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Imagination in the English Renaissance: Psychology and Poetic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2019

William Rossky
William Rossky*
Affiliation:
Temple University
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Extract

Shakespeare couples lunatic, lover, and poet as ‘of imagination all compact’ (Dream v.i.7-8); Spenser finds that Phantastes’ chamber is filled with ‘leasings, tales, and lies’ (F.Q. II.ix.51.9) and that his eyes seem ‘mad or foolish’ (F.Q. II.ix.52.7); Drayton speaks of the ‘doting trumperie’ of imagination; when men's minds become ‘inflamed', says Bacon, ‘it is all done by stimulating the imagination till it becomes ungovernable, and not only sets reason at nought, but offers violence to it’. These views of imagination and its activity, echoed in other important literature of the age of Elizabeth, hardly suggest a favorable view of the faculty assigned to the poet. The explanation of such derogatory views lies in the popular psychology of the period.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in the Renaissance , Volume 5 , 1958 , pp. 49 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1958

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References

1 Drayton, Michael, The Tragicall Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy (The Works of Michael Drayton, ed. William Hebel, J., Oxford, 1931-1941, 1, 262)Google Scholar.

2 Bacon, Francis, Of the Dignity and Advancement of Learning (The Works of Francis Bacon, ed. Spedding, James et al., London, 1889-1892, IV, 406)Google Scholar.

3 The current psychology is a thread which weaves itself everywhere into the tissue of Elizabethan thought and influences views on subjects from education to witchcraft. The currency and influence of the contemporary psychology are suggested not only by the number of works published on the subject but by the number of editions through which most of these went. Significantly, in translating Guglielmo Grataroli, William Fulwood declares that the faculties of the brain have been so often ‘seene in the bookes of many’ that his discussion would be ‘superfluous’ (Castel of Memorie, London, 1573, sig. Bv). The ‘many’ include of course a long line of earlier commentators stretching back to Aristotle (De anima). We expect the Elizabethan critic, then, to be aware of the psychology.

4 Although in classical times the functions of imagination and fantasy were carefully distinguished on the bases of passive or active function, by Elizabethan times the distinctions had, for the most part, been lost and terms like ‘phantasy’, ‘fantsie’, even ‘fancy’, are used interchangeably with ‘imagination’. Thus in his translation of Grataroli, Fulwood lists as the first faculty of the brain ‘Fantasie (or immagination[)]’ (sig. Bv). On a single page of Mirum in Modum John Davies of Hereford uses ‘Imagination’ and ‘Fantasie’ interchangeably (The Complete Works of John Dauies of Hereford, ed. Rev. A. B. Grosart, Edinburgh, 1878, 1, 6)—this despite his declaration that, unlike others, he will make ‘distinction’ (1, 7). Even though he lists them as separate faculties, Pierre de La Primaudaye concludes that he will ‘vse these two names Fantasie and Imagination indifferently', since so many regard them as ‘the same facultie and vertue of the soule’, and still later uses the term ‘fancie’ as a synonym (The Second Part of the French Academie, tr. T. B., London, 1594, pp. 155, 157). See also Burton, Robert, who discusses the ‘Phantasy, or imagination’ (The Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. Dell, Floyd and Jordan-Smith, Paul, New York, 1938, p. 139) and uses ‘fancy’ as synonym (pp. 222, 223)Google Scholar.

5 See, for example, LaPrimaudaye, p. 149; Bright, Timothy, A Treatise of Melancholie, printed by Vautrollier, Thomas (London, 1586), pp. 77, 104Google Scholar; Lemnius, Levinus, The Touchstone of Complexions, tr. Thomas Newton (London, 1581)Google Scholar, fol. 14r; Navarro, Juan Huarte, Examen de Ingenios, tr. R. C., Esquire (London, 1594), p. 75 Google Scholar.

6 Wright, Thomas, The Passions of the Minde in Generall (London, 1604), p. 51 Google Scholar.

7 Batman, Stephen, Batman vppon Bartholome (London, 1582), Bk. III, chap. 11Google Scholar.

8 DuLaurens, André, A Discourse of the Preservation of the Sight: of Melancholike diseases … of Old Age, tr. Richard Surphlet (London, 1599), p. 8 Google Scholar.

