CENTRV. W[]RKU~[j PflPERS []f THE l':l~~~es[]tfl I I. I LE~TER f[]r flljufl~lelj ~TlJlJ~E~ ~~ I I I I I I I. 1 Lfl~[jUfl[jE, STYLE, ~ UTERflRY THE[]RY

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1 CENTRV W[RKU~[j PfPERS [f THE ':~~~ES[Tf LE~TER f[r fuf~le ~T~E~ ~~ 1 Lf~[jUf[jE, STYLE, ~ UTERfRY THE[RY Centrum: Working Papers of the Minnesota Center for Advanced Studies in Language, Stye, and Literary Theory is pubished twice a year, in Autumn and Spring, by the Minnesota Center for Advanced Studies in Language, Stye, and Literary Theory. Subscriptions: $1.00 an issue ($2.50 outside the United States). Subscribers wi be bied upon their receipt of each issue. U(LU':E ~ SPR~~[j Minnesota Center for Advanced Studies in Language, Stye, and Literary Theory 1977

2 EDTOR Michae Hancher Engish ASSOCATE EDTOR Robert Brown Engish EDTORAL BOARD F. R. P. Akehurst French and taian Danie V. Bryan Communication and Humanities Keith Gunderson Phiosophy Martin Steinmann, r., uie Carson,. Lawrence Mitche, Donad Ross Engish Gerad A. Sanders Linguistics EDTORAL POLCY Centrum pubishes papers somehow bearing upon the theory of anguage, stye, and iterature, incuding computer-aided anaysis of discourse, especiay papers with an interdiscipinary approach. Each issue is copyrighted in the name of the Minnesota Center for Advanced Studies in Language, Stye, and Literary Theory; contributors are given permission to reprint their contributions upon request and without charge. Every manuscript submitted shoud be doube-spaced throughout (incuding quotations and, foowing the text, footnotes), conform to some estabished stye (e.g., that of Language or The MLA Stye Sheet, second edition) and be accompanied by a stamped, sef-addressed enveope. Every manuscript reporting research shoud be prefaced by an abstract of no more than 200 words. Each contributor is sent without charge five copies of the issue in which his or her contribution is pubished. COMMUNCATONS A communications - manuscripts, enquiries, books for review, subscriptions - shoud be sent to Centrum, Lind Ha, University of Minnesota, 207 Church St. S.E., Minneapois, \1innesota ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Pubication of Centrum is made possibe by a grant from the Graduate Schoo, and by editoria assistance furnished by the Department of Engish. Ann T. Taranto is Editoria Assistant.

3 ~E~ TAU~ CENTRVM ~E~ TAU~ CENTRVM VOLUME V NUMBER 1 SPRNG 1976 Prefatory Note EARL MNER Assaying the Goden Word of Engish Renaissance Poetics WLLAM KEACH Verba Borrowing in Eizabethan Poetry: Pagiarism or Parody? PETER HUGHES Originaity and Ausion in the Writings of Edmund Burke NORMAN FRUMAN Originaity. Pagiarism. Forgery and Romanticism KENT BALES Generic Expectations and the (n-) Competent Reader. Review of Hawthorne, Mevie, and the Nove by Richard H. Brodhead and Language and Knowedge in the Late Novds ()_U-fenry ames by Ruth Bernard Yeaze!. ELZABETH BRUSS Review of T1eNature of Maps~_Essays!Qward Understanding Ma~s and Mapping by Arthur H. Robinson and Barbara Bartz Petchenik. Books Received Contributors

4 PREFATORY NOTE The essays by Wiiam Keach, Peter Hughes and Norman Fruman were originay presented to a specia session of the MLA Convention, tited "The Concepts of mitation, Originaity, and Pagiarism in Engish Literary History." Future issues of Centrum wi incude the foowing: BRENDA DANET / "Speaking of Watergate" BRUCE OHNSON "Communicative Competence in American Tria Courtrooms" ROBN LAKOFF / Review artice on Edwin Newman's Stricty Speaking MARORE PERLOFF / "Symboism/ Anti-Symboism" DONALD ROSS / review of Roger Fower, ed., Stye and Structure in Literature: Essays in the New Styistics STEPHEN BEHRENDT review of Ronad Pauson, Embem and Expression: Meaning in Engish Art of the Eighteenth Century

5 ' EARL MNER Assaying the Goden Word of Engish Renaissance Poetics To rcturnc from so1-rmt to rej >.ning it is a 'ery good!zap and no 1111\\'ise part fur zim that can do it. Put tc nzam.. j :'!c'(_)j_ :!_Zj!. i1h_f!( c\i_!: ( 1.:35) Even a person of the most setted iterary convictions must be aware of the heady atmosphere of critica activity today. Not ony does critica theory fourish in a way that was not thought possibe a decade or so ago, but aso we a fee the excitement and the optimism of an age that congratuates itsef in having ventured "beyond formaism." From Paris and Geneva, from Toronto and Konstanz. news comes to te us of fresh ways of considering iterature. Criticism has been anatomized, structures and systems have been deveoped. iterary phenomenoogy has been recounted, reader response has been examined, and "texts" have been "deconstructed." At the heart of these activities ies a formidabe paradox: we are ed to understand that such ways of understanding iterature are at once new and timeessy true. n a this rise of new critica faiths. is there not something akin to the reigious situation foowing the Reformation' 1 s there not. that is. a widespread beief that a true iterary faith exists aong with disputes as to which that true faith may be? f so. discovering the true faith is important. and the hazards are great. We may reca Donne's third satire: [Centntm, 4:1 (Spring 1976), 5-:30./... doubt wisey: in strange way To stand inquiring right. is not to stray: To seepe, or runne wrong, is. On a huge hil Cragged. and steep, Truth stands. and he that wi Reach her. about must. and about must goe: And what th'his suddenness resists. winne so:... To wil impyes deay, therefore now doe: Hard deeds. the bodies paines: hard knowedge too The mindes indeavours reach, and mysteries Are ike the Sunne. cazing. yet paine to 'a eyes. ( 77-88)

