Chapter VII: Sixteenth-Century Poetics

The revival of classical Latin was promoted by manuals and discussions, and accompanied by still others directed to vernacular poetry. Though none of these ranks as a poetic in the sense of a contribution to the theory of poetry, not a few reveal or define habits of thought and taste, directions of study, literary ideals and methods. Thus their importance, far beyond their intrinsic values, is in their clues to literary preoccupations and trends, their indications for a Renaissance weather map.

1. VIDA

The ecclesiastic, Marco Girolamo Vida, addressed his three cantos of Latin hexameters _De arte poetica_ (1527) to the Dauphin, son of Francis I, with due invocation of the Muses.

Sit fas vestra mihi vulgare arcana per orbem,
Pierides, penitusque sacros recludere fontes,
Dum vatem egregium teneris educere ab annis,
Heroum qui facta canet, laudesve deorum,
Mentem agito, vestrique in vertice sistere montis.

It invites noble youth to write Latin poetry. The doctrine is mainly an expansion of the “Ars poetica” of Horace;[51] the exemplar is Vergil.

I. Though heroic poetry is the highest, choose according to
your talent heroic or dramatic, elegiac or pastoral. Let the
great work wait while you sound and explore it; but meantime
seize those parts that come at once, and make a prose sketch of
the whole. The preparation of schooling in poetic and rhetoric
is necessary as training in appreciation. [The rest of the
canto is addressed, over the pupil’s shoulder, to teachers.]
Greek, established in Italy by the Medici, and especially
Homer, stimulate comparison. Of the Latins, the Augustans,
especially Vergil, have first claim. The others may wait till
taste has been matured by these. The master’s function is to
awaken and guide love of the best poetry without forcing it.
Even recreation may be pointed by classical suggestions. Calf
love must be handled with care. So soon as young ardor has
penetrated through passion to poetry, the boy should study its
monuments and taste the other arts. Though travel is useful,
and some experience of war, the central thing is unremitting
study of the poets. Thus metric, instead of remaining merely a
set of rules, becomes the testing of one’s own adjustments by
memories of reading, the oral revision of a mind full of great
poetry. Young ambitions should not be quelled by too severe
criticism, nor lack the privilege of retirement and freedom.
The world that grudges these owes its glory nevertheless to
poets, who have sacrificed worldly rewards to live in their own
peace. As the fire stolen by Prometheus, poetry is a divine
gift.

II. The second canto repeats Horace’s counsel: begin on a
subdued tone and at the crisis (_in mediis_). The action,
planned as a whole and clearly forecast, should control the
description. Greek is more tolerant of descriptive dilation
than is becoming to us Latins. Need I caution against the
dilation that comes from gratuitous display of erudition?
The detail of Vulcan’s shield for Aeneas has the point of
exhibiting the history of Rome. Variety has its claims;
but rolls of kings, legends, myths, comic relief, though
delightful as description, should not deviate. Be careful of
verisimilitude. Do not plan for length. Work day and night
on a conception limited and tried out this way and that. If
amplification seems desirable afterward, Vergil shows many
ways. [The citations are mainly descriptive.] Inspiration comes
when it will, and does not obviate revision. Study nature: the
ways of age, of youth, of woman, of servants and of kings, for
appropriateness, as in Vergil; for so you learn to move, as
Vergil by Euryalus. Study in others, especially in the ancient
Greeks, their conceptions (_inventa_) without hesitating to
borrow as Vergil from Homer. So may Rome ever excel in the arts
and teach the world. Alas for our discords and the bringing in
of foreign tyrants! though distant nations had already honored
Tuscan Leo and the Medici. The crusade against the Saracens
became only a dream.

III. Flee obscurity; let poetry be clear in its own light. Vary
to avoid repetition. Figures give vividness to both poetry
and oratory; but verse is freer with hyperbole, metonymy,
personification. Figures should avoid display, incongruity,
dilation. Style must always be appropriate. Follow the
classics, use suggestions from other poets, adapting the old
to the new, even borrowing. As a poet need not fear new words
that are already recognizable, so he may go to Greek, as his
classical ancestors before him. He may venture cautiously on
archaism, periphrasis, compounds, adaptations. Never let words
carry you beyond your meaning, except to serve the music of
verse. Verse is a shrine closed to the mass of men, open to the
few by a narrow way. For it must range beyond mere correctness
to harmony with the persons, with the scene, with each of
the three styles. Such counsels, sure as they are, will not
guarantee high achievement. That can be given only by Apollo.
Let us close by celebrating the supreme poet Vergil.

