A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance

Minor spelling inconsistencies have been silently corrected. Apart from a few corrections listed at the end of the book, original spelling was retained. Footnotes were sequentially numbered and placed at the end of each chapter.

p. 300: in the words carpenter, majesty and merchaundise letters [e macron] and [u with breve] are encoded as plain [e and u] respectively. p. 303: in the words mournfully, mournfuly, royalty letters [u with breve], [u, a macron] are encoded as plain [u and a] respectively. p. 304: in the words Trumpington, love-sik and dangerus letters [i macron] and [i, u with breve] are encoded as plain [i and u] respectively. p. 321-322: superscripts are preceded by the [^] sign and enclosed in braces if more than one letter is in superscript. p. 354: in the word Pusan letters [u macron] and [s with cedilla] are encoded as plain [u and s] respectively. Ligature [oe] is encoded as oe.

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*Columbia University*

STUDIES IN LITERATURE

|===============================================================| |*Columbia University* | | | |STUDIES IN LITERATURE | | | | | | | |=A HISTORY OF LITERARY CRITICISM IN | | THE RENAISSANCE=: With Special Reference | | to the Influence of Italy in the Formation and | | Development of Modern Classicism. By JOEL | | ELIAS SPINGARN. | | | | | |In Press: | | | | | |=ROMANCES OF ROGUERY=: An Episode in the | | Development of the Modern Novel, Part I. | | The Picaresque Novel in Spain. By FRANK | | WADLEIGH CHANDLER. | | | |=SPANISH LITERATURE IN ENGLAND UNDER | | THE TUDORS=. By JOHN GARRETT | | UNDERHILL. | | | | | | * * * * * | | | |***_Other numbers of this series will be issued from | |time to time, containing the results of literary research, | |or criticism by the students or officers of | |Columbia University, or others associated with them | |in study, under the authorization of the Department | |of Literature, GEORGE EDWARD WOODBERRY and | |BRANDER MATTHEWS, Professors_. | |===============================================================|

A HISTORY

OF

LITERARY CRITICISM

IN THE RENAISSANCE

WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO THE INFLUENCE OF ITALY IN THE FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF MODERN CLASSICISM

BY

JOEL ELIAS SPINGARN

[Illustration]

*New York* PUBLISHED FOR THE COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY LONDON: MACMILLAN & CO., LTD.

1899

All rights reserved

COPYRIGHT, 1899,

BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.

*Norwood Press* J. S. Cushing & Co.--Berwick & Smith Norwood Mass. U.S.A.

PREFACE

THIS essay undertakes to treat the history of literary criticism in the Renaissance. The three sections into which the essay is divided are devoted, respectively, to Italian criticism from Dante to Tasso, to French criticism from Du Bellay to Boileau, and to English criticism from Ascham to Milton; but the critical activity of the sixteenth century has been the main theme, and the earlier or later literature has received treatment only in so far as it serves to explain the causes or consequences of the critical development of this central period. It was at this epoch that modern criticism began, and that the ancient ideals of art seemed once more to sway the minds of men; so that the history of sixteenth-century criticism must of necessity include a study of the beginnings of critical activity in modern Europe and of the gradual introduction of the Aristotelian canons into modern literature.

This study has been made subservient, more particularly, to two specific purposes. While the critical activity of the period is important and even interesting in itself, it has been here studied primarily for the purpose of tracing the origin and causes of the classic spirit in modern letters and of discovering the sources of the rules and theories embodied in the neo-classic literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. How did the classic spirit arise? Whence did it come, and how did it develop? What was the origin of the principles and precepts of neo-classicism? These are some of the questions I have attempted to answer in this essay; and, in answering them, I have tried to remember that this is a history, not of critical literature, but of literary criticism. For this reason I have given to individual books and authors less prominence than some of them perhaps deserved, and have confined myself almost exclusively to the origin of principles, theories, and rules, and to the general temper of classicism. For a similar reason I have been obliged to say little or nothing of the methods and results of applied, or concrete, criticism.