A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance Part 12

[271] Ta.s.so, xv. 20.

[272] _Poet._ vii. ii. 1.

[273] _Hamburg. Dramat._ 101-104.

[274] _Essay on Pope_, 3d ed., i. 171.

[275] _Arte Poetica_, p. 158.

[276] Muzio, pp. 81 v., 76 v.

[277] _Poet._ i. 5.

[278] Pope, _Essay on Criticism_, 88.

[279] Viperano, author of _De Poetica libri tres_, Antwerp, 1579.

[280] Maranta, author of _Lucullanae Quaestiones_, Basle, 1564.

[281] Three writers of the Renaissance bore this name: G. Pontano, the famous Italian humanist and Latin poet, who died in 1503; P. Pontano, of Bruges, the author of an _Ars Versificatoria_, published in 1520; and J.

Ponta.n.u.s, a Bohemian Jesuit, author of _Inst.i.tutiones Poeticae_, first published at Ingolstadt in 1594, and several times reprinted.

[282] Sedano, _Parnaso Espanol_, Madrid, 1774, viii. 40, 41.

[283] _Cf._ Berghoeffer, _Opitz' Buch von der Poeterei_, 1888, and Beckherrn, _Opitz, Ronsard, und Heinsius_, 1888. The first reference to Aristotle's _Poetics_, north of the Alps, is to be found in Luther's _Address to the Christian n.o.bles of the German Nation_, 1520. Schosser's _Disputationes de Tragoedia_, published in 1559, two years before Scaliger's work appeared, is entirely based on Aristotle's _Poetics_.

[284] Pope, i. 155.

[285] _Loc. cit._, beginning, "Nec te fors inopina regat."

[286] Pope, i. 164, beginning, "Ne tamen ah nimium."

[287] Lintilhac, in _Nouvelle Revue_, lxiv. 543.

[288] Scaliger, _Poet._ iii. 11.

[289] Trissino, ii. 92.

[290] Varchi, p. 600.

[291] Ta.s.so, xii. 217.

[292] _Defense of Poesy_, p. 48.

[293] _Discorso_, 1587, p. 39 v.

[294] _Causeries du Lundi_, iii. 44.

[295] _Art Poet._ iv. 121.

[296] Berni, p. 249.

[297] _Art Poet._ iii. 193. _Cf._ Dryden, _Discourse on Satire_, in _Works_, xiii. 23 _sq._

CHAPTER VI

ROMANTIC ELEMENTS IN ITALIAN CRITICISM

IN the Italian critical literature of the sixteenth century there are to be found the germs of romantic as well as cla.s.sical criticism. The development of romanticism in Renaissance criticism is due to various tendencies, of ancient, of mediaeval, and of modern origin. The ancient element is Platonism; the mediaeval elements are Christianity, and the influence of the literary forms and the literary subject-matter of the Middle Ages; and the modern elements are the growth of national life and national literatures, and the opposition of modern philosophy to Aristotelianism.

I. _The Ancient Romantic Element_

As the element of reason is the predominant feature of neo-cla.s.sicism, so the element of imagination is the predominant feature of romanticism; and according as the reason or the imagination predominates in Renaissance literature, there results neo-cla.s.sicism or romanticism, while the most perfect art finds a reconciliation of both elements in the imaginative reason. According to the faculty of reason, when made the basis of literature, the poet is, as it were, held down to earth, and art becomes the mere reasoned expression of the truth of life. By the faculty of imagination, the poet is made to create a new world of his own,--a world in which his genius is free to mould whatever its imagination takes hold of. This romantic doctrine of the freedom of genius, of inspiration and the power of imagination, in so far as it forms a part of Renaissance criticism, owes its origin to Platonism. The influence of the Platonic doctrines among the humanists has already been alluded to. Plato was regarded by them as their leader in the struggle against mediaevalism, scholasticism, and Aristotelianism. The Aristotelian dialectic of the Middle Ages appealed exclusively to the reason; Platonism gave opportunities for the imagination to soar to vague and sublime heights, and harmonize with the divine mysteries of the universe. As regards poetry and imaginative literature in general, the critics of the Renaissance appealed from the Plato of the _Republic_ and the _Laws_ to the Plato of the _Ion_, the _Phaedrus_, and the _Symposium_. Beauty being the subject-matter of art, Plato's praise of beauty was transferred by the Renaissance to poetry, and his praise of the philosopher was transferred to the poet.