6 EARL MNER n his dedication of Vopone, onson invoved poetry in reigion, saying that the poet is "a teacher of things divine no ess than human." And he was kind enough to bad poets to decare that to think "that a are embarked in this bod adventure for he is a most uncharitabe thought. " 1 As we contempate the riva iterary faiths today, we may agree with Donne that we must doubt wisey, and even that we have a duty to stmgge for Tmth. But doubt that many think the supposed tmths of criticism invove a reigious obigation to save one's sou in the singe true faith, or that we agree with onson that poets are teachers of divine and human things, or even that they are teachers. The od anaogy between the poet as maker and God as creator, or between the poem of the one and the created word of the other, now seems as dead as Pan. f we do not agree with such things, do we mean that they never seemed tme? Or do we mean that Renaissance ideas about poetry seemed true to them but have been shown to be untrue? f time has reveaed their fasity, is criticism progressivey if erraticay rising toward a higher eve of truth, or does each age invent a criticism usefu to itsef but not to others? Or do progressive and reativistic considerations both appy? Have we perfected criticism? Or is critica assurance a chimerica hope? t very much seems that such questions as these, which are by no means comprehensive, require both historica and critica answers. More than that, they iustrate a very considerabe guf of time and idea between us and the Renaissance. The "vast abmpt" of Miton's Chaos confronts the foohardy and the brave venturer aike. f that sounds rather meodramatic, et us consider a pair of Renaissance and a pair of contemporary critica ideas. Two recurrent iterary questions invove method of interpretation and the purpose of iterature. n his ast book. Don Cameron Aen showed in bristing detai what we have ong known, that the Renaissance continued the medieva practice of regarding iterature as something poysemous. 2 The mere reader might think that Virgi ony chose to te how Aeneas fed Troy, daied with Dido, and after great effort defeated Turnus. But the true understander knew that Virgi offered a far more significant aegory of the ife of man from perious birth to hazardous and passionate youth to virtuous wise age proved in stmgge. That crazy Scot, Aexander Ross. even went so far as to evangeize Virgi, and by extracting ines from here and there out of various works rete the ife of Christ. 3 Surey no student of Virgi today moraizes him in such fashion. Aegorica hermeneutics of such kind simpy do not seem anything other than quaint. We study them to earn how some peope once thought. We earn about such ideas rather than use them ourseves. The ideas we use are many, and among them is a "formaist" premise. We have a been brought up beieving in the necessity of interpreting what is caed the iterary object. The concept of the objective status of iterature is impicit in Aristote, who seems to have had in mind representative Greek scupture and decoration. We have been taught to think of structure, form, texture, cadence, movement, rhythm. and other attributes that are susceptibe to verification by the senses. The fact that we a speak of such things, mysef incuded, does not make them anything other than Critica Fictions, just ike poysemousness. No one has ever seen, fet, or heard a nove, in any itera sense. A book or the sound waves of actors' voices have physica properties and can be objectivey measured, as a coffee-tabe book on Etruscan art may weigh about two pounds, and the sounds from the stage may register so many decibes at a given moment. But iterature exists ony as perceptive and cognitive experience, for without perceivers and knowers there may be books and sounds but there wi be no iterature, just as in another inteectua ream there may be a physica word, but there is no chemistry and there is no physics without a chemist or a physicist to express -

7 [ E ASSAYNG THE GOLDEN WORLD OF ENGLSH RENASSANCE POETCS 7 his understanding. For that what caim does a critic have to deconstruct a text except inferiority to, and dependence on, the poet who creates? Another prevaent Renaissance doctrine hods that the end, or a chief end, of iterature is, in Ben on son's words, "to inform men in the best reason of iving. " 4 Defenders of humanistic studies today commony insist that iterature and the arts treat human vaues, but few of us fee much comfort with Renaissance formuations of the idea. Thomas Rymer et the paper tiger out of the bag when he asked if the mora of Otheo was that young women shoud not run away with backamoors and wives shoud watch to their inen. 5 Who among us can assent to onson's idea of "the impossibiity of any man's being a good poet, without first being a good man"? 6 Surey he did not have in mind the ikes of Dostoyevsky. Proust. and Hemingway. And yet these are good poets. The mora poet and the didactic poem seem singuary out of pace in a word of dangerous iaisons such as are avaiabe for deectation at the oca cinema or bookshop. Finay, there are probaby more peope who assent to a simiar idea than we acknowedge. n eastern Europe, in China, in many new societies. and in some other paces. there is a strong emphasis on the socia end of iterature. Once a itte respected vehice of entertainment, the Peking opera now depicts the recurrent trias and triumphs of the Maoist state in defeating adventurous imperiaism. Anyone who fais to think such a view genuine and appreciated knows itte of contemporary reaity or of such other things as the genera teos of the Oresteia and the Augustan myth of the Aeneid. And yet each of us wi insist that works with such a purpose aone are tendentious, as aso that the Oresteia and Aeneid rise far above such imited considerations. These four interpretations of ih'rature invove Critica Fictions such as have accused one of being. And each in its way carries some W 'ight of conviction. The aegorica reading of the cassics may seem quaint or crude. but from Posch!. Putnam. and Otis, we have been taught to read Virgi in terms of what they ca symboism. 7 The Ango-American New Criticism has convinced us a that the tempora experience of iterature invoves actions of the mind that counter purey tempora concerns. Simiary, we do empoy normative standards to dismiss some things we deem iterary as trivia or even ugy. And we do regard iterature as something deepy invoved in the socia miieu in which poets write. For such reason. it is difficut to dismiss with Bacon dominant iterary systems as idos and fase notions. They may be Critica FiL'tions. but the make-beieve serves rea needs. t is in such spirit that we mst approach Renaissance criticism. asking ourseves painy what its main ideas are. what ogic they may have. and considering what aternatives we can suppy. One of the first things we observe about Renaissance Engish criticism is its extraordinariy derivative character. Aong with that we observe a considerabe time-ag between Engand and the continent. not just in the acquisition of ideas but even in method. As a Protestant country, Engand was committed to that schoarship of the bibica text that, in continenta centers of earning. ed to cassica and then vernacuar schoarship. Not ti Thomas Creech pubished his edition of Lucretius in however. did Engand get a cassica text that cassicists today take seriousy. n 1905 Spingarn showed that neary haf of onson's Discoveries came from a singe source. Danie Hensius. 8 A simiary ong shadow fas from the two Scaigers, notaby from uius Caesar Scaiger and his Poetices Libri Septem. Another feature of Renaissance Engish criticism worth notice is its amost compete ack of historica outook. The

