Genres in the Renaissance and After

8/12/2019 Genres in the Renaissance and After

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The Formation of Genres in the Renaissance and After

Author(s): Alastair FowlerSource: New Literary History, Vol. 34, No. 2, Theorizing Genres I (Spring, 2003), pp. 185-200Published by: The Johns Hopkins University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20057775.

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The Formation of Genres in theRenaissance and After

Alastair Fowler

This title may seem to imply thatmany genres originated in theRenaissance. And it is true that the early modern historicalcontext made possible the revival of several ancient genres andthe fresh invention of new ones. Explorations and new world discoveries, for example, stimulated a return to classical georgic, which appealedto the appetite for practical information on the one hand and on theother for images of exotic places. Again, the development of a printculture was a prerequisite for several important kinds.For the most part, however, "formation" may be misleading. TheRenaissance was not always characterized by new forms; often itworkedby adapting old forms or imparting to them a new spirit.The majority ofthe principal kinds had already been available in theMiddle Ages. MostRenaissance innovations were not totally new, even when they weregiven new labels. Thus, classical georgic, an instructional or informativegenre written inpersona auctoris, had a shadowy existence in theMiddleAges as one of the three generic realms of the rota Vergiliana. It alsothrived under the disguise of prologue, a dominant medieval form; andtherewere georgic sonnets long before Luigi Alamanni's La Cultivazione(1546). Fulgore da San Gimignano's Soneti deiMesi were composedbetween 1309 and 1317.1 Again, comedies and tragedies were commonbefore the Renaissance, although differently conceived, as narrativerather than drama. Comedy in St. Isidore's definition "begins withsorrowful material, namely Hell, and ends with gladness, namely withParadise and the divine being."2 But, in the new historical or externalcontext, these medieval kinds changed profoundly. The tractatus ortreatise is a significant example. Galileo's famous Dialogo of 1632, atreatise on the Copernican and Ptolemaic world systems, is cast in adialectic form: this had the great advantage of avoiding dangerouscommitments in a repressive, ideological age. So, too, with pendentworks presenting pro and con positions or opposite perspectives, likeLAllegro and IlPenseroso. A keymedieval genre was the epistle, used as aninstrument of government at a distance. But the Renaissance epistle,meeting very different social needs, was often informal, or intimate, orNew Literary istory, 2003, 34: 185-200

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FORMATION OF GENRES 187adumbrates a critical term, as yet nonexistent, for silva; just as "parcels"is a trope for the non-epigrams in themiscellany. (Almost always a formappears earlier than the critical term for it.)Another collective metaphorwas "posy" or "nosegay," applicable not only to emblems but to any anthology.The anthology, a genre we take for granted, depends heavily on theprint medium. True, the termwas used by Diogenianus in the secondcentury. And theGreek Anthology had existed inmanuscript only, fromabout 900 ce. Its fullest form, the Palatine Anthology (notwidely knownuntil after 1606) did not appear in print until the nineteenth century.But a substantial part of it,the Planudean Anthology (gathered in 1301),was printed in 1494 and edited byHenri Estienne in 1556. And it is thisprinting of the Planudean Anthology, rather than that of theAppendixVergiliana or theAnthologia Latina,6 which marks the flowering of theepigram genre for themajority of Renaissance readers and poets. Soontherewere somany anthologies that I can only gesture tobibliographiesof early exemplars, such as Arthur Case's English PoeticalMiscellanies andJohn Sparrow's "Renaissance Latin Poetry."7Surveying the new and the new-old genres of theRenaissance period,one cannot but think thatmany of them arose from changed socialcircumstances. Thus, the estate poem (country-house poem) seems tohave emerged in response to changes in the character of hospitality. Thedecline of "housekeeping" was so critical that satiric comments grewnoticeably frequent, and new topoi became recognizable. Dialogue isanother instance: informal debate became more common than wouldhave been usual in theMiddle Ages. Again, the development of literarycoteries and new forms of patronage made possible the seventeenthcentury genre of critical elegy, a subgenre distinct from epitaph,epicede, and personal funeral elegy. The occasionality of the criticalelegy focussed on a notional, imaginary ceremony mourning the deathof an admired poet. But the actual occasion was often the printing of avolume of similar critical elegies, like theJusta Eduardo King Naufrago, abamicis moerentibus . . . (Cambridge, 1638) forEdward King, or the similarcollection for Donne appended to his 1633 Poems; although singlecritical elegies are of course also found, like Ben Jonson's "To theMemory ofMy Beloved ..." (whose occasion was the printing of theShakespeare First Folio of 1623). Poets' elegies likeThomas Carew's "AnElegie upon the Death of theDeane of Pauls, Dr John Donne" not onlyallude to the poetry of the deceased, but may also use their style, as inthe hommage or tombeau.8And sometimes themourning is for the art ofpoetry itself,as inCarew's elegy and inWilliam Dunbar's Lament for theMakaris (ca. 1505).In the formation of kinds, it seems usual for subgenres to emergebefore genres. If this appears counterintuitive, one has only to reflectthatparticulars are identified before generalities. We see trees before we



