RI H2 Literature 9509 Unseen Renaissance Literature Summary

Raffles Institution Y6 Literature 2024 (Arts/Science) Renaissance Unseen Renaissance Unseen – Summary Lecture Today’s lecture is meant to act as a summary for the material we have covered in class, and give you some concrete handles with which you can approach the Renaissance Unseen. This is in light of the upcoming TPs, so that you have some frameworks for revision, and things to pay attention to. We are going to do that by looking at the historical context of the English Renaissance, because that will alert us to the general patterns which are present in the texts we study. Principles and patterns of the classics We know that the English Renaissance grows out of the general Renaissance movement of the rediscovery of the classics. The classical aesthetic was built on the elements of order, balance, proportion, and symmetry. The golden ratio, first mentioned by Euclid (the most prominent mathematician of Greco-Roman antiquity, best known for his treatise on geometry, the Elements), is an expression of this.The golden ratio, also known as the golden number, golden proportion or the divine proportion, is a ratio between two numbers that equals approximately 1.618. It became known as a mathematical distillation of what was aesthetically pleasing, with architects, artists, and various other professions either discovering the golden ratio in nature, or employing it in their creations. It is one of the ways the elements of order, balance, proportion, and symmetry were achieved. When it comes to Renaissance literature, then, we should also look for the adherence to the proverbial golden ratio in the texts we come across. A sensitivity to these classical elements is what we aim to develop. The Parthenon in Athens, a temple dedicated to Athena. The golden ratio. The Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci.

What is rhetoric? The root of the word rhetoric is the Greek word “rhētōr ”, which means ‘the speaker in the assembly’. Rhetoric is the art of using language for persuasion, in speaking, writing, and especially in oratory. The Classical theoreticians codified rhetoric very thoroughly. With the Renaissance rippling through Europe, this would become a core part of the classical education that was extremely fashionable at the time. Peter Womack expresses it neatly when he says that the conventionally stated aim of rhetoric was ‘the moving of men’s minds’: it was meant to be effective in having an effect on the thoughts and perceptions of those who heard it. It was thus an instrument of influence: when religious and political codes were enforced, or altered, or contested, it was through the medium of rhetoric. (English Renaissance Drama, 2008.) Here is an extract about Renaissance culture, which serves as a primer on the history and nature of rhetoric. Rowland, Ingrid D. “High Culture”. A Companion to the Worlds of the Renaissance, edited by Guido Ruggiero, Blackwell Publishing, 2007, pp. 321-324. In the fields of rhetoric, literature, art, architecture, and behavior in particular, the existence of evident standards by which to compare contemporary achievements with the work of the ancients led to what might almost be termed an archaeological appreciation of ancient ways. But the standards set by the ancients exerted powerful influence in music and technology as well, where today the resemblance between ancient works and their Renaissance counterparts may seem particularly far-fetched; most of our own contemporaries would never mistake an opera by Monteverdi (1567-1643) for a Greek tragedy, nor see the utility of an ancient manual of war for the age of gunpowder. But humanism was not only a search for concrete facts of ancient life; it was also a search for systems, what Machiavelli (1469-1527), among many others, called modi e ordini, "methods and orders": ways of doing things and the sequence in which they are done. The classical aesthetic system to which the humanists and their contemporaries looked for guidance was rooted in ancient rhetoric. Rhetoric provided the basic training that educated Greeks (including citizens of the expansive Hellenistic world created after the conquests of Alexander the Great, and subsequently Romans, shared as essential preparation for participation in civic life. Formal training in rhetoric was minutely systematic, and it was designed above all to create persuasive public speakers. Instruction therefore included honing such arts as currying favor with the audience (captatio benivolentiae), glossing over weak arguments, and unabashed appeal to the emotions through the deft use of dramatic changes in the voice, graceful gestures, and direct personal appeals (apostrophe). Rhetorical questions provided yet another effective technique for driving away boredom and winning over the audience. Just as importantly, however, classical rhetoric emphasized the need for a coherent underlying structure (arrangement, Greek taxis, Latin dispositio) whether for an individual argument in the public arena or for an entire legal case, whose final summation might go on for six or seven hours - all, ideally, delivered from memory. As the ultimate development of that coherent structure, rhetoric also placed great importance on ornament. (The word "decoration" derived from the same word as "decorum" and meant imparting a final polish through appropriate expression.) The training, moreover, worked. The orators of the ancient Greco-Roman world were phenomenally successful lawyers and leaders. But then most of the rules invoked by ancient rhetoricians - coherent organization, clarity of argument, clear

pronunciation, delivery from memory, appropriateness - operate just as effectively today. They were practical rules for any age. The same technical terms applied by ancient rhetoricians to the art of public speaking were adopted by ancient writers on the other arts to establish similar criteria for quality. Aristotle's Poetics defined the persuasive power of Greek tragedy as the ability to strike "pity and fear" into the audience, a remarkably analytical assessment of what had been primarily a religious ritual. The Roman architect Vitruvius called for buildings to exhibit "firmness, utility, and concision" - they could almost be speeches. The ancient Roman poet Horace expressed this interconnection of the arts, or at least of ancient thinking about the arts, in a line of poetry that quickly became a cliché among humanists (and has remained a cliché among scholars who write on the Renaissance): "ut pictura poesis" ("poetry is like painting"). Coherent structure or design (dispositio again) applied to laying out the basic framework of buildings, statues, or musical compositions no less than speeches, and as with speeches refined ornament crowned each design's development, so that, if successful, the result moved the emotions, and, ultimately, persuaded. Effects analogous to those of a successful speech were thus demanded of successful paintings, sculptures, and buildings: indeed, in theory, rhetorical criteria defined the success of works in these other media. The development of humanism in the fifteenth century thus revived not only a set of standards for elegant Latin, but at the same time learned from the ancients to apply these same standards for composition and evaluation to a whole range of creative activities. Another crucial element in the classical rhetorical system served as the basic guideline in developing a speech or a design from dispositio to final ornament. This was the concept that the Greeks called genos and the Romans genus; in both languages the word meant "family" or "clan," and its closest English equivalent is probably "kind," with that word's double sense of classification and of kinship. Like members of a human family, the members of a rhetorical family displayed both shared characteristics and individual quirks; the concept o