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Peter Bornedal:
The Interpretations of Art
Part I: Neoclassicism

Contents
List of Tables

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: Classical Transparency and Romantic Opaqueness

1) The Modern Conception of Poetry
2) A General Theme of the Work
3) The Question of Method and Reading-Strategy
4) A Brief Overview of the Composition of the Work

1
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2
5
8

PART ONE: NEOCLASSICISM

Chapter 1: Neoclassicism, Its Freedoms and Its Norms
1) Rejecting Poetry as Irresponsible and Deceptive
2) The Consistency of Platos Doctrine on Poetry
3) Poetry as a Discourse Without an Object
4) The Justifications of Poetry
4.1) Poets are not Liars 25
4.2) An Evasive Distinction Between
Imitation and Inspiration 28
4.3) The Purposes of Poetry Between
History and Philosophy 32
5) Reason as an Image of Nature
5.1) Rationality as Self-Evaluation Under
the Influence of an Other 36
5.2) Moderation and Excess 42
5.3) The Dangerous Excess of Refinement in Art
the Medium as Structural Principle 45
6) The Rules of the Theater
6.1) The Justification of Rules 48
6.2) Aristotle and The Unities 50
6.3) The Unities as Imitation of the Theater 53

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15
17
21
25

36

48

Chapter 2: The Law of the NameLe Cid as Example

1) Code and Text
2) The Code of Honor
3) The Lack of Choice and Freedom
4) The Deathdrive of the Text
5) The Role of the King

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65
70
73
76
78

PART TWO: TRANSITION AND PREROMANTICISM

Chapter 3: Classicists against Classical Ideals
1) Another Nature
2) Consequences of an Epistemological Breakdown
2.1) Transcending Discourse, Discovering Life 93
2.2) The Rejection of the Unities 98
3) Abolishing the Parallelism Between Poetry and Painting
3.1) Parallels Between Poetry and Painting 101
3.2) Interpretations of the Mouth of Laocoon 104
3.3) Lessings Semiotics 106
Chapter 4: Learning How to Judge Beauty
1) Abandoning the Neoclassical Episteme
2) Art and Nature, a New Juxtaposition
2.1) The Reorientation of Art 122
2.2) The Sublime as a Quality Found in Nature 125
2.3) Sight and Image, and the New Definition of Art 127
3) In Pursuit of a Uniform Standard of Taste
3.1) A Brief Sketch of the Problem 130
3.2) In Pursuit of Order (Hume) 131
3.3) In Pursuit of Order (Burke) 137
3.4) Burkes Analysis of Beauty and Sublimity 142
4) Kants Notion of Transcendental Beauty
4.1) Beauty as an Experiential and as a
Transcendental Quality 144
4.2) Beauty as Disinterest 145
4.3) Beauty as Universal 151
4.4) Beauty as Purposiveness Without Purpose 153
5) Kants Concept of Genius

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89
93

101

119
119
122

130

144

155

Chapter 5: The Origins of Man, Language, and Poetry

1) The Rational Principle: Origins and Differential Systems
2) The Formation of the First Words and Before
2.1) The First Passions and the Emergence
of Language 172
2.2) The Reflective Process, and how the First
Word Finds Its Way To Human Consciousness 176
2.2.1) The Non-Origin of Language 176
2.2.2) The Origin of Language in Reason 179
3) The Living and the Dead Languages, Voice and Writing
3.1) The Influence of the Climate 182
3.2) Sound and SenseA New Concept of Poetry 184
4) The Natural and the Contrived
4.1) A Desire for the Return of Nature 189
4.2) The Naive Artist 193
5) The Distinction Between Classic and Romantic
5.1) The Controversy About the Invention
of the Distinction 196
5.2) The Natural Realist and the Cultural Idealist 198
5.3) Schlegel About the Objective and the Interesting 203

169
169
172

Chapter 6: Emotions and Social Restrictions

Die Leiden des Jungen Werther as Example
1) Narrative Framework
2) A Natural Structure, the Seasons
3) The Ambiguous Evaluation of Naivet
4) The Sensitive Artist Contra the Prosaic Bourgeois
5) The Lack of Presence of Death

215

182

189

196

215
217
219
225
232

PART THREE: ROMANTICISM

Chapter 7: Inventing an Other Reality
1) Individualism and Transcendentalism in the
Romantic Paradigm
2) The Romantic Artist and the Discontent With the World
2.1) Inspiration and the Other World 241
2.2) A Ray of Dim Light 243

239
239
241

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2.3) Art as Auto-Affection 245
2.4) Music as Imitation of Feelings;
a Language of the Heart 249
3) Art as a Universal and Infinite Task
3.1) The View of Art as Mythology 253
3.2) Poetry as an Infinite Ideal 257
3.3) Romantic Irony 259
4) Philosophy and Art. Art Without Frame
4.1) The Work of Art In-and-For-Itself 262
4.2) Schellings Dialectics 263
4.3) The Universe as Art and the
Construction of Genius 268
4.4) Self-Reflection and Imagination 272
5) Imaginative Language Contra Rustic Language
5.1) Imagination 276
5.2) Coleridges and Wordsworth
Controversy over Poetry 279
5.2.1) The Problem Stated 279
5.2.2) Wordsworths Low and Rustic
Poetic Language 279
5.2.3) Why Rustic Language Bothers Coleridge 285

253

262

276

Chapter 8: Infantilizing People, Sentimentalizing Society

Heinrich von Ofterdingen as Example
1) Representing Romantic Reality
2) Beyond the Poetry of the Blue Flower
3) Descending into the Underground in Search of Truth
4) Metaphysical Ignorance and the
Importance of Illegible Books
5) The Metaphysical Task of Undoing the
Death of the Beloved
Conclusion: Summary of the Point of View
1) Neoclassicism
2) Transition and Preromanticism
3) Romanticism

302

Bibliography

347

Index

356

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304
311
314
320
331
331
336
343

Introduction
________________________________________
Classical Transparency
and Romantic Opaqueness

1) The Modern Conception of Poetry

During the eighteenth century it becomes a predominant critical idea
that the intrinsic purpose of art is to represent human nature. In general,
human nature becomes an exclusive epistemological object and new
questions arise concerning the knowledge human beings produce about
themselves. Disciplines such as aesthetics, linguistics, hermeneutics,
criticism, psychology, and history proliferate as different ways to answer these questions. Increasingly, individuals are becoming enigmas
that cannot be approached directly, but who have to be investigated
through the layers of knowledge organized around them, such as their
language, their history, and their poetry. They are no longer a behavior
with certain well-classified tempers visible to any spectator; they are
profundities.
Also art becomes a knowledge through which humans approach
themselves. In art, humans expect their nature to be reflected; that is,
they expect to recover themselves not as contingent empirical beings,
but as what they are in their transcendental and eternal humanity.
If beforehand one discussed what poetry was good for, and agreed it
had no object in the same sense as astronomy, theology, law, or history
had, but that it was entertaining and it was able to teach through examples, one begins during preromanticism and romanticism to see the contours of an ideal and metaphysical object. Slowly, poetry begins to de-

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velop into a knowledge about human essence, but a knowledge that can
never present itself patently, and consistently keeps secret and out of
sight that about which it assumes knowledge.
Contrary to all other branches of knowledge, art becomes a discipline which is supposed not to express or explicate what it assumes as its
insights, as these insights allegedly are of a so ethereal nature that any
representation of them by conventional logic would invalidate them.
The poets merely indicate by their enthusiasm how these insights affect
their life and imagination, and their poetry becomes traces of this invisible and inaccessible knowledge. Poetry becomes a light, emitted from
an incomprehensible source, but illuminating the world with a divine
brilliance.

2) A General Theme of the Work

The present work focuses on the transformation of the critical paradigms of classicism and romanticism; it does so with respect to how one
discusses art and the artist, and with respect to the epistemological
changes in these discussions. Thus, the work is not simply a historical
account of the development of criticism. It examines the epistemology
of criticism, and pursues how criticism on a fundamental structural level
develops and changes. As such, the approach is more structural than
historical. In comparing the two major paradigms, the different organization of knowledge about art and the artist is emphasized and the fundamental rationale for this organization is exposed. This is represented
according to how the included texts themselves account for this situation, and not from a theoretical vantage-point exterior to the logical organization of the texts themselves.
In this theoretically disinterested approach, the thesis is that in the
development of art-theory, art gradually is being separated from the
practical purposes and the codified language conducting the task of the
classical artist. Art becomes a sphere where truth presumably is enunciated. Poetry changes from being a kind of language into being a divine kind of languagea language with a particular and exclusive relation to the truth of the human being and nature, and with the task to illuminate this relationship.
It is a general thesis that classicism and romanticism have two different ways of organizing knowledge and employing language. 1) If in

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classicism knowledge is spread out in taxonomic and classificatory systems, for example, as the classification of literary genres or the classification of human tempers, knowledge in romanticism becomes knowledge about depths and origins; about generation and production. If beforehand knowledge was organized on the visible surface of the world,
according to a synchronic axis, knowledge now is organized according
to a diachronic axisit hides in invisible depths of humans, in indistinct principles of productivity, or in inaccessible prehistoric times of
lost origins. Along with this new principle for organization of knowledge is born a new time-consciousness, a sense of history as a development from the primitive to the complex, from the depth to the surface,
from the origin to the present, from the production to the product.
Knowledge generates as a speculative insight in these blurred and opaque areas where the truth, the depth, the origin, and the generation are
condensed in a distant prehistoric point for the beginning of everything.
2) Furthermore, language is employed with greatly different purposes.
If in classicism one uses language for the sake of communication, in
romanticism it is used for the sake of expressionpreferably in order to
express something inexpressible: something belonging either to the regions of a lost prehistory of humans, to a metaphysical divine realm, or
to the depth of the artistic self. One may term these different languagemodes respectively pragmatic and idealistic. From this point of departure it is possible to derive other distinctions such as a fundamentally
different perception of the other, the presumed receiver. In classicism,
the receiver still functions as an external, actual recipient and judge of
the artistic product. The relationship is communicative because a (virtual) dialogue goes on between artist and audience. In romanticism,
where one shifts from emphasizing potential communication with the
audience into emphasizing expression of the self, one loses this pragmatic dimension and communicative purpose of art. If in classicism
the receiver is external, representing a mature audience consisting of
individuals in principle equal to the artist, and thus capable of reviewing the artist, the receiver in romanticism is internalized; one does not
address ones poetry to an actual recipient. The idea of conforming oneself to an evaluating audience becomes intolerable. One writes from a
position within oneself, avoiding any rules that might guide and direct
ones writing. An essentially different writing-process seems to emerge
in this shift of paradigms together with a whole new sense of the self. If
one understands the artist-audience relationship in classicism as an ar-

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tisan-reviewer relationship, where the end for the artist is to get recognition, one may notice that with the romantic internalization of recipient, and consequently elimination of actual recipient, the sensitive
romantic poet rather appeals to understanding and sympathy. The romantic poet no longer takes any chances. Two very different selfinterpretations and desire-structures appear to define the creative self.
Thus, the transition from classicism to romanticism is viewed as a
development from transparency to obscurity, from a pragmatic worldview to a metaphysical, from social obligations of art to an individualized non-obligated art, from communicative to expressive languageuse, from a desire to be recognized (in the artist) to a desire to gain
sympathy, from the basic self-understanding of the artist of being an
adept craftsman to the basic self-understanding of being a genius, from
skills to inspiration. The whole development describes a general tendency, not just implemented in the arts and art-criticism, but in the development of human self-understanding, self-perception, and selfinterpretation on the whole. As a help, one may visualize some of the
relationships mentioned in a table.
TABLE I, Classicism versus Romanticism

World-dimension
Organizational principle of Knowledge
Mode of language
Critical interest
Poetic object
Creative resource
Recipient
Desire-structure

Classicism
Pragmatic
Synchronic

Romanticism
Idealistic
Diachronic

Communicative
Code
Idealized Life
Art
Externalized and actual
Recognition

Expressive
Man
Truth
Inspiration
Internalized and ideal
Sympathy

Ultimately, the concept of truth is targeted in the present work, especially the idea of a linkage between poetry and truth, and the idea of
the poet as a prophet and seeras these ideas are established at some
point in the transition period and legitimize most romanticism, and today still enjoy some recognition. Against this conception, the ideals of
classicism and neoclassicism are reevaluated and rehabilitated, poetry is
understood as an object for rational discussion and judgment and not as
a medium beyond evaluation because it originates in inexpressible and

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unconscious depths of the human soul. This whole development is evaluated from a horizon that briefly and broadly could be characterized as
post-metaphysical, neo-rational, and pragmatic.
3) The Question of Method and Reading-Strategy
As an investigation in the changing epistemological basis of criticism, the present work does not and cannotwithout performative selfcontradictionsuggest a solution to or a truth about the issues discussed in art-criticism. The method of this investigation is descriptive.
Basic Phenomenological assumptions are regarded as most sound when
investigating and describing the logic and economy of an art-theory, in
the sense that the inherent logic of the subject matter itself is investigated. However, as in much self-proclaimed descriptive theory, a
normative component is imbedded, as indicated above. Here obviously
the justification of a pragmatic, non-idealistic approach to art constitutes such a normative componenta pragmatic recognition of art as
merely a language-game among other language-games, without specific claims to truth and without specific metaphysical privileges. In the
description of the development from Renaissance and neoclassical criticism to preromantic and romantic, neoclassicism becomes the norm.
In the descriptions of critical paradigms and texts, a reading-strategy
is pursued that owes much to Derridas Deconstruction. In the pursuit
of idealistic moments in especially romantic texts, or in the examination
of critical concepts that pertain to truth, conclusions are drawn that often seem to duplicate Derridian recognitions. Sometimes this may be
due to actual indebtedness to Derrida; often, however, scrutinizing material with an approach identical to Derridas has unavoidable and necessary deconstructive effects. Although Derrida has never been applied in a primitive sense, and although there has been no attempt to
imitate the style of Deconstruction, the initial ideas of an unprejudiced
approach to texts, of letting the text speak, of the existence of intrinsic
logics in texts that may undermine the intentionality of the author, are
essentially Derridian.
First and foremost, it is presupposed that one approaches a text
without prejudice, rationally and objectively, with this implying that
one does not pretend to understand its core concepts before their contextuality are read and examined. One, for example, does not pretend to

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understand critical concepts such as nature, beauty, imitation, or
inspiration, as if these concepts are constituted as eternally the same,
outside the context and function of the particular text in which they occur. This implies that one understands concepts not according to the
dictionary but according to their actual textual function. Beauty becomes an enigmatic word, meaningless in itself, but something whose
meaning can be reconstructed and reconstituted. Deconstruction becomes a kind of reconstruction. In this phenomenologicaldeconstructive reading-strategy one suspends, cancels out life and
world; theories are perceived as systems.
If art theories are such systems, and a system is a group of interacting elements functioning as a complex whole, one focuses in this
reading-strategy on the operative performance of these elements and on
the laws governing their functioning. Thus, one investigates the system
as object, not its object, and not what the system is about. When talking
about the art theoretical system, the interest is consequently not in the
content of the theory, but in how this theory functions as a systemthat
is, how it is constructed, and how its elements in turn substantiate the
whole. In this enterprise, one must be attentive to the object of the system only as an element in the system and only insofar as the system is
constructed around a theoretical object. Admittedly, a system talks
about something, but it talks systematically, and it is this systematic
structure one examines. Whether its object is God, mind, nature, beauty,
understanding, inspiration, speech or writing, the object in this investigation is reduced to an anonymous x. It is suspended or canceled
out, becoming of no interest in itself, but only another element in the
system. It is something the system is a system for, something it attempts
to substantiate; still, the object in itself is ignored. Whether a particular
work of art is essentially beautiful or ugly is, for example, not interesting, but the way one wants and tries to substantiate essential beauty
or ugliness is interesting.
Systems invent their own conceptual universe. They develop a certain economy and logic for this conceptual universe as their concepts
become mutually self-defining and self-determining. Within the system,
concepts lose their reference to the everyday world as they gain a pure
system-specific meaning. In a theoretical context, the word beauty has
become (what shall be termed) an anaseme, that is, a concept whose
meaning becomes nothing but a structure of other interrelated anasemes. This also implies that the system explaining beauty cannot

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close itself by means of any definite term since terms define and, consequently, depend on each other. There is no master signifier, only
self-referential and recursive definitions. Thus, a simple intuitive understanding of beauty, as something one believes (feels) one knows
from everyday life, is lost again in the theory, whose whole purpose in
the first place was to clarify this vague intuitive understanding of beauty. It seems as if the word, detached from its mundane surroundings
and exposed to the system, begins a new life in which the laws of
diffrance and dissemination are the rule. Here it is transposed to a new
strict, rigorous, logical, and economic language, achieving new definitions that cannot ultimately be substantiated. The intuitively felt meaning of the word is lost as soon as the word becomes a notion. Similarly,
also nature becomes such an anaseme. It is a word which, having
lost its current sense, retains only a vague resemblance to the word as
one knows it from the dictionary or from everyday speech. It is a word
condensing matters that would not necessarily and normally be associated with this word, matters which one can infer only from scrutinizing the specific contexts in which the word occurs. For example, imitating nature is not just to imitate nature because one cannot in advance
know what this statement implies or means. Imitating nature is to do
something, where one selects certain mythological themes in a certain
narrative structure according to certain social norms and ethical standards, with a certain knowledge of the classification of and methods required in different genres. The phrase imitating nature has no obvious
meaning, although a provisional meaning may be reconstructed through
close-reading of particular texts. Again, deconstruction is reconstruction.
To summarize: an anaseme is a word which has lost its normal and
everyday meaning. Although the word sounds familiar, its new significanceits so-called system-specific meaningis perhaps entirely unknown. Beauty is not just beauty, nature is not just nature, imitation is not just imitation, etc. A notion x is called an anaseme when it
is inscribed in a network of neighbor notions from where it specifically
receives its significance. The systems of these notions are called anasemic systems, and these systems constitute the foundation for the
meaninghowever vague and ambiguousof the notions in these
systems. Thus, anasemic concepts are never determined with complete
certainty insofar as they only have meaning within a system they themselves participate to define. In this indirect way they rely on themselves.

