Images and Ideas in Literature of the English Renaissance

264 Pages·1979·27.431 MB·English

by  Patrick Grant (auth.)

IMAGES AND IDEAS IN LITERATURE OF THE
ENGLISH RENAISSANCE
By the same author
THE TRANSFORMATION OF SIN: STUDIES IN
DONNE, HERBERT, VAUGHAN AND TRAHERNE
Images and Ideas in
Literature of the
English Renaissance
Patrick Grant
© Patrick Grant 1979
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 1979 978-0-333-24490-6
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
reproduced or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without permission
First published 1979 by
THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD
London and Basingstoke
Associated companies in Delhi
Dublin Hong Kong Johannesburg Lagos
Melbourne New York Singapore Tokyo
Typeset in Great Britain by
Santype International Ltd, Salisbury
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Grant, Patrick
Images and ideas in literature of the English
Renaissance
1. Symbolism in literature 2. English literature
-Early modern, 150o-1 700-History and
criticism
I. Title
82o'.9'003 82o'.9'003
ISBN 978-1-349-04074-2 ISBN 978-1-349-04072-8 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-1-349-04072-8
This book is sold subject
to the standard conditions
of the Net Book Agreement
To Laurence Lerner
Contents
List of Plates
lX
Preface
Xl
2 The Matter of Roots: belief, images, and bodies 2
Augustine and the mediaeval theory 3
Images and rhetoric
9
New explanations I7
2 The Arms of the Red Cross: believing in the images
Muiopotmos 27
The sign of the red cross 32
The eifectus passionis 37
The passion of St George 42
The Red Cross Knight 46
Conclusion: the butterfly and the cross 6o
3 The Tempest and the Magic of Charity: believing the
Images 63
Masque and drama: intellectual and corporeal vision 63
Prospera: king and magus 6H
Miranda: the play's focus 72
Inigo Jones: the idea of the masque 74
Francis Bacon: the matter of the drama 77
Miranda: the magic of caritas 81
Contents
Vlll
4 Richard Crashaw and the Capucins: images and the
force of belief 89
Poet and critics: images and actual things 89
Hypothesis: Crashaw and the Capucins 93
The Capucin spirit 96
Benet of Canfield 97
Zacharie of Lisieux and Remi of Beauvais I I I
Crashaw's poetry II7
5 Time and Temptation in Paradise Regained: belicl' and
the single image I 29
Time and matter I 29
Milton as historian I 30
Matter, time, and the single image I33
Paradise Regained and the icons of time I37
Temptation and the divisions of time I42
Conclusion I 5 I
6 John Norris and the Oratorians: belief and the
images in God I 54
John Norris: poetry and authority I 55
John Norris: the observers in the poem I6I
The Oratorian solution I 67
Pierre de Berulle I68
Nicolas Malebranche I 75
John Norris: Oratorian prose I 8o
7 Conclusion. John Norris and Mr Locke: bodies and
the uses of imagination I92
The question of bodies I92
The question of imagination I96
Mutual assessment, separate commitment 200
Coda 205
Notes 2IO
Index 239
List of Plates
I. Woodcut (I ss8). Artist unknown. Archiwum Archidiecez
jalne, Poland
2. Giovanni Modena, Fresco ( q.2 I). Basilica di San Petronio,
Bologna
3· Wood panel 'The Crucifixion' (Fifteenth century). The
Art Institute of Chicago
4· BM Arundel44, f. 28v, Speculum Virginum (twelfth century),
'The Tree of Jesse'
S· BM Arundd 44, f. 29r, Speculum Virginum (twelfth century),
'The Tree of Jessee'
6. BM Royal 2A XVIII, f. sv, Hours of John de Beaufort,
'St George and the Dragon'
7. Vittore Carpaccio, 'St George Slaying the Dragon'
(IS02-7), Scuola Dalmata Dei SS. Giorgio E Trifone,
Venice
8. Titian, 'Sacred and Profane Love' (c. ISIS)· Galleria Borg
hese, Rome
9· F. Gafurius, Practica Musice (I496), ki, g3
I o. Giovanni Rost after Angelo Bronzino, 'The Vindication
of Innocence' Tapestry (sixteenth century), Galleria Pala
tina, Florence
Preface
During the early Renaissance in England, poets like Spenser
'believed in' their images. They established by second nature
a correspondence between the meaning of images and the mater
ial substance of things they depicted. Such correspondences
grew out of an Augustinian tradition in which the continuity
of matter, image and transcendent Idea was assumed, and
in which the images of rhetoric were a means of directing
us through everyday experience to contemplation of eternal
truth.
With the rise of science, and especially during the seventeenth
century, the widespread acceptance of a quantitative view of
matter caused a crisis for this older theory by encouraging
a conflict between the traditional view of corporeal nature
and a Cartesian, deistic observation of the world of objects.
One consequence was that the new philosophy opened a breach
between mental images and the divine Ideas which, tradi
tionally, God had used as a blueprint in creating the world.
Whether or not they knew the philosophers in detail, poets
of the period dwelt in a world of linguistic discourse profoundly
in process of change, and throughout the seventeenth century,
literary men as never before came to suspect the usefulness
of images for depicting the true nature of the material world.
As early as Shakespeare in The Tempest the old habits were
subject to a contrary movement, and Milton and the later
Metaphysicals show a direct response to the challenge offered