Casaubon
Cassiodorus
Castelvetro
Castiglione
Cato
Caussinus, N.
Chapman, G.
Chaucer
Chemnicensis, Georgius
Cicero
Clement of Alexandria
Cox, Leonard
Croce, B.
Croll, Morris
Curio Fortunatus
Daniel, Samuel
Daniello
Dante
Darwin, Charles
Demetrius
Demosthenes
de Worde, Wynkyn
Dio Chrysostom
Dionysius of Halicarnassus
Dolce
Drant, Thomas
Drummond of Hawthornden
DuBellay
Ducas
DuCygne, M.
Dunbar, William
Earle, John
Eastman, Max
Empedocles
Emporio
Erasmus
Eratosthenes
Estienne, Henri
Etienne de Rouen
Euripides