8 8 EARL MNER concept of a iterary age or period does not come into fu being unti Dryden, and without that concept such others as historica deveopment or such methods as comparison are very unikey to appear. What we do find is a varying mix of rhetoric. Neoaristoteeanism. Neohoratianism, and Neopatonism. 9 The amount or importance of one eement over another varies with the critic. Often it is not possibe to be sure just what weight to give a remark such as onson's that to be a good poet one must first be a good man. That idea was aready od when Quintiian appied it to the orator. From his other writings. it is pain that onson beieved what he said, and the probem is therefore not that he said what he did not beieve but that we have difficuty in beieving what he said. Of a the constituents of Renaissance iterary theory and method, however. the east attractive to the modern mind have surey been rhetoric and her severer sister, ogic. Unti the studies by W. S. Howe and Father Ong appeared, most of us did not even have an idea of what the issues were in the fuss over Ramism, and even today most of us enjoy Puttenham more when he is being genera than what he gets to "Ornament" in the second haf of his book. 1 0 Rosemond Tuve ong since argued the importance of rhetorica study. caiming that there was a rhetorica cuture shared in by poets of a kinds. That ed Wiiam Empson to impy that if one coud not perceive the major iterarv differences between Spenser and Donne one might as we waste time studying rhetoric. 1 1 As one who perpetuay has to reearn the meanings of terms such as anadiposis, homozeuxis. and even. confess. enthymeme. am hardy the proper trumpeter to ead our age to study of Renaissance "schoasticism." And yet it is in rhetoric and ogic that we find a functioning Renaissance criticism. n an unpubished work. Ronad Runyan has examined Miton in terms of a few of the schemes (as opposed to tropes) set forth by the Ramists as figures of repetition. His approach makes evident sense to anyone who rec:ts that winding. recurrent stye of Miton's. What he discovered is that the figures of repetition tend to custer in the speeches of certain characters and on certain occasions. n particuar, they burgeon in the speech of God the Father in Paradise Lost, Book, and in the repies of esus to Satan in Paradise Regained. t wi no onger do to say that God the Father speaks painy, unfigurativey. We must simpy be prepared to discover figures whose existence has been forgot. n this respect, the11, there is much to discover in Renaissance rhetoric that may te us how to read Renaissance iterature. We sha have some difficuty persuading our Shakespearean coeagues of this, as the exampe of Leon Howard shows. Years ago he proved that Hamet's "To be. or not to be'' and other soioquies foowed a fairy simpe Ramist outine of the usua hierarchy and subsidiary duaities. 1 2 think that the essay coud be pubished now. but formery Shakespearean schoars abominated such trivia, even if their Bard did not. f Renaissance writers beieved in and used certain mora and rhetorica assumptions, they aso had a arger and coudier horizon in forms of Neopatonism. The sense of something far more deepy interfused, the idea of the few fit and initiate readers, the dark conceit, the furor poeticus, the ceestia Venus, and the perennia wisdom a derive from fairy standard kinds of Neopatonism, and they wi be found here and there in one version or another. But we must be aware of certain popuar emphases if we are to foow changes. Lack of awareness of change 1

