Some critics, like Bernardo Tasso1 and Daniello,2 asserted that Plato had not argued against poetry itself, but only against the abuse of poetry. Thus, according to Tasso, only impure and effeminate poets were to be excluded from the ideal state, and according to Daniello, only the more immoral tragic poets, and especially the authors of obscene and lampooning comedies. Other Renaissance writers, like Minturno3 and Fracastoro,* answered the Platonic objections on more philosophical grounds. Thus Fracastoro answers Plato's charge that, since poetry is three removes from ideal truth, poets are fundamentally ignorant of the realities they attempt to imitate, by pointing out that the poet is indeed ignorant of what he is speaking of, in so far as he is a versifier and skilled in language, just as the philosopher or historian is ignorant of natural or historical facts in so far as he, too, is merely skilled in language, but knows these facts in so far as he is learned, and has thought out the problems of nature and history. The poet, as well as the philosopher and the historian, must possess knowledge, if he is to teach anything; he, too, must learn the things he is going to write about, and must solve the problems of life and thought; he, too, must have a philosophical and an historical training. Plato's objection, indeed, applies to the philosopher, to the orator, to the historian, quite as much as to the poet. As to Plato's second charge, that imagination naturally tends toward the worst things, 1 Lettere, ii. 526. 8 De Poeta, p. 30 sq. and accordingly that poets write obscenely and blasphemously, Fracastoro points out that this is not the fault of the art, but of those who abuse it; there are, indeed, immoral and enervating poets, and they ought to be excluded, not only from Plato's, but from every commonwealth. Thus various Aristotelian and Horatian elements were combined to form a definite body of Renaissance criticism. CHAPTER II THE GENERAL THEORY OF POETRY IN THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE In the first book of his Geography Strabo defines poetry as "a kind of elementary philosophy, which introduces us early to life, and gives us pleasurable instruction in reference to character, emotion, action." This passage sounds the keynote of the Renaissance theory of poetry. Poetry is therein stated to be a form of philosophy, and, moreover, a philosophy whose subject is life, and its object is said to be pleasurable instruction. I. Poetry as a Form of Scholastic Philosophy In the first place, poetry is a form of philosophy. Savonarola had classed poetry with logic and grammar, and had asserted that a knowledge of logic is essential to the composing of poetry. The division of the sciences and the relative importance of each were a source of infinite scholastic discussion during the Middle Ages. Aristotle had first placed dialectic or logic, rhetoric, and poetics in the same category of efficient philosophy. But Averroes was probably the first to confuse the function of poetics with that of logic, and to make the former a subdivision, or form, of the latter; and this classification appears to have been accepted by the scholastic philosophers of the Middle Ages. . This conception of the position of poetry in the body of human knowledge may be found, however, throughout the Renaissance. Thus, Robortelli, in his commentary on Aristotle's Poetics (1548), gives the usual scholastic distinctions between the various forms of the written or spoken word (oratio): the demonstrative, which deals with the true; the dialectic, which deals with the probable; the rhetorical, with the persuasive; and the poetic, with the false or fabulous.1 By the term "false" or "fabulous" is meant merely that the subject of poetry is not actual fact, but that it deals with things as they ought to be, rather than as they are. Varchi, in his public lectures on poetry (1553), divides philosophy into two forms, real and rational. Real philosophy deals with things, and includes metaphysics, ethics, physics, geometry, and the like; while rational philosophy, which includes logic, dialectic, rhetoric, history, poetry, and grammar, deals not with things, but with words, and is not philosophy proper, but the instrument of philosophy. Poetry is therefore, strictly speaking, neither an art nor a science, but an instrument or faculty; and it is only an art in the sense that it has been reduced to rules and precepts. It is, in fact, a form of logic, and no man, according to Varchi, can be a poet unless he is a logician; the better logician he is, 1 Robortelli, p. 1 sq. the better poet he will be. Logic and poetry differ, however, in their matter and their instruments; for the subject of logic is truth, arrived at by means of the demonstrative syllogism, while the subject of poetry is fiction or invention, arrived at by means of that form of the syllogism known as the example. Here the enthymeme, or example, which Aristotle has made the instrument of rhetoric, becomes the instrument of poetry. This classification survived in the Aristotelian schools at Padua and elsewhere as late as Zabarella and Campanella. Zabarella, a professor of logic and later of philosophy at Padua from 1564 to 1589, explains at length Averroës's theory that poetics is a form of logic, in a treatise on the nature of logic, published in 1578.1 He concludes that the two faculties, logic and poetics, are not instruments of philosophy in general, but only of a part of it, for they refer rather to action than to knowledge; that is, they come under Aristotle's category of efficient philosophy. They are not the instruments of useful art or of moral philosophy, the end of which is to make one's self good; but of civil philosophy, the end of which is to make others good. If it be objected that they are rôv evavtíwv, that is, of both good and evil, it may be answered that their proper end is good. Thus, in the Sympo 1 This analysis of Zabarella, Opera Logica, De Natura Logicæ, ii. 13-23, I owe to the kindness of Professor Butcher of Edinburgh. Zabarella probably derived his knowledge of Aristotle's Poetics from Robortelli, under whom he studied Greek. Cf. Bayle, Dict. s. v. Zabarella. |