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188 NEW LITERARY HISTORYsee the wood they are parts of. This is particularly obvious with thegenres of visual art. In painting, theflowerpiece, breakfast piece, and soforth, appeared before the category "still life"; the doorkijke appearedbefore the interior; the journey and the world landscape before thelandscape in general; and the brothel scene, the guardroom, themerrycompany and the conversation piece before the "genre" category (aterm not used until the nineteenth century) .9 t first there isno namefor the broader type, only for the particular "subject." The absence of agenre label is of course no argument against the genre's existence; afterall, the architectural orders themselves went unnamed formore than1500 years.10 Even the emblem was not at first identified by name;Andrea Alciato himself seems to have thought of it as a special sort ofepigram.11 One can almost see the epigram part of the emblem emergein an epigrammatic poem by Bonaventura Peeters on his own painting:his associative thoughtmakes the poem virtually a nude emblem.12 Whatcrystallized the familiar emblem form of motto, pictura, inscriptio (epigram), and descriptions probably the print format. Indeed, long beforeAlciato, itmade an almost complete appearance in the printer's device,which sometimes incorporated a motto and a quotation.13In literature, similarly, poems of country life

werecommonly namedas such long before the terms landscape, or georgic, became usual.14Other Renaissance subgenres include the calendar (as in Spenser's

Shepheardes Calender or Cantos ofMutabilitie); and the time-of-day (a sortof almanac, as in Charles Cotton's Morning Quatrains or NicholasBreton's Fantasticks). Breton's Preface calls what he isdoing "descriptionof the twelve houres, the twelvemoneths, and some speciall dayes in theyere," and (disclaiming originality) tellshow his inspiration was "a peeceof paper, in which I found a kind of discourse, set down upon animagination ofmidnight," which he wished to emulate.15 Robert Herrick'scountry festivals and transshiftings are in a similar vein. All theworks justmentioned probably reflect the rethinking of temporality that seems tohave preoccupied the age. And all show influence of the visual arts, inwhich calendrical programmes were extremely common, from theMiddle Ages to the eighteenth century.

During the process of conceptualizing a genre, an important part wasplayed bymetaphors. Many genres had regular metaphors or synecdoches associated with them. Among these, culinary metaphors wereparticularly prominent, in view of thehighly developed analogy betweeneating and talking, not only in "table talk" but in criticism of all sorts.16Many literary genres drew their names from the kitchen: satura; farrago;sal and mel epigram?to mention only the best known. To the manyexamples inMichel Jeanneret and Gilbert Highet, one might add two:The Wit's Album, orPine-apple ofLiterature... (1829) and Philofunniculus's



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FORMATION OF GENRES 189A New Oxford Sausage, Spiced toSuit theTaste ofTown and Gown, Dons andDuns (1844). As theirmetaphors died, identifying the genres becameeasier and more conscious.Claudio Guillen has shown how genres were moulded by compositionmanuals, for example letter-writing manuals.17 And another popularsource of genre topoi and associations was Paul Aler's Gradus adParnassum, one of many similar thesauri. From the Gradus one learns,for example, that syrma and cothurnus can be put for tragedy or anypoem of high seriousness: that is, the trailing robe and the buskin, usedad maiestatem, for dignity. Literary references follow: to Juvenal ("thetrailing robe ofThyestes or Antigone") and Martial ("nor does my Museswell with frenzied tragic strain," insano syrma).A particurly interestingcitation isOvid's Amores, a work well known toMilton, which personifiesseveral genres:

Whilst Iwas strolling here enveloped in woodland shadows, asking myself whatwork my Muse should venture on, came Elegy with coil of odorous locks, and, Ithink, one foot longer than itsmate.19 She had a comely form: her robe wasgauzy light, her face suffused with love, and the fault in her carriage added toher grace. There came, too, raging Tragedy, with mighty stride: her lockso'erhung a darkling brow, her pall trailed on the ground; her left hand swayedwide a kingly sceptre, and on her foot was the high-bound Lydian buskin.20

Elegy's coil or knot "ofodorous locks," odoratosElegeia nexa capillos, surelyreappears inMilton's elegy for Edward King as "the tangle of Neaera'shair." Milton asks "What boots it / To . . .meditate the thankless muse"of serious poetry. "Were itnot better . . ./ To sportwith Amaryllis in theshade, / Or with the tangles of Neaera's hair?"21 The question ismorethan a rhetorical one: he himself had ten years earlier written Latin loveelegies, and more recently had rejected them in the retraction "Haec egoment?' of about 1635.

