A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance With special reference to the influence of Italy in the formation and development of modern classicism — Key Ideas to Explore

Tertullian said that "the Author of truth hates all the false; He regards as adultery all that is unreal.... He never will approve pretended loves, and wraths, and groans, and tears;"[1] and he affirmed that in place of these pagan works there was in the Bible and the Fathers, a vast body of Christian literature and that this is "not fabulous, but true, not tricks of art, but plain realities."[2] According to the criterion of morality, it was urged that as few works of the imagination were entirely free from obscenity and blasphemy, such blemishes are inseparable from the poetic art; and accordingly, Isidore of Seville says that a Christian is forbidden to read the figments of the poets, "quia per oblectamenta inanium fabularum mentem excitant ad incentiva libidinum."[3]

The third, or psychological objection, made by Plato, was similarly emphasized. Thus Tertullian pointed out that while God has enjoined us to deal calmly and gently and quietly with the Holy Spirit, literature, and especially dramatic literature, leads to spiritual agitation.[4] This point seemed to the mediaeval mind fundamental, for in real beauty, as Thomas Aquinas insisted, desire is quieted.[5] Furthermore, it was shown that the only body of literary work worthy of serious study dealt with pagan divinities and with religious practices which were in direct antagonism to Christianity. Other objections, also, were incidentally alluded to by mediaeval writers. For example, it was said, the supreme question in all matters of life is the question of conduct, and it was not apparent in what manner poetry conduces to action. Poetry has no practical use; it rather enervates men than urges them to the call of duty; and above all, there are more profitable occupations in which the righteous man may be engaged.

These objections to literature are not characteristically mediaeval. They have sprung up in every period of the world's history, and especially recur in all ages in which ascetic or theological conceptions of life are dominant. They were stock questions of the Greek schools, and there are extant treatises by Maximus of Tyre and others on the problem whether or not Plato was justified in expelling Homer from his ideal commonwealth. The same objections prevailed beyond the Renaissance; and they were urged in Italy by Savonarola, in Germany by Cornelius Agrippa, in England by Gosson and Prynne, and in France by Bossuet and other ecclesiastics.

II. _The Moral Justification of Poetry_

The allegorical method of interpreting literature was the result of the mediaeval attempt to answer the objections just stated. This method owed its origin to the mode of interpreting the popular mythology first employed by the Sophists and more thoroughly by the later Stoics. Such heroes as Hercules and Theseus, instead of being mere brute conquerors of monsters and giants, were regarded by the Stoic philosophers as symbols of the early sages who had combated the vices and passions of mankind, and they became in the course of time types of pagan saints. The same mode of interpretation was later applied to the stories of the Old Testament by Philo Judaeus, and was first introduced into Occidental Europe by Hilary of Poitiers and Ambrose, Bishop of Milan.[6] Abraham, Adam, Eve, Jacob, became types of various virtues, and the biblical stories were considered as symbolical of the various moral struggles in the soul of man. The first instance of the systematic application of the method to the pagan myths occurs in the _Mythologicon_ of Fulgentius, who probably flourished in the first half of the sixth century; and in his _Virgiliana Continentia_, the _AEneid_ is treated as an image of life, and the travels of AEneas as the symbol of the progress of the human soul, from nature, through wisdom, to final happiness.

From this period, the allegorical method became the recognized mode of interpreting literature, whether sacred or profane. Petrarch, in his letter, _De quibusdam fictionibus Virgilij_,[7] treats the _AEneid_ after the manner of Fulgentius; and even at the very end of the Renaissance Tasso interpreted his own romantic epics in the same way. After the acceptance of the method, its application was further complicated. Gregory the Great ascribes three meanings to the Bible,--the literal, the typical or allegorical, and the moral. Still later, a fourth meaning was added; and Dante distinctly claims all four, the literal, the allegorical, the moral or philosophical, and the anagogical or mystical, for his _Divine Comedy_.[8]

This method, while perhaps justifying poetry from the standpoint of ethics and divinity, gives it no place as an independent art; thus considered, poetry becomes merely a popularized form of theology. Both Petrarch and Boccaccio regarded allegory as the warp and woof of poetry; but they modified the mediaeval point of view by arguing conversely that theology itself is a form of poetry,--the poetry of God. Both of them insist that the Bible is essentially poetical, and that Christ himself spoke largely in poetical images. This point was so emphasized by Renaissance critics that Berni, in his _Dialogo contra i Poeti_ (1537), condemns the poets for speaking of God as Jupiter and of the saints as Mercury, Hercules, Bacchus, and for even having the audacity to call the prophets and the writers of the Scriptures poets and makers of verses.[9]