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Therefore, in a theoretical system, the meaning of an anaseme is merely a system of other anasemes.
The art-criticism and art-theories represented in the following are
exclusively read as anasemic systems.

4) A Brief Overview of the Composition of the Work

The work is divided in three major parts: Classicism, Transition &
Preromanticism and, Romanticism. The first part deals with neoclassical criticism (such as, Scalinger, Castelvetro, Sidney, Boileau, Pope,
Corneille, Dryden). The second and largest part deals with the transition between neoclassicism and romanticismas it describes early
reactions against neoclassicism such as Lessings and Johnsons, follows the development of aesthetic theory from Addison, Hume, and
Burke to Kant, or discusses the theories of the origins of language and
poetry from Rousseau and Herder to Schiller and Frederich Schlegel.
The final part deals with German and English romanticism
represented by Tieck & Wackenroder, F. Schlegel, Schelling, Novalis,
Coleridge, and Wordsworth.
In order to examine the interrelationships between critical and poetic works, three literary works conclude each part. From the classical
period: Le Cid, from the transition period: Die Leiden des Jungen
Werther, and from the romantic period: Heinrich von Ofterdingen. All
these works deal with love-relationships, about how to win and how to
lose a woman. This relationship one may view also as an analogy on the
relationship between author and the other, especially, how to win or
lose ones audience, or, closely related, how to cope with social and
conventional codes. In Corneille, one still has to obey certain rules (in
love as in writing) before the king awards the hero royal recognition.
Emotions are here subordinated conventions. A certain code of behavior is everything, and the individual has to conform to the demands of
society, reluctantly perhaps, but unquestionably. In Goethe, one is no
longer obligated by rules (in love as in writing). The narrator tries to
transgress the rules of society, as he writes intimate letters to a friend in
frustration over a woman, still not convinced about choosing romantic
love above pragmatic marriage. The woman does not yet reward the
sensitivity of the poet-hero; emotions are not yet invaluable, and, to the
distress of the hero, they meet social obstacles. The woman in Novalis

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has reached a conclusive stage where finally poetic sensitivity is appreciated. However, this ideal stage is represented as a fairy tale and fantasy reality in which everything is childhood, innocence, play, song, and
enthusiasm. One does not communicate, debate or judge any longer in
this fantasy realm; one expresses, sympathizes, feels, and sings songs.
Classicism. In this part the classificatory system of the arts is described, together with the ideas of imitation and inspiration, the understanding of what the purpose of poetry should be, and the recommendations of how one should compose an opportune work of art. The general tendency in neoclassicism seems clear enough, one is conservative,
restrictive, and prescriptive; one distrusts the freedom of genius and
confines the creative imagination within certain limits. Imagination is
subjected to reason; one recommends imitation and discourages experiment. Instead of encouraging genius, one teaches rules; instead of trying new methods, one looks back to tried methods of the past. The end
of poetry is to teach and delight. How it should do so is adjusted to the
particular kinds of poetry. Thus, epic should arouse admiration for heroic virtues; tragedy should arouse terror and pity, and carry out poetic
justice; comedy should correct humans manners through ridicule. The
different areas and objects of poetry may easily be classified in a table
because poetry does not represent a secret and incomprehensible truth
about the human being. Also important is the relationship between work
and audience. Theories are developed to explain what an audience may
understand and find credible, and which sentiments the work should excite in the audience. Poetry has to be credible and probable, because if
spectators cannot believe a play, neither can they be affected by it. The
play will not move them and they will not learn from it. Although human life is also in focus in the classical paradigm, it is in focus as a life
of action, of virtues, vices, or manners. Life is understood as idealized
life. If artists picture life, they picture the conventional and social norm,
the acceptable and the good. Art still upholds a relationship to moral
and legal discourses. It is not yet psychological or anthropological in its
general orientation. As such, poetry does not represent an immanent
knowledge about the human being. It is a reflection of the obvious. It
does not pretend to present an insight into things and their nature, but to
become an instrument for teaching and correction. One derives ones
criticism from Aristotle and Horace. Poetry is not divine madness; it is
an art, a skill, and as such it is thought to have specific rules which all
craftsmen have to know if they are to ply their trade properly. Artists

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should not trust themselves as geniuses; artists should learn to imitate
those who knew how to imitate literature, that is, the ancients. In the seventeenth century one concentrated on matters of technique and hardly
raised the question of the nature of poetry.
Transition & preromanticism. If the classicist tradition stressed unchangeable norms of art, one begins in the transition to develop a historical consciousness of art and to discuss the nature of art and the artist. If in the classical tradition artistic production was a matter of imitating good examples, following certain well-defined rules applied to different genres, one now begins to realize the changeability of genres.
The novel, which is not recognized in earlier lists of genres, emerges.
One rebels against strict normative rules and against the standard examples. The second part will deal with three occurrences which may be
identified as transition. First, it will be described how the neoclassical
paradigm collapses, and how it is replaced with another rationale and
paradigm that makes the rejection of neoclassicism possible. Although
the ancient Greeks remain an artistic ideal, one objects to the neoclassical application of ancient classicism. It becomes increasingly impossible to argue consistently for the necessary implementation of the rules
of the unities and of ancient models. The paradigm changes, and the
better argument is now drawing its resources from presumed insights in
nature itselfnot from preapproved taxonomic systems. Neoclassicism collapses before Lessing and Johnson (or any other individual
agent) as this collapse constitutes the conditions of possibility for their
better arguments against neoclassical principles. Secondly, one begins
to discuss the nature of art and the artist. Gradually a new philosophical
discipline is introduced, a cognitive meta-discipline related to the arts, a
so-called aestheticsa discipline of how to perceive in general, and
specifically of how to perceive beauty. If art previously had to imitate
exemplary models, and could do so successfully or unsuccessfully, it
now has to be beautiful. Kants philosophy becomes influential, because he is able to distinguish so-called aesthetic judgments from scientific and moral judgments, separating so-called disinterested from interested judgments. Thirdly, one begins to look for new ideals to follow in the past of human prehistory. One no longer returns only to the
ancient Greeks to find material to be imitated. One returns to another
simplicity, to a childhood of mankind, languages, poetry, and music.
Against a growing sense of present alienation, one evokes an idea of a
primitive beginning, an origin of civilization and its products, a happier,

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purer, more beautiful and sensuous beginninga beginning which perhaps cannot be recovered and restored, but which may be represented
and revived in the works of the poetic genius.
Romanticism. One may argue that there is no radical paradigmatic
shift between so-called Transition and romanticism in the same
sense as one can localize such a shift between neoclassicism and romanticism. The change between Transition/preromanticism and romanticism consists rather in a development and radicalization of certain already existent themes. Kants critical philosophy is, for example, radicalized by idealist philosophers. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant
suggests a dualism between a phenomenal world, the world one senses
and experiences, and a noumenal world, the world-in-itself as beyond
human knowledge. Where Kant tries to maintain a certain balance between these two worlds, it is important to the idealistic philosopher to
abandon this dualism and to determine a first essential principle determining both the real and the ideal. If Kant claimed that we could not
know the world in-itself (because cognitive categories already filter
our knowledge about it, making any positive and direct access impossible), the idealist pursues this argument in what seems its logical consequence, namely, that if we cannot know the external world, then we
cannot even know it is there, since this world in and for itself does not
pass through our cognitive filter. Hence, the most important principle
for the idealist becomes subjectivity, a position already prepared in
Kant. All knowledge has a subjective base, both knowledge about what
we perceive and the way we perceive it. In this self-conscious subjectivity, one comprises both the one who knows and the known. Subjectivity becomes a principle of identity annihilating differences between exterior and interior, nature and self, world and poetry, etc. This
recognition becomes the foundation for Schellings speculative philosophy, as well as for Coleridges criticism. Oppositions are meant to be
reconciled in these systems, for example, the opposition between self
and nature; and on a certain level of Schellings system, art gets the task
of reconciling this opposition. In their divine ability of making art,
poets become most like God. The concept of imagination in Coleridge
is also such a reconciling principle, something belonging neither exclusively to the subject nor to the object, but comprehended as an act of
self-conscious reflection synthesizing nature and mind. If in British
Empiricism the impressions of the world constitute a kind of imagematerial, retained by the poets, from which they produce their writing,

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this conception is reversed in Coleridges romanticism. Now the imagining self generates the world, since imagination is a creative resource recovering the world. The human being is finally restored not
only in its relationship to nature, but also in its relationship to God, because in its role as poet-creator, it does the same as God does.

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Chapter 1
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Neoclassicism, its Freedoms and its Norms

1) Rejecting Poetry as Irresponsible and Deceptive

In the sixteenth century one still has to defend poetry against accusations of distracting people from more important issues: religious, social, and moral. As yet poetry has no unique and privileged status in the
system of human knowledge. It is still not established as an extra-mundane discourse, lingering in the abstract beyond human criticism, because poets in their inspirational motivated creativity see and reach
deeper than the critics can ever hope for by their limited secular language.
Artistic activity is criticized as a suspect undertaking and defenses
are composed to counter these accusations. The defenses become responses to contemporary critics accusing poetry of counterfeiting the
world by invalidating mans rational perception of it, accusing poetry of
leading people astray in their religious quests by wasting their time with
profane matters, or accusing poetry of arousing desire by imaging love.
Typically, Platos famous rejection of poetry in The Republic provides
ammunition for the accusations.
Poetry is on trial in these essays. One evokes a few relatively welldefined indictments against poetry, a small number of objections, to
which the defense is obliged to answer. In the defense-speeches one
tries to emphasize that poetry in fact obtains a place as a responsible
discourse within society, and that it is not contradictory to the prevalent
religious convictions. Between accusers and defenders, however, one is
convinced of one thing, the liability of poetry is at stake, poetry is no
obvious self-justifiable discourse.
The defenders get the task of defining and determining poetry within a general classificatory system structuring the objects and purposes
of the different discursive disciplines. Thus, they endeavor to demon-

14
strate that actually poetry has its own place within such a system, that
poetry within this system has its own function, purpose, and task. The
determination of such a locus for poetry, in a general order of knowledge, would in itself make poetry liable, simply because the order, in
which it would be defined, would be the undisputed order of God. Determining a locus for poetry would give it distinction in two senses: 1) It
would be immediately perceptible, that poetry is not just a weaker imitation of well-established discourses, such as history and moral philosophy, because it would be classified with its own distinct object. 2) Given this determination of object and purpose it would be restored within
the order of knowledge and rehabilitated as a morally, socially, and politically trustworthy discourse.
The opponents of poetry would argue that poetry could do nothing
which not theology, moral philosophy, and history could do better; poetry never had any beneficial or utilitarian functions; it merely constituted a superficial and infantile discourse. In its severe lack of place, it
was diverting the attention of people from disciplines which one knew
had a place, such as religion and philosophy. In the lack of locus, poetry
was merely play, not to be taken serious, and was nothing that would
improve humans as moral and religious beings.
Consequently, the defenders of poetry had to counter these objections. One had to argue for the general purpose of poetry. In the pursuit
of justifications regarding the utilitarian and beneficial aspects of poetry
one often, but not unequivocally, focused on the educational value of
poetry. The function of poetry was to teach. But as many other disciplines had the same declared end, the argument did not explain the necessity of creating poetry, the argument did not in itself provide poetry
with a purpose in the classification of knowledge. The more specific
function of poetry, that with which it differed from history and philosophy, was therefore often defined as its ability to teach with delight.
With this, the objective of poetry was to recruit the uneducated
masses. The spectators of a play, who could not be expected to understand the tangled and tortuous arguments of the moral philosopher,
could in the theater learn to discern between virtues and vices, because
the theater did appeal to the senses. What the moral philosopher could
never attain by abstract discussions, poetry might attain by its delightful mixture of examples, images, rhyme, rhetoric, and arguments.
Thus, the defenses responded to contemporary attacks on poetry
(Sidneys Apology was, for example, an answer to Gossons The

15
Schoole of Abuse), but typically the arguments of these attacks were already existent in Platos famous rejection of poetry in The Republic,
and in his ideas of censorship in The Laws.
2) The Consistency of Platos Doctrine on Poetry
In a contemporary intellectual climate, where ultimately a romantic
understanding of the role of art and the artist has dominated critical discussions, it has been regarded as important to save Plato from himself.
One has tried, through intricate arguments, to contest his explicit reservations against poetry by detecting statements and by uncovering hidden meanings in statements that allegedly should oppose Platos express general positions. In particular his statements about the inspiration of the poet, from Ion, have served this effort of justifying Plato,
making him proper according to a modern comprehension of the sacredness of poetry.
In this modern comprehension, it is taken for granted that it is an indisputable and unequivocal mark of excellence to be inspired, no
higher superlative is conceivable. When Plato qualifies a poet as inspired, it evidences the erroneousness and deceptiveness of his general
rebuttal and refutation of poetry. A Plato, who calls poets inspired and
poetic activity inspiration, cannot have meant to censor poetry in, or
banish poets from, his ideal state. Briefly, he cannot have meant what
he said about the role of poetry in his state, he was just speaking with
another voice. Nowhere else is the theory of Platos many voices as
popular as here: when he rejects poets, he speaks with another voice, he
is not himself; when he endorses (or what is interpreted as endorsement) them, he speaks with his own voice.
There is indeed a strong relationship between the ignorance of poets
(a fundamental reason why Plato banishes them from, or censors them
in, his state) and inspiration. In Apology this relationship is perhaps
most straightforwardly drawn up.
I [Socrates] turned to the poets. . . . I used to pick up what I thought
were some of their most perfect works and question them closely about
the meaning of what they had written, in the hope of incidentally enlarging my own knowledge. Well, gentlemen, I hesitate to tell you the
truth, but it must be told. It is hardly an exaggeration to say that any of
the bystanders could have explained those poems better than their ac-

16
tual authors. So I soon made up my mind about the poets too. I decided
that it was not wisdom that enabled them to write their poetry, but a
kind of instinct or inspiration, such as you find in seers and prophets
who deliver all their sublime messages without knowing in the least
what they mean. It seemed clear to me that the poets were in much the
same case; and I also observed that the very fact that they were poets
made them think that they had a perfect understanding of all other subjects, of which they were totally ignorant.1

This position, this relationship between ignorance and inspiration,

seems consistent throughout Platos work, from Ion to The Republic to
The Laws. Because poets do not know what they are talking about, because poets are ignorant, poets are inspired. This is a direct logical
consequence of the lack of knowledge: those who do not know what
they say, they apparently talk in what we justly may call an inspired
state of mind, like the prophets, the givers of oracles. Because poets are
ignorant, because they are merely inspired, one has to censor their
works in Platos pragmatic state. One is obliged to watch so that their
unwarranted opinions on political, moral, military or religious affairs do
not have any impact on the uneducated masses.
Already in Ion Socrates complains that the singer, while reciting a
poet (here HomerPlatos favorite), does not have any knowledge
about the professions he sings about. If Homer writes about driving a
chariot, about how to heal a wound, or about fishing, he writes about
professions of which the singer is not as qualified as are the charioteer,
the physician, or the fisherman. In Socrates argument it turns out that
the singer cannot judge any single art better than the men in the practical professions. The singer lacks skills in the occupations he describes in
Homer, his exclusive skill is to explain Homer through inspiration.
Thus, what he describes he is ignorant about, but that he describes it,
and the way he describes it, he owes to divine inspiration.
The thought is repeated in The Republic, this time with regard to
Homer himself. Does Homer know what he is talking aboutand why
not? Before using Homer as an example on the deception of art, Plato
develops his theory of imitation. Art is deceptive because it is not just
an imitation of the reality that is. It is in effect an imitation of an imitation, since man-made things already are regarded as imitations of a
real world of ideas (this ideal world, created by God, is in Plato understood as the so-called real world). Art is, in consequence, further
removed from truth than are any other things in a man-made world.

