Donald Lemen Clark

“ Bacon's focus of attention on the substance of poetry is in keeping with his attack on mere sophistication of style in rhetoric. Poetry as style does not interest him. Like Castelvetro and Sidney, he considers the vehicle of verse not essential to poetry, which, as a product of the imagination, he considers to be occupied with fiction. To Bacon, perhaps, the imagination seems to be too much the organ of make-believe, imaging things which never were on land or under the sea. ”

“ 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 second objection which Plato raises against poetry is that poetry is addressed to the passional element in man. The man of noble spirit and philosophy will not lament his misfortunes, especially in public, while the lower orders of intellect are likely to express all their feelings with greater freedom, and thus furnish the poet with easier subjects for imitation. Consequently poetry has the power of harming the good, for a good man will be in raptures at the excellences of the poet who stirs his feelings most by representing a hero in an emotional condition. ”

“ Movement is characteristic of poetry, as color and form are characteristic of painting and sculpture. Thus in discussing the plot of tragedy, which he holds to be the highest and most characteristic form of poetry, Aristotle urges the necessity of unity and magnitude, both of which he defines in terms not of space relations, but of movement. For instance, to possess unity a plot must have a beginning, a middle and an end. ”

“ In answering the specific charges against poetry, that it is a waste of time, the mother of lies, the nurse of abuse, and rejected by Plato, Sidney asserts that a thing which moves men to virtue so effectively as poetry cannot be a waste of time; that since poetry pretends not to literal truth, it cannot lie, [391] that poetry does not abuse man's wit, but man's wit abuses poetry, for "shall the abuse of a thing make the right use odious?" ”

“ The remains of Roman literary criticism are not so philosophical as are the Greek. The treatise of Horace is not in Aristotle's sense a poetic; it is an ars poetica. Ars, to the Roman, meant a body of rules which a practitioner would find useful as a guide in composing. As a practitioner himself, Horace is more interested in the craft of poetry than in its philosophy or theory. He writes as a poet to young men who desire to become poets. The essence of poetry he ignores or takes for granted. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nowhere does Ascham advance the claims of allegory as cloaking moral truth under the guise of fiction. He is too good a classicist and Ciceronian. What he fears from poetry is evil example. If he believed that the purpose of poetry was to teach truth by example pleasantly, at least he does not say so. Ascham represents the advance guard in England against allegory. But since he was not writing on the theory of poetry primarily, he did not endeavor to establish that the function of poetry is to teach by example. ”

“ As the critical theorists believed that the poets were inspired, they endeavored less to teach men to be poets than to point out the excellences which the poets had attained. Although these critics generally, with the exceptions of Aristotle and Eratosthenes, believed the greatest value of poetry to be in the teaching of morality, no one of them endeavored to define poetry, as they did rhetoric, by its purpose. To Aristotle, and centuries later to Plutarch, the distinguishing mark of poetry was imitation. ”

“ Satire was first invented to administer direct rebuke of evil, comedy to amend the manners of common men by discipline and example, tragedy to show the mutability of fortune and the just punishment of God in revenge of a vicious and evil life, pastoral to inform moral discipline, for the amendment of man's behavior, or to insinuate or glance at greater matters under the veil of rustic persons and rude speeches. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Longinus would seem to say that the realization of poetic is untrammeled by fact, while the imagination of the orator is bound by the actual; it is always practical.
Because the imaginative realization of poetry is characterized by passion, intensity, and immediacy, the author of the treatise feels with Aristotle that the dramatic is the most characteristically poetic. On this basis he judges the Odyssey to be less great than the Iliad. It is narrative instead of dramatic; fable prevails over action; passion has degenerated into character-drawing. ”

“ Music, for instance, uses both rhythm and harmony, dancing uses rhythm alone, and poetry uses language alone. Aristotle by this does not, as might seem, exclude rhythm and harmony from poetry. Indeed, he states explicitly that most forms of poetry do use all of the media mentioned: rhythm, tune, and meter. He is only insisting that imitation in unmetrical language is still poetry; that meter is not the characteristic element of poetic. [16] It is important to recognize that in classifying poetry with music and dancing, Aristotle is insisting that the common element in these arts is movement. ”

“ Some believe that, because some of the pleasures of poetry are pernicious, young men should not be allowed to read. This, Plutarch believes, would be every whit as foolish as to cut down the vineyards because some people are addicted to drunkenness. Young men should be taught to use poetry intelligently. "Poetry is not to be scrupulously avoided by those who intend to be philosophers, but they are to make poetry a fitting school for philosophers, by forming the habit of seeking and gaining the profitable in the pleasant." ”

