Felicity and End in Renaissance Epic and Ethics

Abstract

For many a Renaissance theorist, poetry was, if not handmaid, at least pedagogue of sterner disciplines-ethics, politics, and theology. Its final cause was instruction as well as pleasure. For Tasso, its end (fine) was giovare dilettando. According to Minturno, il fine della Tragica Poesia and l'uficio del Tragico Poeta ... non e altro, che dir talmente in versi, che insegni, e diletti, e muova si, che delle passioni abbia a purgare gli animi de' riguardanti.l In Milton's opinion, poet had power to inbreed and cherish in a great people seeds of vertu and public civility and to teach over the whole book of sanctity and vertu through all instances of example. Combining profit with delight, he could instruct more effectively than doctrinaire schoolman; Spenser was a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas. Though this consciousness of religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of Poetry in and humane things 2 was by no means peculiar to Renaissance, it was undoubtedly heightened by psychological stresses of Reformation and Counter-Reformation. A practical consequence of this doctrine was emphasis which more sage and serious poets intentionally placed on didactic element in their works, either incorporating moral, religious, and political concepts openly through explicit statement or else expressing them indirectly through allegory. Nevertheless, tension between two primary ends of poetry -prodesse and delectare 3-confronted poet with a peculiar problem. If poetic art was theoretically oriented towards ethical, civil, and religious norms, in what way and to what extent should these values affect argument, structure, and meaning of poem? If poetry was to serve ends of ethics, politics, and theology, how (if at all) should poet represent these ends? In following pages I shall examine one aspect of this problem-the importance of idea of beatitude or chief good in works of four poets of Reformation or Counter-Reformation. As Renaissance intellectual tradition regarded felicity as summum bonum and final cause of ethics, politics, and divine science theology, this was a concept of greatest significance for a poet seriously dedicated to didactic end of his art.