9 ' \ ' ASSAYNG THE GOLDEN \\'ORLD OF ENGLSH RE\'ASSANCE POETCS 9 has ed to some strange assumptions about the presence and timing of Neopatonism. n genera, sixteenth-century writers emphasize the idea of the scae of ove more than writers from the next century, who are more concerned with what they termed "the inteigibe word." onson and Henry More iked the figure of the word as garment of the sou, whereas Miton and Dryden were more interested in the doctrine of Midde Spirits. 1 3 Of course it is we known that the best understanding of Pato avaibhe to the Renaissance was in Cicero's Hortensius, as Thomas Staney seems to have sensed in preparing his materia on Pato for The History of Phiosophy, beginning with Cicero and graduay working in subsequent materia from ess reiabe writers such as Pico dea Mirandoa. 14 As distinct from Neopatonism. Patonism was not recovered unti the German cassicists got to work in the ast century and this. Unfortunatey. we cannot read Friedaender with any security that the Renaissance possessed so sure a grip of what Pato wrote. Recenty Staney Fish pubished a very interesting account of Pato's Phaedrus, which he read basicay as rejection of rhetoric in favor of phiosophica diaectic, and the point was usefu to him for his genera thesis. 15 Athough the Phaedrus is accounted by cassicists as one of the difficut diaogues. most woud think that such a strand was to be found in it. Such was, however, not at a the version deivered to the Renaissance by the interpreter who monopoized the subject, Ficino. To him, the Phaedrus was about beauty. De Puchro being his subtite and the basis of his Renaissance expication. 16 Neopatonism invoves. then, very itte Pato. t depends chiefy upon either Ficino, when Pato is utimate inspiration: or upon that other hodge-podge of phiosophy, symboism, and the occut that fourished in Engand in the 1580s and again between 1640 and There is point to detais of the Renaissan e use of dial'l'tic and Neopatonism because those two eements were of importance. diaectic to stye and Neopatonism to ce tain ideas. Neither, however, reay constitutes what French critics today woud term a construction, or the basic systematic poetics of the Renaissance. f it is ony a hypothesis that a systematic poetics exists, then must confess that accept the hypothesis. \y evidence derives in part from the recurrence of centra ideas in Renaissance writing and in part from the competey different assumptions made in the three principa Asian cuture~ of China. apan. and Korea. As have aready suggested. the systematic poetics of the Renaissance seems to me to be Neoaristoteean and Neohoratian. Put another way, it entais a dominant theory of mimesis suppemented by a subordinate affectivism. Mimetic theory does indeed join the Renaissance with Aristote and even with certain critics of our time. notaby Frich Auerbach and Northrop Frye. different as they are. The affective theory wa~ of importance because mimesis itsef suffers from the cripping imitation that it fais to consider the reader. Of course Aristote spoke of katharsis, but if Gerad F. Fse is rig:ht. not e\ en that is a tedi\'e in nwa ni ng:. whatever the Renaissance thouf!ht. 1 7 t did not matter. becausl' oratianism was there to remedy the omission. and in fact effected such a reading of the Poet'S. t is sedom asked how a systematic poetic emerges. but think the question an important one for what it tes of the iterary assumptions of a cuture and of the imitations of a given system. My expanation 1 uns that a systematic poetics emerges in the encounter of a superior critica practice with the then dominant g:enre. Aristote of course considered tragedy and comedy, athough we do not have his remarks on the atter. t seems to me no accident that consideration of represented genres shoud ead to a theory of imitative representation. n the Asian countries mentioned. mimetic theory did not exist unti it was brought in as an

10 10 EARL MNER exotic Western product. nstead, the systematic poetics emerged from the encounter with yric poetry as the most distinguished genre, and out of that came a reciproca or poar theory of affectivism-expressionism. When we consider that, in apan. such a systematics had to absorb at an unprecedentedy eary moment prose fiction and its canons of time and daiy reaity, we can see that the entire nature of iterary assumptions may depend on the sequence of generic occurance in a cuture. By the time prose fiction emerged as a principa genre in the West. apanese poetics aso had had to absorb three major forms of drama and theatre. Returning to our Renaissance critics, we discover the entirey different but famiiar situation of mimetic and affectivist dominance. Some of us might think, or a of us in some moods, that these canons so tireessy repeated by the critics have itte to offer for an understanding of Shakespeare's pays. Certainy, the strict Neoaristoteeans who quarreed over! Pastor Fido earier and over Le Cid ater coud hardy have thought Shakespeare a proper dramatist at a. For a that. it is Shakespeare that matters more, and his own support of mimesis and affectivism emerges reveaingy when he takes his art to a second eve of presentation, as in dumb shows. pays within pays, and masques. t wi hep to consider three such theatrica moments. n Richard we have a version of the dumb show at Baynard's Caste, when Richard, Duke of Goucester, appears "aoft, between two Bishops." His partner in the scheme to get the throne. Buckingham. then acts as the Presenter after the Mayor observes: "See, where his Grace stands 'tween two cergyman!" Buckingham interprets the embematic moment: Two props of virtue for a Christian prince, To stay him from the fa of vanity; And, see, a book of prayer in his hand, True ornaments to know a hoy man. 1 ~ By the end of the scene Goucester has had Buckingham maneuver him into acceptance of the crown. Now after a we have seen of Richard's actions, we know that he is not "a hoy man." His mimesis is fase imitation, and our knowedge of that therefore eads to affective resuts directy opposite to those of stage characters ike the Mayor who see Buckingham without our knowedge of his character. n the Pyramus and Thisbe episode of A Midsummer Night's Dream we have a different and cearer exampe of Shakespeare's devotion to mimesis and affectivism. Everyone knows how ridicuous is the pay performed by Bottom and his friends with its "Thanks, courteous wa," " see a voice!" and a the rest. The point here is ess that the representation is fasified by the motives of the representers as that the imitation itsef is so woefuy - and comicay - unbeievabe. Such being the case, it fais competey in its aim of moving or affecting its immediate audience as the actors intend. Theseus does his best to rebuke his snickering courtiers but at ast he cannot contain himsef and says of the crazy payet they are watching something that we iustrates faied affectivism and that surey is Shakespeare's wittiest ine: "This passion, and the death of a dear friend, woud go near to make a man ook sad" (5.1.'293-94). When mimesis fais in tragedy, a rea death is required to arouse the emotions. Of course we aso have a second, genuine representation of those mechanicas making foos of themseves. Again, in Hamet we have both a dumb show and a pay. Caudius endures the former but not the actua spoken representation of his murder of the eder Hamet. The fuer the mimesis. the more affective it is. We see this over and over in Shakespeare, and not ony in i 1 1