“ 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. ”

“ According to Sidney, then, it is the very purpose of poetry to win men to virtue by pleasant instruction. The argument of poetry in accomplishing this end is primarily the example. Sidney compares very elaborately philosophy, history, and poetry in an endeavor to show that poetry is the most effective instrument for forwarding virtue. In the first place poetry is better adapted than philosophy to win men to virtue because it persuades both by precepts and by examples, while philosophy persuades by precepts alone. ”

“ It is thus the result in action which Minturno and Scaliger emphasize. The poet must work on the feelings of his reader so that he shall embrace and imitate the good, and spurn the evil. Philosophy, oratory, and poetry have thus one end--and only one--persuasion. ”

“ It is only when the poet thus completely realizes his characters and situations that the audience can be induced to feel sympathetically the pity and fear which produces the katharsis, so important a result of successful tragedy. If human beings did not possess that tendency to feel within themselves the emotions of the people on the stage, they would be unable to experience vicariously the fear animating the tragic hero. Thus tragedy, which is the type of all poetic, depends vitally, according to Aristotle, on imaginative realization. ”

“ But the concession of his own style to the habit of his age did not involve any fundamental confusion of rhetoric with poetic.
Thus Sidney's Defense of Poesie, by domesticating in England the Aristotelian theories of the Italian critics, went far in displacing mediaeval tradition by sounder classical criticism. To object that Sidney's criticism contains elements which derive from the middle ages and from the classical rhetorics would be captious. It is asking too much to expect that a man can shake off at once the traditional habits of thought which are part of the air he breathes. ”

“ But even Plutarch, who goes so far as to suggest emending the poets to make their effect more moral, does not suggest that the purpose of poetry is to afford moral instruction. He distinguishes; some poetry is distinctly immoral and should be enjoyed only for its art. Other poetry is moral in its effect, and consequently should be utilized extensively by the school-master in educating young men. For such purposes no poetry was thought to be better than Homer, whose epics furnish so many examples of heroic conduct. ”

“ Thus the modern treatise on rhetoric deals not only with what the Greeks would recognize as rhetoric, but also with what they would classify as poetic. Furthermore, narrative and dramatic technic, which the classical critics considered the most important elements in poetic, are now no longer called poetic. What the ancients discussed in treatises on poetic, is now discussed in treatises on the technique of the short-story, the technique of the drama, the technique of the novel, on the one hand, and in treatises on versification, prosody, and lyric poetry on the other. ”

“ As the ladies of the court, be they ever so beautiful, should be ashamed to be seen without their courtly habiliments of silks, and tissues, and costly embroideries, even so poetry cannot be seen if any limb be left naked and bare and not clad in gay clothes and colors, says Puttenham. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Nevertheless Aristotle is answering Plato's objections to unrestrained emotionalism, and by his theory of katharsis endeavors to show not only that the emotional excitation of tragedy is harmless to the spectator, but that it is actually good for him.
But if the spectator is to derive these emotional excitations from tragedy, his aesthetic experience cannot be passive. Aristotle recommends as the ideal tragic hero a man not preeminently good nor unusually depraved, but a man between these extremes; "for pity is aroused by unmerited misfortune, fear by the misfortune of a man like ourselves." ”

“ In a word, the whole traditional division of rhetoric is transferred to poetry, and at the same time both rhetoric and poetic are limited to the single part which they have in common--diction. The style cultivated by this focus is ornamental and elaborate. If Lydgate or Hawes had believed that rhetoric included more than aureate language, surely the scope of their treatises would have afforded them opportunity to correct this impression. Each of them is endeavoring to present a compendium of universal knowledge according to the conventional analysis of the seven liberal arts. ”

“ The poets feign these fables, of course, to lead the readers out of mischief. A poet to be great must drink of the redolent well of poetry whence flow the four rivers of Understanding, Close-concluding, Novelty, and Carbuncles. These rivers are translatable into: understanding of good and evil, moral purpose, novelty, rhetorical adornment of figures and so forth.
The poets praised--Gower, Chaucer, and Lydgate--deserve their fame, he says, for their morality. They cleanse our vices. They kindle our hearts with love of virtue. Lydgate's Falls of Princes is an especially great poem ”

“ Instead of rehearsing facts, the dramatist or the epic poet creates truth. We expect him to be "true to life," and that is what is implied in Aristotle's "imitation of nature." [21] This truth to life controls, according to Aristotle, both the characterization and the action. In the first place
Poetry tends to express the universal--how a person of a certain type will on occasion speak or act according to the law of probability or necessity. ”

“ 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. ”