Bacon's View of Rhetoric, Poetry, and the Imagination

Abstract

UCH of the writing on Bacon in recent decades has depended lVl. from an a posteriori view of his influence on the seventeenth century. A true estimate of his idea of poetry has been prevented by too exclusive attention to his role in the advancement of scientific learning.' following statements are representative: At any rate Bacon seems to have given the coup de grace to allegory in England' The science which is placed at the service of humanity has as its final aim technical mastery, which now in Bacon's estimation supplants artistic culture' C. M. Dowlin appears to believe that Bacon excluded elegies, odes, etc., from poetry. L. C. Knights and K. R. Wallace both seem to underestimate the role Bacon assigned to poetry in satisfying the needs of human nature, Wallace going so far as to report cryptically: poesy, because it is a part of learning that is 'extremely licensed' and obeys no rational laws, is later eliminated from serious investigation' Bundy claimed that Bacon had made no original contribution to the theory of poetry. Originality is always a difficult question. But Bacon was surely original in foreseeing the fabulous extension of the area of science and