11 ' ( ' 1 ASSAYNG THE GOLDEN WORLD OF ENGLSH RENASSANCE POETCS 11 terms of dumb shows and pays within pays. Seeing uiet's body in its imitation of death, Romeo is so distraught that he takes his ife. When she awakens, the sight of Romeo dead eads her to die too. The roe-paying by King Lear's two evi daughters and Goucester's two sons eads to a constant fow of reaction and affect in which we sometimes find ourseves responding ike, and sometimes unike, the characters represented on the stage. "True imitation" may be thought true in descriptive, affective. and normative senses. Description is true if it represents what is true - unike Richard at Baynard's Caste. Affectivey it is true if it is done we enough to succeed in moving an audience, in Sidney's wonderfu phrase, if it "hodeth chidren from pay, and od men from the chimney corner. " 1 9 Normativey it is true when it is rea, when it satisfies our sense of reaity. But it is just here where serious probems begin to emerge with mimetic theory. The major assumption of mimesis is the reaity of the word and of art. Reaity can be truthfuy perceived, truthfuy known, and truthfuy imitated or recreated. The meaningfuness of reaity and the meaningfuness of the imitation of it derive in considerabe measure from the presumed knowabiity of reaity. To phiosophers today such beiefs briste with difficuties and are perhaps neither provabe nor disprovabe. happen to think the assumptions make usefu daiy sense, but ceary anyone taking the so-caed iterature of the absurd seriousy cannot aso support mimesis. Such fundamenta and truy basic assumptions about the nature of things underie the vioent resistance by many to abstract painting and seria music. Something simiar was invoved in Erich Auerbach's we known antipathy to writers ike oyce: such manipuation of stye must have seemed to Auerbach to beie a veritabe, representabe reaity. There is more to it than that, however, because most forms of mimesis we know have ethica coroaries. n brief, the question is not ony whether something is true but aso whether it ought to be true, or, in some minds. even if it is true shoud it be said? We may reca that Sidney's argument on behaf of poesy hed that it was a better teacher than either phiosophy or history.:w By which Sidney meant, think, two things. He meant that it was a more efficient way of conveying truth, and aso that its affective powers were far greater. On the other hand, Sidney ceary expects that tragedy has a certain set of characters and characteristics; the epic simiar characters but different characteristics: and comedy different characters but simiar characteristics. t is difficut not to accept in some fashion the doctrine of decorum impicit here, once it is mentioned: but it is a too easy for critics to be carried away with the idea. Kings must be kingy, soiders miitary, overs amatory, etc.. and the characteristics are precisey those from a pre-existing stock. Reaity not ony ought to be true, but in order for it to be truy true it must be true in certain ways. Kings may do evi, but they are great men and not to be shown under comic circumstances, as The Knight of Burning Peste shows, when the actors protest that Raph the grocer's apprentice shoud not be seen with the daughter of the King of Modavia. 21 Soiders may be drunkards, but not kings or overs. The very weaknesses of Shakespeare's Richard are rega, and the vices of his Richard are princey. Such decorum is so important that it must be incuded in any description of Renaissance poetics. Decorum has profound rhetorica, ethica, social and even reigious sanctions in the Renaissance. A major reason why that is so derives from the status of that which is not decorousy rea, what is not natura and which is therefore aso inartificia. Here is Sidney: Deight hath a joy in it, either permanent or present. Laughter hath oney a

12 1.2 EARL MNER scornfu ticking. For exampe, we are ravished with deight to see a faire woman, and yet are far from being moved to aughter. We augh at deformed creatures, wherein certainey we cannot deight. 22 Deformed creatures have something artisticay and moray wrong with them. A usus naturae - a sport or "monster" - is aughabe, and according to the proverb, Africa produced a new monster daiy. s there any bastard, crippe, or ew in Shakespeare who satisfies a bastard, crippe, or ew as reader? We reca that the funny peope in A Midsummer Night's Dream are mere mechanicas. Or, to consider Ben onson, there are those readers of The Achemist who profess to be upset because no poetic justice is done. confess that am troubed precisey because poetic justice is done. When Lovewit returns home. Subte resumes his roe as eremy the servant, and the master gets the person and fortune of a woman he had never seen before. The point is that after chaos of a kind the desirabe socia order is re-estabished. 23 Masters marry women with fortunes: servants do not. t is easy to forget that the nature imitated by Renaissance art was. in socia terms, an unjust hierarchica order in which those who rued wer~ few in number and did their best to make sure that others acked power. Most Engishmen and even more Engishwomen coud expect eary death from disease or chidbirth, and most were hungry more or ess aways. To boster the unjust socia hierarchy. inteectuas devised such things as the Scae of Nature, or the Great Chain of Being. The divinity that hedged a king. the High Court of Pariament, and "our aws and iberties" were a the possession of a few. The right of that few was to rue. The duty of the rest was to obey. Angican Convocation went so far as to put into fathers' hands the power of ife and death over their chidren. One of Burton's images of anarchy is chidren teing their parents what to do: another is women wearing breeches. Such anomaies are ike towers buiding masons or fish in the trees. n his First Anniversary Donne worries ess about the New Phiosophy than each man thinking himsef a Phoenix and forgetting his obigations as son and subject. 24 Of course there is more to be said of the Renaissance than that. and it is aso true that mimesis does not require a Renaissance socia order to exist. t existed in the so-caed democracy of Greece, in repubican and imperia Rome, and it exists sti today. Auerbach ted Nazi persecution and very we knew what oppression was. Yet he has his decorum. which admits into the category "iterature" amost ony those works that possess high seriousness of some kind. Northrop Frye ends the Anatomy of Criticism with the vision of an increasingy ibera and rationa society. A of us fee far more comfortabe in the presence of such socia impications than we do in the presence of Renaissance tyranny and autocracry. But is it not of something more than passing interest that the two principa advocates of mimesis in our time shoud aso discover ethica or socia as we as aesthetic impications in it? When a vaue is set on reaity, as with anything ese, it changes from neutraity to a part in a system of vaues. There is no reason whatever. to my mind, why a systematic poetics shoud not invove a systematic theory of vaues; and simpy do not see how any of us can detach one's sef sufficienty from one's cuture and one's age to create something whoy new. But that fact does not require us to accept the vaues of the Renaissance any more than the fact that Sociaist criticism has vaues necessariy means that they are those one shares. The chief gory of mimesis is aso the matter on which many woud wish to dissent from ) )! 1