17
In his example of the bed, Plato argues that corresponding to a real
thing, as a bed, there is an ideal form, an idea of a bed. There may be
many individual chairs, tables or beds around, but still there are only
three corresponding ideas to each of these entities.
We are in the habit, I take it, of positing a single idea or form in the
case of the various multiplicities to which we give the same name . . .
for example, there are many couches and tables. But these utensils imply, I suppose, only two ideas or forms, one of a couch and one of a table . . . the craftsman who produces either of them fixes his eyes on the
idea or form, and so makes in the one case the couches and in the other
the tables that we use . . . for surely no craftsman makes the idea itself.2

It has to be so, Plato argues, because whenever there are a number

of individuals who have a name in common, they also must have a corresponding idea or form in common. If they are supposed to understand
one another, the name has to generate the same idea in different individuals.3 Now, the maker of the bed makes the bed according to this
idea or form. But when the painter paints a picture of the bed, he
does not make a bed like the carpenter does, insofar as he merely imitates the real bed. So, there are three beds in Platos system: 1) There is
the bed made by God, the idea, the essence or form of the bedwe may
call it the universal and ideal bed. 2) There is the real bed, the particular and actual bed, made by the carpenter according to the universal
form. 3) Finally, there is the bed painted by the artist, neither universal
nor particular, neither ideal nor actual, but a mere imitation.
So, God makes the universal bed, the carpenter makes the particular
bed, but the painter only imitates the bed in its particular and contingent
appearance. Therefore, the artist is thrice removed from truth as Plato
expresses it (although the artist, strictly and according to all good logic,
would be only twice removed from truth).4
This theory of imitation also applies to the poets.
And similarly, I suppose, we shall say that the poet himself, knowing
nothing but how to imitate, lays on with words and phrases the colors
of the several arts in such fashion that others equally ignorant, who see
things only through words, will deem his words most excellent. . . . On
this, then, as it seems, we are fairly agreed, that the imitator knows
nothing worth mentioning of the things he imitates, but that imitation is
a form of play, not to be taken seriously, and that those who attempt

18
tragic poetry, whether in iambic or heroic verse, are all altogether imitators.5

One must not allow the ignorant poets to form peoples minds as
they are inclined to because of the charm of their rhymes and meters.
Poets are not only disqualified as legislators in Platos state because
they do not know what they talk about but, furthermore, because they
do not discern between good and bad. In consequence, they destroy the
perception and observance of good and bad in their audience. In a state
where self-control, self-restraint and reliance on fate are supreme virtues, poets depict humans as representing the opposite of these virtues.
Poetry imitates humans in lack of self-control, and does so because it is
difficult to represent the inactivity of thoughtfulness and calmness. Not
only is it hard to imitate the individual in such a reflective inactivity,
moreover, it is not understood by common man.
The intelligent and temperate disposition, always remaining approximately the same, is neither easy to imitate nor to be understood when
imitated, especially by a nondescript mob assembled in the theater. For
the representation imitates a type that is alien to them.6

Poets imitate humans in distress, agony, and lamentation, because

they want to stir our feelings. Where a reasonable person would understand the importance of hiding such feelings from the public, and find
unworthy their expression in the public sphere, the poets teach the audience to approve of and applaud these outpourings. With this, poets
teach not a rational behaviorfitting a mature personbut an emotional one. The same lack of restraint is taught with regard to sexual
emotions.
And in regard to the emotions of sex and anger, and all the appetites
and pains and pleasures of the soul which we say accompany all our actions, the effect of poetic imitation is the same. For it waters and fosters
these feelings when what we ought to do is to dry them up, and it establishes them as our rules when they ought to be ruled, to the end that we
may be better and happier men instead of worse and more miserable.7

So, poets imitate not the rational side of the human soul but the irrational as they describe human action in its most visual, emotional appearances. They prefer to render feelings and passions that everyone

19
recognize. But when poets choose to image the tempers, they happen to
educate their audience to childish behavior instead of teaching them to
exercise their rational capabilities. Thus, the main reasons why imitative
poets are not permitted in Platos ideal state are thatqua their specific
imitative activitythey are removed from both truth and reason. Art
has become an inferior thing.
This, then, was what I wished to have agreed upon when I said that
poetry, and in general the mimetic art, produces a product that is far
removed from truth in the accomplishment of its task, and associates
with the part in us that is remote from intelligence, and is its companion and friend for no sound and true purpose . . . mimetic art, then, is
an inferior thing.8

These two major objections are, as we shall see shortly, repeated

throughout the Renaissance and neoclassical discourses: 1) poetry lies;
it has no object, and 2) poetry teaches irrational behavior.
First, we shall see howin Renaissance and neoclassical criticismone deals with Platos criticism that poetry has no distinguished
object. Thereafter, we shall return to the discussion of inspiration.

3) Poetry as a Discourse Without an Object

Understood as a discourse, as a body of knowledge, poetry holds
from the beginning of Western thinking a position different from that of
other discourses. Western thinking has difficulties determining the validity of this particular form of knowledge. Plato is among the first to
expose these difficulties, as articulated in Ion and The Republic.
First, poetry seems without an object. This is the major point in Plato. The professional skills, described by the poet, are merely
represented, imitated, without knowledge about the practice of the professions. The knowledge of the poet, or of the singer of poems, is hollow and superficial to the extent that is hurts more than it helps in the
erection of an ideal state.
This question concerning the validity of poetry also characterizes
the discussions of poetry in the Renaissance and early neoclassical
thinking. In the early neoclassical defenses of poetry, responding to Platonic accusations against poetry, one acknowledges implicitly this idea
of a radical lack of object in the poetic discourse. Also the defenders

20
recognize that a defense has to be established despite this apparent lack
of natural object.
It seems an established fact that where other disciplines have an object, and as such have their place in a well-arranged world, poetry seemingly has none. This is the difficult position from where the defense of
poetry starts in both Castelvetro, and later in Sidney. All other disciplines build on nature, whereas poetry, lacking an innate natural object,
creates a second nature.
Nature is understood as the order of the empirical, social, religious, moral or cultural world surrounding humans. Neither is it understood in the metaphysical sense as an implicit principle governing things,
as an intrinsic essence or being of humans or things, as their inner cause
and motivation, nor as nature in Rousseaus sense of nature as a refuge from civilization and city-life. Nature is the order of things, the
God-given arrangement of things, and as such it is manifest on the surface of the world, revealing itself in the attentive study of things: So
doth the astronomer look upon the stars, and, by that he seeth, setteth
down what order nature hath taken therein.9 The natural order is visible. By looking upon the stars, the astronomers perceive this order as a
natural order of the stars, revealing itself qua their visible arrangement.
The astronomers have, hereby, an object of their science. A welldefined area of the visible world, the sky, is their object. Similarly, the
moral philosophers have an object as they study human inclinations and
the nature of morality, so as they can instruct humans in how to behave:
the moral philosopher standeth upon the natural virtues, vices, and
passions of man; and follow nature (saith he) therein, and thou shalt
not err.10 These virtues, vices, and passions constitute an object, they
can be exposed as a universal and omnipresent nature existent in humans. As such, every discipline has its corresponding object; each discipline investigates a well-defined corner of the visible world in order
to expose the nature of this object. Historians talk about what humans
have done, grammarians about the rules of speech, rhetoricians about
how to persuade people, and the metaphysicians, although they seemingly have no object, talk about the depth of nature. The universe is
well ordered qua these disciplines with their corresponding objects;
nothing is forgotten, everything is accounted for. The universe is a surface which one exhausts plainly by perceiving it. The stars make up
such a surface, as do human passions, as do the rules of persuasion, etc.
In principle there is no depth, no infinity; there is no unconsciousness

21
behind the apparent passions, no universe behind the visible universe.
What one perceives is what God in his wisdom has created.
Yet there are no Kantian categories disputing the relationship between objectivity and subjectivity, nor are there any ideas of the impact
of interpretative methods or cultural horizons on the exposure and delineation of scientific objects. Whether we talk about astronomers,
moral philosophers, grammarians, rhetoricians, etc., questions concerning the impact of subjective perception, interpretive method, or cultural
horizons are nonexistent regarding the results of the investigations.
In this paradigm, where everything has its place, and where the correspondence between knowledge and object is undisputed, poetry constitutes the single exception. Poetry is the single discipline not linked to
the world through such a corresponding object.
Only the poet, disdaining to be tied to any such subjection, lifted up
with the vigor of his own invention, doth grow in effect another nature,
in making things either better than nature bringeth forth, or, quite anew,
forms such as never were in nature.11

Poetry is of another order. From the beginning it is defined according to another general epistemology. Whereas the sciences are bound to
nature, poetry gives man a glimpse of infinity, a glimpse of what was
later celebrated as freedom. Within the closed universe of the Renaissancewhere the contemporary sciences all have a distinctive object
poetry has none because in itself it is the making of a second nature. It
makes things either better than they are found in nature, or forms things
that were never there. With this, the task of the poet is radically different from the scientists. Poets are not exposing truth as scientists are;
they do not make assertions about nature. They are not facing a Godcreated object in an attempt to understand its nature. In their activity
they are to be compared with God, as they, untied from the visible
world, create another world. So Caesar Scaliger states:
But the poet makes another nature and other outcomes for mens acts,
and finally in the same way makes himself another God, as it were. The
other sciences are as it were users of what the maker of them all produced; but poetry when it so splendidly gives the appearance of the
things that are and of those that are not, seems not to narrate the events,
as others, like the historian, do, but as God to produce them.12

22
From the beginning, poetry is of another epistemological order. This
is an undercurrent in all criticism since Plato, and it is this other order
that cannot be conclusively thought in Western criticism. It is an order
which resists coming into a final form and remains a permanent object
for continuous interpretation. As related to, if not defining this radically
different order, poetry is from the beginning (from Plato) in need of justification. But, paradoxically, because of its disconnection to both the
natural and practical world, because it is distinct from both sciences and
practical disciplines, poetry also seems to have an advantage. It attains
a semi-divine status. It attains a status that is already thematized as inspiration, not just in Plato but in most renaissance and neoclassical
writings. However, in this early stage, the semi-divinity never becomes
the major reason for justifying poetry; that happens much later in the
history of criticism. On the contrary, the representation of poetry as
semi-divine also constitutes an obstacle for the defense. By the free
creativity of poets, by their exclusive creation of a second nature, they
achieve a freedom in which they imitate the creative act of God himself.
But this apparent semi-divine status serves the accusers of poetry as
well as it serves the defenders. Do not poets in this free creative activity challenge and offend God? Do not poets lie, not only by
representing things that do not exist but by putting themselves in the
place of God? Do they not deserve condemnation?the accusers would
ask, while the defenders, responding to the same paradigm, would
praise the poetic imaginativeness and try to advocate this creativity as
being another product of the wisdom and providence of God. Sidney
argues this latter case.
Rather give right honor to the heavenly maker of that maker, who, having made man to his own likeness, set him beyond and over all the
works of that second nature; which in nothing he showeth so much as
in poetry, when with the force of a divine breath he bringheth things
forth far surpassing her doings.13

The idea of the divinely inspired poet is therefore not by any means
alien to classical, Renaissance, and neoclassical thinking. From the beginning of Western criticism, the idea of inspiration is conceived and
staged because inspiration is one obvious way of explaining away,
mediating, or neutralizing the logical and epistemological difficulties
one encounters regarding the poetic discourse. Thus, inspiration is
conceived as a possible explanation of poetry as an objectless dis-

23
course, but it becomes a dangerous possibility that provides simultaneously the means both to justify and condemn the poets. In romanticism this ambiguity is gone. Here the idea gains a momentum as never
before in the history of criticism as it becomes a self-evident justification of the artista status it first attains at this very late stage in Western thinking.
Whether one criticizes or defends the poets, whether one accuses
them of being ignorant liars or inspired geniuses, poetry is from the beginning an extra-mundane discourse, a strange idealism, an arbitrary
and artificial discourse with no utility in itself. It is a discourse that has
to be determined further in order to obtain its place among recognized
discourses. It differs from all the other disciplines because, despite its
lack of object, it has to justify its place within the order of knowledge.

4) The Justifications of Poetry

4.1) Poets are not Liars
As a discourse disconnected nature, apparently without its own object, poetry is, by its opponents, accused of being deceptive. It appears
to be obvious that it does not tell the truth; on the contrary, it invents
fiction, fictive persons with fictive names. Hence, the typical accusation
is that poets are liars. When the early critics defend poetry against this
accusation, their paradoxical response is to admit that poetry is not
representing truthexactly what their opponents state. But the consequence they draw from this fact is entirely different from the accusers,
insofar as they reason that since poetry does not deal with truth from the
beginning, it cannot lie. Already Boccaccio sees this: poets do not deceive people, poets are not liars, because poetry has no resemblance to
truth.
I insist that . . . poets are not liars. I had supposed that a lie was a certain very close counterfeit of the truth which served to destroy the true
and substitute the false. . . . Poetic fiction has nothing in common with
any variety of falsehood, for it is not a poets purpose to deceive anybody with his inventions; furthermore, poetic fiction differs from a lie
in that in most instances it bears not only no resemblance to the literal
truth, but no resemblance at all; on the contrary it is quite out of harmony and agreement with the literal truth.14

24
So, if the pagan poet writes about more than one God, he is not a
liar either, because he does not lie willfully; he could not know the
truth of Christianity.15
As Sidney points out, elaborating this objection, poets cannot lie
because they never affirmed or claimed anything to be true. This he can
state exactly because poetry is of an epistemological order different
from the sciences. The sciences affirm things to be true, which may be
shown later to have been false, and as such the sciences are discourses
always at risk to lie. But while creating their second nature, poets are
not telling the truth. Measured against primary nature, what they are
doing is false, but because they do not deny it is false (or not-true), they
are not lying. Because they confirm that to be false which is false, poets
do not lie. The poets are, in fact, the only one telling the truth about
their own activity, because in any other discourse one asserts something
to be the case, such that it conforms to fact or actuality, which later may
show up not to be the case.
Now, for the poet, he nothing affirms and therefore never lieth. For as
I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false. So as the other
artists, and especially the historian, affirming many things, can in the
cloudy knowledge of mankind hardly escape from many lies. But the
poet, as I said before, never affirmeth. The poet never maketh any circles about your imagination, to conjure you to believe for true what he
writes. He citeth not authorities of other histories, but even for his entry
calleth the sweet Muses to inspire into him a good invention; in troth,
not laboring to tell you what is or is not but what should or should not
be. And therefore, though he recount things not true, yet because he
telleth them not for true, he lieth not.16

Because poetry does not belong to the mundane sciences, because

of its epistemological exclusiveness, poetry is beyond truth and falsehood. Even if it claimed to tell something to be true which is merely fictiona narratological possibility Sidney does not consider because it
belongs to another (modern) Ageit would tell this truth within the
framework of the fiction as a part of the fiction. Poetry has from the beginning a certain immunity to criticism inscribed into its own definition.
In these discussions, the very concept of truth changes. If in medieval thinking it is an indisputable fact that there is only one God, then
the pagan poets, by talking about many gods, are lying. Truth is established according to a matter-of-fact-rule; what does not correspond to

25
the established facts is a falsehood. Truth and falsehood is determined
according to equivalence between statement and thing represented by
the statement. The truth-concept is non-psychological, because the individuals intentions and knowledge does not determine whether he lies
or not, for example, if he as a pagan poet talks about many gods. If the
truth of one God is not represented by the story, the story is false, it is a
lie.
With the new concept, the pagan poets do not lie talking about many
gods because they do not know better. It is not their intention to deceive; truth is organized according to a new rule, a sincerity-rule. Now the
intentions of the poets are taken into account and in fact determine
whether poets are lying or not. Lying is becoming a psychological matter where the intentionality of the author is decisive for determining the
authors truthfulness. It is now obvious that lying is not just to state
something untrue; it is to state something which one knows by oneself
to be untrue. The decision procedure regarding the determination of
truth and falsehood is based on mind and intention, on the inner mental
life of the subject.
4.2) An Evasive Distinction Between Imitation and Inspiration
Understood as a justification of poetry, the argument regarding the
poets divine inspiration does not have any eminent influence in Renaissance and neoclassical criticism. It is not taken for granted that
poets are divinely inspired. Even though the thought exists, and is suggested as a possibility, it never becomes a major element in the justification of poetry. The idea of poetry as a special gift of God, a special
privilege bestowed upon certain humans, is basically met with suspicion, if not derision.
Poetry is justified according to another and more pragmatic rationale; it is justified according to its utility, not according to immanent
principles residing in the human soul. One still does not celebrate the
conception of the uniquely inspired genius, and an argument taking this
path ultimately only defends God. If poets happen to be inspired, as
some critics thought they might be, it is, so to speak, not the poets
fault, and they should not be commended. The inspiration would only
be an installment of Gods. It would only prove his might and wisdom.
As it was seen above, if Sidney praises the poets for their imaginativeness, this phenomenon is just another evidence of Gods benevo-

26
lence. As such, inspiration first and foremost evidences Gods wisdom,
providence, and power.
Castelvetro, in particular, discards these ideas of divine inspiration.
His explanation of their psychological origin and genealogyhis deconstruction of the staging of these ideasis still forceful and to the
point.
Poets are not divinely inspired, but such ideas develop among the
people for two main reasons. First, people perceive skills in the poets
which they lack themselves. In their ignorance, they jump to the conclusion that these skills are the result of a miracle or a gift from God bestowed upon a few selected geniuses. Secondly, because this superstition
among people flatters the vainglorious poets, they understand how to
nourish it by making it appear as if they actually utter their poems in a
state of mind inspired by the gods.
Anything done by someone else is highly regarded and seems marvelous to those who have not the power to do it themselves, and because
men commonly measure the forces of the body and of the ability of
other men by comparison with their own, they reckon as a miracle and
a special gift of God that which they do not know how to attain by their
own natural powers, and see that others have attained. Hence the fist
poets were thought by the ignorant people to be full of the spirit of God
and to be aided by God. . . . This belief of the people, though false, was
pleasing to the poets, since through it great reputation came to them
and they were looked on as dear to the gods. Hence they nourished it
with their approval, and making it appear that the condition was as the
people thought, they began at the beginnings of their works to call on
the aid of the Muses and Apollo, the god set over poetry, and to make it
seem that they uttered their poem, as though with the mouths of the
aforesaid gods.17

This piece of genealogical analysis efficiently deconstructs the idea

of genius. The notion of genius is created because a difference in intellectual powers among people, and because people regard as inaccessible and miraculous that which they cannot attain themselves. As the
poets exploit this situation, they take advantage of this belief and assert
themselves as divine.
Castelvetros unimpressed and pragmatic attitude makes poetic
creation a conventional phenomenon. The secrets of art are not hidden
in the soul of the individual artist, nor are they anything inaccessible,
removed from discussion. The later celebrated idea of a genius, incom-

27
prehensible in his or her inspiration, is here conceived as an idea belonging to the uneducated masses; an idea arisen because of superstition.
This disbelief in poetical inspiration does not, however, imply that
the poet should not be inventive and original, and in a restricted sense
be able to seize a certain moment of inspiration. But inventiveness or
inspiration, in this sense, is an outcome of the poets reasoning, not a
divine stimulation of his or her unconscious self.
Art is conceived as obliged to follow predetermined rules and
codes, but only to a certain extent. The poet is always recommended,
not just allowed, but recommended to invent new events within the
framework of this code. When the poets imitate, they should not only
follow the example laid down by another, but do something completely separate from what has been done. Thus, the poets must renew
their plots so they do not simply imitate the examples of their predecessors.
He [the poet] must spend time in reflection and careful reasoningto
such an extent that it can securely be affirmed that the imitation made
from the poet is not and ought not to be called directly or properly imitation.18

According to this conception there is room for the disposition of

fortune, for the lucky inspiration, but not for divine inspiration, understood as a divine stimulation of the poets unconsciousness. We are
still situated within a code where consistent action is the aim of poetic
activity. Primarily, one should pursue perfect action, which constitutes
the real grandeur and eminence of the play. The other elements of poetry which Aristotle mentioned, such as manners and thought, are
subjected to the successful construction of the plot. As Castelvetro
states, quoting Caesar Scaliger: Beatitude is nothing else than perfect
action.19
The critics carefully guard the freedom of the poets, even more so
than they require them to follow certain rules. The notion of imitation
consequently becomes a greatly ambivalent notion, as indicated in the
quotation above: imitation . . . ought not to be called . . . imitation.
The poet must not just copy things as they already are. History, for example, provides an important resource for poetic material in Castelvetro, but the poet must do more than just imitate the historian. We perce-

28
ive this idea in a statement, seemingly as close to an open selfcontradiction as anything.
Now the matter of poetry should be like the matter of history and resemble it, but it ought not to be the same, for, if it were the same, it
would not be like it or resemble it, and if it were not like it or did not
resemble it, the poet in dealing with such material would not have labored at all, and would not have showed keenness of intellect in finding it; therefore he would not merit praise.20

Poetry should be like history, but it ought not to be the same; if it

were the same, it would not be like it! Is Castelvetro contradicting himself?Only from a very superficial point of view! Rather, he is stating
the basic law, the basic logic, of imitation. Imitation is never the same
as what it imitates. Imitation is not identity; in imitation one acknowledges the principle of difference. (First in preromanticism and romanticism one begins to think in identities, notably with the beginning of a
new self-centrism, a new epistemological narcissism, a new interest of
knowledge where the human being becomes the center of the universe.)
This principle of difference is even emphasized and underlined; those
who do not recognize it show no intellect; they do not deserve praise.
This is not an isolated position of Castelvetros. Generally, one
agrees with Aristotle that poetry is imitation. But the poets should never
just copy, and above all, they should never plagiarize, that is, steal the
invention of somebody elses. In Sidney the notion of imitation also becomes ambivalent. Poetry is on one hand imitation.
Poesy therefore is an art of imitation, for Aristotle termeth it in his
word mimesis, that is to say, a representing, counterfeiting, or figuring
forthto speak metaphorically, a speaking picture; with this end, to
teach and delight.21

The end and object for poetry is to create a second nature, and
with this to imitate an already existing one, and do so in order to teach
and delight. But genuine poets do not simply imitate; that is, they do
not simply copy nature as it already is. Partly because of the Horacian
recommendation that poetry should also teach, poetry has an ethical
component; it has moral obligations. One should not just content oneself in representing the world as it is, but also as it might be, and should
be.