In such metaphors the mood of a genre is cultivated, meditated,perhaps modified; this can be of value to an interpreter.A good instanceis Aeneid I 336-7, where Venus tells her son Aeneas "Tyrian maids arewont towear the quiver, and bind their ankles high with the purplebuskin." Very soon after, Dido is named?and so associated withbuskined tragedy. In the same book, Aeneas brings Dido the gift ofIlione's sceptrum(I 653). The tropic attributes of tragedy?purple buskinand sceptre?thus combine together in a dramatic irony foreshadowingDido's tragic end.It is time to look in more detail at how genre works in practice.Consider Melibceus's lines opening Virgil's First Eclogue: "Tityre, tupatulae recubans sub tegmine fagi/ silvestrem tenui musam meditaris avena."22One is to imagine Tityrus asmeditating his woodland Muse on slender



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190 NEW LITERARY HISTORYreed. Such formulas have been described as coded; everyone knows todecode avena ("reed") as pastoral song. But weren't early pastoral idylsand eclogues, for Theocritus ifnot for Virgil, accompanied on actualreed pipes? And, ifso, should we not think of the avena as a part of theexternal situation, the context of utterance? Genres are coming to beunderstood as virtual contexts: as providing for the individual work acontext equivalent to the pragmatic context of speech. Abandoning thenotion of genres as fixed classes, criticism moved on in the 1980s and1990s to discussing them as coded structures or matrices for composition and interpretation. Perhaps

now it is time tomove on again, and tothink of genres as fields of association like those in actual situations ofutterance.

Codes have indeed their parts toplay in the reception of every literarywork, as I stressed (and probably overstressed) in Kinds ofLiterature(1982). Ordinary speech has its codes too. But, just as in speech itselfmeanings are taken up through inferences drawn from assumptionsshared with the speaker about pragmatic contexts, so too in literature,where the speaker is often absent, the finer meanings need to beinferred from the shared literary (not least generic) contexts. We maybe too ready to assume coded signals. The general case is that of anuntutored readership with little knowledge of literary codes?an audience, say, that has heard shepherds' pipes and read a few poems butknows little of subgenres and modes.Genres seem to differentiate, more or less systematically, a combination of features, both formal and substantive, ranging fromminute tolarge, from specific topics to elusive moods.23 This repertoire mayinclude characteristic diction, favorite rhetorical figures, peculiar meters,principal subjects, and typical themes. Each genre has more or lessobligatory topics, for which material has to be found by thewriter. Thegeorgic topic of retirement, for example, may lead a poet back toSeneca's Ep?stola XC. Such shared sources draw exemplars of the genretogether and adumbrate for a reader the broad field of associations inwhich themost relevant ones are tobe found. One may usefully think ofgenres as domains of association?specialized, literary equivalents of thefields of association whereby meaning is communicated in ordinaryspeech. As such, the genres adjust a reader's mental set and help inselecting the optimally relevant associations that amount to a meaningof the literary work.24

Genre's associative function can be clearly seen at work in theattributes or conventional tropes of the kind. In the verses fromVirgil'sFirst Eclogue, tenui musam meditaris avena calls up associations andassumptions (literary and extraliterary) connected with the outsideworld of shepherds and country song, and with the literaryworld of



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FORMATION OF GENRES 191pastoral poetry. In the rejected opening of the Aeneid ("I who formerlytuned my song on a thin reed ... now sing of Mars's bristling arms"), thereed is obviously self-referring, the poet's attribute as much as theshepherd's. It is "thin" because the lowlymode of pastoral properlyrequires a stylus tenuis. Since Virgil, generations of poets have deployedsimilar metaphors. Spenser's Cuddy complains "I haue pyped erst solongwith payne, /That allmine Oten reedes bene rent and wore";25 andwhen Spenser wishes to announce thathis poem has cracked themouldof pastoral, he writes that Colin (the poet's persona) "broke his oatenpype."26 Shakespeare, too, complains "My shepherd's pipe

can sound nodeal"; he, too, has shepherds piping on humble "oaten straws"27?just as,in Lycidas, "the rural ditties were not mute / Tempered to the oatenflute." Milton occasionally makes the genre association explicit: "pastoralreed with oaten stops"; "Arcadian pipe, the pastoral reed."28 In 1730,James Thomson, both Virgilian and Miltonic, can still claim "The Doricreed once more /Well-pleased, I tune."29And, beneath John GreenleafWhittier's bust, more vaguely, is inscribed "Making his rustic reed ofsong / A weapon in thewar with wrong."This pastoral landscape is well trodden; but itmay be less widelyknown that other genres, too, have metaphoric attributes. Some of themost prominent genre metaphors were already consciously recognizedby the ancients; others accrued in the Renaissance (see table 1):Table 1.