Commonplaces of rhetoric, from a source commonplace for centuries, why were these put into elegant Vergilian hexameters? Hardly to make the Dauphin a Latin poet; hardly to interpret what was already too well known; hardly to advance poetic. The poem is an exhibition of competence in learning, in teaching, and in Latin verse, a sort of thesis for the degree of humanist. The person that it seeks to establish as a Latin poet is its author.

2. TRISSINO

_The seven divisions of poetic_ (1529, enlarged 1563) by Giovan Giorgio Trissino occupy the first 139 pages of the second volume of his collected works (Verona, 1729). The first four divisions are devoted to diction, metric, and verse forms. The fifth and sixth are substantially an Italian paraphrase of Aristotle’s _Poetic_[52] with insertions from the “Ars poetica” of Horace. Trissino repeats Aristotle without grasp of his distinctive ideas. He has read also Dionysius of Halicarnassus (105); he has the independence to disparage Seneca (101); and he considers why Dante called his great work _Commedia_ (120); but he thinks that pastoral eclogue is of the same poetic genus as comedy, and he does not make clear that Aristotle’s distinction of dramatic from epic is in composition. Though Trissino had not penetration enough to be constructive, or even suggestive, he opened Aristotle early in the century to the wider circle.

3. GIRALDI CINTHIO

Giraldi Cinthio published together two essays on the composition of romances,[53] comedies, and tragedies (_Discorsi ... intorno al comporre de i romanzi, delle commedie, e delle tragedie ..._ Venice, 1554). In the one on comedy and tragedy (pages 199-287, written in 1543) he moves, as Trissino, over the surface of Aristotle’s _Poetic_ without grasping the import of poetic as a distinct form of composition. For style he even prefers Seneca (220) to the Greeks. In the essay on verse romances (pages 1-198, written in 1549) he speaks of having presented the subject in oral teaching, and refers (4) to Vicentio Maggio’s lectures on Aristotle.

The word _romance_ has the same meaning with us as epic
with the Romans (5); and the form originated in France (6).
Considering first the plot (_favola_), as Aristotle bids,
we see in Boiardo and Ariosto that romance is the adorning
(_abbellimento_) of the strife of Christians with their
enemies (9). Though thus like epic or tragedy in imitating
illustrious deeds, romance has not a single action (12), but
several, perhaps eight or ten. Its organization (_orditura_)
is unhappily compared to that of the human body: the subject
being the skeleton; the order of parts, the nerves; the
beautification, the skin; the animation, the soul. This is the
plan of the treatise.

A single action is too restrictive for romance (22), whose
many actions are more desirable, as conducive to variety
(25). But the actions should be connected in a continuous
chain (_continua catena_) and have verisimilitude. The parts
should cohere as the parts of the human body. The poem
should be fleshed out at suitable places (26) with fillings
(_riempimenti_): loves, hates, laments, descriptions of places,
of seasons, of persons, tales made up or taken from the
ancients, voyages, wanderings, marvels [in short, anything for
sophistic display]. For there is nothing in heaven above, nor
in the earth beneath, nor in the very depth of the abyss, which
is not at the call of the judicious poet—provided (27) each be
appropriate in itself and to the whole.

The appended proviso is irrelevant in theory and was not observed in practice. The age of classicism is faced with the fact that its most evident and most popular poetic achievement is not classical in composition. Renaissance romance does not follow the epic formula. True, Ariosto does begin in _mediis rebus_ (23), as Horace bids; but even that is not obligatory for a “manifold action”; and evidently the action may be not merely manifold, but plural. By “continuous chain” Giraldi means not sequence of the whole, but merely transitions; not connection, but connectives (40, 41).

Our romancers may have learned this from Claudian (41). The
breaking off of an action creates suspense; and the main
stories remain in suspense to the completion of the whole poem
(42). Besides, variety is itself an added beauty. Why must
romances be limited to the epic way (44)? Ovid did not follow
Vergil (45). But the parts and the episodes must have the
connection of verisimilitude (55).

It seems difficult for Giraldi to think in terms of composition. Once more we arrive at verisimilitude; and we go on to appropriateness (_il decoro_).

