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Instruction and Delight In Medieval and Renaissance Criticism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Phillips Salman
Phillips Salman*
Affiliation:
The Cleveland State University
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Extract

The Horatian formula holding that a poem should instruct and delight raises two obvious questions: what is ‘instruction’ and what is ‘delight’? These are difficult questions, since they seem too broad to be answerable and too central to be dismissed. They are difficult, also, because they refer to paired terms. Are we to see instruction and delight related in some kind of sequence? And what of the cases where only one term appears and the other not at all?

These are the basic questions generated by a consideration of the Horatian formula as it occurs in medieval and Renaissance critical texts and it is the purpose of this paper to show that the formula in these texts can be coherently interpreted through the use of the then dominant faculty psychology.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1979 , pp. 303 - 332
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1979

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References

1 Sir Sidney, Philip, An Apology for Poetry or The Defence of Poesy, ed. Geoffrey Shepherd (Edinburgh, 1965), pp. 66–69 Google Scholar and 223-24; Robinson, Forrest, ed., An Apology for Poetry (Indianapolis, 1970), p. 20 Google Scholar, n. 83; p. 36, n. 180; and p. 78, n. 414. Robinson's, The Shape of Things Known (Cambridge, Mass., 1972)CrossRefGoogle Scholar borders on this topic, in presenting epistemological concerns in Renaissance criticism. See also Hathaway, Baxter, Marvels and Commonplaces (New York, 1968), pp. 165-66Google Scholar, where Hathaway concludes by noticing the relationship between Renaissance comments on marvels as pleasurable and pleasure as the end of poetry. He hints at a reassessment of Renaissance critical theory on the role of imagination.

Invaluable for the Renaissance background is Edgar Wind's chapter ‘Virtue Reconciled with Pleasure’ in Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven, 1968). See also, Allen, D. C., ‘The Rehabilitation of Epicurus and his Theory of Pleasure in the Early Renaissance,’ SP, 41 (1944), 1–15 Google Scholar; and Trinkaus, Charles, ‘In Our Image and Likeness,’ 2 vols. (London, 1970)Google Scholar, passim. Lionel Trilling's ‘The Fate of Pleasure’ in Beyond Culture (New York, 1965) discusses modern survivals of notions of pleasure in literature.

2 Some sorties are made, however, in Atkins, J. W. H., English Literary Criticism: The Renascence (London, 1947), pp. 25–27 Google Scholar; Clark, Donald Lemen, Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance (New York, 1922), p. 120 Google Scholar; Herrick, Marvin, The Fusion of “Horatian and Aristotelian Literary Criticism, 1531-1555, Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. 32, No. t (Urbana, 1946), p. 42 Google Scholar; Saintsbury, George, A History of Criticism and Literary Taste in Europe, (Edinburgh, 149), II, 87–88 Google Scholar; Spingam, J. E., A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance (1899; rpt. New York, 1963), pp. 12–13 Google Scholar; and Fish, Stanley, Self-Consuming Artifacts (Berkeley, 1972), pp. 32–37.Google Scholar

3 A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance, 2 vols. (Chicago, 1961), passim; Trattati di poetice e retorica del cinquecento (Bari, 1970), I, 551—554. Sec also Hathaway, Baxter, The Age of Criticism (Ithaca, 1962)Google Scholar for material on the topic.

4 Good accounts of the faculty psychology may be found in Brennan, Robert E., OP., Thomistic Psychology: A Philosophical Analysis of the Nature of Man (New York, 1967), pp. 3–44 Google Scholar; Ruth Harvey, E., The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London, The Warburg Institute, 1975)Google Scholar; McKeon, Richard, ‘Arts of Invention and Arts of Memory: Creation and Criticism,’ Critical Inquiry, 1, (1975), 732—736 Google Scholar; Mazzeo, Joseph A., ‘Dante's Conception of Love,’ American Essays on The Divine Comedy, ed. Robert J. Clements (New York, 1967), pp. 140–157 Google Scholar; and Wolfson, Harry A., ‘The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophical Texts,’ HTR, 28 (1935), 69–133 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, reprinted in his Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, I, ed. Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams (Cambridge, Mass., 1973), 250-314.