Genrerope Locus classicus

POETRYCOMEDYTRAGEDY

PASTORALGEORGICEPICODEEPIGRAM

cicadacygnussoccus (sock)cothurnus (buskin)palla, sceptrumdrum, ejulationsavena (reed)arvum (field)tuba (trumpet)lyra (lyre)

mel (honey), sal (salt)fel (gall), acetum(vinegar)

Plato, Phaedrus 258eMignault on AlciatoclxxxHorace, Epistlesll i 174Horace, Satires I v 64Ovid,Amor??$IIIill 13Milton, R Penseroso97-8Donne, Sermons? iii271Virgil, Aeneid i laVirgil, Aeneid i leMartial, VIII iii 22Horace, Odes I vi 10Martial, XII xciv 5Scaliger, Poeticelll exxii



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192 NEW LITERARY HISTORYOne notices that mel, acetum, and the others are not merely taxonomiclabels classifying epigram types. For the imagery of the poem itself islikely to belong to a corresponding register. Katherine Wilson drawsattention to Francis Meres's comparison of Shakespeare to Ovid inPalladis Tamia (1598): "the sweet witty soul of Ovid lives inmellifluousand honey-tongued Shakespeare, witness . . .his sugared sonnets."31 Asshe points out, sugared "was often used by the sonneteers of their lovetalk": "sugared speech and siren's song" (Thomas Watson); "No othersugaring of speech to try" (Philip Sidney); "Oh sugared talkWherewith

my thoughts do live" (Giles Fletcher). Wilson defines sugared as "sweetened by artifice," a sung or lyricquality: "the sugared quality is a sort ofwit." But "wit"may be misleading; sweetness and honey more probablyimply an erotic charge. In Sidney, kisses are sweet, and breath, andladies. The statistics of sweet re surprising. In Astrophel and Stella,mostlymel epigram-sonnets, sweet occurs no fewer than fifty times; if oneincludes theOther Sonnets, the total rises to sixty-seven. Sugared adds afurther six occurrences. In Shakespeare's Sonnets, similarly, sweet occursfifty-five times.From an early date, such associations as these fused with the enduringsymbolism of the Muses. Clio, for example, Muse of history andsometimes epic, had as attributes the trumpet and the laurel wreath orcrown. Chaucer knows the trumpet's association with heroic achievement in TheHouse of ame; his account of "hem thatmaken blody soun/ In trumpe, beme, and claryoun" contains as many as eight referencesto the instrument in twelve lines.32 Several other Muses were alsoassigned musical instruments, which became part of a network of genresymbolism. In the seventeenth century, the system of symbolic modesand its corresponding instrumentarium culminated in cosmic summaslike Fr. Athanasius Kircher's MusurgiaP

In the Middle Ages, the three major modes were schematized andexpanded through genre metaphors in the so-called rota Vergiliana (seefigure 1 and table 2). This enormously influential diagram, popularisedbyJohn of Garland, associates pastoral with otiosuspastor, sheep, crook,pasture, and beech tree. Georgic is comparably linked with farmer, ox,plough, field, and fruit tree; and epic, with miles dominons (knight),horse, sword, city and camp, laurel of victory and cedar of status.Sophisticated Renaissance poets were able to use the medieval andancient genre metaphors in allusions of great economy. So, inMilton's"Then to thewell-trod stage anon / IfJonson's learned sock be on," thereference is clear without the word "comedy." Similarly with the "trembling strings" of lyricor hymn.34And Joseph Hall, whose "scornfulMuse"cannot abide "with tragic shoes her ankles for to hide," nor to writepoems of patronage ("trencher poetry"), nor to "speak rhymes unto my



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FORMATION OF GENRES 193

j^ascoft_bacu[us_,

^Pastor ohos^^

Fig. 1.The Wheel ofVirgil. From Edmond Faral, Les Arts po?tiques de 12 etde 13" si?cle (Paris,1962), p. 87.

Table 2. The Wheel ofVirgil, expressed in tabularformEpic Pastoral Georgic

STYLECADRENAMEANIMALTOOLLOCALETREE

gravis stylusmiles dominansHector; Ajaxequusgladiusurbs; castrumlaurus; cedrus

humilis styluspastor otiosusTityrus; Melibceusovisbaculuspascuafagus

mediocris stylusagr?colaTriptolemus; Cceliusbosaratrumagerpomus

oaten minstrelsy," announces his preference for satire by rejecting aseries of other genre associations: "Trumpet, and reeds, and socks, andbuskins fine / I them bequeath."35

Satire, a genre that called for no invocation, had scarcely an attributein ancient literature?unless one counts epithets like "biting," "piercing," and "scornful." But Renaissance satire acquired several tropic



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194 NEW LITERARY HISTORYattributes: the shaggy satyr from false etymology of satire from satyrrather than satura; the whip of "corrected" abuses; and, in Marston, thebiting dog of cynic-ism?6The whipping metaphor was particularlycommon as a disguise around 1600, when satires were being burnt bythe hangman. Among many one may mention the anonymous TheWhipper of the Satire and The Whipping of the Satire (both 1601) andBreton's No Whipping, nor Tripping, But a Kind Friendly Snipping (also1601).