13 t t.. t t ASSAYNG THE GOLDE!\ WORLD OF E'\GLSH RENASSANCE POETCS 13 it: its assumption that a proper reaity can be presented in proper art. The idea of what is proper changes from the compex decorums of the Renaissance to the seriousness of Auerbach or the concepts of high and ow mimesis of Frye. Ony this much more need be said about it. Mimetic theory is not required for an aesthetic theory entaiing a beief in the reaity of the word and man's access to it. To recur to an earier exampe, the affective-expressive theory of apanese poetics has an equay strong faith. t woud be unjust to assume that what Auerbach caed "tte Representation of Reaity" beongs soey to mimesis or soey to Western iterature. The subordination of affectivism to mimesis in Renaissance theory has been shown, beieve, from the exampes taken from Shakespeare's pays and from Sidney's remark about the nature of our responses to a beautifu woman or deformed creature. n the Renaissance itsef, no such subordination appears to have been intended. The affective theory was commony extoed in terms of the "ends'' of poesy, to teach and deight. Again and again we observe critics either trying to join mimesis and affectivism into a whoe or unaware that they are espousing two different critica propositions that have no necessary connection with each other - as the exampe of Asian poetics shows once again. Often a sanction obtained from reigion, Neopatonism, or anaogy with God the Creator justifies the affectivism of art. As Chapman put it in his dedicatory matter prefaced to his iad: "since the exceence [of Poesy cannot be obtained by the abour and art of man... it must needs be acknowedged a divine infusion." And yet he shorty speaks quite differenty: "no Artist [is so stricty and inextricaby confined to a the aws of earning, wisdom. and truth as a Poet. " 25 And here is Puttenham at ength from the opening of his Arte of Engish Poesie: A Poet is as much as to say as a maker. And our Engish name we conformes with the Greek: for of [ rroieiv to make, they ca a maker a Poeta. Such as (by way of resembance and reverenty) we may say of God: who without any trave to his divine imagination, made a the word of nought, nor aso by any paterne or moud a:. the Patonicks with their dees do phantasticay suppose. Even so the \'Cry Poet makes and contrives out of his owne braine both the verse and matter of his poeme... And nevertheesse... a Poet may in some sort be said a foower or imitator, because he can express the true and ivey of every thing is set before him, and which he taketh in hand to describe: and so in that respect is both a maker and a counterfaitor: and Poesie an art not ony of making, but aso of imitation. And this science in its perfection. can not grow. but by some divine instinct. the Patonicks ca it furor.... Puttenham goes on to consider how poesy praised and honored gods. and how vice was reproved by satire but "better reformed" by comedy and tragedy. 26 That is the right Eizabethan copia. getting at the effects of poesy by a engthy preambe invoving God and making before getting even to mimesis. The ideas ast 011. Davenant is sure that poesy is the "hyreess Science! and of a aone The Libera." And that by the poets' singing of ove and just war, ''the oving Love, and vaiant, fight" (Gondibert, ). For that matter, Hobbes begins his ntroduction to the Leviathan with the very anaogy between divine and human creation that Puttenham had used.

14 14 EARL MNER The most concise advocacy of affectivism with mimesis of which am aware, and the strongest effort to reate the two ogicay, aso comes from a time ater than some woud incude in the Renaissance. n his Parae Betwixt Painting and Poetry, Dryden wrote: The imitation of nature is therefore justy constituted as the genera, and indeed the ony, rue - and what focws is the stroke of a master critic who understood Shakespeare -- the general and indeed the ony, rue of peasing [my stress both in poetry and painting. Aristote tes us [in Poetics, ch. 4 that imitation peases, because it affords matter for a reasoner to inquire into the truth or fasehood of imitation, by comparing its ikeness, or unikeness with the origina. But by this rue, every specuation in nature whose truth fas under the inquiry of a phiosopher, must produce the same deight, which is not true. shoud rather assign another reason. Truth is the object of our understanding, as good is of our wi; and the understanding can no more be deighted with a ie than the wi can choose [a garing evi. As truth is the end of a our specuations, so the discovery of it is the peasure of them; and since a true knowedge of nature gives us most peasure, a iving imitation of it, either in poetry or painting, must of necessity produce a much greater. For both these arts, as said before, are not ony true imitations of nature, but of the best nature, of that which is wrought up to a nober pitch. 27 Unike Puttenham, who adds one idea to another in a series, Dryden has sought to make a whoe, as had Sidney and Ben onson before him. Here is onson in the Dedication of Vopone: "it being the office of a comic poet to imitate justice. and instruct to ife, as we as purity of anguage, or stir up gente affections." 28 The idea that poetry instructs and deights seems either wrong or crude to an age concerned with phenomenoogy, games theory, and deconstruction. The praise avished by Sidney and Puttenham on Gorbudoc makes painfu reading today, when it gives no deight at a and teaches us itte but to appreciate better pays. Or, at the other end of our main dramatic tradition, we find Dryden writing that his tragedy Don_Sebastian has a genera mora besides specific ones couched in each character; and Congreve prefixing a Latin tag to The Way of the Word impying that woud-be aduterers wi earn to avoid the sin by attending to the pay. 29 And as for Sidney himsef, the wag was not far wrong who said that Addison's Cato best fits his requirements for tragedy. One probem of particuar difficuty is accepting an expicit mora. Dryden said that the genera mora of Don Sebastian is set forth in the ast three ines: This dreadfu sentence to the word reate, - That unrepented crimes, of parents dead, Are justy punished on their chidren's head. Such an expicit mora was obviousy of great importance to Dryden. So was it to Beaumont and Fetcher, who concude Phiaster with a simiar sentiment: 1 3 1

