Wesley Trimpi, Jonson and the Neo-Latin Authorities for the Plain Style
Wesley Trimpi, Jonson and the Neo-Latin Authorities for the Plain Style, PMLA, March 1962, Volume LXXVII, Number 1, pp. 21-26.
The neo-Latin influence upon anti-Ciceronianism in prose and anti-Petrarchanism in verse, therefore, became considerably more significant when an English writer, such as Jonson, in reacting again the poetic attitudes and practice of the Petrarchans, looked for rhetorical corroboration for his position and found it, not only in certain ancient writers, but in such men as Erasmus, Vives, Lipsius, and Bacon, who advocated various applications of the Attic style and argued their case with power and precision. Jonson’s Discoveries is particularly valuable as a statement of the neo-Latin influence on the plain style… Although it was not published until 1640, the neo-Latin authorities it cites exerted their formative influence on Jonson’s stylistic ideas and practice from the middle 1590’s on and, largely through his own authority, on those of the first half of the seventeenth century. (21)
One example of the important influence of Jonson’s authorities upon vernacular verse is the gradual extension of the range of subject matter which decorum permitted the plain style to treat. … Traditionally, the high style of genus grande treated high subjects such as matters of divinity and state, the plain or low style, the genus humile or tenue, treated matters of farce and comedy on the stage and communicated simple matters of daily life in conversation or in letters, and the middle style, the genus medium or floridum, ranged in between the usually settled on love. The reasons why poems concerning matters of religion and love, subjects traditionally treated in the high and middle styles, began to be written in a plain style, which traditionally had been associated with satire and comedy, can be explained in part by the general breakdown of the ancient characters in the Renaissance, which permitted the gradual extension of the range of subject matter which could be decorously treated by the plain style, an extension most generally described by the Latin satirists themselves and most specifically by the neo-Latin treatises on letter writing in the sixteenth century. /
It was in rebellion against this decorum of subject matter that the ancient writers of comedy, satire, epigrams, and epistles asserted so often their right to treat actual happenings, trivial or important, with moral seriousness in a plain style, to treat, in the style of the Platonic dialogues, the subjects, as Horace refers to them, of the Socraticae…chartae (Ars Poet., 310). Horace’s description and use of the sermo, whose intention or officium was to teach , while those of the high and middle styles were to move and to delight, are essentially the same as those of the style described by Cicero in his account of the ‘Attic’ orator. The purpose of comedy, satire, and epigram was to reveal with candid accuracy what men actually do and think in order to encourage them to reform, while that of the epistle was self-examination and candid self-revelation. The sermo was particularly suitable for these purposes, because, in the words of Morris Croll, “Its idiom is that of conversation and is adapted from it, in order that it may flow into and fill up all the nooks and crannies of reality and reproduce its exact image to attentive observation.” Jonson, whose rhetorical position as stated in the Discoveries is closest to that of the Attic orator, in extending the range of subject matter treated by the plain, is simply taking advantage of the flexibility of the sermo in the accurate representation and analysis of actual experience that Socrates and the satirists had taken before him. (22)
The most intelligent scholars were careful not to restrict too narrowly, in an effort to possess and apply more quickly and securely their classical learning, the terminology which they adopted from the ancient writers, but attempted instead to retain the flexibility of the original terms. Vives, for instance… The more popular literay writers, however, often over-simplified and obscured the problem. George Puttenham, … (22)
Whatever the causes for it, the breakdown of the characters of style with regard to subject matter facilitated Jonson’s and Donne’s attempt, which was directly analogous to Horace’s in style and intention, to extend the range of subject matter which the sermo could decorously treat in poetry. The most specific statements about this extension in the Renaissance occur in the treatises on letter writing and are directly relevant for three reasons. First, the sixteenth-century description of the proper epistolary style was identical to Cicero’s description of the plain stle in his account of the Attic orator; second, the writers of the treatises were most often among the new anti-Ciceronian authorities, of whom Jonson’s Discoveries might serve as an explicit handbook; and third, the epistolary style was described as the best style for imitation by Jonson’s rhetorical masters, such as Bacon, Vives, and Justus Lipsius, and by Jonson himself, who Lipsius’ description of the epistolary style from John Hoskyns and applied it to style in general. (23)
In his treatise, On Style, the first-century rhetorican, Demetrius, describes the style of the familiar letter as a further development of the plain style. Since a letter was a kind of written conversation, “one of the two sides of a dialogue,” it should employ the informal sermo and candidly reveal the mind of the writer to his correspondent, for, writes Demetrius, “in every other form of composition it is possible to discern the writer’s character, but in none so clearly as in the epistolary.” “Everybody,” he says, “reveals his own soul in his letters.” The letter should avoid the complicated periodic structure and organization of an oration and should confine itself to its proper subject matter, since, he continues, “there are epistolary topics, as well as an epistolary style.” “If anybody should write of logical subtleties or questions of natural history in a letter is designed to be the heart’s good wishes in brief; it is the exposition of a simple subject in simple terms.” /