Similarly, the georgic farmer's equipment was supplemented in theRenaissance with a goad;37 as when Michael Drayton boasts about thevariety of the Fourteenth Song of Poly-Olbion:As to the varying Earth the Muse doth her apply,Poor Sheep-hook and plain Goad, she many times doth sound:Then in a buskined strain she instantly doth bound.38

In his elegy on Donne, Henry King associates the funeral elegy genrewith a solemn passing bell: "Oh Hadst thou in an Elegiac knell / Rungout unto theworld thine own Farewell."39 And inhis "ElegyWritten in aCountry Churchyard," Thomas Gray famously develops the same association: "The curfew tolls the knell of parting day." He probablycomplicates itwith an echo of Milton's "I hear the far-offcurfew sound/ Swinging slow with sullen [melancholy] roar"?the solemn counterpart in II Penseroso of LAllegros "merry bells"40?and certainly (as heacknowledged to Bedingfield) he follows Dante's Purgatorio Canto 8,lines 5-6, where "from afar a bell . . . seems to mourn the dying day"(squilla di lontano / chepaia ilgiorno pianger che simore).Milton's pendantmodes and moods form an emotional and experiential polarity as well asa contrast of genres.

Something of the complexity of association involved in genres may beglimpsed from James Jensen's fine account of the trumpet in baroqueliterature. It has connections not only with martial and heroic contextsbut with musical semiotics, mural painting, contemporary music andmusical theory, allegory, prosody, and iconography.41 All thismay suggestthat genre metaphors call up an entire world, or at least all of it that issusceptible to representation in a single genre ormode. Doubtless this isso potentially. But the genre ambiences invoked have a limited numberof focuses. And it is to these in the first instance that the tropes ofinvocation gesture.

The pastoral ambience, for example, the genre's mental "set," may beevoked by a distinct constellation of interrelated metaphoric properties:the oasis-pleasance, the sedge-fringed river, the sheep-hook, the occupa



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FORMATION OF GENRES 195tions of otium, and not a great many others.42 The oasis guarantees thatotium is unlikely to be interrupted. And the reed raises the subject ofpoetry itself,the self-referential topic ofmuch pastoral poetry. Naturally,these metaphors soon became autobiographically over-determined.Thus, for his choice of pastoral river,Virgil returns to his own nativelocality and the riverMincio. In Eclogues VII, "Mincius fringes his greenbanks with waving reeds," and in the survey of poetic themes that opensGeorgics III he promises a temple "beside thewater, where great Minciuswanders in slow windings and fringes his banks with slender reeds" {ette?era praetexit harudine ripas) .43 fter Jacopo Sannazaro, the river became a more prominent element in Renaissance pastoral and lovepoetry: Edmund Spenser makes much of his "sweet Thames," Michael

Drayton of "sweet Ankor." In Lycidas, Milton alludes to Virgil's rivermore openly, with a self-conscious, parados-like effect: "thou honouredflood, / Smooth-sliding Mincius, crowned with vocal reeds, / That strainI heard was of a higher mood" (85-7). As often, the tropic pastoral riveris the river of poetry, the ever-changing stream that flowsnow as Alph orHippocrene, now as Arethuse or Mincius. His "somewhat loudly sweepthe string" (17) prepares for a high lyric or hymnal passage; his"Mincius" returns to the Latin pastoral mode. This last transition isconfirmed in the next verse: "But now my oat proceeds." The reeds ofthe Mincius signal a return after the higher modulation.This does not mean thatMincius is invariably coded as an indicator. Itcan carry many complex associations?suggesting, for example, Milton'srelations with previous pastoral poetry and with Virgil; the latter's lifestream, which sprang from a neighbouring fountain; the waters thatended Edward King's life; and much else besides. In other words, genre

metaphors often function as associative contexts rather than mereindicators.The potential complexity of associations can be glimpsed even in thework of quite minor poets. Probably written in the 1640s, "The Vote," bythe Spenserian Ralph Knevet, draws motifs from Virgil's Georgics andfrom Isaiah 2:4:

The helmet now an hive for bees becomes,And hilts of swords may serve for spiders' looms;

Sharp pikes may makeTeeth for a rake;And the keen blade, the arch-enemy of life,Shall be degraded to a pruning knife;The rustic spade,Which first was made



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196 NEW LITERARY HISTORYFor honest agriculture, shall retakeIts primitive employment, and forsakeThe rampires [ramparts] steepAnd trenches deep.44

