Plato in Renaissance England

214 Pages·1995·5.31 MB·English

by  Sears Jayne (auth.)

PLATO IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES
INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS
141
SEARS JAYNE
PLATO IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
Founding Directors: P. Dibon (Paris) and R.H. Popkin (Washington University, St. Louis
&UCLA)
Directors: Richard Popkin (Washington University, StLouis & University of California, Los
Angeles, USA), Sarah Hutton (The University of Hertfordshire, United Kingdom), Brian
Copenhaver (University of California, Los Angeles, USA)
Editorial Board: J.F. Battail (Paris); F. Duchesneau (Montreal); A. Gabbey (New York);
T. Gregory (Rome); J.D. North (Groningen); M.J. Petry (Rotterdam); J. Popkin (Lexington);
Th. Verbeek (Utrecht)
Advisory Editorial Board: J. Aubin (Paris); A. Crombie (Oxford); H. Gadamer (Heidelberg);
H. Gouhier (Paris); K. Hanada (Hokkaido University); W. Kirsop (Melbourne); P.O.
Kristeller (Coloumbia University); Elisabeth Labrousse (Paris); A. Lossky (Los Angeles); J.
Malarczyk (Lublin); E. de Olaso (C.I.F. Buenos Aires); J. Orcibal (Paris); Wolfgang ROd
(Miinchen); G. Rousseau (Los Angeles); H. Rowen (Rutgers University, N.J.); J.P.
Schobinger (Zurich); J. Tans (Groningen)
PLATO IN RENAISSANCE ENGLAND
SEARS JAYNE
Brown University, Providence, U.S.A
SPRINGER-SCIENCE+BUSINESS MEDIA, B.V.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Jayne, Sears Reynolds, 1920-
Plato In Renalssance England 1 by Sears Jayne.
p. cm. -- <Archlves lnternatlonales d'hlstolre des ldees
International archlves of the hlstory of ldeas ; 141>
Includes blbllographlcal references and Index.
ISBN 978-90-481-4456-3 ISBN 978-94-015-8551-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-8551-4
1. Plato--Influence. 2. Renalssance--England. 3. England
-Intellectual 11fe. I. Tltle. II. Serles: Archlves
lnternatlonales d'hlsto1re des ldees ; 141.
6395. J37 1995
141'.2'0942--dc20 94-29929
ISBN 978-90-481-4456-3
Printed on acid-free paper
All Rights Reserved
© 1995 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1995
Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover lst edition 1995
No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and
retrieva1 system, without written permission from the copyright owner.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgements vii
Epistle Dedicatorie lX
To the General Reader Xl
List of Tables XVll
Abbreviations XIX
PART 1: THE PRE-TUDOR PHASE (1423--1485)
Chapter 1: The Chrysoloras Revival of Plato in Italy (1350-1456) 3
Chapter 2: The Chrysoloras Revival in England 13
Chapter 3: The Relapse into Medievalism 22
PART II: THE TuDOR PHASE (1485-1603)
Chapter 4: The Pletho Revival of Plato in Italy 63
Chapter 5: The Early Tudors (1485-1558) 83
Chapter 6: The Early Years of Elizabeth I (1558-1578) 97
Chapter 7: The Later Years of Elizabeth I (1579--1603) 115
Epilogue: The Stuart Phase ( 1603--1700) 135
Appendices
l. a: Works attributed to Plato and in England (1423--1485) 143
b: Dubia: works attributed to Plato but only possibly in England before 1485 146
2. The Social Status of Tudor Writers 148
Bibliography 149
Index 183
v
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Permission has been given by the following publishers to quote books under their
copyright. I am pleased to acknowledge these permissions with thanks:
Cambridge University Press:
John Purvis, Tudor Parish Documents of the Diocese of York.
Council of the Early English Text Society:
ES 47 Wars ofA lexander, ed. W. W. Skeat.
ES 69 John Lydgate, The Assembly of Gods, ed. 0. L. Triggs.
ES 76 George Ashby, Dicta et opiniones diversorum phi/osophorum, ed. M.
Bateson.
OS 211 Diets or Sayings of the Philosophers, ed. C. Buhler.
Cranbrook Educational Community:
Diets or Sayings of the Philosophers, ed. W. Caxton.
University of Toronto Press:
Court ofS apience, ed. E. Ruth Harvey.
vii
EPISTLE DEDICATORIE
To the three no less vertuous than faire
Graces of Leagrave
the Lady Lynn, the Lady Emily, and the Lady Elizabeth
Many and sundrie are the gitles and presents which are sent between friend and
friends, of value according to the habilities of the sender. Some present giftes of
great worth, as plate, jewels, and such like; others meaner things. Myself, finding
mine own estate but of a weak kind, am bold, instead of such giftes, only to bestow
part of my brain's fruite upon your ladyships, praying you to vouchsafe it your
acceptance as Alexander did a cup of cold water offered unto him of a simple
husbandman.
As it hath ever been my study to please thee, so now I would that this last of my
endeavors in this kind should find such generous entertainment at large as, though
it do thee no honour, yet it shall do thee no dishonour. But I rather pray than hope
that he that tumeth these pages may know thee, that in the pleasure of that knowl
edge he may vouchsafe a more kinder reception to the defaults of mine owne. As
thus: but these his infortunate failures as an author may be the more aptly forgotten
by remembraunce of his far fairer fortunes as a father.
And thus with my most humble and hartie prayers to the Almighty for your
ladyships' long life and prosperitie, I end this December, 1994.
s. J.
ix
TOTHEGENERALREADER
In Renaissance England it was thought seemly, when sending a new book out into