29
Backed by the authority of Aristotle, Sidney determines poetry as
imitation; it counterfeits and sets forth a speaking picture. But he immediately denounces poets who, as a matter of fact, counterfeit. There
are now two kinds of poets: those who imitate, and those who invent, or
rather, those who imitate by copying and those who imitate by invention. The first kind are:
wrapped within the fold of the proposed subject, and take not the
course of their own invention . . . they counterfeit only such faces as
are set before them. . .

These poets are not commendable, but there are another kind:
. . . who, having no law but wit, bestow that in colors upon you which
is fittest for the eye to see . . . which most properly do imitate to teach
and delight, and to imitate borrow nothing of what is, hath been, or
shall be; but range, only reined with learned discretion, into the divine
consideration of what may be, and should be. These be they that, as the
first and most noble sort may justly be termed vates [prophets] . . . with
the foredescribed name of poets [beforehand described as maker], for
these indeed do merely make to imitate, and imitate both to delight and
teach, and delight to move men to take that goodness in hand, which
without delight they would fly as from a stranger, and teach, to make
them know that goodness whereunto they are moved.22

It is clear enough which poets Sidney favorsthose who imitate by

invention, not by copying. If we understand imitation too narrowly, if
we understand imitation according to the dictionary, imitation as
counterfeiting, as copying something from an original, we miss the
whole neoclassical discourse. Imitation is not just imitation, and the
reason is this: imitation is not just permitted to be, but recommended
and prescribed to be, an imitation of what does not exist, of what is not
there, of something that does not have an original which one could copy
and counterfeit. The best imitations are imitations of what is not. They
are imitations of what might have been, or what should be. They are inventions of new plots, new stories, new examples, never seen before.
Imitation isin the neoclassical discoursenot as much the representation of something as it is the invention of something.

4.3) The Purposes of Poetry Between History and Philosophy

30

A long tradition finally determines that the purposes of poetry are

teaching and instruction. Regarding the audiences, poetry should have a
both recreational and educational perspective. It takes part in a civilizing process, teaching humans to distinguish between virtues and vices.
Sidney, and later Dryden, follows this definition by Horace and Caesar
Scaliger. Let us present a potpourri of seminal statements:
The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful.23Imitation is a means to the last end, which is
teaching with delight. For the poet certainly teaches, he does not merely delight, as some think.24Poesy therefore is an art of imitation . . .
with this end, to teach and delight.25A play ought to be: A just and
lively image of human nature, representing its passions and humors,
and the changes of fortune to which it is subject, for the delight and instruction of mankind.26

Defined according to this purpose, poetry is also distinguished from

history and philosophy. It occupies a intermediary place between these
two discourses. If the basic objectives of poetry are to please and give
advise, these objectives are in contrast to history and philosophy, which
only teach. The similarities and dissimilarities between poetry, history,
and philosophy are carefully supervised. Thus the conception about the
objectives of poetry is closely related to the conception of the place it
occupies between history and philosophy. In the topos of poetry, the
topic of poetry is determined. Occupying a place within a structure,
poetry attains its object. Without having a natural object in itself, poetry
becomes a supplement to two other discourses, history and philosophy,
improving them both regarding their didactic and rhetorical effect.
Even in Castelvetro, whose work revolts against the traditional idea
of poetry as teaching and who is in disagreement with such authorities
as Horace and Caesar Scaliger, poetry is still a discourse located between philosophy and history. In the landscape of discourses, the ends
of poetry are defined according to this topos. If poetry is defined as
recreation and delight in Castelvetro, it is so in contrast to philosophy.
It is a relaxation from the language of the philosophers, a language consisting of arguments, not expected to be comprehensible to the crude
multitude.

31
Poetry has been discovered solely to delight and to recreate, I say to delight and to recreate the minds of the crude multitude and of the common people, who do not understand the reasons and the divisions and
the arguments, subtle and far from the practice of ordinary men, which
the philosophers use in investigating the truth of things27

When Castelvetro insists that poetry does not teach, it is because he

is imposing another and stricter interpretation, different from Caesar
Scaligers or Sidneys, of what teaching is or should be, because of
another idea of what is reserved teaching. Teaching is teaching of truth
and morality, and poetry teaches neither truth nor morality.
From Aristotle, Castelvetro (like Heinsius) inherits the idea that the
plot is the primary concern of a poet, and that manners and thought (as
Aristotle mentions but emphasizes less) are merely accessories to the
making of a successful plot. The poet should leave the teaching of morals to the philosophers; any ventures in this field would transgress the
limits of poetical discourse and merely plagiarize what philosophers
have already written amply about.
If the plot is final and not a thing accessory to the morals of the agents,
but on the contrary the morals do not hold the final place and are accessory to the plot, it follows that many authors of high reputation . . .
have greatly erred, for they think the intention of good poets . . . has
been to depict and show to the world, let us say, a general portrayed in
the most excellent manner that is possible, or a valorous leader, or a
wise man, and their nature, and like absurdities . . . It would happen
that if such material [moral material] were principal and not accessory,
it could not be poetic material, since it is naturally philosophical and
taken from many philosophers.28

Poetical discourse, located on an axis between history and philosophy, has closer kinship to history. The task of the poet is to give a semblance of truth to the happenings that come upon men through fortune.29 The poet is to represent life through action, and in this undertaking the poet is recommended to use historical examples. Poetry
should speak both about what happens every day and about what has
happened; it should contain both some elements of worldly news, and
of historical knowledge.
Now because poetry has been discovered, as I say, to delight and
recreate the common people, it should have as its subject those things

32
that can be understood by the common people and when understood
can make them happy. These are the things that happen every day and
that are spoken of among the people, and that resemble historical accounts and the latest reports about the world.30

Although Castelvetros approach to poetry is seen by many, for example Beneditto Croce and Bernard Weinberg,31 as expressing an entirely hedonistic idea of the function of poetry, it contains at least this
element of education. Poetry should inform us about historical events
and daily news and should do so in a language that can be digested by
the people.
In Sidney, the purpose of poetry is also determined in contrast to
both philosophy and history. A certain symmetrical logic constitutes the
way poetry is justified. Poetry surpasses history and philosophy by incorporating their better halves, and amending their deficiencies. The
contrast can be roughly laid out as follows: where philosophy only
teaches morality, poetry also delights by examples, and where history
only delights by examples, poetry also teaches morality. Thus, the end
is teaching with delight, the end is moral action. In the moral perfection
of action, poetry finds its highest purpose. With this it does something
no other discourse does equally well. The contenders to the position,
partly the moral philosopher, partly the historian, do not teach virtues as
efficiently as the poet. Both history and philosophy aspire to teach virtue, but by different means; whereas the teaching of the philosopher is
abstract, the historian teaches by examples: the one giveth the precept,
the other the example.32
The deficiency of philosophy is that it is too abstract for the common man to understand; the deficiency in history is that the historians
are tied to the particular events of things. Their examples therefore have
no necessary moral consequences. The historians depict what has been,
not what could be or should be; they lack precepts on how to live our
lives. Poetry therefore represents what history cannot represent when it
describes virtue in its best colors, and vice such that nobody would
like to follow it. History is tied to a world of vice, caprice, and wickedness, and is bound to describe things as they are. Hence, poetry
teaches more morally correct than history.33
Thus the poet rectifies two deficiencies; on the one hand, the poet is
able to teach what the philosopher teaches, the moral precepts, and with
this amend the deficiency of history. On the other hand, the poet is able
to teach these precepts by means of examples, by giving images, where

33
the philosopher only gives descriptions. And the imagery of poetry is a
more powerful instrument of teaching than the regular instruction of
philosophy.
[The poet] beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the
margent with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness;
but he cometh to you with words set in delightful proportions . . . with
a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney
corner.34

Between philosophy and poetry there are similarities and differences; the general similarity is that both disciplines have normative intentions, but they describe these intentions through different means:
For conclusion, I say the philosopher teacheth, but he teacheth obscurely, so as the learned only can understand him; that is to say, he teacheth
them that are already taught. But the poet is the food for the tenderest
stomachs, the poet is indeed the right popular philosopher.35

Poetry supplements and improves these two borders that delimit

and define its purpose. Poetry becomes a mediator between two discourses, it brings together the best sides of them both. In doing so, poetry achieves its purpose, its noble place among respectable discourses.
5) Reason as an Image of Nature
5.1) Rationality as Self-Evaluation Under the Influence of an Other
Write what your reader may be pleased to hear, this is Boileaus
advise in LArt Poetique. In good harmony with his predecessor Horace
(here as elsewhere) in the task of instructing aspiring poets, Boileau
emphasizes the importance of the audience as the ultimate reviewer of
the poetic work. But before the audience can review the poets, the poets
have to review themselves. The intention of Boileaus LArt Poetique is
to instruct the poets in how to review, censor and evaluate themselves
before publishing their work. This self-censorship, self-judgment, selfevaluation comes down to a question of how to hear oneself; it literally
comes down to a question of the ear.
write what your reader may be pleased to hear,

34
And for the measure have a careful ear [une oreille svre]
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The fullest verse, and the most laboured sense,
Displease us, if the ear once takes offence [quand loreille est
blesse].36

Boileaus essay is an elaboration on how this ear should learn to

hear, and what it should listen for. As such the essay also exposes all
those who do not hear and who consequently err when they write. An
ear fine-tuned to the context of reception of the poetical work becomes
a precondition for pleasing a critical audience, especially an educated
audience like Boileau himself. As such, Boileaus advise underscores
the importance of sensitivity regarding the reception of the work. He
teaches the poet how to internalize the audience and with this, how to
internalize their opinions. The audience becomes a final reviewer and
judge of the poet and explicitly a purpose for writing poetry.
This idea is prevalent in neoclassical criticism. In Boileau it is mainly inherited from Horace, Boileaus explicit guide in this work. Horaces Epistle is also a piece of instruction for aspiring poets and a
warning against making mistakes, because of the devastating reaction of
the audiences. Mistakes can be forgiven if beauties in a poem predominate. In this case a few blemishes are permitted, but habitual blundering, especially making the same mistake after having been warned,
causes only laughter.
In this advise, good taste is always the others taste. There is no
hope for poets unless they learn to hear themselves with the ears of
their audience. The artists must learn to listen to themselves as with
another ear, and with an others ear, the ear of the receiver. Before
going public, the context of reception has to be cultivated. One does not
express a poem, one accommodates it to fit the general decorum of the
receiver.
This also indicates a beginning training in self-restraint and rationality. In general it implies an ability to hold back oneself, and specifically, to hold back ones writing. It is a training in self-discipline and
self-restraint. In Horace one is advised to show prudent awareness of
ones own limitations. One is recommended to show ones writings only
to someone who is truly critical, and then to put the manuscript away
for nine years, because, as Horace states: one can always destroy
what one has not yet published.
Boileau repeats this counsel; the same idea if not the same words.

35
A hundred times consider what youve said:
Polish, repolish, every colour lay,
And sometimes add, but oftener take away
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
The public censure for your writings fear,
And to yourself be critic most severe
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Embrace true counsel, but suspect false praise.37

The idea of seeking counsel before going public is not isolated to

Boileau, but characterizes the whole paradigm. Pope also recommends
that poets seek the advise and evaluation of reliable friends before
completing the work: Trust not yourself; but, your defects to know, /
Make use of evry friendand every foe.38
Thus the poet must listen to a second opinion, but not indiscriminately, as not all counselors on their part are able to hear or evaluate
poetry appropriately. For those poor counselors everything appears
marvelous: A sycophant will every thing admire; Each verse, each sentence sets his soul on fire.39 The bad advisor hears poetry in the same
manner that bad poets hear themselves, hearing everything as excellent.
The bad advisor has the bad poets ears, or reverse. Likewise, the good
advisor has the good poets ears. There is overlapping of critic and
poet; a good critic is a good poet. They exist within the bounds of the
same conventional horizon; they are not separated in two different professions or functions. Because of this overlapping, Boileaus essay is a
simultaneous instruction of both poet and critics; it is a cultivation and
refinement of the poetic ear in general. The poets choice of advisor
becomes in itself a test of rational skills, identical to those that should
be executed when the poet evaluates his or her writing. The choice of
advisor reflects on a mundane level the same appeal to rational selfevaluation and self-censorship which poets are instructed to pursue in
their writing. If the poets are able to evaluate who is able to evaluate
their writing, they are already well on their way; they have demonstrated aptitude to evaluate and hear. At this point, they have proved capable of appreciating general poetic qualities regarding rules and reason
which are so essential to all successful writing. The advisor is as such
the external personification of poetic rationality, the personification of
what Boileau teaches the poets to apply to themselves. The advisor is
self-restraint made external.

36

Chuse a sure judge to censure what you write,

Whose steady hand will prove your faithful guide,
And touch the darling follies you would hide:
He in your doubts, will carefully advise,
And clear the mist before your feeble eyes [votre esprit tremblant].40

A judicious critic will relieve the poets trembling spirit of its

scruples. With this addition of external censorship, the internal fragility
of self-evaluation and self-censorship is indicated and presupposed.
Rationality has to be added from the outside in the form of a critical
friend, as this assistance is not merely justified but recommended. Because of the lack of a firm rational foundation of ones self-evaluation,
one needs an exterior other to confirm ones poetical choices.
The poetic self disappears in this emphasis on the other, whether
we talk about the other in the form of an interior earexercised and
cultivated to perceive the context of reception even before the work is
composed (as a fine-tuned capability to receive the receiver one is addressing)or we talk about the competent exterior critic of ones work.
There is no faith in an omnipotent-potent unique self, a self turning
its ear inwards in order to detect traces of its own enigmaas in romanticism. There is a keen understanding of poetry as a language-game,
that is, as a province of our linguistic world with its specific rules and
economy, a province that is shared by others and which is not the private and unique possession of the poet.
The attitude is significantly different from the emphasis one makes
on self in romanticism. First, in romanticism, the neoclassical principle
of self-restraint and laborious self-censure is replaced with a principle
of spontaneity, a principle of spontaneous overflow of feelings. Secondly, the idea of seeking advise in neoclassicism (and with this, acknowledging authorities outside oneself in the process of artistic creation) is replaced with an idea of Geniusan idea of a unique subject
which is rather disqualified as true artist if in need of additional authorities to validate its work. In romanticism, the ear is not directed towards the world, one is not listening to anothers voice in an attempt to
fulfill the ideals of a general context of reception. In romanticism one
may listen to voicessensitive as one is to the inspired momentbut
within a transcendental space in oneself where poetry neither originates
from anybody or anywhere in particular nor directs itself to anybody or
anywhere in particular. Although the romantic searches origins as never

37
before, the source of poetry is lost. One cannot identify a source because supposedly poetic expression is so original that nobody prior to
the poets, except perhaps an abstract God, have ever retained what is
expressed in their poetry. Even the poets themselves do not know what
to express before it comes to them in a moment of fortunate inspiration.41
However, in Boileau one still writes for an audience, the reason why
it is critical to learn to hear the reception of the poetic work. Learning
to hear the reception also imposes self-restraint and self-reflection on
the poet. Also in moments of poetic rage, moments of inspiration
which are not by any means entirely unacknowledged or repressed phenomena in the neoclassical paradigmone has to guard oneself from
being carried away. Thus, the reflective judgment is more important
than the imagination, thinking more important than expression. As such,
expression is subordinated meaning, insofar as meaning is the product
of thinking. There is a certain hierarchy between thinking, meaning, and
expression. One should first learn to think, and in that process, secondly, establish the notions and ideas to which one, thirdly, wants to
give expression.
Learn then to think ere you pretend to write.
As your ideas clear, or else obscure,
The expression follows perfect or impure:
What we conceive with ease we can express;
Words to the notions flow with readiness . . .
In short, without pure language, what you write
Can never yield us profit or delight.
Take time for thinking; never work in haste;
And value not yourself for writing fast.42

The appeal to thinking adds a certain delay and suspension to the

process of writing. One is recommended to pursue a certain economy in
creative writing, to hold back hasty ideas and impressions, and to sort
out the general notions before putting them into words. With the resulting pure language, one conveys ideas in rational self-awareness of
what one communicates. One has attained transparency between the notion and the expression, a transparency which is to yield the audiences
profit and delight. Rhyme should also obey this economy, this hegemony of reason.