This he has touched earlier in reprehending Homer (31) for
letting Nausicaa wash clothes. Here (63-65) he insists that
romance, in bringing on kings as well as shepherds and nymphs,
must make each consistent with his type. After pausing to
disagree with the Italian followers of Hermogenes, he passes
to style (83-159), including verse. The section on verse,
sometimes dubious, is often suggestive, as on Ariosto’s
admirable facility (145) in making verse run as easily as
prose [i.e., without inversions]. Petrarch is cited (147) as
the ideal combination of weight and ease.

The concluding section (160-184) on the soul of the poem
manages to lean even more on rhetoric. In oratory _anima_
depends on delivery; in poetry, not only on this, but on such
expressive words as put things before our eyes (_energia,
sotto gli occhi_). An appendix (188-197) repeats the Horatian
counsels on advice and revision.

The main significance of the treatise in 1549 is its recognition of the actual difference of romance from epic. Giraldi’s attempts at reconciling the two in theory seem evasions because he misses Aristotle’s controlling view of poetic as having its own ways of sequence, distinct from those of rhetoric.

4. MUZIO

Muzio published among his Italian poems a poetic in verse (_Rime diverse del Mutio Iustinopolitano: tre libri di arte poetica ..._ Venice, 1551). Diffused through some 1,600 lines (pages 68-94), it is often thin and sometimes vague, the sort of treatise written not to teach, nor much to theorize, but to express the author’s culture and taste via Horace’s “Ars poetica.” What individuality it has transpires for the most part incidentally; but the treatment of metric is fairly distinctive.

Why use Greek terms: ode, hymn, epigram, elegy (71*)? Why
talk of dactyls and spondees (72)? The difference between
quantitative and accentual verse forbids the transfer. You will
make a hodgepodge like Coccai’s.

Non puote orecchie haver giudicio saldo
Di quantità & di tempo ove la lingua
De l’accente conviene esser seguace. (72*)

“The ear cannot respond surely to quantity and time where the
tongue must follow the stress” is at once penetrative and, in
the face of the classicists, daring. After conventional remarks
on verse as expressing that harmony which in nature we see to
be divine, and on the ancient relation to the dance, he finds
the joining of lyre with song in _ottava rima_ (77) and in
_stanza_ (86). The Greeks and Romans, using hexameter for all
“three styles,” did not even adapt their verse to tragedy or
to comedy (88*) by the length of the line. Our unrhymed verse
(_versi sciolti_) is appropriate to proud and lofty emprise
(88*). For purity of style it is not enough to be born in
Tuscany. Seek usage in books (70*). Tuscan is not confined to
Petrarch. He was pure and fluent above all others—and perhaps
more timid than becomes a poet (71).

The treatment of imitation (69*, 70, 82) and of sentences (68*, 90*, 91, 93) is conventional. Sophistic appears in the recipes for verisimilitude through appropriateness (77-78) and in the recommendation of show-pieces (Aetna, winter, spring, etc. 83). But Muzio at once makes a significant addition. “You might yourself look at nature, not merely seek it in books. Learn what to dilate, what to compress.” As examples of the force of restraint (84) he cites Vergil’s mating of Dido and Aeneas in the cave and Dante’s Paolo and Francesca.

5. FRACASTORO

A Latin dialogue (1555) by Girolamo Fracastoro discusses poetry as a form of eloquence, merging poetic in rhetoric (_Hieronymi Fracastorii Naugerius sive de poetica dialogus ..._ with an English translation by Ruth Kelso and an introduction by Murray W. Bundy, University of Illinois Press, 1924). Ciceronian in type, it is clearly ordered and composed, and agreeably fluent in style. Fracastoro’s motive is not professional. Scientist and philosopher, he turns to poetry as to an important item in culture and a suggestive topic for discussion. So approached by not a few Renaissance scholars, it imposed no obligation to advance critical theory.

6. PELETIER

_L’Art poétique_ of Jacques Peletier du Mans is a similar excursion of a scholar into literature. Philosopher and mathematician as Fracastoro, interested in languages, professor, promoter of normalized spelling, he was known, by that adjective dear to the French Renaissance, as “docte Peletier.” His literary associations were first with Ronsard and Du Bellay under Jean Dorat at the Collège de Coqueret; later he had associations in Lyon, where Jean de Tournes published his treatise in 1555 (_L’art poëtique_ ... publié d’après l’édition unique avec introduction et commentaire [par] André Boulanger, Paris, 1930).