One can see how, in a different poem, the contrast of "blade" and"pruning-knife" might have been used simply to signal epic and georgic,or to modulate from the one to the other. But, even then, theextraliterary associations obvious here would surely not have beenaltogether abstracted into a world of specialized conventions. After thebattles of the Civil War, real weapons were dug up by farmers who hadnot necessarily read Virgil's Georgics.Interaction of politics with the literaryworld is specially evident withthe emblem genre. During the Renaissance emblematic objects andtheirmeanings were at firstmostly ancient, like the originally warlikedolphin and anchor from an aureus of the Emperor Titus, which becamethe device of the printer Aldus. But before long theywere given modernapplications; already Alciato replaced Titus's festina lente motto with aprince who seeks his subjects' safety. In modernized versions of Cupid withhis arrow, similarly, the archer might become a crossbowman or agunner. The French revolution generated a great many novel emblems,notably the bourgeois emblem sabres of 1789 and the revolutionarysabres of the following decade. Mayors, judges, and minor officials allcarried a sword then, as a sign of office and symbol of nobility. Therevolutionary sabre was often bought privately, and engraved either byprivate commission or on the maker's initiative. G?rard Sabatier, whohas studied the emblem sabres in considerable detail, shows that thearmourers used two main sources of imagery.45 Sometimes they drew onthehuman body or heraldic images ultimately derived from thebestiaries;sometimes they used Cesare Ripa's Iconolog?a (Rome, 1593), which wasstill being enlarged and reprinted in the eighteenth century. Or, newallegories, Masonic or revolutionary, might be invented, involvingperhaps the scales of justice, the fasces of unity, or the eye and pyramid,as in the dollar bill. The liberty cap might surmount a helmet, or beraised on a tree of liberty.

Genre metaphors continue to function in modern literature butusually are there deployed less overtly. Particularly in complex, mixedworks, they serve to re-establish or maintain a generic ambience.Readers of novels may not think theyneed genre metaphors to tell themthey are reading a novel. But the metaphors are often introducednevertheless, perhaps to indicate some particular subgenre of novel.Attributes or associations of the novel (suitably literalistic, even transpar



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FORMATION OF GENRES 197ent) include letters and letter-writing; diaries; notebooks; autobiographical journals; and unfinished drafts, not impossibly of a novel.Again, modern novels are sometimes presented as the diary of someone

(a rapist, perhaps, or a nobody).46 Doubtless, letters sometimes allude tothe genre's originary variant, the epistolary novel of Richardson andSmollet. More generally, however, the letter implies intimacy?once, anintimacy greater than that of speech. At critical stages of Richardson'sPamela and his Clarissa, writing a letteror journal figures prominently inthe action. In the romantic, and still in the Victorian novel, theemotional commitment a letter represented was a valuable association;the approach to intimacy inWilkie Collins's Basil actually leads to aconcluding section entirely in epistolary form. In realistic novels, itmaybe the documentary status of letters or official records that ismoreprominent as a genre indicator. Or, itmay be the occupation ofwriting.Thus, in The New Grub Streetand in The Private Papers ofHenry Rycroft,George Gissing writes about what he knows?writing.Genre metaphors are nowhere more actively explored than in avantgarde novels of the twentieth century. All the associations just mentioned may stillbe operative, together often with an implication that thepages presented are mere jottings?"papers," "notes," and the like.47Novels may be deprecatingly titled "Chronicles" or "ATale of Such andsuch," even when they are not actually in chronicle or tale form.48 Or, anespionage novel will be called something like The IpcressFile, where "file,"however, does not merely suggest an early draft or the rawmaterial offiction. It is associated specifically with classified information, confidentiality leaks, and the open or closed society.The writing metaphor is most prominent in self-referring, self-conscious, or "self-begetting" novels: in "metafiction."49 This genre orsubgenre has commonly been related to that seminal antecedent ofnovel genres, Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy: a work that itselfintroduces, more than once, themetaphor of autobiographical writing.Comparable self-references sometimes work theirway into the titles; aswith James Merrill's The Diblos Notebook (1965), Doris Lessing's GoldenNotebook (1972), and Lawrence Durrell's Black Book (1973). The culmination or reductio of this tendency may be found in Robert Grudin'sthoughtful Book: A Novel (1992), where every stage of writing?and ofediting, publication, bookselling, and pulping?has been assimilated tothe fiction. To regard such genre metaphors as encoding would missmuch of their point. What matters is the associations they prompt. Evenso, they only indicate more or less relevant fields of association; theoptimally relevant associations?the meaning?depends less on codesand conventions than on the individual handling: on what new departures the shared associations and formal shaping allow to be taken up.