38
Whater you write of pleasant or sublime,
Always let sense accompany your rhyme.
Falsely they seem each other to oppose;
Rhyme must be made with reasons laws to close;
And when to conquer her you bend your force,
The mind will triumph in the noble course.
To reasons yoke she quickly will incline,
Which, far from hurting, renders her divine;
But if neglected, will as easily stay,
And master reason, which she should obey.43

Because of such advise it is commonly suggested that Boileau is a

Rationalist, and he, in his literary criticism, applies Cartesian principles
of rationality and mathematics (as Ernst Cassirer has suggested44). This
may be the case, and Descartes may be Boileaus the philosophical
counterpart, but we shall suggest a still more fundamental principle
structuring Boileaus rationalistic discourse, something we for now
shall term, reasonableness. This is a principle that, as an appeal to reason, may be easily confused with Rationalism, although strictly, it
transgresses this and any other specific philosophical School. The reasonable consists essentially in the appeal to common and sound senses
in ones artistic judgment. Rather than an application of Cartesian Rationalism and mathematics, it is an epistemological undercurrent on
which Rationalism establishes itself. As such an undercurrent, it is the
presupposed rhetorical level of a specific discourse. It provides the stylistic means by which neoclassical intelligentsia legitimizes and justifies
their critical objectives. This rhetoric basically consists of an appeal to
soundness, sense, and reason. It can, for example, be found in Descartes Meditations before he establishes any of his well-known rationalistic principles. For example, in the first Meditation where he reassures his readers thatin this suspiciously mad project of annihilating
all presuppositions concerning perceptive and cognitive truthshe is
still is in his sound senses, that he, in fact, only suggests a hypothesis.
Before Descartes is rational, he is reasonable. He assures us, his readers, that we must not get the wrong impression that he really believes
himself existing in this excessive doubt. One should therefore address
this principle of the reasonable in contrast to and as a repudiation of the
excessive.
Boileaus advise of how to create good poetry is that one should
work hard,45 show openness toward the advise of others and be patient

39
with oneself. One should, in brief, show moderation, restraint and reserve on different levels of poetic creation. These qualities are indefinitely more important than any external rules in Boileau. On the contrary, external rules may hamper the artistic creativity and not rarely
does Boileau criticize such rules.
5.2) Moderation and Excess
Nothing in these neoclassical writings is condemned as much as the
excess, the extravagance, and the presumption. If we were regarding
these writings statistically, sorting out and counting the leading themes,
we would undoubtedly find the condemnation of the excessive, the
extravagant, the exorbitant, the immoderate, and the presumptuous to
be, overall, the most repeated theme.
In the quest for reason, the exorbitant is a trap to be avoided. It is
something that is luring both poets and their critics away from the path
of nature. This lack of reason has been described as an impaired hearing, that is, impaired self-judgment, self-evaluation, and self-censure.
On a phenomenological level it manifests itself as such. On a structural
level, however, lack of reason manifests itself as excess. Excessive is
everything going beyond nature and reason. Reason is determined
and defined within a logic where nature and excess, moderation and
extravagance make up the boundaries of the definition. Reasonableness
is to know the borders and to remain within the bounds of nature; it
implies avoiding the excessive, the extravagant:
Love reason then; and let whateer you write
Borrow from her its beauty, force, and light.
Most writers mounted on a resty muse,
Extravagant and senseless objects chuse;
They think they err, if in their verse they fall
On any thought thats plain or natural.
Fly this excess;46

When reason is explained and described in these writings (here we

especially refer to Boileau and Pope), it is chiefly explained negatively,
as what it is not. One lines up examples of the unreasonable, illustrated
by individuals behaving vainly, arrogantly, dogmatically, impulsively,
hypocritically, enviously, etc.; individuals who are as such immoderate,
extreme and excessive in their different judgments and expressions.

40
When Pope describes how a critic ought to assess a poetic work, he
demonstrates his points by depicting what would be ludicrous. Following the rules too tightly would for example be ludicrous because it
represents an extremism. Extremists are not reasonable persons following natures direction; they follow their own capricious inclinations.
Moderation, therefore, also implies that one should bear with small imperfections in the play. The most reasonable person is not the person
who rigidly follows the rules; on the contrary, reason is beyond rules.
On the one hand, these essays are written to the poet and the critic as
instructions in how to avoid faults, but, on the other hand and at another
level, the essays renounce their own appeal to perfection when it becomes excessive (and obsessive)when rigor replaces reason or extremism replaces moderation. Whoever thinks a faultless piece to see,
Thinks what neer was, nor is, nor eer shall be.47
Perfection never existed, and is therefore not a part of nature. One
is misguided if requesting such non-existing perfection. Furthermore,
nature itself is the cause of errors; when it moves the poets, when rapture captivates them, they forget the rules and make mistakes. But who
would condemn such mistakes caused by nature itself?
Reason is to know nature, it is to know how things are, not how
they pretend to be. The simulation is criticized. Nature is what is unchanging; it has imposed some standards to things, some limits which
humans in their vanity and pride repeatedly exceed, although urged to
observe. Nature is therefore always in danger of being forgotten or
transgressed when humans impose their pretentious wit on things.
To study nature be your only care.
Whoeer know man, and by a curious art
Discerns the hidden secrets of the heart.
He who observes, and naturally paint
The jealous fool, the fawning sycophant
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
May safely in those noble lists engage,
And make them act and speak upon the stage.
Strive to be natural in all you write.48
Nature to all things fixd the limits fit,
And wisely curbd proud mans pretending wit
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
First follow Nature, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, which is still the same:

41
unerring Nature!
. . . . . . .
At once the source, and end, and test of art. 49

Nature ensures the truth of things, their order and arrangement. This
nature is interpreted as a principle warranting modification, moderation,
and modesty. Consequently, one should let the same principles govern
ones writing and judgment. Reason, in accordance to nature, is first
and foremost moderate in its expressions and judgments. But also
words should follow the principle of nature, that is, moderation. Poor
poets err by ignoring this moderation; they try to conceal their lack of
art in a lot of glittering thoughts, capricious expressions, etc.; they are
unskilled in tracing naked nature; they hide with ornaments their want
of art; they do not understand that true wit is nature to advantage
dressed.
Nature is consequently a naked body, and, as it were, a female
body. To be reasonable is to know how to dress this body and especially, it is to understand how not to overdress, how to avoid the glitter and abundance, but instead to wear a modest dress, because simplicity better reveals natural grace. And the same logic works with words:
one must avoid overdressing ones meaning in abundant expressions.
Words are like leaves, and where they most abound.
Much fruit of sense beneath is rarely found.
False eloquence, like the prismatic glass,
Its gaudy colours spreads on evry place;
The face of Nature we no more survey,
All glares alike, without distinction gay;
But true expression, like th unchanging sun,
Clears and improves whateer it shines upon,
It gilds all objects, but it alters none.
Expression is the dress of thought.50

There is a strong relationship between correct poetic judgment and

knowing how to dress. A right judgment is to know how to dress notions and ideas. Literally it is to know how to dress nature where nature is an explicit feminine principle (her). Yet in this logic of the fashionable, we are beyond fashion, the mode, the current style, because
the knowledge prescribed is, or ought to be, eternally valid. What is
prescribed transcends the mode of the day. It represents a general

42
knowledge about how dresses should cover without hiding, about how
dresses should only cover in order to accentuate the natural body itself,
about how they should gild the body of nature/idea/woman. Indeed,
the dress is merely an unfortunate necessity, it must not hide this body
of nature. It does the opposite of what dresses normally do when they
conceal and cover bodies as it exhibits and exposes the body of nature/idea/woman.
As such, an old figure of Western thought is repeated in these recommendations to the artist, the figure of truth as veiling/unveiling, concealing/revealing. It is the poets job to understand the delicate relationship between the oppositions, but never engage themselves in only one
of the poles. What the artists (or rather the artistic earas a general
phenomenological principle) are recommended to carry out within this
logic is a keen reflection on and understanding of the slash between
concealing and revealingthe slash as a medium one must learn to execute between nature and art. Poetical reason, when it is practiced according to the recommendations of Boileau and Pope, consists of
representing this medium.

5.3) The Dangerous Excess of Refinement in Artthe Medium as

Structural Principle
As an explanation of the rationale in neoclassicism, we shall suggest
that this medium represents a more profound structural level than the
specific Rationalism of Descartes (although it cannot be deniedit has
no meaning to denythat Boileau may have been personally inspired
by Descartes). This medium is not in itself a stable principle; it is always fluctuating between the same two poles it is supposed to ascertain.
Over periods of time (even within the same textsbut let us ignore this
difficult case for now), the medium fluctuates between oppositions defining the reasonable choice between nature and art. What is rational
and irrational is determined according to the actual position of this medium. In some historical self-interpretations it seems to have moved
closer to the side of artrules then seem to prevail and be more important than nature (even if it is admitted that nature should not be entirely
ignored). In other historical self-interpretations it seems to have moved
closer to the side of naturerules then seem to become mere supplements, necessary evils (even though critics admit that one cannot do en-

43
tirely without rules). As a median, this principle has the power to define
the reasonable, the rational, the common sense, the judicious, the mature, the just, etc. The medium is a rational principle, but a rational
principle which is nothing in itself because it is merely the slash between opposites, merely a buffer between extremes. By this insubstantial and inessential function alone, it acquires the power to define reason.
To further illustrate this idea it is, in this context, tempting to mention a text that is not distinctively located within the neoclassical paradigm. The text thematizes this idea of the medium, and illustrates how
this rational principle transgresses a narrow rationalistic discourse
for example by making it apparent that it does not derive from Rationalism itself. The text is a small essay by the empiricist David Hume, Of
Simplicity and Refinement of Writing, written approximately half a century after Pope writes. In an attempt to determine the equilibrium between the simple and the refined, Hume reiterates the tendency in
Western criticism to reject the refined and the excessive. Hume takes up
the problem from above: in creative writing, how does one determine a
just mixture of simplicity and refinement; and in his first observation, Hume recognizes that this determination is by no means easy:
First, I observe, that though excesses of both kinds are to be avoided,
and though a proper medium ought to be studied in all productions; yet
this medium lies not in a point, but admits of a considerable latitude.51

In the attempt to determine this medium, Hume realizes that critics

such as Fontenelle, allegedly speaking in favor of the natural and rural
in order to fix a medium between simplicity and refinement in pastoral
poetry, by other standards are much nearer the extreme of refinement
than pastoral poetry will admit of.52 But Hume also recognizes, that insofar as this fluctuation of the medium always is and will be the case,
the medium is impossible to establish: Where this medium is placed, is
the great question, and can never be sufficiently explained by general
reasoning.53 Humes second observation regarding this medium (a
speculation on how to determine a general standard of taste, in which
Hume anticipates the later essay, Of the Standard of Taste) reads: "It is
very difficult, if not impossible, to explain by words, where the just medium lies between the excess of simplicity and refinement, or to give

44
any rule by which we can know precisely the bounds between the fault
and the beauty."54
The medium is an attempt to establish a balance between nature and
art, simplicity and refinement. In this dichotomy, the neoclassical
poetslike Pope and Fontenelleare far too close to the side of excessive refinement. Hume is on the side of nature and simplicity, and he
regards refinement as the most dangerous extreme in this dichotomy:
We ought to be more on our guard against the excess of refinement
than that of simplicity; and that because the former excess is both less
beautiful, and more dangerous than the latter.55
Everybody apparently agrees that refinement represents the greater
danger. Hume, like Boileau and Pope (but within another paradigm), is
warning against the artful and excessively refined. This warning occurs
in a text where Pope becomes an example of excessive refinement
Pope who himself pronounces this warning. Thus, Hume is performatively confirming his own theory: the medium lacks point; it is impossible to explain by general principles; it must be allowed considerable latitude. What is a natural medium to Pope is to Hume dangerous excess.
Everybody apparently speaks in favor of nature, and one may therefore suggest that the medium always tilts toward nature. One apparently has always tried to restrict the artificial, to dress the naked
body of nature in clothing that was never meant to cover it up, but rather to reveal it.
This appeal to nature prevails in Western thinking. The medium is
installed as a buffer zone between nature and art, but inevitably it has
the purpose of restricting art from becoming too artificial. Thus the
medium is a fundamental rational principle located between oppositions, a principle more profound than the system of differences which it
distributes, and a principle more fundamental than philosophical Rationalism. This principle is both defined by and defining the oppositions
between which it is located. The reasonable defines the just balance
between opposites, but such that the weight always tips slightly to the
side of nature. This principle of reason is nothing in itself; it receives
its meaning through the position it occupies between oppositions.
The medium cannot define nature; it even has no notion of nature.
It can merely assert that nature is whatever exists as opposing the
overly artful. Nature becomes the ideal of creativity. It may have no
positive content, but despite its evasiveness, nature is a legislative no-

45
tion, an ideal defining the liabilities of Western criticism, a rhetorical
figure enforcing the distinction between right and wrong, beautiful and
ugly.
Asserting that the pursuit of nature is a general trend in Western
criticism may seem to run counter to the common opinion that particularly the neoclassical paradigm evidences a tendency to a mannered and
ornamented language. Also with its emphasis on rules and unities, neoclassicism appears to favor the artificial. But this evaluation of neoclassicism seems inherited from preromantic and romantic interpretations of
the neoclassical paradigm, rather than being a result of examination of
neoclassical self-understanding. The neoclassicists themselves believe
in naturethey believe, for example, the rules of the unities to be expressions of nature.

6) The Rules of the Theater

6.1) The Justification of Rules
A strong conviction in nature, understood as a prearranged cosmos, as an intrinsic order of things, dominates the neoclassical paradigm, and consequently, also the discourse of poetry. Poetry has rules,
like anything else, and these rules follow, or ought to follow, nature.
As such they are not conceived as dogmatic rules imposed on poetry by
dogmatic individuals. They are objective rules determining, for example, the different genres, as these are established through objects,
means, and manners. Since they are regarded as objective, the rules
have been discovered by the ancients, not devised. Therefore they are
never dogmas. If they, by any means, happen to degenerate into doctrines, they are criticized. Nature both gives laws to be followed, and
laws to restrict her laws; she gives both written laws, the rules, and unwritten laws, the reasonable, by which to restrict written laws from degenerating into doctrines.
Those Rules of old discoverd, not devisd,
Are Nature still, but Nature methodizd:
Nature, like liberty, is restraind
By the same laws which first herself ordaind.56

Thus, the rules of the unities are still nature, but restrained, or methodized, nature. With this, nature becomes both a substance and the

46
structuring of this substance, both, in effect, nature and the art by
which nature is organized. Rules are natural laws which nature has invented to confine herself. According to this understanding (in the attempt to ascertain the just balance between natural liberty and natural
laws), the rules become a medium; they constitute the reasonable; they
are neither nature at liberty, nor artificial devices imposed on the poetic
material mechanically.
But the justification of the rules also follows another argument, an
argument deriving from the conviction that poetry is imitation of nature. In his Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Dryden takes this
path of justification. Drydens opponent, Howard (who had criticized
An Essay of Dramatic Poesy), had contended that pressed to their logical consequence, the rules of the unities were absurd. The logical foundation on which the rules are invented was hollow, it was nothing. In
consequence, if rules were built upon a foundation that was nothing,
they needed not be observed. Dryden, however, determines the foundation of the rules of the unities as the fact that poetry is imitationan
indisputable truth in the neoclassical paradigm. From here Dryden infers that if poetry is imitation, there must be rules for this imitation.
I never heard of any other foundation of dramatic poesy than the imitation of nature . . . This I have plainly said in my definition of a play:
that it is a just and lively image of human nature . . . The direct and
immediate consequence is this: if nature be to be imitated, then there is
a rule for imitating nature rightly; otherwise there may be an end, and
no means conducing to it.57

If poetry is imitation, poetry is self-evidently governed by rules. Imitation renders not just a copy of nature, but is in itself an activity mediated by rules, which are a part of nature. The rules therefore have to
be well understood, and Aristotles Poetics becomes the authoritative
work about the subject. In Poetics the rules are described and discovered.
6.2) Aristotle and The Unities
In Poetics, Aristotle tries to distinguish and systematize different
genres of poetry. Genres he perceives as different elements in the larger
group of poetry, and he arranges them in a logical and comprehensive

47
system, according to their different characteristics with regard to what
they represent and how they represent.
Thus, Aristotles distinctions between tragedy, comedy, and epic
become principal guidelines for the neoclassicists. Tragedy, comedy,
and epic are distinctive genres one should not mix. They have different
objects and different means of representation. So, comedy is the representation of inferior people, whereas tragedy and epic represent superior people (according to what they represent). But again, tragedy and
epic are different regarding manner of representation: where epic is narrated, tragedy is performed, and where epic is unlimited with regard to
length, tragedy tends to last only a revolution of the sun (according to
how they represent): Then as regards length, tragedy tends to fall within a single revolution of the sun or slightly to exceed that, whereas epic
is unlimited on point of time.58
This remark starts a long discussion in neoclassicism about the
proper duration of a theater play, and it develops finally into the idea of
the unities. Here the unity of time becomes the most significant rule of
the drama in neoclassical French theater. It becomes the chief principle
from where one logically deduces two other important rules: the unity
of place, and the unity of action.
In Aristotle, however, the proper length of a play is not an intrinsic
normative rule of the playwhether he talks about the actual duration
of the play, or of the duration of the action represented in the play,
which is not clear from the context; neither is it clear whether a revolution of the sun indicates a twenty-four or a twelve hour day. In Aristotle the normative emphasis is on the question of action, and the pursuit of consistency and completeness regarding the plot-construction.
Thus, Aristotles Poetics undergoes a transformation in the interpretations of the neoclassicists. Where Aristotle never mentions a unity of place, and only casually suggests a time limit for the play (in the
quotation above), suddenly, in most neoclassicism, the unity of time is
regarded as an incontestable standard regulating the play. And as a logical consequence of the unity of time, one now derives the unities of
place and action.
In Castelvetro, as one of the first commentators on Aristotle, there
ought to be a unity of action in the sense that ideally there should be only one plot relating to one person only. And if there is more than one
action, one should depend on the other. But this unity of action is not
justified in itself. It is not justified because several diverse plots would

48
destroy the unity of the play, but because of the unity of time. Insofar as
one is compelled to restrict an action to twelve hours at mostin Castelvetros interpretationone cannot permit a multitude of actions. The
time-limit becomes a main regulatory principle of the play, because
there would not be sufficient time to perform several actions.
But how is this re-interpretation of Aristotle justified, and why is it
considered necessary? Is a unity of time easier to administer than a
unity of action? Before returning to these and related questions, we
shall first recapitulate how Aristotle comprehends the notion of action.
Aristotle analyzes the elements in, and the logical construction of,
the plot in the tragedy. The reason of focusing on action is that tragedy
does not primarily represent humans, but rather their action and life (or
a part of it), as it develops in time. A character is the same at all times,
but action changes in time. Events are therefore more urgent to understand in the play than the character. The events constitute the elements
of the construction of the play. The thought is the least important in
the trinity that constitutes the elements of tragedy (the action, the character, and the thought) because thoughts are expressed by the characters, which are more important. The system is hierarchic, the action includes characters which include thoughts. One can have action without
character-study, not the reverse. One can have characters without
thoughts, not the reverse.
After establishing the elements of tragedy, Aristotle discusses how
one should represent action. Action must constitute a whole; that means
it must have a beginning, a middle, and an end. A beginning, it is explained judiciously, is something which is followed by something else,
an end is something from which nothing follows, and a middle is something from which something follows and which follows something. This
definition implies that the play has to constitute a closed whole, closed
upon itself, containing a world of action of its own. If a play is such a
whole it is well constructed. If an element in this whole is superfluous,
if it makes no difference whether it is there or not, then it does not belong to the whole. Everything in the whole must be necessary and inevitable. This is also the reason why poetry is more ideal than history.
The historian does not construct in the same freedom and under the
same constraints towards unity as the poet. The poets are free to render
truth generally, whereas the historian only renders particular truths.
Poetry tells what might happen, history tells what has happened.