The fourteenth and fifteenth books of Boccaccio's treatise, _De Genealogia Deorum_, have been called "the first defence of poesy in honor of his own art by a poet of the modern world;" but Boccaccio's justification of imaginative literature is still primarily based on the usual mediaeval grounds. The reality of poetry is dependent on its allegorical foundations; its moral teachings are to be sought in the hidden meanings discoverable beneath the literal expression; pagan poetry is defended for Christianity on the ground that the references to Greek and Roman gods and rituals are to be regarded only as symbolical truths. The poet's function, for Boccaccio, as for Dante and Petrarch, was to hide and obscure the actual truth behind a veil of beautiful fictions--_veritatem rerum pulchris velaminibus adornare._[10]

The humanistic point of view, in regard to poetry, was of a more practical and far-reaching nature than that of the Middle Ages. The allegorical interpretation did indeed continue throughout the Renaissance, and Mantuan, for example, can only define a poem as a literary form which is bound by the stricter laws of metre, and which has its fundamental truths hidden under the literal expressions of the fable. For still later writers, this mode of regarding literature seemed to present the only loophole of escape from the moral objections to poetry. But in employing the old method, the humanists carried it far beyond its original application. Thus, Lionardo Bruni, in his _De Studiis et Literis_ (_c._ 1405), after dwelling on the allegorical interpretation of the pagan myths, argues that when one reads the story of AEneas and Dido, he pays his tribute of admiration to the genius of the poet, but the matter itself is known to be fiction, and so leaves no moral impression.[11] By this Bruni means that fiction as such, when known to be fiction, can leave no moral impression, and secondly, that poetry is to be judged by the success of the artist, and not by the efficacy of the moralist. Similarly, Battista Guarino, in his _De Ordine Docendi et Studendi_ (1459), says that we are not disturbed by the impieties, cruelties, horrors, which we find in poetry; we judge these things simply by their congruity with the characters and incidents described. In other words, "we criticise the artist, not the moralist."[12] This is a distinct attempt at the aesthetic appreciation of literature, but while such ideas are not uncommon about this time, they express isolated sentiments, rather than a doctrine strictly coordinated with an aesthetic theory of poetry.

The more strict defence of poetry was attempted for the most part on the grounds set forth by Horace in his _Ars Poetica_. At no period from the Augustan Age to the Renaissance does the _Ars Poetica_ seem to have been entirely lost. It is mentioned or quoted, for example, by Isidore of Seville[13] in the sixth century, by John of Salisbury[14] in the twelfth century, and by Dante[15] in the fourteenth. Horace insists on the mingled instructiveness and pleasurableness of poetry; and beyond this, he points out the value of poetry as a civilizing factor in history, regarding the early poets as sages and prophets, and the inventors of arts and sciences:--

"Orpheus, inspired by more than human power, Did not, as poets feigned, tame savage beasts, But men as lawless and as wild as they, And first dissuaded them from rage and blood. Thus when Amphion built the Theban wall, They feigned the stones obeyed his magic lute; Poets, the first instructors of mankind, Brought all things to their proper native use; Some they appropriated to the gods, And some to public, some to private ends: Promiscuous love by marriage was restrained, Cities were built, and useful laws were made; So ancient is the pedigree of verse, And so divine the poet's function."[16]

This conception of the early poet's function was an old one. It is to be found in Aristophanes;[17] it runs through Renaissance criticism; and even in this very century, Shelley[18] speaks of poets as "the authors of language, and of music, of the dance, and architecture, and statuary, and painting," as "the institutors of laws, and the founders of civil society, and the inventors of the arts of life." To-day the idealist takes refuge in the same faith: "The tree of knowledge is of equal date with the tree of life; nor were even the tamer of horses, the worker in metals, or the sower, elder than those twin guardians of the soul,--the poet and the priest. Conscience and imagination were the pioneers who made earth habitable for the human spirit."[19]