5 Nicomachaean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), IX, 7, 1168a6-10.

6 De Anima, trans. R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, 1907), III, 9, 426a7-426b7.

7 On the volatility of the imagination, see Rossky, William, ‘Imagination in the English Renaissance: Psychology and Poetic,’ Studies in the Renaissance, 5 (1958), 49–73 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8 See for example, De Anima, III, 3, 428011, where imagination is said to be a species of motion.

9 Aristotle's words for our response to texts are ‘learn and infer.’ The Greek for these is revealing, since it points to an apparently conscious reliance by Aristotle on the sequential activities of the faculty psychology. ‘Learn’ is and ‘infer,’ . Liddell-Scott records the first as meaning ‘to learn by experience, study, practice’ and ‘to perceive, remark, notice.’ Liddell-Scott reports that the second has its base in the verb ‘to collect’ and that it generally means to ‘compute, reckon up; to conclude from premises, infer.’ The Lexicon further notes that Aristotle uses the term in his logic to mean ‘infer by way of syllogism.’ Aristotle's order is perhaps not random. The movement from to can be seen as a movement toward greater abstractions as the mind works with sense data. This fact bears on the discussion of Castelvetro below. Aristotle, Poetics, trans. W. Hamilton Fyfe (New York, 1932), ch. 4, pp. 14-15.

10 De musica trans., Robert Catesby Tallifero (New York, 1947), 6. 14. 46; PL 32, 1187. See n. 19 below. For detailed treatments of Augustine's aesthetics see Svoboda, K., L'Esthetique de Saint Augustine et ses sources (Brno, 1935)Google Scholar; Chapman, Emmanuel, Saint Augustine's Philosophy of Beauty (New York, 1939)Google Scholar; Robertson, D. W. Jr., ‘Some Principles of Medieval Aesthetics’ in A Preface to Chaucer (Princeton, 1966)Google Scholar; and O'Connell, Robert J. S.J., Art and the Christian Intelligence in St. Augustine (Cambridge, Mass., 1978)Google Scholar.

11 6.1.1; PL 32, 1162-63, summa charitate nitentes.

12 6.2.2; PL 32, 1163, a corporeis ad incorporea transeamus.

13 6.11.29; PL 32, 1179.

14 6.17.56-59; PL 32, 1191-1194.

15 For good introductions to Augustine's psychology, see Gilson, Etienne, The Christian Philosophy of St. Augustine, trans. L. E. M. Lynch (New York, 1960), pp. 44–111 Google Scholar; Markus, R. A., ‘Marius Victorinus and Augustine,’ in The Cambridge History of Later Greek and Early Medieval Philosophy, ed. A. H. Armstrong (Cambridge, 1967) pp. 354–394 Google Scholar.

16 6.10.25; PL 32, 1177, humano sensui accomodatis; 6.13.38; PL 32, 1184, appetimus convenientia pro naturea nostrae modo. See also 6.8.2; PL 32, 1174-75.

17 Several passages recapitulate the process. 6.9.23; PL 32, 1176-1177 is the fullest and most clearly relies on the faculty psychology. My account of the role of imagination and memory relies on that of Mazzeo, J. A., ‘St. Augustine's Rhetoric of Silence,’ in his Renaissance and Seventeenth Century Studies (New York, 1964), p. 25 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, n. 4.