49
The different types of plot are furthermore classified. Some are simple, some are complex. The best plots are complex; that is, they include
so-called discovery and reversal in the plot structure, and the best plots
include both, and include them simultaneously.
Discovery means that a change from ignorance to knowledge occurs
at a certain final state of the plot. Reversal means that a situation in the
play changes into its opposite, for example, a mans good fortune may
change into bad fortune. If these two changes happen concurrently, as
in Oedipus the King, the denouement of the plot is optimally excellent.
The third element, calamity, is not discussed much by Aristotle; but
with reversal and discovery it is mentioned as a necessary requirement
for denouement of the successful plot. It must be understood as the calamity appearing on the stage, as it is equivalent to discovery and reversal, as for example, the calamity affecting Oedipus when he discovers
the truth about his identity.
The whole structure has to affect the audience, and the affect on the
audience we must understand as the distant, but always present and selfevident aim of Aristotles discussions. The audience must experience
pity and fear in the wake of the calamity appearing on the stage. Consequently, the audience must be able to identify itself with the hero. Aristotle therefore also suggests standards for what a hero should be. He
should, for example, not be ideally good, because then his punishment
will be intolerable to the audience. Neither should the hero be entirely
evil, because then the punishment is only just, and he cannot be pitied.
The hero should therefore be a human being more like the audience
themselves, someone with whom they can identify. Therefore, it is also
better if the character does his horrid deed unknowing, not knowing. In
that case he is guilty, but he acted not out of malevolence; he can be pitied. His example is frightening because his fate has caught up with
him, and he is punished for what was unavoidable and beyond his control.
Thus, Aristotle emphasizes the consistency of action and characters
of the play, but says little or nothing about a unity of time and place.

6.3) The Unities as Imitation of the Theater

Why then is the unity of time necessary? The neoclassicists are
aware of the awkwardness of this doctrine, and often they start their de-

50
liberations by excusing its necessity, as in Corneille: Many argue
against this rule, which they call tyrannical, and they would be right if it
were founded only on the authority of Aristotle.59 Thus, the unity of
time is not essential because of Aristotle. It has another and more profound urgency. It is imperative because of a natural reason which supports it,60 as Corneille asserts.
Now, it would have been difficult to rely on Aristotles authority
because he said little about the matter, a remark so brief that it is in fact
beyond intelligible interpretation. The unity of time is justified according to this other rationale that Corneille calls natural reason; that
is, something that presents itself as common sense, as self-evident, as
reasonable, as a medium of sensible and moderate thinking. The idea
of dramatic poetry as imitation represents this self-evident natural
reason.
A dramatic poem is an imitation, or rather, a portrait of human action;
and it is beyond question that portraits are more excellent as they better
resemble the original. The representation lasts two hours, and it would
be a perfect resemblance if the action which it represented did not require more time in reality. Thus let us not stop at twelve or at twentyfour hours, but compress the action of the poem into the least time
possible so that the representation shall be more like and more perfect.61

Imitations are better if they resemble the original. But what is the
original which one is here recommended to imitate? Corneille has no
doubt about what he believes he is talking about. He allegedly talks
about human action; the dramatic poem is a portrait of human action,
and this is what one wants to imitate. But contrary to this explicit statement, it is apparent throughout the quotation that this is not what is being imitated. In the quotation, imitation is imitation of the theater, or rather, it is imitation of the conditions of the spectators in the auditorium.
Thus, if the spectators are watching a two-hours long performance, it
would be perfect if the duration of the action represented also lasted
two hours. If imitation is imitation of human action, it is the action
of the spectators when they are passively seated watching the play.
Thus, the nature which the unities imitate is not life, nor human action,
but theater itself. The major inherent problems in this involuntary selfcontradictionimitation is not imitation of nature, but of theater itselfanticipate the collapse of the neoclassical rules of the unities. As

51
we shall see, this inherent discrepancy regarding the object of imitation
makes Johnsons and Lessings subsequent critiques of the neoclassical
rules almost irrefutable.
In an interpretation where imitation ideally is imitation of the theater, Aristotles remark about the duration of a play slackens the requirements to imitation considerably. A certain leniency seems permitted because Aristotle allows action to last, not just two or three hours
corresponding to the duration of performance, but up to twenty-four
hours. Although Corneille emphasizes that the rule of unity of time was
not derived from Aristotle, but from the idea of imitation, he inherits, in
a strange and paradoxical manner, Aristotles remark when he suspends
this idea of strict imitation. The rule of the unity of time would collapse
into absurdity if it had to be rigorously applied, but fortunately Aristotle
has permitted the looser time-limit of a natural day. Thus, Aristotle
provides the neoclassical poets with considerably more freedom than
they give themselves, following the rule of imitation.
The neoclassicists inherit Aristotles brief remark to guide their reasoning whenever they discuss the length of a theater play. The arbitrary
becomes the rule since the acceptance of twenty-four hours as the appropriate guideline has no justification beyond the remark of Aristotle.
Nonetheless, the rule is taken for granted. Also in Dryden this rule is
obvious. Dryden lets Lisideius, one of the debaters in his An Essay of
Dramatic Poesy, reiterate the self-evidence of this rule.
The unity of time they comprehend in twenty-four hours, the compass
of a natural day, or as near as it can be contrived; and the reason of it
is obvious to everyone.62
The time of the feigned action, or fable of the play, should be proportioned as near as can be to the duration of that time in which it is represented; since, therefore, all plays are acted on the theater in the space of
time much within the compass of twenty-four hours, that play is to be
thought the nearest imitation of nature, whose plot or action is confined
within that time.63

Again, the rules of the unities are justified according to the principle
of imitation. The feigned action, the fable, should ideally only last as
long as it takes to represent this action on the stage. This is the rule of
correspondence between performance and action; real time should
correspond to fictional time. However, insofar as theater-plays are
much within the compass of twenty-four hoursthey only last two to

52
three hoursit is argued that plays are more perfect if their actions are
enacted within twenty-four hours. This is obvious. The obvious is
here the randomness of a 1 to 12 ratiotwo hours to twenty-four
hoursbetween performance and action. This ratio has in itself no justification. As such, the discussion of the unity of time becomes an example of the randomness of the constitution and legitimization of human knowledge. In centuries of Western theater theory, one has had a
rule concerning the length of action in dramatic poetry, depending on a
sentence one has never fully understood.
These two laws, the law of imitation and the law of Aristotle (the
law of correspondence between performance and action, and the law of
a random sentence) also govern the idea of the unity of place. At a first
look, the unity of place appears to be simply a logical derivation of the
unity of time. Although Aristotle never mentioned a unity of place, the
unity of place appears to have been derived from Aristotles remark
on time. Since the unity of time governs the play, it is absurd to
represent places in great distance from each other. One cannot travel
from one end of the world to the other in the same play because time
does not permit it. The stage should always represent but one place,
and the uttermost time presupposed in it should be, both by Aristotles
precept and common reason, but one day.64
However, deriving this rule only from the unity of time allows too
much freedom in the interpretation of the unity of place. One would be
permitted to represent several distant places on the stage if it was probable that one could sojourn in them all within twenty-four hours. As
Corneille complains, one could then represent both Rouen and Paris,
and everywhere in between, in the same play.
As for the unity of place, I find no rule concerning it in either Aristotle
or Horace. This is what leads many people to believe that this rule was
established only as a consequence of the unity of one day, and leads
them to imagine that one can stretch the unity of place to cover the
points to which a man may go and return in twenty-four hours. This
opinion is a little too free, and if one made an actor travel posthaste, the
two sides of the theater might represent Paris and Rouen. I could wish,
so that the spectator is not at all disturbed, that what is performed before him in two hours might actually be able to take place in two hours,
and that what he is shown in a stage setting which does not change
might be limited to a room or a hall depending on a choice made beforehand; but often that is so awkward, if not impossible, that one must

53
necessarily find some way to enlarge the place as also the time of the
action.65

Deriving the rule of the unity of place strictly from the unity of time
makes it too liberal. The unity of place is therefore derived from less
than the permitted twenty-four hour time-frame. Ideally one ought not
to travel at all, but stay at the place where the play takes its beginning.
As the real stage is only one, it should, strictly speaking, represent only
one place. In A Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, Drydens opponent Howard raises this argument: tis as impossible for one stage to
present two rooms or houses truly, as two countries or kingdoms. 66 But
Howard argues to abolish the unity of place. Howards argument is that
insofar as the stage, according to the unity of place, can never represent
more than one room, maintaining this unity is absurd because it is absurd to restrict all action of a play to one room only. Dryden counters
this argument by relaxing Howards rigorously defined interpretation of
the unity of place.
I answer, tis neither impossible, nor improper, for one real place to
represent two or more imaginary places, so it be done successively,
which in other words is no more than this: that the imagination of the
audience, aided by the words of the poet, and painted scenes, may suppose the stage to be sometimes one place, sometimes another, now a
garden, or wood, and immediately a camp.67

One the one hand, a unity of place ideally should be represented as

only one single room in the play, but, on the other hand, such an interpretation would be too restrictive. One consequently suggests a compromise. Places can be changed if they are close to each other. 68 According to the unity of place one can represent different places, but only
if they are chosen within the same location, for example, within the
same city.
Deriving the unity of place from the unity of time results in too liberal an interpretation, and it offends reason. Reason requires imitation
between fiction and theater settings, between play and theater, between
action and stage, between the circumstances of the characters and the
circumstances of the spectators. The unity of place must be maintained,
and the place at which the play begins must remain the same, because as
Dryden lets Lisideius state, The stage on which it is represented being

54
but one and the same place it is unnatural to conceive it many, and
those far distant from one another.69
As in the question of time, imitation is again interpreted as the correspondence between the real stage and the fictional places represented
on the stage, as a correspondence between theater and fiction. One must
delimit the distances the imagination has to travel during the play, because the spectator revolts against too big leaps between distant or
many places.
Fancy and reason go hand in hand; the first cannot leave the last behind: and though fancy, when it sees the wide gulf, would venture over,
as the nimbler, yet it is withheld by reason, which will refuse to take
the leap when the distance over it appears too large . . . So, then the
less change of place there is, the less time is taken up in transporting
the persons of the drama, with analogy to reason; and in that analogy,
or resemblance of fiction to truth, consists the excellency of the play . .
. The nearer and fewer those imaginary places are, the greater resemblance they will have to truth; and reason, which cannot make them
one, will be more easily led to suppose them so. 70

Here Dryden summons up Platos image (from Phaedros) of the

charioteer and his two steeds, the obedient white and the disobedient
black. In Platos example the obedient holds back the disobedient when
the latter wishes to yield to its immediate inclinations. In Dryden, reason is the obedient, fancy the disobedient, steed. Fancy is the unnatural and unreasonable. It is fanciful to embrace all poetic illusions, for
example, to uncritically jump from place to place in a single play. Fortunately, natural reason restricts these frivolous inclinations and interjects the spectators with some moderation, protecting them against their
own imagination.
Natural reason is a sound medium, preventing the superficial poet
from entirely controlling the imagination of the spectator. The fact that
reason defines the unities is only regarded as common and sound sense.
One appeals to reason to warrant the natural and moderate theater, and
to avoid the unnatural and excessive, conceived as unregulated poetic
imagination. The theater becomes a medium theater, a theater preserving both the rationality of the spectator and acknowledging the imaginative power of the poet, but without admitting any of the extremes to
flourish.

55
As we shall see, this understanding of the audience changes radically with the introduction of new definitions of man and nature
through the Transition Period and preromanticism.

56

Chapter 2
________________________________________
The Law of the Name
The Cid as Example

1) Code and Text

Corneilles Le Cid does not represent the relationship between
code and text in the most fortunate manner; not, at least, if we understand code as the contemporary standards for composition and decorum in dramatic poetry. Thus, Corneilles text is not the most illustrious example of how the rules of the unities are implemented in a
neoclassical text.71
Neither the unity of time nor the unity of place are strictly observed
in the work, as Corneilles critics noticed and Corneille later admitted.
Too much happens within a span of twenty-four hours and the characters move between too many different places. Later, in his Discours des
Trois Units, Corneille defended his use of many different places by
pointing out that although the scenes are enacted at different locations,
his characters remain within the same city, Seville. But in his later Examen of the play, Corneille admits these and other errors; errors of
which he had been criticized by the French Academy. The question of
the rules becomes a question of the probable, the vraisemblable, and
the proper, the biensance. Transgressing the rule of the unity of time
has two consequences: it makes the play invraisemblable, improbable,
and it violates the doctrine of biensance, a notion indicating that one
should not simply depict truth on the stage but beautify it according to
the conduct and proprieties of polite society. When one does not observe the rule of the unity of time, one ultimately offends these principles, not just the law of probability as discussed in the previous chapter, but also the doctrines of conduct and propriety. Ultimately one offends the preeminent recipient of the play, the king.

57
The problem in Corneilles play is that too much happens within
twenty-four hours. For instance, Rodrigues fight with the Moors should
realistically have worn him out so much, that he would have needed two
or three days of rest. Instead, after the fight the king immediately arranges the duel with Don Sanchos. Corneille recognizes that this goes
too fast.
. . . but it is not so with the duel of Don Sanchos, which the king arranges, and he could have chosen an other time for the duel than two
hours after the fight with the Moors. Their defeat did exhaust Rodrigue
long enough to earn him two or three days of rest.72

The same rule of time is violated with regard to Chimne when she
two times, within twenty-four hours, seeks the king pleading for justice
and revenge of her slain father. This is importune, pressing the king for
the same request within such a short span of time. As Corneille notices,
it works in the novel about Cid, where there is no time-limit and seven
days pass between Chimnes requests, but on the stage it appears as if
Chimne seeks the king both the evening and the following morning.
The same rule pushes Chimne to ask the king for justice a second
time. She had already done that the evening before and had no reason
to come back the next day to bother the king. She had no reasons for
complains, since she could not claim that he did not keep his promises.
The novel would have given her seven or eight days before bothering
the king again, but twenty-four hours did not allow that. This is the inconvenience of the rule.73

If we assume that the unity of time is strictly observed, if the action

of the play elapses within twenty-four hours, then the play is an insult to
the king. In the first case, the king appears inhumane by not letting Rodrigue rest a while after his triumphant battle, because he instead arranges the duel with Chimnes defender, Don Sanchos. In the second
case, the king is offended because Chimne importunately presses the
king for justice both night and day, without respect for his sovereignty.
In both cases the conduct towards the king is impudent. Either Corneille
depicts the king as insensitive, or he lets his heroine treat him disrespectfully. If the rule of the unity of time applies, Corneille indirectly offends the king. If it does not apply, the conduct of the characters might
have been justifiable.