9 SirGreville, Fulke, A Treatie of Humane Learning (Poems and Dramas of Fulke Greville, ed. Bullough, Geoffrey, New York, 1945, 1, 156).Google Scholar

10 Nashe, Thomas, Terrors of the Night (The Complete Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. Rev. Grosart, A. B., London and Aylesbury, 1883-1885, III, 233)Google Scholar.

11 Nosce Teipsum, in An English Garner, ed. Edward Arber (Birmingham, 1877-1896), v, 193. Subsequent references to Sir John Davies will be to Nosce Teipsum in Vol. v of Arber's text.

12 See Burton, p. 222, and Scot, Reginald, The Discoverie of Witchcraft (London, 1930), P. 33.Google Scholar

13 Andrew Boorde, Dyetary, in The First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge and A … Dyetary of Helth, ed. F. J. Furnivall, Early English Text Society, Extra Series, No. 10 (London, 1870), p. 250; see also Batman, Bk. VI, chap. 27.

14 Among such ‘sciences’ Huarte later lists poetry (p. 108).

15 In the examples of distortion of images by vapors of melancholy humor, the imagination, as we have seen, seems passive. However, the imagination of the melancholy man is also often regarded as abnormally active and creative in its own right. The disrepute of the disease of melancholy, and, for that matter, of the other agents of distortion, follows imagination, of course, into its active operation.

16 An Apologie for Poetrie, in Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. G. Gregory Smith (London, 1904), 1, 159. (Subsequent references to Sir Philip Sidney will be to the Apologie in Vol. I of Smith's text.) From these quotations it is perhaps even not very far to William Wordsworth's ‘The light that never was, on sea or land, | The consecration, and the Poet's dream’ (‘Elegiac Stanzas: Suggested by a Picture of Peele Castle in a Storm’).

17 Bright, pp. 102, 104; Nashe, Terrors (Works, III, 233); Spenser, F.Q. II.ix.51.9; Huarte, p. 118.

18 Puttenham, George, The Arte of English Poesie, ed. Willcock, Gladys Doidge and Walker, Alice (Cambridge, 1936), p. 19 Google Scholar.

19 See Anderson, Ruth L., Elizabethan Psychology and Shakespeare's Plays (Iowa City, 1927, University of Iowa Humanistic Studies, Vol. III, No. 4), p. 73 Google Scholar.

20 For parallel accounts, see also Sir John Davies, p. 177; Bright, p. 81; Burton, p. 224; and Huarte, p. 31.

21 Bright does not make here the usual Elizabethan distinction, according to which perturbations are distinguished from other emotions as unruly and excessive.

22 On the distortion of the images of fantasy by emotion see also Greville, , Treatie (Poetns and Dramas, 1, 157)Google Scholar, and Caelica (Poems and Dramas, 1, 145); Burton, p. 221; Shakespeare, Dream v. 1. 21-22.

23 Drayton, The Tragicall Legend of Robert, Duke of Normandy (Works, l, 285).

24 Ling, Nicholas, Politeuphuia: Wits Common wealth (London, 1598)Google Scholar, fol. 52r. Cf. also Puttenham, p. 304

25 Chapman, George, dedicatory epistle to Odysseys (The Poems of George Chapman, de. Phyllis Brooks Bartlett, New York, 1941, p. 407)Google Scholar.

26 Bacon, , Of the Dignity … of Learning (Works, IV, 292)Google Scholar; see also Description of the Intellectual Globe (Works, v, 504). Cf. Shakespeare, Dream v.i.14-15.