18 6.5. II; PL 32, 1169. However, sense knowledge belongs in the last analysis to the soul alone. On Augustine's activity theory of sensation, see Gilson, St. Augustine, pp. 56-65; Sister Gannon, Mary A. I., ‘The Active Theory of Sensation in St. Augustine,’ The New Scholasticism, 30 (1956), 154–180 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

19 The centrality of will in Augustine's thought has been described by Gilson, St. Augustine, pp. 132-134.

20 Augustine epitomizes this concern in 6.16.51; PL 32, 1189.

21 6.9.24-6.10.28; PL 32, 1176-1179; 6.11.32; PL 32, 1180-1181. On the role of the will, see Gilbert, Neal W., ‘The Concept of Will in Early Latin Philosophy,’ The Journal of the History of Philosophy, 1, (1963), 17–35 CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Kristeller, Paul Oskar, ‘A Thomist Critique of Marsilio Ficino's Theory of Will and Intellect’ in Harry Austryn Wolf son Jubilee Volume, ed. Saul Libemann et al. (Jerusalem, 1965), II, 470–486 Google Scholar.

22 In the De ordine, Augustine shows that in this, intellect is operating by means of dialectic, a science which ‘teaches both how to teach and how to learn. ‘2.13.38; PL 32,1013.

23 De Musica, 6.11.31; PL 32, 1180. ‘Nee aliquid appetunt etiam ipsa corporea ponderibus suis, nisi quod animae amoribus suis.’ Epist., 55.10.18; PL 32.213. ‘Nam velut amores corporum momenta sunt ponderum, sive deorsum gravitate, sive sursum levitate nitantur. Ita enim corpus pondere, sicut animus amore, fertur quocumque fertur.’ De civ. dei, 11.28; PL 41, 341-342. See Gilson, Augustine, p. 310, n. 29.

24 Hagendahl, Harald, Augustine and the Latin Classics (Goteborg, 1967), p. 728 Google Scholar, summarizes the evidence on this point.

25 6.11.29; PL 32, 1179.

26 PL 32, 849.

27 2.6.7; PL 34, 38-39.

28 PL 33, 214.

29 Summa theologiae, I—II. q. 32, a.3-4.

A full exposition of Thomas's description of the faculty psychology may be found in Brennan, Thomistic Psychology, cited in n. 8 above.

30 ST I-II. q. 31, a. 5.

31 ST I-II, q. 32, a. 2, ad 1.

32 ST I, q. 79, a. 3.

33 ST I-II, q. 32, a. 8.

34 ST I, q. 1, a. 9, ad 1.

35 See also I—II, q. 23, a. 4.

36 The Christian Philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, trans. L. K. Shook, C.S.B. (New York, 1956), p. 184. See Buckley, Michael J., Motion and Motion's God (Princeton, 1971)Google Scholar for a full study of attitudes toward motion as a passing from conditioned to unconditioned reality. This point in Augustine's thought is stressed by Victorino Capanaga, O.S.A., Introduction General, Ohras de San Augustine, ed. Felix Garcia, O.S.A., 3rd ed. (Madrid, 1957), I, 48-49 and 66—69. These metaphors and their aesthetic connection have been discussed by Svoboda, pp. 82, 95-97, and 137; and Chapman, p. 12, n. 36.

37 ‘The Medieval Theory of Literature for Refreshment and Its Use in the Fabliau Tradition,’ SP, 71 (1974), 291-313.

38 Mazzeo, p. 26.

39 For the general philosophical background on the emphasis on the senses as a means to spiritual pleasure, see Wind, Pagan Mysteries, pp. 55-56.

40 Weinberg, Trattati, I, 553-554.

41 Abrams, M. H., The Mirror and the Lamp (New York, 1953), pp. 14–21 Google Scholar.

42 Important exceptions are the physician Girolamo Fracastoro and Francesco Patrizi, who ground their literary theories on coherently treated psychological structures. Fracastoro describes the faculty psychology in his De sympathia et antipathia rerum, Opera Omnia (Venice, 1574), pp. 59D-71D; 123A-134D. Patrizi's descriptions are to be found in his Deliapoetica (1553—1588), ed. Danilo Aguzzi-Barbagli (Florence, 1969-71), II, 20-21, 314-15, 355-58 and III, 106-110.