It was this ethical and civilizing function of poetry which was first in the minds of the humanists. Action being the test of all studies,[20] poetry must stand or fall in proportion as it conduces to righteous action. Thus, Lionardo Bruni[21] speaks of poetry as "so valuable an aid to knowledge, and so ennobling a source of pleasure"; and AEneas Sylvius Piccolomini, in his treatise _De Liberorum Educatione_ (1450), declares that the crucial question is not, Is poetry to be contemned? but, How are the poets to be used? and he solves his own question by asserting that we are to welcome all that poets can render in praise of integrity and in condemnation of vice, and that all else is to be left unheeded.[22] Beyond this, the humanists urged in favor of poetry the fact of its antiquity and divine origin, and the further fact that it had been praised by great men of all professions, and its creators patronized by kings and emperors from time immemorial.

There were then at the end of the Middle Ages, and the beginning of the Renaissance, two opposing tendencies in regard to the poetic art, one representing the humanistic reverence for ancient culture, and for poetry as one of the phases of that culture, and the other representing not only the mediaeval tradition, but a purism allied to that of early Christianity, and akin to the ascetic conceptions of life found in almost every period. These two tendencies are expressed specifically in their noblest forms by the great humanist Poliziano, and the great moral reformer Savonarola. In the _Sylvae_, written toward the close of the fifteenth century, Poliziano dwells on the divine origin of poetry, as Boccaccio had done in his _Vita di Dante_; and then, after the manner of Horace, he describes its ennobling influence on man, and its general influence on the progress of civilization.[23] He then proceeds to survey the progress of poetry from the most ancient times, and in so doing may be said to have written the first modern history of literature. The second section of the _Sylvae_ discusses the bucolic poets; the third contains that glorification of Virgil which began during the Middle Ages, and, continued by Vida and others, became in Scaliger literary deification; and the last section is devoted to Homer, who is considered as the great teacher of wisdom, and the wisest of the ancients. Nowhere does Poliziano exhibit any appreciation of the aesthetic value of poetry, but his enthusiasm for the great poets, and indeed for all forms of ancient culture, is unmistakable, and combined with his immense erudition marks him as a representative poet of humanism.[24]

On the other hand, the puristic conception of art is elaborated at great length by Savonarola in an apology for poetry contained in his tractate, _De Divisione ac Utilitate Omnium Scientarum_,[25] written about 1492. After classifying the sciences in true scholastic fashion, and arranging them according to their relative importance and their respective utility for Christianity, he attacks all learning as superfluous and dangerous, unless restricted to a chosen few. Poetry, according to the scholastic arrangement, is grouped with logic and grammar; and this mediaeval classification fixes Savonarola's conception of the theory of poetic art. He expressly says that he attacks the abuse of poetry and not poetry itself, but there can be no doubt that, at bottom, he was intolerant of creative literature. Like Plato, like moral reformers of all ages, he feared the free play of the imaginative faculty; and in connecting poetry with logic he was tending toward the elimination of the imagination in art. The basis of his aesthetic system, such as it is, rests wholly on that of Thomas Aquinas;[26] but he is in closer accord with Aristotle when he points out that versification, a merely conventional accompaniment of poetry, is not to be confounded with the essence of poetry itself. This distinction is urged to defend the Scriptures, which he regards as the highest and holiest form of poetry. For him poetry is coordinate with philosophy and with thought; but in his intolerance of poetry in its lower forms, he would follow Plato in banishing poets from an ideal state. The imitation of the ancient poets especially falls under his suspicion, and in an age given up to their worship he denies both their supremacy and their utility. In fine, as a reformer, he represents for us the religious reaction against the paganization of culture by the humanists. But the forces against him were too strong. Even the Christianization of culture effected during the next century by the Council of Trent was hardly more than temporary. Humanism, which represents the revival of ancient pagan culture, and rationalism, which represents the growth of the modern spirit in science and art, were currents too powerful to be impeded by any reformer, however great, and, when combined in classicism, were to reign supreme in literature for centuries to come. But Savonarola and Poliziano serve to indicate that modern literary criticism had not yet begun. For until some rational answer to the objections urged against poetry in antiquity and in the Middle Ages was forthcoming, literary criticism in any true sense was fundamentally impossible; and that answer came only with the recovery of Aristotle's _Poetics_.