15 ASSAYNG THE GOLDEN WORLD OF E'\GLSH RENASSANCE POETCS 15 ' c r r 1 Let princes earn By this to rue the passions of their bood; For what Heaven wis can never be withstood. Webster had his say at the end of The Duchess of ~_rafi: And onson aso at the end of Yopone: ntegrity of ife is fame's best friend. Which noby, beyond death. sha crown the end. Let a that see these vices thus rewarded. Take heart, and ove to study 'em. Mischiefs feed Like beasts. ti they he fat. and then they beed. Marowe goes on at greater ength at the end of Dr. Faustus ;me is brief at the end of The ew of Mata. Shakespeare is usuay somewhat more indirect, but in addition to a sense of an ending, he gives moras at the end of a tragedy as eary as Titus Andronicus and as ate as King Lear. One need hardy stress the mora cast of A Mirrour for Magistrates. The Fairie Queene. and other engthier Renaissance poems. Whdher we find such concerns naive or not. they are patenty there. Whether we find the moras too simpe or not. they meant a great dea to their authors. Nor need one stress the cast of joyousness and sorrow in Renaissance songs and yrics. On une 4, 1599, various satires, erotic verses. and other compositions were burnt by order of Archbishop Whitgift. The Renaissance acted on its c onvidions: if poetry coud teach men virtue, it coud aso teach them evi. The probem with Renaissance affectivism for me differs from that of my probem with its mimesis. Some version of affectivism seems to me ne~.:c>ssary to account for the reader's experience, for my experience as read. ~ty feeings and ideas _i!!e engaged when read. That is. we can never consider a ite1 ary theory compete that fais to account for what goes on in the reader. But the Renaissance version seems at time~ too sweeping and at times too simpe. t seems no accident that affectivism was termed a faac y by those AmeriL an New Critics who were absorbed in that Critica Fiction. the iterary object. which supposedy existed independenty of its author or its reader. And it seems no accident either that, as we have come to be more concerned with psychoogica approaches to iterature. phenomenoogy. and reader response, Renaissance affectivism shoud seem a very proper concern, even to a critic ike Staney Fish who has no beief in, or sympathy with. mimesis. agree with Fish on those two heacs at east but disagree on others and sha get at <>omdhing of the difference between us by asking a question. We a know that the heyday of mimesis and affectivism in Engand ran from about 1550 to the end of the eighteenth century. and that even ater Coeridge sought to adapt it to expressive theory. Now does not the combination of mimesis and affectivism account for a major portion of the greatest iterature in Engish, incuding poetic and prose genres? have said precisey what think about the imitations of Renaissance iterary and other views, but it does seem to me that its uneasiy combined mimetic and affective theory managed to account. however crudey we may think it did. for the four main considerations of criticism: the poet, the

16 16 EARL MNER word, the expression, and the reader. Fish is so far from beieving (in theory) that a iterary theory coud account for a quaitative difference that he is unwiing to admit (in theory) to normative standards of any kind. 33 t seems to me a pecuiar advantage of iving in our age that we can investigate iterature in terms unreated to reaity or to moraity. assent to Fish's thesis that we may admit as iterature (or science, reigion, etc.) anything that someone chooses to think iterary, which may incude random jottings as we as sonnets and the most deepy pondered nove. Such permissiveness or broadmindedness has enabed us to understand the bases for our unsefconsciousy considering, a this whie, such writers as Pica, Montaigne, and Hobbes to be iterary. Such an approach has heped us understand that a scientific treatise such as Burton's Anatomy of Meanchoy or Browne's Hydriotaphia may justy be thought iterary. aong with such autobiographica writings as Bunyan's Grace Abounding and Pepys's Diary. Such permissiveness, which is so antithetica to the rigorous, excusive inferences drawn in practice from mimesis, seems to me to have done a word of good in extending the boundaries of iterature to imits such as we have often recognized in practice if not in theory. By the same token, however. firmy beieve that our contemporaries wi impoverish their sense of iterature if they do not recognize the caims made by Renaissance poetics. f had not mentioned it aready so often, woud enter some caims as we for Asian poetics. Anything that can get us out of our sma parish and chapter of time can ony do us good. But more than that. Renaissance poetics seems to have certain vaues for us that we cannot find in contemporary theory. which ike any theory is often at variance with what peope actuay do and think. n his briiant book, with its insufferabe tite, Sef-Consuming Artifacts, Staney Fish beies his own purey descriptive theory and entertains certain normative considerations. How ese coud he prefer one thing over another? How ese decide Burton is superior to Browne and Bunyan to other Restoration prose writers? Fish's rea taent has been to know when to depart from description for evauation, and when to engage these contraries in fruitfu diaectic. whoy beieve that such inconsistency represents the resuts of encounter with Renaissance iterature, in which vaues and normative schemes are rea and not just theoretic. Staney Fish can speak about such things as advertising commercias and make a briiant case for a purey descriptive approach to iterature. But he cannot do so in accounting for his experience of Bacon and Browne, Donne and Bunyan. Nor can or, think, anyone responsive to Renaissance iterature. The vaues may come to us with a naive theory of poetic teaching, and they may be buttressed by a detestabe socia system. But they are rea. That is, we experience them in reading. And even across three or four centuries, in spite of certain profound changes in society, reigion, and science, we sti respond as the authors responded to their word. We do not respond exacty as they did by any means. Nor do we respond exacty as do a our contemporaries, as the present and a past states of criticism testify. But we do respond in ways that we are asked, as it were, to respond. When reading Renaissance iterature, then, we respond with a strong conviction of reaity derived from a we-practiced mimetic theory; and we respond in emotiona and ethica ways to a we-embodied affective theory n a time ike ours when action painting, seria music, and the iterature of the absurd have had a desirabe effect in extending the boundaries of iterature, Renaissance poetics and 1