43 Letture edite e inedite sopra la Commedia di Dante, 2 vols. (Florence, 1887). All citations are from this edition.

44 Sinclair, John D., trans., The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri, 3 vols. (New York, 1939)Google Scholar.

45 ‘per lo piacere umano, cioe per il desiderio e per lo appetite umano: questo vocabolo piacere ha nella nostra lingua duoi significati; primieramente e'si piglia per ogni sorte di diletto; a appresso, perche tutte quelle cose che noi desideriamo, ottenute che noi le abbiamo, ne seguita la dilettazione a il piacere, ei si piglia ancora per il desiderio a per lo appetite che noi abbiamo di una cosa… .'

46 Weinberg, Italian Criticism, II, 826-27, describes Gelli's concern with moral and aesthetic pleasure.

47 ‘Usò adunque Dante, per manifestare il concetto di questo suo poema, il modo poetico, principalmente per tre cagioni; la prima, per tirare maggior numero di uomini a lo studio di essa sua opera; la seconda, perchè eglino apprendessero piu facilmente quel ch'era l'intenzion sua d'insegnare loro; e la terza, perchè ei ritenessero con maggior faciltà, per più lunghezza di tempo, ciò ch'eglino imparavano da quella. Le quali tre cose fa grandemente la poesia. Conciosia cosa che i poeti, parlando della maggior parte, descrivono e adornino i loro concetti di tante finzioni, favole, sale, fiori, figure e modi leggiardri di dire, che arrecan tutti dolcezza e diletto a gli orecchi degli uditori, ch'ei son pochi quegli uomini che non si dilettino dileggergli.'

48 Bembo, Pietro, Prose della volgar lingua (1549), ed. Mario Marti (Padua, 1967), p. 69 Google Scholar.

49 ‘Le quali parti di gravità, perche fossero con alcuna piacevolezza mescolate, ordinò colui che primieramente a questa maniera di versi diede forma, che dove le stanze si toccano nella fine in due versi. Ma questa medesima piacevolezza tuttavia è grave; in quanto il riposo che alia fine di ciascuna stanza e richiesto, prima che all'altra si passi, frametta tra la continuata rima alquanto spazio, e men vicina ne la fa essere, che se ella in una stanza medesima si continuasse’ (p. 69).

50 Poetica d'Aristotele vulgarizzata et sposta, 2nd ed. (Basel, 1576). All citations are from this edition.

51 ‘Ma oltre a questo la materia delle scienze, e delle arti per un’ altra ragione piu manifests al senso non puo essere soggetto della poesia, conciosia cosa che la poesia sia stata trovata solamente per dillettare, e per ricreare, io dico per dilettare e per ricreare gli animi della rozza moltitudine, e del commune popolo, il quale non intende le ragioni, ne le divisioni, ne gli argomenti sottili, e lontani dall'uso degl'idioti, quali adoperano i philosophi in investigare la verita delle cose, e gli altri ne favella, che egli ne senta noia, e dispiacere, percioche c'incresce fuori di modo naturalmente, quando altri parla in guisa, che non lo possiamo intendere’ (pp. 29-33-30-1). Certain important sections of Castelvetro are available in Gilbert, Allan H., Literary Criticism: Plato to Dryden (New York, 1940), pp. 304–357 Google Scholar. I have used Gilbert's translations wherever possible.

52 ‘Se adunque ci è rappresentato un buono, che operando sia felice, sentiamo un piacere tacitatemente nascere in noi, che ci fa lieti, e per rispetto di noi, e per rispetto del buono felice. Percioche in noi nasce una speranza, che per essere noi simili a lui, o non molto dissimili in bonta, siamo altresi per ottenere simile felicita, e nasce anchora una voglia di ralegrarci con lui della sua felicita per fargli a sapere, che godiamo, che habbia adempiuto il suo desiderio.’ My translation.

53 ‘Per che eglino s'avicanatio a dio e trapassano di gran lunga tutti gli altri animali.’ Gilbert, p. 312.