III. _The Final Justification of Poetry_

The influence of Aristotle's _Poetics_ in classical antiquity, so far as it is possible to judge, was very slight; there is no apparent reference to the _Poetics_ in Horace, Cicero, or Quintilian,[27] and it was entirely lost sight of during the Middle Ages. Its modern transmission was due almost exclusively to Orientals.[28] The first Oriental version of Aristotle's treatise appears to have been that made by Abu-Baschar, a Nestorian Christian, from the Syriac into Arabic, about the year 935. Two centuries later, the Moslem philosopher Averroes made an abridged version of the _Poetics_, which was translated into Latin in the thirteenth century, by a certain German, named Hermann, and again, by Mantinus of Tortosa in Spain, in the fourteenth century. Hermann's version seems to have circulated considerably in the Middle Ages, but it had no traceable influence on critical literature whatsoever. It is mentioned and censured by Roger Bacon, but the _Poetics_ in any form was probably unknown to Dante, to Boccaccio, and beyond a single obscure reference, to Petrarch. There is no question that for a long time before the beginning of the sixteenth century the _Poetics_ had been entirely neglected. Not only do the critical ideas of this period show no indication of Aristotelian influence, but during the sixteenth century itself there seems to have been a well-defined impression that the _Poetics_ had been recovered only after centuries of oblivion. Thus, Bernardo Segni, who translated the _Poetics_ into Italian in 1549, speaks of it as "abandoned and neglected for a long time";[29] and Bernardo Tasso, some ten years later, refers to it as "buried for so long a time in the obscure shadows of ignorance."[30]

It was then as a new work of Aristotle that the Latin translation by Giorgio Valla, published at Venice in 1498, must have appeared to Valla's contemporaries. Though hardly successful as a work of scholarship, this translation, and the Greek text of the _Poetics_ published in the Aldine _Rhetores Graeci_ in 1508, had considerable influence on dramatic literature, but scarcely any immediate influence on literary criticism. Somewhat later, in 1536, Alessandro de' Pazzi published a revised Latin version, accompanied by the original; and from this time, the influence of the Aristotelian canons becomes manifest in critical literature. In 1548, Robortelli produced the first critical edition of the _Poetics_, with a Latin translation and a learned commentary, and in the very next year the first Italian translation was given to the world by Bernardo Segni. From that day to this the editions and translations of the _Poetics_ have increased beyond number, and there is hardly a single passage in Aristotle's treatise which has not been discussed by innumerable commentators and critics.

It was in Aristotle's _Poetics_ that the Renaissance was to find, if not a complete, at least a rational justification of poetry, and an answer to every one of the Platonic and mediaeval objections to imaginative literature. As to the assertion that poetry diverges from actual reality, Aristotle[31] contended that there is to be found in poetry a higher reality than that of mere commonplace fact, that poetry deals not with particulars, but with universals, and that it aims at describing not what has been, but what might have been or ought to be. In other words, poetry has little regard for the actuality of the specific event, but aims at the reality of an eternal probability. It matters not whether Achilles or AEneas did this thing, or that thing, which Homer or Virgil ascribes to either, but if Achilles or AEneas was such a man as the poet describes, he must necessarily act as Homer or Virgil has made him do. It is needless to say that Aristotle is here simply distinguishing between ideal truth and actual fact, and in asserting that it is the function of poetry to imitate only ideal truth he laid the foundations, not only of an answer to mediaeval objections, but also of modern aesthetic criticism.

Beyond this, poetry is justified on the grounds of morality, for while not having a distinctly moral aim, it is essentially moral, because it is this ideal representation of life, and an idealized version of human life must necessarily present it in its moral aspects. Aristotle distinctly combats the traditional Greek conception of the didactic function of poetry; but it is evident that he insists fundamentally that literature must be moral, for he sternly rebukes Euripides several times on grounds that are moral, rather than purely aesthetic. In answer to the objection that poetry, instead of calming, stirs and excites our meanest passions, that it "waters and cherishes those emotions which ought to wither with drought, and constitutes them our rulers, when they ought to be our subjects,"[32] Aristotle taught those in the Renaissance who were able to understand him, that poetry, and especially dramatic poetry, does not indeed starve the emotions, but excites them only to allay and to regulate them, and in this aesthetic process purifies and ennobles them.[33] In pointing out these things he has justified the utility of poetry, regarding it as more serious and philosophic than history, because it universalizes mere fact, and imitates life in its noblest aspects.