The Aristotelian doctrine defines beauty according to its relations to the external world; that is, poetry is an imitation of nature, expressed in general terms. The Platonic doctrine, on the contrary, is concerned with poetry, or beauty, in so far as it concerns the poet's own nature; that is, the poet is divinely inspired and is a creator like G.o.d.

Fracastoro, as has been seen, makes the Platonic rapture, the delight in the true and essential beauty of things, the true tests of poetic power.

In introducing this Platonic ideal of poetic beauty into modern literary criticism, he defines and distinguishes poetry according to a subjective criterion; and it is according to whether the objective or the subjective conception of art is insisted upon, that we have the cla.s.sic spirit or the romantic spirit. The extreme romanticists, like the Schlegels and their contemporaries in Germany, entirely eliminate the relation of poetry to the external world, and in this extreme form romanticism becomes identified with the exaggerated subjective idealism of Fichte and Sch.e.l.ling. The extreme cla.s.sicists entirely eliminate the poet's personality; that is, poetry is merely reasoned expression, a perfected expression of what all men can see in nature, for the poet has no more insight into life--no more imagination--than any ordinary, judicious person.

The effects of this Platonic element upon Renaissance criticism were various. In the first place, it was through the Platonic influence that the relation of beauty to poetry was first made prominent.[298]

According to Scaliger, Ta.s.so, Sidney, another world of beauty is created by the poet,--a world that possesses beauty in its perfection as this world never can. The reason alone leaves no place for beauty; and accordingly, for the neo-cla.s.sicists, art was ultimately restricted to moral and psychological observation. Moreover, Platonism raised the question of the freedom of genius and of the imagination. Of all men, only the poet, as Sidney and others pointed out, is bound down and restricted by no laws. But if poetry is a matter of inspiration, how can it be called an art? If genius alone suffices, what need is there of study and artifice? For the extreme romanticists of this period, genius alone was accounted sufficient to produce the greatest works of poetry; for the extreme cla.s.sicists, studious and labored art unaided by genius fulfilled all the functions of poetic creation; but most of the critics of the sixteenth century seem to have agreed with Horace that genius, or an inborn apt.i.tude, is necessary to begin with, but that it needs art and study to regulate and perfect it. Genius cannot suffice without restraint and cultivation.

Scaliger, curiously, reconciles both cla.s.sic and romantic elements. The poet, according to Scaliger, is inspired, is in fact a creator like G.o.d; but poetry is an imitation (that is, re-creation) of nature, according to certain fixed rules obtained from the observation of the anterior expression of nature in great art. It is these rules that make poetry an art; and these rules form a distinct neo-cla.s.sic element imposed on the Aristotelian doctrine.

II. _Mediaeval Elements_

The Middle Ages contributed to the poetic ideal of the Renaissance two elements: romantic themes and the Christian spirit. The forms and subjects of mediaeval literature are distinctly romantic. Dante's _Divine Comedy_ is an allegorical vision; it is almost unique in form, and has no cla.s.sical prototype.[299] The tendency of Petrarchism was also in the direction of romanticism. Its "conceits" and its subjectivity led to an uncla.s.sical extravagance of thought and expression; and the Petrarchistic influence made lyric poetry, and accordingly the criticism of lyric poetry, more romantic than any other form of literature or literary criticism during the period of cla.s.sicism. It was for this reason that there was little lyricism in the cla.s.sical period, not only in France, but wherever the cla.s.sic temper predominated. The themes of the _romanzi_ are also mediaeval and romantic; but while they are mediaeval contributions to literature,[300] they became contributions to literary criticism only after the growth of national life and the development of the feeling of nationality, both distinctly modern.