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198 NEW LITERARY HISTORYComparing genre metaphors can be instructive. The prominence ofthewriting metaphor in postmodern metafiction may suggest how far ithas turned in on literature itself,or at least on the literary community.By contrast, the trumpet of epic used to refer to themartial music of theoutside world: to a citynot primarily concerned with literature.

University of EdinburghNOTES

1 Arte delta Caceta, ed. Giuliano Innamorati (Milan, 1965); see Renaissance Genres: Essayson Theory,History, and Interpretation, ed. Barbara Kiefer Lewalski (Cambridge, Mass., 1986);Rosalie L. Colie, The Resources ofKind: Genre-Theory in tJieenaissance (Berkeley, 1973).2 See R. D. S. Jack, Patterns of Divine Comedy: A Study ofMedieval English Drama(Cambridge, 1989), pp. 1-10.3 Familiar Letters, orEpistolae Ho-Elianae, ed. O. J. Smeaton, 3 vols. (London, 1902), vol.1, p. 2; compare Erasmus Newsletter, (1976), 28, and Claudio Guillen, "Notes toward the

Study of the Renaissance Letter" inRenaissance Genres, ed. Lewalski, pp. 71-3, 75-6.4 Art po?tique Jran?oyse (Paris, 1548), fol. 39r-44v.5 See Alastair Fowler, "The Silva Tradition inJonson's The Forres''," inPoetic Traditions oftheEnglish Renaissance, ed. Maynard Mack and George deForest Lord (New Haven, 1982),pp. 163-80.6 Begun perhaps in the early ninth century, frequently modified, and not printed until1729.7 Arthur E. Case, A Bibliography of nglish Poetical Miscellanies 1521-1750 (Oxford, 1935) ;John Sparrow, "Renaissance Latin Poetry: Some Sixteenth-Century Latin Anthologies," inCultural Aspects of the Italian Renaissance, ed. C. H. Clough (Manchester, 1976). Amongmany epigram anthologies may be mentioned Delitiae CC. Italorum Poetarum, 2 vols.(Frankfurt, 1608); Delitiae G Poetarum Gallorum, 3 vols. (Frankfurt, 1609); Delitiae PoetarumGermanorum, 6 vols. (Frankfurt, 1612) containing about 250,000 poems; Delitiae C. PoetarumBelgicorum, 3 vols. (Frankfurt, 1614) (all ed. by Jean Gruter); Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum, ed.Arthur Johnston (Amsterdam, 1637); Enchiridium Epigrammatum Latino-Anglicum, ed.Robert Vilvain (London, 1654); Delitiae Poetarum Danorum, ed. Friedrich Rostgaard, 2 vols.(Leiden, 1693). See also Hoyt Hopewell Hudson, The Epigram in theEnglish Renaissance(New York, 1966), p. 24 n 3.8 Thomas Carew, The Poems, ed. Rhodes Dunlap (Oxford, 1957), p. 74.9 See Judikje Kiers and Fieke Tissink, The Glory of theGolden Age, exhibition catalogue(Amsterdam, 2000), p. 169.10 See John Onians, Bearers ofMeaning: The Classical Orders inAntiquity, theMiddle Ages,and the enaissance (Princeton, 1988), p. 3.11 Many associated (or confused) emblem and epigram; see, for example, Francis

Thynne, Embl?mes and Epigrames [1600], ed. F. J. Furnivall (London, 1876).12 See Lawrence O. Goedde, Tempest and Shipwreck inDutch and Flemish Art: Convention,Rhetoric, and Interpretation (University Park, Penn., 1989), pp. 128-9, quoting Peeters'spoem on his own Ships in a Tempest On the naked emblem, see John Manning, The Emblem(London, 2002), p. 18.13 See Alastair Fowler, "The Emblem as a Literary Genre," inDeviceful Settings: The EnglishRenaissance Emblem and Its Contexts, ed. Michael Bath and Daniel Russell (New York, 1999),

pp. 1-31.



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FORMATION OF GENRES 19914 See Jay Apple ton, The Symbolism ofHabitat: An Interpretation ofLandscape in theArts(Seattle, 1991).15 Nicholas Breton, Fantasticks Serving for a Perpetuall Prognostication [1626], in The Works,ed. Ursula Kentish-Wright, 2 vols. (London, 1929), vol. 1, p. 4.16 See Michel Jeanneret, A Feast ofWords: Banquets and Table Talk in theRenaissance, tr.