58
The unity of time apparently is not observed, but it should have
been so, and if it were observed as it ought to, the play is without
judgment of conduct, as Georges de Scudry complains. When the fictive universe of Le Cid is condensed into one day, time becomes scarce
and precious. In this situation Corneille seems to be pressing on the
king as he does not give him enough time to carry out his decisions. His
judgment of conduct is inadequate because he has failed to acknowledge that the king is worth more time.
Corneille packs too many events into too little space; in consequence, the play becomes invraisemblable. Presupposing the twentyfour hour time limit, it is unlikely that so much can happen. However, it
is first and foremost in relation to the king that this unlikelihood becomes offensive. It is the king one ought to give time, and give him
considerably more time than twenty-four hours. This is the essence of
Corneilles apology: he has not given the king more than twenty-four
hours; he admits his disrespect, and apologizes.
The problems of time and place were, however, only one of the criticisms Corneille was exposed to by contemporaries. Corneille was criticized for neither respecting the unities nor the decorum of the stage, and
furthermore for plagiarizing and stealing the most beautiful verses.
The problem of the unities is only one point in the charges brought
against Corneille.
That the topic is worth nothing.
That it opposes all the main rules of a dramatic poem.
That it lacks judgment of conduct.
That it is full of bad verses.
That almost all its beautiful parts are stolen.74

According to Scudry, just about everything is wrong with the play,

but one issue is particularly devastating, the role of Chimne. It is unforgivable that she accepts Rodrigues presence in her bedroom so soon
after he has killed her father, and it is invraisemblable et immoral that
she by the end marries her fathers murdererparticularly if we assume
it happens within twenty-four hours.
The French Academy was finally called upon to mediate in the polemic between Scudry and Corneille. They maintained the criticism
although not as severely as Scudryand the basic charge that
Chimne acts immorally and improbably by marrying the man who slew
her father. In his later Examen of Le Cid, Corneille defends these ac-

59
cusations by pointing out how Rodrigues and Chimnes sensitive conversation makes the spectator either forget or forgive the error.
Rodrigues two visits to his mistress shocks the propriety of the scenes
in which she suffers. A strict duty would have required that she refused
to talk to him, and that she locked herself up in her chamber instead of
listening to him, but allow me to say with one of the best minds of this
century, that their conversation is so full of noble feelings, that mostly
people have not noticed this flaw, and those who have noticed it, have
forgiven it.75

It is a question of whether one ought to follow the vraisemblable

or the biensance, whether one should remain truthful to history or
beautify the facts in order to make them suitable to current opinions and
conventions. In the case where Corneille is accused of the unlikelihood
of the visit to Chimnes bedroom, he defends himself by pointing out
the embellished dialogue. In the case where he is accused of imprudence by letting Chimne marry her fathers murderer, he argues that he
is just describing what is historically correct.
It is true that in this matter it should have been enough to save Rodrigue from danger, without pushing him to marry Chimne. This is the
historical fact and it pleased in its own time although it would not in
ours; and I suffer to see why Chimne accepts it in the Spanish author
although he gave more than three years to the comedy. In order not to
contradict history, I felt I could not dispense with the idea, notwithstanding the uncertainty of its effect, and is was only so I could reconcile the theatrical rules of propriety and the reality of the events. 76

However, in these discussions about whether or not Corneille observes the rules of decorum and unity, something more general is at
stake, something defining the neoclassical paradigm in a more profound
way. First, the play and the code defining the composition of the play
can be discussed between author and critic. Poetry is still defined as
something that implicates society, and as an actiona linguistic actionwithin the bounds of society. Poetry is still an object of (rational,
pseudorational, or even irrational) discussion. Thus, poetry has to observe the rules defined by the society it addresses. It must, in other
words, inscribe its potential recipients and internalize its own context of
reception. These two aspects of the poem, conventionality and receptivity, organize and form signification on a deep-structural level of Le Cid.

60
As such, the recipient is part of the structure of Le Cid. A general
or transcendental recipient in the text reveals itself as Corneilles
awareness of code and decorum. This general receiver is not only
made up by the specific audience to which the work is composed, but
by the social-political-ideological horizon in which the work is supposed to function. The general recipient is inherent in the work as the
different messages it conveys. The purpose of the present interpretation
is to reconstruct these interdependent layers in the text, to expose their
internal logicor lack of logic. The text therefore is like a surface beneath which layers of different messages can be uncovered. Inconsistent
and conflicting, these messages echo ideological conflicts existent in
the social groups which first and foremost constitute Corneilles addressees. Behind a quite coherent plot-construction, it is possible to discover these sediments of conflicts, conflicts which the author tries to resolve for the simple reason that he, at this particular historical point of
time, is concerned about the audience and tries his best not to offend
them. In the interpretive work we shall reconstruct these conflicting
messageshereby actually deconstructing the apparent and superficial organization of the text.
Whether or not Corneille succeeds in Le Cid, whether or not his
Chimne is a opportune sketch of a heroine, whether or not his unities
are stretched beyond the probable, he writes acknowledging a conventional code and potential recipients. It is this state of affairs we shall
address in the following interpretation.
Le Cid is a play about how to follow a code, namely the code of
honor. The pursuit of honor is understood as correct conduct in the
play. Beneath this, however, it is also a play about how this code becomes increasingly problematic. If this does not seem obvious in a first
reading of the play, this is what is at stake in the subsequent reception
of Le Cid, and in the fervent polemic it launches. In these debates, partly introduced above, it is indisputable that Corneille (who on behalf of
the characters of the play meticulously observes the code of honor)
among notable critics, The French Academy, and even Richelieu, was
not successful in matters of conduct.

2) The Code of Honor

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In order to understand the logic of the conflicts in the play, it is necessary to understand the prevailing and underlying value-system, what
we shall term the code. This is the system against which everything is
measured: man, woman, love, existence, death.
The value-system is fundamental, and therefore no other systems
found it. It is in itself (consequently and by all good logic) inexplicable
and random. It is the Law of the play, a horizon taken for granted, a categorical imperative of honor: act in such a way that the maxim of
your action always corresponds to the universal law of honor. This
Law is exposed in the behavior and speech of the characters as something they have to observe, interpret, and react on in the most correct
manner.
Ignoring or overlooking this Law would be worse than anything
else, worse, for example, than death. Such disregard would annihilate
the characters as subjects. The annihilation of their individual, corporeal, and empirical being would be insignificant, but the annihilation of
their imaginary beingas the esteem they hold in the eyes of the other
and as their self-esteemwould be disastrous not just to the person, but
to the persons name and family.
The underlying value-system we imply here is the code of honor. A
mans or womans value is measured in honor as a value beyond life
and death. The economy of honor constitutes a general economy of
the play. It is recognized among the characters as constituting a valuesystem according to which they can and should adjust their actions. It is
the general equivalent of human action. The play is about how one can
increase ones value within this value-system, increase ones esteem
(and thus self-esteem), and consequently increase ones worth and
price; and, conversely, about how one avoids a decrease in ones
worth.
Because individual action is ultimately measured in esteem, it is far
beyond the individually comfortable and agreeable. Characters in the
play are at any point ready to die if dying gives them higher esteem than
living. Death is chosen over life, if death makes the subject more worthy and a higher priced subject in the eyes of the other. This is
represented in numerous places in the text. Because death in the play
tends to increase rather than to decrease subjective worth, the text has
an implicit problem in putting a restraint on the eagerness with which
the characters are ready to sacrifice themselves. It has to transform this
suicidal tendencythis drive toward death and self-destruction which it

62
suggests as an appropriate solution to a dishonorable lifeinto something more constructive. It has to make life an honorable alternative to
death.
In this quest for the highest honor and esteem, the text is discussing,
expounding, and interpreting the code. It attempts to determine the
most honorable action, given diverse circumstances. This is the teaching of the text. It is a lesson in how to behave honorably. The text sets
forth different examples and situations. For instance, it often places a
character in a dilemma, giving him or her the choice between two
equally, or almost equally, honorable alternatives. The problem of the
character here becomes whether he or she is able to interpret and identify which alternative would be the more honorablegiving him or her
the most esteem and worth. The representation of this problem is the
teaching of the text, the solution is its pleasure.
After Rodrigue has avenged his insulted father by killing Don Gomez, the father praises his son; he has given him satisfaction; the family
honor is restored. The fact that Rodrigue has killed the father of his beloved and broken his bond to her does not occur to the old man as a major problem.
From the beginning, Rodrigue stood in a dilemma: should he carry
out his duty as a son, or should he follow his feelings of love for
Chimne. In this dilemma Rodrigue makes the right and only possible
choice. He recognizes, after discussing and interpreting the problem by
himself for the sake of the audience, that his first obligation is his father. He must restore the honor of the family. Speaking to Don Diego:
The honor was your due. I could no less, / Since Im your flesh and
blood, and bred by you.77 But he perceives another obligation, his obligation toward Chimne.
Don Diego recognizes his sons sacrifice, a sacrifice that brings him,
as a father, in debt to his son, because although Don Diego gave his son
life, Rodrigue has given his father back his name, and as the name carries all the worth of a person Rodrigue has given his father something
more valuable than life. Now Don Diego is indebted to Rodrigue.
Carry Your victory still further. Think
I gave you life; you gave me back my name.
And, since I cherish glory more than life,
My debt to you is all the heavier.
But from you heart remove such weaknesses.
Theres but one honour; mistresses abound!

63
Loves but a pleasure; dutys a command.78

Don Diego perceives only one obligation, the duty toward the family, or rather the name. Women are not included in the economy of his
system because they are abundant and can be replaced. A name cannot.
Rodrigue, however, has another, stricter, interpretation of honor. Compared to Don Diegos patriarchal attitude, it is youthful and romantic.
One also has certain obligations with regard to the woman one loves,
and he starts at his fathers insensitivity in the matter.
What you say, father?
. . . . . . . . .
you dare urge me to inconstancy!
Like infamy weighs equally upon
The craven warrior and the faithless heart.
Do not this wrong to my fidelity.
Let me be chivalrous but not for sworn.
My ties are strong and are not broken thus;
My troth still holds, even if I hope no more.
And still I cannot win or leave my love,
The death I seek will be the sweetest pain.79

A faithless heart with regard to his beloved he is not; he has an obligation towards her. Remaining faithful to Chimne is, however, less a
recognition of her personal well-being than it is an acknowledgment
and recognition of the integrity of her name. His fidelity consists in supervising that her name remains intact, even if that will cost him his life.
In this intent he does not care about her, his, or their happiness. His final obligation would be to defend her name as he has already defended
his fathers. As this noble act would imply giving her the satisfaction
family honor demands, it implies offering her his life, as his life is what
she now must pursue as retribution for her slain father. To save her
name and worth, his last display of duty is to sacrifice himself, that is
his life, but certainly not his name. On the contrary, the price of his
name goes up with this recognition of duty, with this readiness to selfsacrifice.
This, at least, is how Rodrigue interprets the code of honor. This is
what would give him the highest worth. His father, however, perceives
him as having another obligation, the obligation towards the king. Thus
Rodrigue is confronted with another dilemma. He is not just torn be-

64
tween his duties toward his father and his beloved. Having made the
choice to fight Don Gomez, he is torn between his duty toward
Chimne and his duties toward the king as his soldier. Therefore, the
text places him in two different dilemmas, twice he confronts situations
where he has to chose between two unpleasant alternatives. At first his
obligations towards the king dont seem quite as important as his obligations towards his beloved because choosing to serve the king and forgetting Chimne might raise the suspicion that Rodrigue is trying to
rescue his own life, and consequently values life above honora major
ignominy within the horizon of the play. In this general economy, life
is, compared to honor, always the lesser value.
Whereas the text dissolves Rodrigues first dilemma with a logical
argument, making it evident that he has no other choice than to fight
Don Gomez, the text, strictly and logically speaking, never solves the
second dilemma. To reach a solution, however, it uses another strategy:
it increases Rodrigues value to the king. It makes him invaluable for
the survival of the kingdom. Into his qualms and perplexities it intersects his successful and triumphant combat with the Moors, making him
a priceless subject to the king, a subject who cannot be wasted in private matters of love and honor. As such it never teaches the audience
a logical solution to what one ought to select in a given choice between
honor and king as it makes this choice dependent on current powerrelations. It acknowledges the political circumstances of the state as
more significant than a logical solution of the dilemma.

3) The Lack of Choice and Freedom

When the characters are placed in dilemmas, they apparently have a
choice: should Rodrigue choose to revenge his father, or should he
choose Chimne? But the outcome of these choices is always predetermined. Insofar as the characters observe and understand the conventional code, the choices are pseudochoices because the characters know
what is in advance required from them. The choice is always a choice in
favor of the name, and against oneself. The honorable choice invariably
has this structure, against oneself but for the name.
Therefore, dilemmas are typically only seeming, merely displayed in
the text in order to demonstrate, to teach how one chooses what one
has to choose. A dilemma is a pretext for exposing the argument guid-

65
ing the action of the noble individual. In Rodrigues first choice between avenging his father or cherishing his love for Chimne, he has in
reality no choice. His contemplation of this situation is a display of the
value-system that thinks him. First Rodrigue displays a superficial and
naive interpretation of his dilemmathis sounds like a choice, like a
genuine either-or.
If I avenge him, then I must lose her.
One fires me on. The other holds me back.
The shameful choice is to betray my love,
Or live in infamy.80

Those are seemingly the possibilities: honor or love. But soon Rodrigue realizes that he has in fact no choicewhat makes his decision
easy, although with no less devastating consequences. If he chooses
love, if he abstains from dueling, he only earns the contempt of his beloved. His choice of love would deprive him of her love. This path is
cut off and it leaves him with only one possibility. Rodrigue discusses
this more intelligent interpretation of his dilemma with himself, an interpretation with which he realizes his lack of freedom.
Taking revenge, I earn her hate or wrath,
And, taking no revenge, I earn contempt.
One makes me faithless to my dearest hope,
One unworthy of her.
My ill increases if I seek a cure.
Everything swells my grief.
Come then my soul, and, since we have to die,
Lets die at least without offending her.81

Here he presents his insight into the logic and code of honor. The
choice is not a choice he can make in freedom. His first naive assessment of this dilemma, where he actually discussed his alternatives as if
they were open options, is now seen as shamefulas he notices: Lets
hasten to revenge; / Deeply ashamed at having wavered so, / Lets hesitate no more.82 Whatever he does he loses her, but in one case he will
not lose her respect.
Chimne also knows the code of honor. She knows that Rodrigue
has in fact no choice, and Rodrigue knows that Chimne knows just
that. He obviously counts on that knowledge when he chooses to defend

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his father instead of retreating from his duties and cherishing his amorous passions. Rodrigue knows that he would never merit his beloved by
not fighting her father. As soon as he disregards his immediate inclinations for Chimne, when he sets against her charms this thought, he
realizes this situation.
You would certainly have tipped the scales [in the choice between her
and duty]
Had I not set against your charms the thought
That I, dishonoured, did not merit you,
That, though I shared in your affection, yet
Who loved me brave would hate me infamous;
That to obey, and listen to your love,
Would make me quite unworthy of your choice.83

This dialectical insight into one anothers decisions is only possible

because the characters share a common code. If a common code determines humans and their logic, they are always able to infer the thinking
of the other.
Chimne knows that she could ask Rodrigue not to fight her father.
But she also knows that if he obeyed her, it would only make her
ashamed of a man who defied the fundamental laws of honor. She
knows furthermore that Rodrigue would never allow himself to be
represented as a craven in the eyes of the other, and especially not in
hers. She consequently knows that her choice is not free. In the choice
between imploring or not imploring Rodrigue to abstain from fighting,
the first possibility is not really there. The dilemmas never reflect real
individual freedom.
If he obeys me not, what grief is mine?
If he obeys, what will they say of him?
A man like him, to suffer such a slight!
Whether or not he yields to love for me,
I can be only shamefaced or distraught
At his respectful Yes or rightful No.84

And when later Rodrigue explains to her his reasons to fight,

Chimne accepts his explanation: Rodrigue. Ah! Its true. Although
your foe, I cannot blame your No to infamy.85
It is the characters fate to be caught up and trapped in their own
code.

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4) The Deathdrive of the Text

With the exception of the king, all the characters seek death in their
pursuit of honor. Everyone in the play is ready to die if his or her name
is at stake. The infanta would rather die than succumb to her love for
Rodrigue and suffer a loss of social rank: So mindful am I [of her social status] that Ill shed my blood / Before I stoop to sullying my
rank.86 Don Gomez is prepared to die rather than to compromise his
pride by apologizing to Don Diego. Don Diego prefers death to living
his life in disgrace by not revenging Don Gomez insult. Rodrigue, in
the first case, risks death rather than seeing his fathers name sullied;
and in the second, he prefers death to disloyalty towards his beloved.
Chimne would rather take her own life (were Rodrigue to die) than
giving up her demand for his death as retribution for her fathers death.
Her defendant, Don Sanchos, risks death rather than refusing to defend
a woman of esteem and virtue.
A fundamental death-drive structures the text. But it is death understood as a trade in for worth, not as ultimate relief from an intolerable life, as in a romantic understanding. It is not death understood as
darkness, nothingness, nirvana, or as an eternal oblivion promised a
subject who wishes to abandon his or her intolerable bonds to the
world. One the contrary, the world is never more present than in speculations on death. Death is not the annihilation of the subject, but its
consecration and magnification.
Although death would in fact solve conflicts and frustrations in the
play, it is never first and foremost contemplated as such. It is considered because it would be the most honorable choice. If the infanta contemplates death, it is not because she is desperately in love with Rodrigue and cannot have himwhich is the case. She does not contemplate
death as a release from this unbearable conflict. On the contrary, she
contemplates death as a possibility she would have to choose if she
could no longer control herself, if she yielded and married him. If she
actually got whom she loved, if she lowered her rank and worth to such
an extent, then she would have to choose death. Death is the option in a
hypothetical situation in which she marries her beloved. Death is not
contemplated because of Rodrigues actual absence, but because of his
hypothetical presence as a desired subject.