the world, to provide it with two letters of introduction: one for the reader to whom
the book was dedicated, and another for readers in general. In accordance with that
custom, I have dedicated this book with a letter to our three daughters, (my letter is
modelled on one by Richard West in The Court ofC onscience, 1607). My Letter "To
the General Reader", however, can follow Renaissance custom only imperfectly, for
this book is not addressed to readers in general; it is addressed only to my colleagues
in the field of Renaissance English literature.
For almost a hundred years students of English literature have been taught in
graduate school that during the Renaissance the English people had to depend for
their conception of Plato upon the writings ofMarsilio Ficino, and since Ficino was
a Neoplatonist, the best way to refer to the English conception of Plato during that
period is to speak of it as being "Neoplatonic". This theory appears to have origi
nated in 1903 in an American doctoral dissertation entitled Platonism in English
Poetry oft he Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries by John Smith Harrison (Harrison,
1903 ed., Preface pp. vii-viii).
The idea that English Platonism was actually Neoplatonism has survived at least
five subsequent books on the subject (Schroeder, 1920; Schirmer, 1924; Cassirer,
1932; Dannenberg, 1932; and Baldwin, 1994), and is in fact still being taught in
graduate schools today. (A typical handbook statement of the doctrine is that by
Isabel Rivers, 1979, pp. 3 5-39.) As a result, students of Renaissance English litera
ture now almost universally regard the term "Neoplatonic" as a more accurate and
sophisticated substitute for the term "Platonic". To cite only a few examples the term
"Neoplatonic" has been applied to:
Breton (Reed, 1923, p. 532)
Spenser (Casady, 1941, title)
Reynolds (Kinney, 1972, p. 2)
Donne (Mauch, 1977, title)
Jonson (Summers and Pebworth, 1979, pp. 17&--181)
Shakespeare (Roe, 1994, title)
For all its ubiquity, however, this practice has now outlived its usefulness. One
xi
xu To the General Reader
major count against it is that historians of Philosophy no longer regard Ficino as a
Neoplatonist. The distinction between "old" and "new" Platonists is at least as old as
Diogenes Laertius. Laertius used it to distinguish among three schools ofPlatonists:
the original Academy founded by Plato (Hicks ed., 1972, Book 3, ch. 9); a "Middle
Academy" established by Arcesilaus (Hicks ed., 1972), Book 4, ch. 28) and a New
Academy, founded by Lacydes (Hicks ed., 1972, Book 4, ch. 59). Cicero modified
Laertius' usage slightly, employing the term "New Academy" for the Academy of
Arcesilaus (De academicis l.iv, Rackham ed., pp. 422-429). But the term
"Neoplatonic" was not used in any language to refer to the Alexandrian school of
Plotinus and his followers until the eighteenth century, when Leibnitz ( 1646-1716)
used it in Latin in that sense. The earliest English version of the term was "neo
p1atonician", which appeared in Fraser's Magazine in 1831 (vol. 4, p. 54). Leibnitz's
distinction became standard usage among historians of philosophy, and remained
so throughout the nineteenth century. It is found in Jowett, Zeller, Ritter, Taylor,
and Hermann, and it was these authors whom Harrison had in mind in speaking of
"latter-day criticism".
But Leibnitz's distinction was based on a conception of Plato that was colored by
the preferences of his age. In Leibnitz's view Plato's philosophy was primarily a
system of ethics, based on reason. Accordingly, Leibnitz regarded as authentic works
of Plato only those dialogues such as the Republic, Symposium and Phaedo, that
deal with ethical rationalism. Works of Plato that appear to wander away from
ethical rationalism Leibnitz tended to regard as obiter dicta or even spuria. Having
defined Platonism in this special way, Leibnitz and his admirers were then able to
make a sharp distinction between Platonism and the thought of Plotinus, which
they described as a mystical monism quite unlike anything that Plato himself could
have conceived. In order to emphasize the difference between Plotinus' oriental
mysticism, and Plato's Hellenic rationalism, they called Plotinus' thought
"Neoplatonism".
This distinction between Platonism and Neoplatonism, which was so clear for
Leibnitz, has become steadily more and more blurred for modem scholars. Modem
scholarship has restored a number of epistles and dialogues to the canon of Plato's
works; it has taken a much more objective view of such troublesome dialogues as
the Timaeus and Parmenides; and it has examined much more carefully the testi
mony of Plato's own contemporaries and that ofhis immediate successors, and the
work of Plotinus and his pupils. The effect of all this work has been that modem
historians of Philosophy no longer use the term "Neoplatonism" in the loose sense
in which it was once accepted (see Tigerstedt, The Decline and Fall of the
Neoplatonic Interpretation ofP lato, 1974). Most historians now prefer to use more
general terms, such as "Platonism" (Kristeller, 1968), "the Platonic Tradition"
(Klibansky, 1981 ), or "the return of Plato" (Garin, 1986). In any case, they regard it
as anachronistic to apply the eighteenth-century term "Neoplatonic" to Ficino, or