17 E ' ASSAYNG THE GOLDEN \VORLD OF ENGLSH RENASSANCE POETCS 17 iterature seem to me particuary vauabe for insisting on iterary integrity in various guises. One of them is the vaued identity of what may be termed iterary expressions: Hamet or Macbeth, Paradise Lost or Paradise Regained. For no matter how far we go toward a purey descriptive, reativistic, or permissive view of iterature, there wi never come a time when sane readers wi confuse Shakespeare's two tragedies or Miton's two epics. There wi be no universa agreement about countess detais of our response to these achievements; but each is an affective embodiment of reaity such as we sha not confuse with another. That evident truth eads to others ess obvious. The terms on which it is possibe to create iterary expressions are ike those of other kinds of expression in that they set the terms by which they may be understood. Or to put it differenty, we readers and the poet share for the moment the terms and assumptions of the predications of a iterary creation. Such a bond between the poet and the reader has as its counterpart the bonds between different readers, whatever our differences of response in detai. One of the oneiest acts of our ives, reading, is yet an act that joins us with contemporaries whom we do not know, with those who have gone before us. and with those who wi foow us. And it joins us in the same partia but essentia degree with writers eiciting our consent, even when the terms of that consent differ so much as those provided by Shakespeare and onson, Donne and Miton. We cannot caim that Renaissance iterature is unique in this respect. Montherant, Beckett, and onesco can aso eicit recognition and consent. But Renaissance iterature eicits stronger recognition and consent by virtue of that bond between poet and reader being insisted upon as a basis of recognizing reaity and its effects on us. f we take the term iteray, such a bond is a Critica Fiction. And at best it may be thought that am advancing a hypothesis, athough put fu faith in it. have recenty competed a three-part study of seventeenth-century poetry in which argue for and try to demonstrate a moda conception of iterature. What mean by that is that a poet consciousy or unconsciousy assumes some perceptive. cognitive. and expressive reation between himsef, other human creatures, and their word. t seems to me that the radica of characteristic poems usuay termed "Metaphysica" is a private mode. That term comes to us from privatus, meaning that beonging to onesef, not pubic or of the state. Donne's speakers are separated in their own vaued uniqueness, and individuaity, to one itte room. Priv~e, to separate or deprive, is not amiss; nor is privus, meaning separate, pecuiar. The poems by onson and others thought characteristic of that other period stye termed ''Cavaier" are social vauing what sma groups share, what esteemed peope have in common against a arger crowd of the fooish or ignorant or corrupt. The socia mode very much seems to me to deveop out of sixteenth-century yric poetry, in which a fractious and uncertain court society found means in convention, tradition, and shared vaues to assert its commor1 bonds and aristocratic vaues excusive of other socia groups. The over or friend and certain socii represent the norm. The seventeenth century brought a ast adjustment in the pubic poetry of Buter, Miton. and Dryden, in which characteristicay what is vaued is what peope share. not what separates them. These three seventeenth-century modes are merey reations on points of a graded scae, and we shoud have to pace The Fairie Queene somewhere in the spectrum between the socia and the pubic, athough nearer the pubic. And we shoud have to pace apanese Court poetry between the private and the socia. My point of course does not rest on names or abes but on the human necessity to draw

18 18 EARL MNER a perceptive, cognitive, and expressive reation between the sef, other peope, and the word. And aso on the fact that as readers we immediatey recognize the reation and adjust our perceptive and cognitive facuties accordingy. t is in such spirit that interpret Sidney's remark that the poet ranges the zodiac of wit, creating things in or out of nature, and deivering a goden word. 31 take it that poets may egitimatey choose to deiver an iron or siver word as we, or even one of foo's god and that we give consent as to the kind of word, ranging in ikewise on our own zodiacs, and coming to do so from our chimney-corners or our games. Departments of Engish and Comparati'e Literature Princeton University NOTES 1 Vopone, ed. Avin B. Kernan (New Haven: Yae Univ. Press, 1962), pp Mysteriousy Meant (Batimore: ohns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1970). 3 Virgiius Evangeisans (London, 1634 ). His Mystagogus Poeticus (London, 1647 and much reprinted) provides a mythography using pagan gods aegoricay and typoogicay. 4 Vopone, p The Critica Works, ed. Curt A. Zimansky (New Haven: Yae Univ. Press, 1956). p Vo pone, p Cassicists have ong beieved that Virgi deveoped an Augustan myth. The "symboism" recenty discussed invoves something not totay different. See Viktor Posch, The Art of Virgi: mage and Symboism in the Aeneid (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press. 1962): Michae C.. Putnam, The Poetry of the Aeneid (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1965): and Brooks Otis, Virgi: A Study in Civiized Poetry (Oxford: Carendon Press, 1963). ~See Pau R. Sein, Danie Heinsius and Stuart Enga!!_c (London: Oxford Univ. Press, 1968), especiay pp. 123ff.: Spingarn's essay, "The Sources of onson's 'Discoveries' " [Modern Phioogy, (1905), is cited on p The first two are admiraby treated by Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the taian Renaissance (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961 ). No such study exists for Neopatonism, a fact which is of more significance than many Renaissance schoars woud care to admit. 10 Wibur Samue Howe, Logic and Rhetoric in Engand, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1956), who cites Ong and other students of the subject. For ' 1 )!