Chapter VII

Renaissance Poetic



1. The Reestablishment of the Classical Tradition


In concluding his authoritative study, _A History of Literary Criticism in
the Renaissance_, Spingarn asserts that before the sixteenth century,
"Poetic theory had been nourished upon the rhetorical and oratorical
treatises of Cicero, the moral treatises of Plutarch (especially those
upon the reading of poets and the education of youth), the _Institutions
Oratoriae_ of Quintilian, and the _De Legendis Gentilium Libris_ of Basil
the Great."[174] With the turn of the century, he goes on to say, a great
change was brought about by the publication of the classical critical
writings, especially the _Poetics_ of Aristotle. Then the mediaeval
criteria of _doctrina_ and _eloquentia_ were superseded by many new ones.

The development of Aristotelian poetic in the Italian renaissance is a
separate inquiry, which has been made extensively, and need not be gone
into here. The results which bear upon the present inquiry may be
summarized as follows:

The recovery of Aristotle's _Poetics_ brought about a complete change in
poetical theory, and stimulated in Italy a great body of critical writing