This limitation of subject matter was perfectly in accord with the stylistic conventions against which the satirists and epigrammatists had successfully rebelled. Matters in which strong emotions were involved were usually treated in the grand style, or perhaps the middle. Conversation, whether oral or written in a letter, Cicero points out in his De officiis (I, 136) and Orator (64), ought to be free of emotions such as anger and inordinate desire. (23)
The epistolary manuals of the middle ages were not concerned with the familiar letter but with dectamen, the art of the professional letter writer, or secretary, whose business it was to compose official or ceremonious epistles to important men. Such letters imitated the formal organization of the oration, as prescribed by the classical rhetorical treatises, and were usually divided, with regard to their subject matter, into three categories: the Demonstrative, the Deliberative, and the Judicial. It was to these categories and to the formal and pretentious inflexibility of the official letter that Erasmum objected in his treatise De Ratione Conscribendi Epistolas, and he objected mainly on the grounds of its unrealistic limitations upon subject matter. (23-24)
The degree of freedom of subject matter that the epistolary tradition after Erasmus offered to the plain style, a freedom which was not extensively taken advantage of by the English poets until Jonson and Donne, is clear when one recalls the position of the conventional rhetoric book. Puttenham had stated that the middle, to say nothing of the plain, style must not treat matters of state or war, leagues or alliances. Erasmus said explicitly above that wars could be declared in letters, bellum denuntiamus, and Antonious Muretus, the most important spokesman, with the exception of Lipsius, of the anti-Ciceronian movement, echoed him … In describing the range of epistolary material, Francis Bacon writes: “Letters are according to all the variety of occasions, advertisements, advices, directions, propositions, petitions, commendatory, expostulatory, satisfactory, of compliment, of pleasure, of discourse, and all other passages of action.” (The Advancement of Learning, II, iii, 4, ed. W. A. Wright, Oxford, 1926, p. 100). (24-25)
There was, then, a tendency among those interested in reviving the Attic, or plain, style to consider the familiar letter as the ideal stylistic model. / It is not strange, therefore, that Jonson should apply to style in general a passage on letter writing from John Hoskyns’ Directions for Speech and Style. This passage, which Hoskyns took from Lipsius’ Institutio Epistolica and which Lipsius derived originally from Demetrius, defines his general rhetorical position. (25)
The neo-Latin influence upon anti-Ciceronianism in prose and anti-Petrarchanism in verse, therefore, became considerably more significant when an English writer, such as Jonson, in reacting again the poetic attitudes and practice of the Petrarchans, looked for rhetorical corroboration for his position and found it, not only in certain ancient writers, but in such men as Erasmus, Vives, Lipsius, and Bacon, who advocated various applications of the Attic style and argued their case with power and precision. Jonson’s Discoveries is particularly valuable as a statement of the neo-Latin influence on the plain style… Although it was not published until 1640, the neo-Latin authorities it cites exerted their formative influence on Jonson’s stylistic ideas and practice from the middle 1590’s on and, largely through his own authority, on those of the first half of the seventeenth century. (21)
One example of the important influence of Jonson’s authorities upon vernacular verse is the gradual extension of the range of subject matter which decorum permitted the plain style to treat. … Traditionally, the high style of genus grande treated high subjects such as matters of divinity and state, the plain or low style, the genus humile or tenue, treated matters of farce and comedy on the stage and communicated simple matters of daily life in conversation or in letters, and the middle style, the genus medium or floridum, ranged in between the usually settled on love. The reasons why poems concerning matters of religion and love, subjects traditionally treated in the high and middle styles, began to be written in a plain style, which traditionally had been associated with satire and comedy, can be explained in part by the general breakdown of the ancient characters in the Renaissance, which permitted the gradual extension of the range of subject matter which could be decorously treated by the plain style, an extension most generally described by the Latin satirists themselves and most specifically by the neo-Latin treatises on letter writing in the sixteenth century. /
It was in rebellion against this decorum of subject matter that the ancient writers of comedy, satire, epigrams, and epistles asserted so often their right to treat actual happenings, trivial or important, with moral seriousness in a plain style, to treat, in the style of the Platonic dialogues, the subjects, as Horace refers to them, of the Socraticae…chartae (Ars Poet., 310). Horace’s description and use of the sermo, whose intention or officium was to teach , while those of the high and middle styles were to move and to delight, are essentially the same as those of the style described by Cicero in his account of the ‘Attic’ orator. The purpose of comedy, satire, and epigram was to reveal with candid accuracy what men actually do and think in order to encourage them to reform, while that of the epistle was self-examination and candid self-revelation. The sermo was particularly suitable for these purposes, because, in the words of Morris Croll, “Its idiom is that of conversation and is adapted from it, in order that it may flow into and fill up all the nooks and crannies of reality and reproduce its exact image to attentive observation.” Jonson, whose rhetorical position as stated in the Discoveries is closest to that of the Attic orator, in extending the range of subject matter treated by the plain, is simply taking advantage of the flexibility of the sermo in the accurate representation and analysis of actual experience that Socrates and the satirists had taken before him. (22)