His editor, regarding it as the best formulation of the Pléiade movement, notes that it relies on Horace’s “Ars poetica” [which Peletier had translated ten years before], Cicero, and Quintilian, that it uses no Greek source and of the Italians only Vida, that the great model is Vergil, and that the section on dramaturgy is slight and feeble. He sums up the doctrine as: (1) use your vernacular and enrich it; (2) imitate the ancients; (3) imitate nature; (4) cultivate the high poetic forms urged by the Pléiade.

The little that Peletier has to say on poetic composition is all rhetoric. He makes, for example, the usual transfer of the counsels for _exordium_ to the opening of a poem. He shows the sophistic slant in turning to encomium the Horatian commonplace that poets are givers of fame (71, 82, 89, 176) and in the stock show-pieces (127). He is more distinctive on rhyme (149), on classification of meters by the number of syllables (153), and on imitation of classical verse forms (159). He occasionally cites Ariosto (103, 201) and discusses both the sonnet and the ode (169, 172).

7. MINTURNO

Minturno made his more comprehensive and influential Latin dialogue on classical poetic, _De poeta_, a collection of six monologues, or essays, with enough question and objection for occasional reminder of the literary form, but with little real discussion (_Antonii Sebastiani Minturni de poeta ... libri sex_, Venice, 1559). The setting, a villa by the sea, is elaborately described in the introduction. The style, oratorical and inclined to Ciceronianism, is throughout elaborate and diffuse, each noun being habitually escorted by two adjectives. What is thus conveyed with much repetition is generally Horace’s “Ars poetica” once more, Cicero, and Quintilian; but there is also considerable use, though little comprehension, of Aristotle’s _Poetic_. Aristotle’s conception of poetry as a distinct kind of composition has not yet arrived; and poetic style, which is Minturno’s actual subject, is conceived in the terms of rhetoric. The spokesmen are: Book I Sincerus (Sannazaro) on What is poetry?; Book II Pontanus (recalled, not present) on What is poetic?; Book III Vopiscus on tragedy; Book IV Gauricus on comedy; Book V Carbo on lyric; Book VI Sincerus on style. The quotations adduced on the first two hundred pages show the following proportions: Vergil above all (_Bucolics_, 55 lines; _Georgics_, 10 lines; _Aeneid_, 512 lines); Seneca, 101; Horace (mainly “Ars poetica”), 99; Euripides (in Latin), 68; Sophocles (in Latin), 23.

I. What is poetry? It is a _furor coelestis_. Wisdom and
eloquence being one, all who had it used to be called poets
(Moses, Theseus, Lycurgus, Solon); for poetry was the only art
of speech. Recovering now from medieval darkness, we see Vergil
as the exemplar of everything, Homer as comprehending all
philosophy. Poetry is imitation of nature [apparently conceived
as description]. Therefore Plato’s exclusion is rejected.
The imitation is narrative in epic, through _personae_ in
dramatic poetry, and a combination of the two in melic. That
poetry is like painting (Horace’s “ut pictura poesis”) is
agreed. Poets seek variety rather than sequence, and prefer
violent or otherwise disturbed states of mind, considering
the [rhetorical] headings of appropriateness to habit, place,
and time. Plato’s preference of epic is approved against
Aristotle’s of tragedy.

II. What is poetic? [The implication of this book, as
throughout, is that poetic is rhetoric.] The ancient poets
thought their distinction to be not in verse, but in lore of
astronomy, optics, music, logic, history, geography. In _ratio
dicendi_ historians are likest to poets. Vergil was expert in
rhetoric and logic as well as in cosmogony, morals, law and
polity, medicine, athletics, etc. Poetry belongs under _ratio
civilis_. Its object is to teach, to delight, to move [the
stock summary for oratory]. It must command the “three styles”
in order to be always appropriate. The natural objection of
Traianus that this seems to be all rhetoric is answered by
citing the distinction of verse, by slipping back to the “three
styles,” and, as in a sort of desperation, by saying that the
poet’s distinctive gift is to move men to wonder (_admiratio_).
[Not only is this pure sophistic, but Minturno’s floundering
is due to his seeing no distinction at all. He always falls
back on rhetoric.] The poet, no less than the orator, must
command _inventio_, _dispositio_, _elocutio_, _memoria_,
_pronuntiatio_. Tragedy is discussed as a poem with parts
like those of a speech and with descriptive amplification.
Its _personae_ are to be fashioned through the headings of
rhetoric. “The other parts of an oration with which the orator
is concerned, division, confirmation, rebuttal, conclusion,
peroration, must also be observed (_tenendae_) by the poet.”