54 Castelvetro, pp. 116.34-119.33; Gilbert, pp. 316-318.

55 Of the steps of psychological operation, these passages clearly refer to intellect and will and imply memory. Elsewhere, Castelvetro suggests that an imitation also delights other faculties. See, for example, p. 370.11-25, where he suggests ways that the poet makes demands on the imagination and intellect.

56 Castelvetro, p. 63.29-32. My translation.

57 ‘Attingere questo diletto surgente dal Fonte del riconoscere la rassomiglianza.’ My translation.

58 ‘La purgatione, e lo scacciamento dello spavento, e della compassione dagli animi humani … dovendosi dirittamente chiamare utilita, poiche e sanita d'anima acquistata per medecina assai amare.’ Gilbert, pp. 350-351.

59 Weinberg, Bernard, ‘Castelvetro's Theory of Poetics,’ in Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, ed. R. S. Crane (Chicago, 1952), pp. 353–354 Google Scholar.

60 The Arte of Rhetoric, ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), sig. A7.

61 Weinberg, Tratti, I, 551.

62 Alois Walde and Hoffman, J. B., Lateinisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Heidelburg, 1938), I. 744–745.Google Scholar

63 On the distinction between physical and spiritual senses, see Mouroux, Jean, The Christian Experience, trans. George Lamb (New York, 1954), pp. 273 Google Scholar ff.

64 All citations are from Shepherd's edition of Sidney's Defence, cited in n. 1 above.

65 ‘Tria sunt enim … quae sint efficienda dicendo: ut doceatur is apud quern dicetur, ut delectetur, ut moveatur vehementius.’ Cicero, Brutus, trans. G. L. Hendrickson (Cambridge, Mass., 1962), xlix, 185, p. 156.

66 On the nature of the knowledge taught by the poet, see Malloch, A. E.,’ “Architectonic” Knowledge and Sidney's Apologie ,’ ELH, 20 (1953), 181–185 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Related points on learning and psychological activity are made by Ronald Levao, ‘Sidney's Feigned Apology,’ PMLA, 94 (1979), 223-233.

67 Sidney, Apology, p. 14, n. 55; p. 16, n. 62; Robinson, The Shape of Things Known, Ch. 3, ‘Sidney's Apology: From Fore-Conceit to Ground-Plot.'

68 Sidney, Apology, p. 16, n. 62.

69 Another passage sheds light on this point. In a discussion of poetry as the origin of culture, Sidney says: ‘Even among the most barbarous and simple Indians where no writing is, yet have they their poets who make and sing songs, which they call areytos both of their ancestors deeds and praises of their gods—a sufficient probability that, if ever learning come among them, it must be by having their hard dull wits softened and sharpened with the sweet delights of Poetry; for until they find a plesure in the exercises of the mind, great promises of much knowledge will little persuade them that know not the fruits of knowledge’ (p. 98). Here, as elsewhere in the Apology it is the exercise, the activity, of mind that proves persuasive. The participation of the audience in the activity of the poet is crucial.

70 Energeia is discussed and the principal scholarship on it is reviewed by Robinson, The Shape of Things Known, pp. 128-135, 158-159, 172-173. Although known in the medieval period—see St. Aquinas, Thomas, Commentary on the Nicomachean Ethics, trans. C. I. Litzinger, O.P. (Chicago, 1964), I, pp. 8–9 Google Scholar, sec. 9-14; and Eustratii Metropolitani Nicaeae Ennaratio In Primum Aristotelis Moralium Ad Nicomachum, The Greek Commentaries on the Nicomachean Ethics of Aristotle in the Latin Translation of Robert Grosseteste, ed. H. Paul F. Mercken (Leiden, 1973), I, p. 12—energeia does not seem to figure as a concept in medieval criticism and it is arguable tht the emphasis on it in the Renaissance in such writers as Scaliger, Sidney, and Puttenham exemplifies the concern with the importance of a text in itself.