The most intelligent scholars were careful not to restrict too narrowly, in an effort to possess and apply more quickly and securely their classical learning, the terminology which they adopted from the ancient writers, but attempted instead to retain the flexibility of the original terms. Vives, for instance… The more popular literay writers, however, often over-simplified and obscured the problem. George Puttenham, … (22)
Whatever the causes for it, the breakdown of the characters of style with regard to subject matter facilitated Jonson’s and Donne’s attempt, which was directly analogous to Horace’s in style and intention, to extend the range of subject matter which the sermo could decorously treat in poetry. The most specific statements about this extension in the Renaissance occur in the treatises on letter writing and are directly relevant for three reasons. First, the sixteenth-century description of the proper epistolary style was identical to Cicero’s description of the plain stle in his account of the Attic orator; second, the writers of the treatises were most often among the new anti-Ciceronian authorities, of whom Jonson’s Discoveries might serve as an explicit handbook; and third, the epistolary style was described as the best style for imitation by Jonson’s rhetorical masters, such as Bacon, Vives, and Justus Lipsius, and by Jonson himself, who Lipsius’ description of the epistolary style from John Hoskyns and applied it to style in general. (23)
In his treatise, On Style, the first-century rhetorican, Demetrius, describes the style of the familiar letter as a further development of the plain style. Since a letter was a kind of written conversation, “one of the two sides of a dialogue,” it should employ the informal sermo and candidly reveal the mind of the writer to his correspondent, for, writes Demetrius, “in every other form of composition it is possible to discern the writer’s character, but in none so clearly as in the epistolary.” “Everybody,” he says, “reveals his own soul in his letters.” The letter should avoid the complicated periodic structure and organization of an oration and should confine itself to its proper subject matter, since, he continues, “there are epistolary topics, as well as an epistolary style.” “If anybody should write of logical subtleties or questions of natural history in a letter is designed to be the heart’s good wishes in brief; it is the exposition of a simple subject in simple terms.” /
This limitation of subject matter was perfectly in accord with the stylistic conventions against which the satirists and epigrammatists had successfully rebelled. Matters in which strong emotions were involved were usually treated in the grand style, or perhaps the middle. Conversation, whether oral or written in a letter, Cicero points out in his De officiis (I, 136) and Orator (64), ought to be free of emotions such as anger and inordinate desire. (23)
The epistolary manuals of the middle ages were not concerned with the familiar letter but with dectamen, the art of the professional letter writer, or secretary, whose business it was to compose official or ceremonious epistles to important men. Such letters imitated the formal organization of the oration, as prescribed by the classical rhetorical treatises, and were usually divided, with regard to their subject matter, into three categories: the Demonstrative, the Deliberative, and the Judicial. It was to these categories and to the formal and pretentious inflexibility of the official letter that Erasmum objected in his treatise De Ratione Conscribendi Epistolas, and he objected mainly on the grounds of its unrealistic limitations upon subject matter. (23-24)
The degree of freedom of subject matter that the epistolary tradition after Erasmus offered to the plain style, a freedom which was not extensively taken advantage of by the English poets until Jonson and Donne, is clear when one recalls the position of the conventional rhetoric book. Puttenham had stated that the middle, to say nothing of the plain, style must not treat matters of state or war, leagues or alliances. Erasmus said explicitly above that wars could be declared in letters, bellum denuntiamus, and Antonious Muretus, the most important spokesman, with the exception of Lipsius, of the anti-Ciceronian movement, echoed him … In describing the range of epistolary material, Francis Bacon writes: “Letters are according to all the variety of occasions, advertisements, advices, directions, propositions, petitions, commendatory, expostulatory, satisfactory, of compliment, of pleasure, of discourse, and all other passages of action.” (The Advancement of Learning, II, iii, 4, ed. W. A. Wright, Oxford, 1926, p. 100). (24-25)
There was, then, a tendency among those interested in reviving the Attic, or plain, style to consider the familiar letter as the ideal stylistic model. / It is not strange, therefore, that Jonson should apply to style in general a passage on letter writing from John Hoskyns’ Directions for Speech and Style. This passage, which Hoskyns took from Lipsius’ Institutio Epistolica and which Lipsius derived originally from Demetrius, defines his general rhetorical position. (25)
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