A book inquiring what poetic is, including tragedy, and quoting Aristotle, has not the faintest suggestion of a distinctive poetic composition! It can translate Aristotle’s complication and solution without seeing that his mainspring is sequence, and consider his “recognition” as a means of display.

Once more we are told that characterization must be true in
the sense of being true to type: Aeneas consistently _pius et
fortis_, Achilles _iracundus et magnanimus_, Ulysses _prudens
et callidus_, according to the headings of rhetoric. After a
few vague precepts on arrangement, and one more reminder of the
“three styles,” a close is at last found in the epic eminence
of Vergil.

III. (Tragedy) is again conventional. With little use of
Aristotle, it reverts to Horace and Seneca, and repeats the
rhetorical doctrine of types. Tragedy is found to consist of
plot, character, words, and pregnant sentences (_fabula_,
_mores_, _verba_, _sententiae_). Its externals are described,
its parts enumerated, its origin summarized. It should have
five acts of not more than ten scenes each. Its style should be
graphically vivid. [To this counsel of rhetoric, which applies
to drama only in the reports of messengers, no hint is added of
the distinctive quality of dramatic dialogue.]

IV. (Comedy) after a review of the history of comedy and an
enumeration of its typical _personae_, is devoted largely to
a long list of figures used for comic effect, and closes with
enumeration of its parts.

V. (Lyric) after a long introduction on _convivium_, with
quotations from the poets, distinguishes melic from dithyrambic
and nomic, and finds that lyric has as many components as drama
(_fabula_, _mores_, _verba_, _sententiae_!). Its forms are
ode (with epode and palinode), satiric iambs, elegy (nenia,
epicedium, epitaphium, epithanatium), epigram in the Greek
sense, and satire.

VI. (Style) is a summary of the section on style in any
classical rhetoric, with classified examples and with the usual
lists of figures.

What is the result of these 570 pages? Five men of letters, besides the author, have roles in a sort of published academy; and several others at least take a hand. They have no new ideas, except certain Aristotelian inklings that hardly seem to fit. But they are learned in rhetoric. They begin with the convention of the original dominance of poetry; they end with sixty-two figures of speech. The subject is reviewed; it is not advanced. As guidance for Latin poets—but that is hardly intended. As inspiration this oratory is much feebler than Poliziano’s; and it never even approaches that brief, anonymous ancient prose poem περι ὕψους, _De sublimitate_, “on reaching up.”[54]

Minturno’s other treatise, _Arte poetica_ (1563), reduces the dialogue form to catechism (_L’arte poetica del signor Antonio Minturno, nella quale si contengono i precetti eroici, tragici, comici, satirici ..._ Naples, 1725). Though there is some debate in Book I on the validity of _romanzo_ narrative, elsewhere the single interlocutor assigned to each book merely asks the right questions. The work is not a discussion; it is a manual of vernacular poetry so analyzed under headings and sub-headings as to be a book of reference. Systematic and detailed, its doctrine is classical in referring everything ultimately to ancient principles. Its exemplification is abundant, with the usual preference for Petrarch.

Book I, discussing epic, includes the _Divina Commedia_ and
Petrarch’s _Trionfi_, and insists that the lack of unity in
Ariosto’s _Orlando_ is a cardinal fault. If the teaching of
the ancients “and the example of Homer’s poetry is true, I do
not see how another, different from that, is admissible; for
truth is one. Therefore the variation of later times will not
suffice as a warrant for letting a poem treat more than one
action, entire and of just compass, to which everything else
should be contributory” (35). What offends Minturno especially
is Ariosto’s interruption and resumption.

Book II, discussing drama, though it gives a better account of
Aristotle’s theory than the _De poeta_, still cites Horace,
calls actors _recitanti_, and does not comprehend the idea of a
play as a sequence of action.

Book III, dealing with lyric forms, is especially ample as
to _canzone_. The triad of Pindar’s odes he calls _volta_,
_rivolta_, _stanza_. His own praises of Charles V consist of
five such triads. “As Pindar,” he goes on, “narrates the myths
of Tantalus and Pelops, so I told the landing of Aeneas in
Africa and Hannibal’s invasion of Italy, with due reference to
the Trojan origin of the Romans and of the princely ancestors
of Charles” (183-184). After due citation of Dante the book
goes on to _sonetto_, _ballata_, and other forms with both
quotation and analysis, and even devotes a page to reminder of
the Latin hymns.