href="@public@vhost@g@gutenberg@html@files@10140@[email protected]#id_1-5-2" class="pginternal" tag="{http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml}a">Rhetoric as Aureate Language

Part Second: The Purpose of Poetry

1. The Classical Conception of the Purpose of Poetry
   
   1. General
   2. Moral Improvement through Precept and Example
   3. Moral Improvement through Allegory
   4. The Influence of Rhetoric
2. Medieval Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry
   
   1. Allegorical Interpretations in the Middle Ages
   2. Allegory in Mediaeval England
3. Rhetorical Elements in Italian Renaissance Conceptions of the Purpose of Poetry
   
   1. The Scholastic Grouping of Poetic, Rhetoric and Logic
   2. The Influence of the Classical Rhetorics
4. English Renaissance Ideas of the Purpose of Poetry
   
   1. Allegory and Example in Rhetoric
   2. Allegory and the Rhetorical Example in Poetic
   3. The Displacement of Allegory by Example

Index of Names

Part One
The General Theory of Rhetoric and of Poetry

Chapter I
Introductory

By definition the renaissance was primarily a literary and scholarly movement derived from the literature of classical antiquity. Thus the historical, philosophical, pedagogical, and dramatic literatures of the renaissance cannot be accurately understood except in the light of the Greek and Roman authors whose writings inspired them. To this general rule the literary criticism of the renaissance is no exception. The interpretation of the critical terms used by the literary critics of the English renaissance must depend largely on the classical tradition. This tradition, as the labors of many scholars, especially Spingarn, have shown, reached England both directly through the publication of classical writings and to an even greater degree indirectly through the commentaries and original treatises of Italian scholars.

The indebtedness to the Italian critics is well known and has been widely discussed. Although the present study does not hope to add to what is known of the influence exerted on the literary criticism of the English renaissance by the Italians, it does propose to show the English critics to have been more indebted than has been supposed to the mediaeval development of classical theory. For this relationship to be clear it will be necessary to review classical literary criticism and to trace its development in post-classical times and in the middle ages as well as in the Italian renaissance. Only by such an approach will it be possible to show in what form classical theory was