IMAGES AND IDEAS IN LITERATURE OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

Transcription

1 IMAGES AND IDEAS IN LITERATURE OF THE ENGLISH RENAISSANCE

2 By the same author THE TRANSFORMATION OF SIN: STUDIES IN DONNE, HERBERT, VAUGHAN AND TRAHERNE

3 Images and Ideas in Literature of the English Renaissance Patrick Grant

4 Patrick Grant 1979 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without permission First published 1979 by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD London and Basingstoke Associated companies in Delhi Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo Typeset in Great Britain by Santype International Ltd, Salisbury British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Grant, Patrick Images and ideas in literature of the English Renaissance 1. Symbolism in literature 2. English literature -Early modern, 150o History and criticism I. Title 82o'.9'003 82o'.9'003 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI / This book is sold subject to the standard conditions of the Net Book Agreement

5 To Laurence Lerner

6 Contents List of Plates lx Preface Xl 2 The Matter of Roots: belief, images, and bodies 2 Augustine and the mediaeval theory 3 Images and rhetoric 9 New explanations I7 2 The Arms of the Red Cross: believing in the images Muiopotmos 27 The sign of the red cross 32 The eifectus passionis 37 The passion of St George 42 The Red Cross Knight 46 Conclusion: the butterfly and the cross 6o 3 The Tempest and the Magic of Charity: believing the Images 63 Masque and drama: intellectual and corporeal vision 63 Prospera: king and magus 6H Miranda: the play's focus 72 Inigo Jones: the idea of the masque 74 Francis Bacon: the matter of the drama 77 Miranda: the magic of caritas 81

7 Vlll 4 Contents Richard Crashaw and the Capucins: images and the force of belief Poet and critics: images and actual things Hypothesis: Crashaw and the Capucins The Capucin spirit Benet of Canfield Zacharie of Lisieux and Remi of Beauvais Crashaw's poetry I I I II7 5 Time and Temptation in Paradise Regained: belicl' and the single image I 29 Time and matter I 29 Milton as historian I 30 Matter, time, and the single image I33 Paradise Regained and the icons of time I37 Temptation and the divisions of time I42 Conclusion I 5 I 6 John Norris and the Oratorians: belief and the images in God I 54 John Norris: poetry and authority I 55 John Norris: the observers in the poem I6I The Oratorian solution I 67 Pierre de Berulle I68 Nicolas Malebranche I 75 John Norris: Oratorian prose I 8o 7 Conclusion. John Norris and Mr Locke: bodies and the uses of imagination I92 The question of bodies I92 The question of imagination I96 Mutual assessment, separate commitment 200 Coda 205 Notes Index 2IO 239

8 List of Plates I. Woodcut (I ss8). Artist unknown. Archiwum Archidiecezjalne, Poland 2. Giovanni Modena, Fresco ( q.2 I). Basilica di San Petronio, Bologna 3 Wood panel 'The Crucifixion' (Fifteenth century). The Art Institute of Chicago 4 BM Arundel44, f. 28v, Speculum Virginum (twelfth century), 'The Tree of Jesse' S BM Arundd 44, f. 29r, Speculum Virginum (twelfth century), 'The Tree of Jessee' 6. BM Royal 2A XVIII, f. sv, Hours of John de Beaufort, 'St George and the Dragon' 7. Vittore Carpaccio, 'St George Slaying the Dragon' (IS02-7), Scuola Dalmata Dei SS. Giorgio E Trifone, Venice 8. Titian, 'Sacred and Profane Love' (c. ISIS) Galleria Borghese, Rome 9 F. Gafurius, Practica Musice (I496), ki, g3 I o. Giovanni Rost after Angelo Bronzino, 'The Vindication of Innocence' Tapestry (sixteenth century), Galleria Palatina, Florence

9 Preface During the early Renaissance in England, poets like Spenser 'believed in' their images. They established by second nature a correspondence between the meaning of images and the material substance of things they depicted. Such correspondences grew out of an Augustinian tradition in which the continuity of matter, image and transcendent Idea was assumed, and in which the images of rhetoric were a means of directing us through everyday experience to contemplation of eternal truth. With the rise of science, and especially during the seventeenth century, the widespread acceptance of a quantitative view of matter caused a crisis for this older theory by encouraging a conflict between the traditional view of corporeal nature and a Cartesian, deistic observation of the world of objects. One consequence was that the new philosophy opened a breach between mental images and the divine Ideas which, traditionally, God had used as a blueprint in creating the world. Whether or not they knew the philosophers in detail, poets of the period dwelt in a world of linguistic discourse profoundly in process of change, and throughout the seventeenth century, literary men as never before came to suspect the usefulness of images for depicting the true nature of the material world. As early as Shakespeare in The Tempest the old habits were subject to a contrary movement, and Milton and the later Metaphysicals show a direct response to the challenge offered

10 Xll Preface to poets wishing to serve traditional piety in an intellectual environment increasingly bent on abandoning Augustine for Locke. My attempt to discuss the eclipse of a mediaeval, poetic vision of things by the disintegration of matter from symbol to atom depends to some extent on a clear distinction between the argument about ideas and literary history. I therefore make the case independently that during the seventeenth century a mediaeval view of images did yield to that of the empiricists. My authors then are examples of some ways in which literature took up the challenge posed by such a development. But in each case I felt also that I had something to say which would be of service to the poetry and of interest to a specialist in the subject. My suggestions on Muiopotmos and the effectus passionis for Book I of Spenser's Faerie Q_ueene, the iconography of caritas for The Tempest, the influence of the French Capucins on Crashaw, the structural relationship of time to temptation in Paradise Regained, and the effects of the Oratorians on John Norris are, I believe, new. I have tried thus to have the practice of criticism complement the analysis of ideas by adopting methods appropriate to the nature of my material in the particular cases. The reader who wishes to test further how the rise of materialism affected the course of literary history, must attend to a wider range of examples. The present study may be of some assistance in the task. I would especially like to acknowledge the help of Charles Doyle, Laurence Lerner, and Tony Nuttall, who read the manuscript and made invaluable suggestions for improvement. The Canada Council provided a research grant for the summer of I974, and a leave fellowship which enabled me to complete the book while on sabbatical in I Permission to reproduce materials printed earlier have been received from The University if Toronto Quarterly for my article 'Time and Temptation in Paradise Regained', XLIII, I (Fall, I973), 32-47, and from Review of English Studies, for 'The Magic of Charity: a Background ofprospero ', N.S. XVII, 2 (March, I976), I-I6. Permissions to reproduce the plates have been received from the following: The Archiwum Archidiecezjalne, Poland, for a woodcut, dated I 558. The Basilica di San Petronio, Bologna, for Giovanni Modena's Fresco. The Art Institute of Chicago for a wood panel 'The Crucifixion'. The British Museum for BM Arundel

11 Priface Xlll 44, ff. 28v, 2gr, Kings 7, ff. 45r, 54r, Royal 2A xviii, f. sv, F. Gafurius, Practica Musice ( 1496), K1, G3. The Scuola Dalmata Dei SS. Giorgio E Trifone, Venice, for Vittore Carpaccio, 'St. George Slaying the Dragon'. The Galleria Borghese, Rome, for Titian, 'Sacred and Profane Love'. The Galleria Palatina, Florence, for Giovanni Rost, 'The Vindication of Innocence'. April 1978 PATRICK GRANT