27 See Sidney, p. 160; Francis Meres's Treatise ‘Poetrie': A Critical Edition, ed. Don Cameron Allen (Urbana, III., 1933, Univ. of Illinois Studies in Lang, and Lit. XVI), pp. 71, 73-74; Mulcaster, Richard, Positions, ed. Quick, Robert H. (London, 1888), p. 269 Google Scholar; SirHarington, John, ‘Preface to … Orlando Furioso’ (Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Smith, G., London, 1904, II, 203, 204)Google Scholar; Daniel, Samuel, dedicatory epistle to The Civill Wars (The Complete Works in Verse and Prose of Samuel Daniel, ed. Rev. Grosart, A. B., London, 1885-1896, II, 6)Google Scholar; Drayton, , ‘To … Henery Reynolds, Esquire, of Poets and Poesie, (Works, III, 229)Google Scholar; Marston, John, Satires (The Works of John Marston, ed. Bullen, A. H., Boston, 1887, III, 283–284)Google Scholar; Blundeville, Thomas, The True Order and Methode of Wryting and Reading Hystories (London, 1574)Google Scholar, sig. [E4]v.

28 Ben Jonson, Discoveries 1641; Conversations … 1619, ed. G. B. Harrison (London, [1923]), P. 89.

29 See also Sir Fulke Greville's Life of Sir Philip Sidney (Oxford, 1907), p. 223.

30 Murray W. Bundy has already pointed out that by distinguishing men of good fantasy ‘from mere phantastici’ the Renaissance attempted to avoid the disrepute of the coupling, through imagination, of lunatics and poets (‘Fracastoro and the Imagination', Renaissance Studies in Honor of Hardin Craig, ed. Baldwin Maxwell et al., Stanford Univ., 1941, P. 47).

31 The contemporary rhetorics, for example, often inherit doctrines from classical literary criticism and return them to criticism in Elizabethan times, while the very classical literary criticism which influences later rhetoric and poetic is itself often based on ancient rhetoric. See, for example, Clark, Donald L., Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance (New York, 1922, Columbia Univ. Studies in Eng. and Comp. Lit.), pp. 80–81 Google Scholar, and note also Clark, pp. 31-32, 42. The general influence of the contemporary rhetoric upon Elizabethans, their literature and criticism in particular, has been so frequently pointed out as to require no further examination in this study.

32 Ed. G. H. Mair (Oxford, 1909), p. 198. See also Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria I.Pr. 10-13, and particularly Bacon, Of the Dignity… of Learning (Works, IV, 456). For an account of the absorption of this rhetorical material by poetic, see Clark, pp. 138-161.

33 The rhetorical origins of the poetic doctrine of persuasion have been recognized for some time. See, for example, Clark, pp. 136-137; Tuve, Rosemond, ‘Imagery and Logic: Ramus and Metaphysical Poetics’. JHI, III (1942), 369 Google Scholar; Ringler, William, commentary on Rainolds, John, Oratio in Laudem Artis Poeticae, tr. Allen, Walter Jr., (Princeton, 1940, Princeton Studies in Eng. No. 20), pp. 31–22, 61Google Scholar.

34 On the superiority of emotional over merely intellectual appeal in persuasion, see Quintilian vi.ii.5.

35 Peacham, Henry, The Garden of Eloquence (London, [1577]), fol. uijv Google Scholar.

36 The English Secretary (London, 1599), [1], 47.

37 See Jonson, , Discoveries, pp. 95–96 Google Scholar; Puttenham, p. 196. For Jonson particularly, it is the poet's superiority in moving emotion which makes him preeminent.

38 Puttenham, p. 196; Harington, in Smith (note 27 above), II, 204.

39 Webbe, William, A Discourse of English Poetrie (Elizabethan Critical Essays, ed. Gregory Smith, G., London, 1904, 1, 251)Google Scholar. See also Harington, in Smith, II, 209.

40 See also Heywood, Thomas, An Apology for Actors (1612) (New York, 1941)Google Scholar, sig. C3, and Jonson, , Discoveries, p. 42 Google Scholar, for very parallel views on love-hate responses. How current this view was is suggested by Gower's listing of each of the principal characters at the end of Pericles (v.iii.85-98) as a ‘figure’ of vice or virtue. It is interesting to speculate on how much of this rhetorical purpose lay behind Shakespeare's histories and tragedies.