Some reference has already been made to the paganization of culture by the humanists. But with the growth of that revival of Christian sentiment which led to the Reformation, there were numerous attempts to reconcile Christianity with pagan culture.[301] Such men as Ficino and Pico della Mirandola attempted to harmonize Christianity and Platonic philosophy; and under the great patron of letters, Pope Leo X., there were various attempts to harmonize Christianity with the cla.s.sic spirit in literature. In such poems as Vida's _Christiad_ and Sannazaro's _De Partu Virginis_, Christianity is covered with the drapery of paganism or cla.s.sicism.

The first reaction against this paganization of culture was, as has been seen, effected by Savonarola. This reaction was reenforced, in the next century, by the influence and authority of the Council of Trent; and after the middle of the sixteenth century the Christian ideal plays a prominent part in literary criticism. The spirit of both Giraldi Cintio and Minturno is distinctly Christian. For Giraldi the _romanzi_ are Christian, and hence superior to the cla.s.sical epics. He allows the introduction of pagan deities only into epics dealing with the ancient cla.s.sical subjects; but Ta.s.so goes further, and says that no modern heroic poet should have anything to do with them. According to Ta.s.so, the heroes of an heroic poem must be Christian knights, and the poem itself must deal with a true, not a false, religion. The subject is not to be connected with any article of Christian faith or dogma, because that was fixed by the Council of Trent; but paganism in any form is altogether unfit for a modern epic. Ta.s.so even goes so far as to a.s.sert that piety shall be numbered among the virtues of the knightly heroes of epic poetry. At the same time also, Lorenzo Gambara wrote his work, _De Perfecta Poeseos Ratione_, to prove that it is essential for every poet to exclude from his poems, not only everything that is wicked or obscene, but also everything that is fabulous or that deals with pagan divinities.[302] It was to this religious reaction that we owe the Christian poetry of Ta.s.so, Du Bartas, and Spenser. But humanism was strong, and rationalism was rife; and the religious revival was hardly more than temporary. Neo-cla.s.sicism throughout Europe was essentially pagan.

III. _Modern Elements_

The literature of the Middle Ages const.i.tutes, as it were, one vast body of European literature; only with the Renaissance did distinctly national literatures spring into existence. Nationalism as well as individualism was subsequent to the Renaissance; and it was at this period that the growth of a national literature, of national life,--in a word, patriotism in its widest sense,--was first effected.

The linguistic discussions and controversies of the sixteenth century prepared the way for a higher appreciation of national languages and literatures. These controversies on the comparative merits of the cla.s.sical and vernacular tongues had begun in the time of Dante, and were continued in the sixteenth century by Bembo, Castiglione, Varchi, Muzio, Tolomei, and many others; and in 1564 Salviati summed up the Italian side of the question in an oration in which he a.s.serted that the Tuscan, or, as he called it, the Florentine language and the Florentine literature are vastly superior to any other language or literature, whether ancient or modern. However extravagant this claim may appear, the mere fact that Salviati made such a claim at all is enough to give him a place worthy of serious consideration in the history of Italian literature. The other side of the controversy finds its extremest expression in a treatise of Celio Calcagnini addressed to Giraldi Cintio, in which the hope is expressed that the Italian language, and all the literature composed in that language, would be absolutely abandoned by the world.[303]

In Giraldi Cintio we find the first traces of purely national criticism.

His purpose, in writing the discourse on the _romanzi_, was primarily to defend Ariosto, whom he had known personally in his youth. The point of view from which he starts is that the _romanzi_ const.i.tute a new form of poetry of which Aristotle did not know, and to which, therefore, Aristotle's rules do not apply. Giraldi regarded the romantic poems of Ariosto and Boiardo both as national and as Christian works; and Italian literature is thus for the first time critically distinguished from cla.s.sical literature in regard to language, religion, and nationality.

In Giraldi's discourse there is no apparent desire either to underrate or to disregard the _Poetics_ of Aristotle; the fact was simply that Aristotle had not known the poems which deal with many actions of many men, and hence it would be absurd to demand that such poems should conform to his rules. The _romanzi_ deal with phases of poetry, and phases of life, which Aristotle could not be expected to understand.