A History of Literary Criticism in the Renaissance by Joel Elias Spingarn

Author:Joel Elias Spingarn [Joel Elias Spingarn]
Language: eng
Format: epub

were anticipated in Berni's , written in 1526, though not published until 1537. This charming invective is directed against the fashionable literature of the time, and especially against all professional poets. Writing from the standpoint of a polished and rationalistic society, Berni lays great stress on the fact that poetry is not to be taken too seriously, that it is a pastime, a recreation for cultured people, a mere bagatelle; and he professes to despise those who spend all their time in writing verses. The vanity, the uselessness, the extravagances, and the ribaldry of the professional poets receive his hearty contempt; only those who write verses for pastime merit approbation. "Are you so stupid," he cries, "as to think that I call any one who writes verses a poet, and that I regard such men as Vida, Pontano, Bembo, Sannazaro, as mere poets? I do not call any one a poet, and condemn him as such, unless he does nothing but write verses, and wretched ones at that, and is good for nothing else. But the men I have mentioned are not poets by profession." Here the sentiments expressed are those of a refined and social age—the age of Louis XIV. no less than that of Leo X.

The irreligious character of neo-classic art may also be regarded as one of the consequences of this rationalistic temper. The combined effect of humanism, essentially pagan, and rationalism, essentially sceptical, was not favorable to the growth of religious feeling in literature. Classicism, the result of these two tendencies, became more and more rationalistic, more and more pagan; and in consequence, religious poetry in any real sense ceased to flourish wherever the more stringent forms of classicism prevailed. In Boileau these tendencies result in a certain distinct antagonism to the very forms of Christianity in literature:—

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