JeremyWhiteley and Emma Hughes (Chicago, 1991); Gilbert Highet, The Anatomy ofSatire(Princeton, 1962).17 See Barbara K. Lewalski, "Notes toward the Study of the Renaissance Letter," inRenaissances Genres, ed. Lewalski, pp. 70-101.18 Thirty-two editions in the British Library, from Cologne 1680 onward.19 In the elegiac metre, hexameter and pentameter verses alternate.20 Ovid, Amores, tr.Grant Showerman (Cambridge, Mass., 1963), ffl.I.11-14, p. 445.21 Milton, Lycidas, in Complete ShorterPoems, ed. J. Carey (London, 1997), lines 67-69.22 Virgil, Eclogues, in Virgil, tr.H. Rush ton Fairclough (Cambridge, Mass. 1999).23 Alastair Fowler, Kinds of Literature: An Introduction to theTheory ofGenres and Modes(Cambridge, Mass., 1982), ch. 4.24 See Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (Cam

bridge, Mass., 1986).25 Glossed by E. K. as avena to signal theVirgilian allusion.26 Shepheardes Calender (London, 1579), October, line 8; January, line 72.27 The Passionate Pilgrim 7.17; Love's Labour's Lost 5.2.893. For the "humility" (stylushumilis) of the oaten reed, see Thomas Watson, "An Eglogue upon theDeath of.. .Walsingham. . . ," "An humble stile befits a simple Swaine /My Muse shall pipe but on an oaten quill":Poems, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1895), p. 163; Arthur Golding, The XV Bookes ofP.Ovidius Naso, EntytuledMetamorphosis, Translated . . . (London, 1567), vol. 1, p. 842, "OtenReede."28 Cornus 344; Paradise Lost xi 132, in The Poems of ohnMilton, ed. John Carey and AlastairFowler (Harlow, 1968).29 James Thomson, Autumn [1730] lines 3-4, in The Poetical Works of ames Thomson, ed.Bertram Dobell (Cambridge, 1994).30 John Donne, Sermons, ed. G. R. Potter and Evelyn M. Simpson, 10 vols. (Berkeley,1953-62).31 Katherine M. Wilson, Shakespeare's Sugared Sonnets (London, 1974), pp. 11-12.32 The House ofFame lines 1239-50. Compare Ariosto, Orlando Furioso, XXXIV xxv.33 Musurgia Universalis sive Ars Magna Consoni etDissoni (Rome, 1650). See EmanuelWinternitz, Musical Instruments and Their Symbolism inWestern Art (London, 1967).34 L'Allegro 131-2; // Penseroso 106-7. Compare Michael Drayton, "The Sacrifice toApollo," line 50, "Or in the Sock, or in the Buskined Strayne."35 Joseph Hall, "Satire I," Virgidemiae (London, 1598) lines 9-20. The tropic legacy isitself a satiric topos.36 W. Kinsayder [that is, gelder of dogs] (John Marston), The Scourge ofVillanie. ThreeBookes of Satyres (London, 1598); John Davies, The Scourge ofFolly. Consisting of SatyricallEpigrams . . . (London, 1611); John Taylor, The Scourge of Baseness (London, 1624);compare Alexander Pope, "Epistle toDr. Arbuthnot" line 303: "A lash likemine no honestman shall dread."37 Suggested perhaps by the iconography of the constellations, in which Bootes theHerdsman wielded a stimulus.38 Michael Drayton, Poly-Olbion (London, 1619), song 14, lines 2-4.39 Henry King, "Upon the Death ofMy Ever Desired Friend Dr. Donne of Paul's" lines35-6.



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200 NEW LITERARY HISTORY40 // enseroso 73-5; L Allegro 93-4.41 H. James Jensen, The Muses' Concord: Literature, Music, and theVisual Arts in theBaroqueAge (Bloomington, Ind., 1976), pp. 171-91.42 See Rosalie Colie, Shakespeare's Living Art (Princeton, 1974), p. 301, where she showsShakespeare testing the limits of pastoral by introducing extreme instances of antipastoral.43 Eclogues vii 12-13; Georgics iii 15; cf. Aeneid x 206.44 Ralph Knevet, The ShorterPoems, ed. A. M. Charles (Columbus, 1966), pp. 307-8.45 G?rard Sabatier, "Aux Armes, Citoyens ," FMR, 39 (1989), 65-80.46 For example, Evan S. Connell, Diary of a Rapist (London, 1966); George Grossmithand Weedon Grossmith, The Diary of a Nobody (London, 1892).47 Evan S. Connell, Notes from a Bottle Found on the each at Carmel (New York, 1963) ; rianHiggins, Notes while Travelling (London, 1964); and Robert Lowell, Notebook 1967-8 (NewYork, 1969), which is on the model of actual notebooks like Rilke 's The Notebook ofMalteLaurids Brigge (London, 1959). "Notes" in a titlemay also indicate autobiographical orconfessional writing; and, particularly inRussian literature, ithas subversive associations.48 For example, Charles Reznikoff, Family Chronicle (London, 1969).49 See Steven G. Reliman, The Self Begetting Novel (New York, 1980); Patricia Waugh,

Metafiction: The Theory and Practice ofSelf-Conscious Fiction (London, 1984).

Genres in the Renaissance and After

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