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Death never annihilates the characters as subjects. They continue to
live in the other; that is to say, they continue to have worth in the eyes
of the other in death, and after death. This interminable existence as a
valuable subject, even after death, is internalized in the characters selfreflection upon death. According to this self-reflection, death is not the
end, but the continuation and survival of the name. Nowhere else in the
play is trust in the code and distrust in the individual given stronger expression. The subsistence of the individual is not essential, but his/her
price, honor, worth, and name is.
The death-drive of the text is not a longing for nirvana, but a belief
in name before and above life, of subject before and above the individual, of code before and above emotions. The text, however, puts a
restraint on this death-driveonly Don Gomez actually dies during
the play. The restraint is the king. He intervenes for example in the conflict between Rodrigue and Chimne (who as individuals love each other, but as subjects pursue an honorable death) by actually decreeing
them to get married to end their conflict. Against the law of honor, the
king dictates his own law: the law of power, the law of the politically
opportune. It is not politically opportune to have subjects pursuing
death. Politicians can neither rule dead people nor those fearless of
death. Against the permeating death-drive of his subjects, the king introduces a drive towards life, insofar as he introduces a reason to live;
this reason is explicitly his power.
5) The Role of the King
The kingdom is at stake. The king cannot do without his most brilliant subjects. He cannot allow them to kill each other in duels. As mentioned in the introductions to the French edition of Corneilles works,
this was a urgent problem at the time of Corneille, a problem Corneille
cannot permit himself to ignore because the greater part of his audience
came from the ruling aristocracy. Furthermore, Cardinal Richelieu had
tried to put a stop to the widespread practice of dueling among knights,
nobility, and musketeers in France as this custom decimated his best
men. In this light, the code of honor, pervading Corneilles play and defended so stubbornly by his heroes and heroines, is not in the best interest of some of the recipients of the play. Cardinal Richelieu is undoubtedly such a potential reviewer, a projected recipient in Corneilles
creative self, because the play is dedicated to the niece of the cardinal,

69
Madame de Combalet. Corneille is therefore fully aware about Richelieu as a reviewer of the play, and he is hardly ignorant of Richelieus
opinion about dueling and the code of honor that impels it. In the text,
therefore, Corneille has to represent an acceptable solution to the ongoing conflicts. If these conflicts were all carried out according to the
code, this would imply the demise of most of the plays important characters.
In The Cid, Corneille fails to please the authorities (the play got a
harsh and condemning reception by Richelieu). One problem is the romantic interpretation of the code of honor, but still worse is the disobedience that characterizes the relationship between the king and his subjects. The play is poor politics. Throughout the play, the code of honor
dominates the interaction between men and women. The king is the single subject who opposes this code. Because his interests and the code of
honor conflict, he tries to impede his subjects pursuit of honor.
Obedience toward the king should be a self-evident obligation.
Compared with the importance of the kings interests, the subjects
should readily denounce their private pursuits; but the characters do not
realize this order of things. They only reluctantly submit themselves to
the will of the king when honor is at stake. Don Gomez denies to abide
by the kings decree when Don Diego is favored as tutor of the kings
son. Despite the kings command, Don Gomez does not retract his insult of Don Diego. The king has to explain what should have been obvious, that his law is higher than the law of honor.
There is no dishonour in obeying me.
Besides, the affront is mine. He has disgraced
The man I made the tutor of my son.
To slight my choice is to attack myself
And seek to weaken my authority.87

Placing the law of honor above the king obviously weakens the
kings authority. The play says so, but it nevertheless does the opposite
by accepting, at every turn, honor as prior to royal authority. The hero
of the play, Rodrigue, never considers giving up his obligations to
Chimne, which honor dictates. He persistently offers her his life instead of realizing that his services to the king are indefinitely more important. Neither does the heroine of the play, Chimne, renounce her
demand for Rodrigues death which honor dictates as retribution for her
slain father. Even when she realizes that Rodrigue, after his triumphant

70
battle with the Moors, is becoming invaluable to king and kingdom, she
upholds her demand. The infantas explanation of the political order of
things does not move Chimne.
Willing his death, you will the states collapse.
What! to avenge a father, is it right
To hand Spain over to the enemy?
Can your demand be justified for us?
Must we share punishment without the crime?
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Deprive him of your love, but not his life.88

The prospect of the states collapse, to hand Spain over to the enemy in the case of Rodrigues death, does not persuade Chimne, and it
does not compel her to forgive him and give up her request of revenge.
Her duty knows no bounds, and neither does king and kingdom constitute an obligation.
Ah! Such forgivingness is not for me.
The duty which impels me knows no bounds.
Whateer my love may say on his behalf
Adored by all and cherished by the king,
surrounded by his bravest warriors
My cypresses make his laurels fade.89

The cypresses as a symbol of death in Chimnes family overshadows the laurels as a symbol of Rodrigues victory.
The king is surrounded by disobedient subjects pursuing their honor
rather than his rule. The name weighs heavier than the interest of state
and kingdom.
But as the characters have dilemmas, the text now has a dilemma
because it professes honor as the major value among the characters,
but still recognizes that this value-system conflicts with the political interests of the king. Consequently, the problem of the text is to mediate
between two conflicting value-systems: honor and political power.
Don Gomezs insult indicates the first incidence of disobedience,
the first conflict between honor and power. This conflict resolves itself,
when the count is slain in the duel with Rodrigue and is as such punished for his pride. But in the second incident, when Rodrigue seeks
death at the hand of Chimne, because he nobly offers her satisfaction,

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this conflict is not easily resolved. The text has here to explain why
these two characters do not follow the imperatives of their value-system
and choose death as they ought to do. In diverging from this course, the
text has to justify its political choice, its sudden favoritism of the law
of power.
In this endeavor, it appeals both to our feelings and our reason. Under any circumstance, it would be a pity if Rodrigue and Chimne carry
out their intentions and destroy themselves. From the beginning, the
text strives to soften the conflict by showing not just their duties, but also the injustice in how these ironclad duties pull the two apart. The text
appeals to the emotions of the recipient, but it appeals to our reason as
well because it would be too much of a waste if Rodrigue were to sacrifice himself on the altar of honor, when the existence of the state depends upon him. The text increases his value; he becomes an asset who
cannot die for love. Although the individual in general is less valuable
than his or her name, Rodrigue, after his success against the Moors, becomes more valuable than himself. His noble self-destructive project
becomes futile.
At a certain point the text now has to give in to its own persuasion.
But it is prepared and constructed to give in and bend at a certain point,
a point where the text legitimately can chose the pragmatic solution
above the idealistic: the law of the king above the law of honor. This is
also the point where the politics of the text is inscribed. The play may
be poor politics, but nevertheless politics is inscribed in its thematic and
plot structure. It is inscribed for the simple reason that Corneille believes in the political reviewer (and in the receiver in general); for example, he believes in Richelieu. Thus, Corneille is not writing for himself, as the romantic poet; he is observing the social and political conventions of the time, not neglecting them as belonging to an inferior
world, unsuitable for an artist to take part in.
At the point where Rodrigue becomes too valuable to be wasted, the
text instates the law of king and state as superior. One has now to yield,
not to the rules of honor, but to the rules of power. This power relation
is disguised, however. Never does it become a question of the king
simply issuing decrees. The king is not represented as a despotic sovereign, he is represented as just and wise. Among all his idealistic subjects, he is the only one who is capable of seeing when they remain
blind to all other purposes than their own honor. The king naturalizes
his commands. The politics of the text does not simply manifest itself

72
by a sudden emphasis on power instead of honor. If such a shift were
represented as a royal decree forced upon his subjects, it would establish the king as a tyrant, and Corneille as either a fool or a revolutionary. The text understands in full the ideological importance of naturalizing and humanizing this new emphasis on power. In this undertaking
it constitutes the king as the only humanist in the textand flatters the
potential aristocratic spectator of the play. It manages to translate the
kings political concerns into general human concerns. What is advantageous to the kingdom is beneficial to the subjects.
The text represents the kings superior wisdom by making him realize that beneath the surface, Chimne in fact loves Rodrigue and wishes
to marry him. The king understands this as soon as he sees Chimnes
anguish when she mistakenly believes that Rodrigue has been killed in
the duel with Don Sanchos. Chimne is convinced that Don Sanchos
return from the duel with Rodrigue means that Rodrigue is defeated and
dead. In her misconception of the situation she reproaches Don Sanchos
for Rodrigues death. This reaction is interpreted and explained to the
king by Don Sanchos as an indication on Chimnes true love for Rodrigue.
Sire, she was deceived by her excess of love.
I came to tell the outcome of the fight.
This gallant knight of whom she is entranced,
As he disarmed me, said to me: fear naught.
Id rather have uncertain victory
Than shed the blood Chimne hazarded.
But, since my duty calls me to the king,
Report the combat in my name.
On my behalf, bear her the victors sword.
I went to her. This sword deceived her, Sire.
She thought me victor, seeing me return.
Her anger suddenly betrayed her love
With such an outburst of impatience that
I could not win a moments audience.90

This is the denouement of the play. Here we notice a certain discovery and reversal at stake, insofar as the king and his servants discover
Chimnes real love for Rodrigue beneath her request of revenge,. As
this discovery directly causes the king to demand that Chimne abandons her plans of revenge and marries Rodrigue, it also reverses the fortune of hero and heroine. It turns their bad fortune into good fortune.

73
When Don Sanchos convinces the king of Chimnes love for Rodrigue,
the king, as the only person raised above the rule of honor, releases
Chimne from observing her obligations.
Your must not be ashamed of what you feel
Or seek to disavow it, as in vain
Your modesty still urges you to do.
Honours redeemed and duty is discharged.
Your fathers satisfied. He is avenged
By hazarding Rodrigues life so oft.
You see how heaven disposes differently.
You did all for the Count. do something for
Yourself. Do not oppose my order which
Gives you a husband you so dearly love.91

Thus, the king issues a decree in the end, as he orders Chimne to

marry Rodrigue. But everybody understands that this was her dearest
hope, and that this decree just signifies the wisdom and humanity of the
king. The text spells it out. When the king commands Chimne to marry
the man she dearly loves, he only commands her to follow her deepest desire. This is how the text finally makes the law of the king superior to the law of honor. It is how it is ideologically defensible and justifiable to change the emphasis from honor to power. The kings power
becomes the more humane and natural choice. In his interest of maintaining a strong state, the king pursues the most secret desires of his
subjects.

74

Notes
1
. Plato: Apology, in: The Last Days of Socrates, trans. Tredennick. (New
York: Penguin Classics, 1979), p. 51.
2
. Plato: The Republic, in: Plato: Collected Dialogues, ed: Hamilton/Cairns. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1961), p. 820.
3
. Well then, shall we begin as usual by assuming that whenever a number
of individuals have a common name, they have also a corresponding idea or
form Plato, The Republic, ibid. p. 823.
4
. Here it is not the task to question the metaphysical system of Plato. However, one could briefly point out what seems to be a short circuit in Platos argument. A confusion between language and reality seems to generate the metaphysics of essences. This lack of distinction implies that when Plato talks about
how the understanding of words necessarily relies on a common idea, a common signified, shared by language-users, then he interprets this understanding
of common words as warranting a common form or essence of things. The signified for the signifier bed, or the idea for the word bed is interpreted as a
form intrinsic to the thing bed. Language-users understand one another by
sharing the meaning of a word they use in common. That is, the word bed generates the idea of a bed, and not of some other thing. This correct recognition on Platos part implies that language has a conventional aspect which we
can describe as its objective meaning; it implies that the meaning of a word
realizes itself as the same meaning in an infinite number of different individuals. But from this widely accepted linguistic assumption, Plato draws the conclusion that reality has an essence, a corresponding idea or form, thought out
by God. The objective meaning of a word (bed) suddenly becomes an essence
of things. Besides all the particular beds in the world, there is now one bed, the
bed, namely the form of the universal bed created by God. Plato has invented a
transcendental nature as the origin of the world. One might argue that if Plato
had kept to the linguistic recognition that to every name (in a conventional
language) there also belongs an idea, a meaning, it would have been difficult
to reject the artists because then they would simply realize and create meaning
(ideas) by working with language. The hierarchy: form, reality, imitation,
would have been less obvious as a hierarchy.
5
. Plato: The Republic, ibid., p. 827.
6
. Plato: The Republic, ibid., p. 830.
7
. Plato: The Republic, ibid., p. 832.
8
. Plato: The Republic, ibid., p. 828.
9
. Sir Phillip Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Literary Criticism, ed: Allan H. Gilbert. (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1962), p. 412.
10
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 412.
11
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 431.

75
12

. Julius Caesar Scaliger: Poetice, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 413.

. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 413
14
. Giovanni Boccaccio: Genealogy of the Gentile Gods, in: Hazard Adams:
Critical Theory since Plato. (New York: HBJ, 1971), p. 131.
15
Giovanni Boccaccio: Genealogy of the Gentile Gods, in: Adams, ibid., p.
131.
16
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 439, my emphasis.
17
. Castelvetro: A Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 311. Ernst Robert Curtius explains the hostility toward the muses
(which was a figure commonly referred to in Antiquity) by the influence of
Christianity: That in every century the Muses continued to trouble Christian
poets may seem strange. Would it not have been more natural simply to say
nothing about the Muses, instead of attacking them or finding ingenious substitutes for them (which after all was a way of recognizing their existence)? . . .
The dominion of the Church was uncontested; with the Inquisition, by the persecution of heretics, it could stamp out all resistance. Ernst Robert Curtius:
European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages (New York: Pantheon Book,
1953), p. 241.
18
. Castelvetro: A Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 312.
19
. Caesar Scaliger: Poetice, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 317 note. In Caesar Scaliger beautitude is taught through action, and poetry therefore is a kind of
teaching: Action is therefore a mode of teaching; and the moral habit is what
we are taught to apply. Hence the action will be a sort of example of instrument
in the narrative; the moral habit will be its end. Caesar Scaliger: Poetice, in:
Gilbert, ibid. p. 317. Also Daniel Heinsius emphasizes the importance of action, compared to other elements of the tragedy, such as manners/moral and
thoughts: The end of the tragic poet is not the imitation of manners but of
the actions which those manners derive from. The imitation of manners is not
the primary task of the tragic poet, but the secondary . . . If, on the contrary, he
[the poet] takes no great account of either manners, diction, or thought, if he arranges the action carefully and with requisite artistry, if he structures the incidents, if he knits together and finishes the fable as he ought, he will accomplish
the task of a tragic poet. Heinsius: On Plot in Tragedy (Northridge: California,
1971) p. 21. The action is only the vehicle, the necessary support, for the development of manners and thoughts: Indisputably therefore, the fable is the
most important and the proper task of tragedy and (as he himself [Aristotle]
loves to say) the soul of tragedy. Indeed, as the soul is the form of the body, so
the fable, the suitable structure of actions, is the form of tragedy itself. Just as
without the soul the body does not live although the external form be present,
so without this formal part, tragedy cannot really be that which it is, even
13

76
though manners, expressions and thoughts are present. Heinsius, On Plot in
Tragedy, ibid., p. 22.
20
. Castelvetro: A Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 305.
21
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 138.
22
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 138.
23
. Horace: The Art of Poetry, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 139.
24
. Caesar Scaliger: Poetice, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 414 note.
25
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 414.
26
. Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 608.
27
. Castelvetro: A Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 307.
28
. Castelvetro: A Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 317.
29
. Castelvetro: A Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 307.
30
. Castelvetro: A Commentary on the Poetics of Aristotle, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 308.
31
. A Castelvetro stopped short at the simple, purely hedonistic solution,
giving simple pleasure as the end of art Croce: Aesthetic (Boston, Nonpareil
Books, 1983) p. 182. Or Bernard Weinberg: Castelvetros Theory of Poetics,
in: Crane: Critics and Criticism. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press,
1952)
32
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 140.
33
. In this discussion of poetry versus history, Aristotle is quoted as the authority in saying that poetry is more serious than history. The reason is that
poetry deals with the universal, while history deals with the particular. As it is
better to render life as it should be, the poet has more freedom and is able to
modify nature.
34
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 427.
35
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 423.
36
. Nicholas Boileau-Despreaux: The Art of Poetry, Drydens translation in:
The Great Critics ed. Smith/Parks (New York: Norton, 1932), p. 226.
[Noffrez rien au lecteur que ce qui peut lui plaire. / Ayez pour la cadence une
oreille svre /. . ./ Le vers le mieux rempli, la plus noble pense / Ne peut
plaire lesprit, quand loreille est blesse Boileau: LArt Poetique (Paris:
18/24, 1966) p. 24]
37
. Boileau: The Art of Poetry, in: Smith/Parks ibid., p 228-29. [Vingt fois
sur le mtier remettez votre ouvrage: / Polissez-le sans cesse et le repolissez; /
Ajoutez quelquefois, et souvent effacez /. . . / Craignez-vous pour vos vers la
censure publique? / Soyez-vous vous-mme un svre critique. /. . . / Aimez

77
quon vous conseille, et non pas quon vous loue. Boileau: LArt Poetique,
ibid., p. 26]
38
. Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 339.
39
. Boileau: The Art of Poetry, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 229. [Un flatteur
aussitoot cherche se rcrier: Chaque vers guil entend le fait extasier. Boileau: LArt Poetique, ibid., p. 27]
40
. Boileau: The Art of Poetry, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 248. [Faites choix
dun censeur solide et salutaire, / Que la reason conduise et le savoir claire, /
Et dont le crayon sr dabord aille chercher / Lendroit que lon sent faible, et
quon se veut cacher. / Lui seul claircira vos doutes ridicules, / De votre esprit
tremblant lvera les scrupules. Boileau: LArt Poetique, ibid., p. 57]
41
. Subsequently, in an era one might term post-romanticism, this whole
idea of the inner work of the poets slowly is articulated as having its source in
existence itself, raising the poets to the distinction they receive in modernity
as the exclusive denominators of being.
42
. Boileau: The Art of Poetry, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 228. [Avant donc
que dcrire apprenez a penser. / Selon que notre ide est plus ou moins obscure, / Lexpression la suit, ou moins nette, ou plus pure. / Ce que lon concoit
bien snonce clairement, / Et les mots pour le dire arrivent aisment / . . . /
Sans la langue, en un mot, lauteur le plus divin / Est toujours, quoi quil fasse,
un mchant crivain. / Travaillez loisir, quelque ordre qui vous presse, / Et ne
vous piquez point dune folle vitesse. Boileau: LArt Poetique, ibid., p. 26]
43
. Boileau: The Art of Poetry, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 224-25. [Quelque
sujet quon traite, ou plaisant, ou sublime, / Que toujours le bon sens saccorde
avec la rime: / Lun lautre vainement ils semblent se har; / La rime est une esclave et ne doit quobir. / Lorsqu la bien chercher dabord on svertue, /
Lesprit la trouver aisment shabitue; / Au joug de la raison sans peine elle
flchit / Et, loin de la gner, la sert et lenrichit. / Mais lorsquon la nglige,
elle devient rebelle; / Et pour la rattraper le sens court aprs elle. Boileau:
LArt Poetique, ibid., p. 22]
44
. In Cassirer, Boileau is essentially seen as responding to Cartesian rationalism and mathematics in the seventeenth century France: If the work of art
is to be worthy of its name, if it is to be independent from possessing objective
truth and perfection, then it must purge itself of the subjective forces which
were indispensable during its development . . . for the law governing art as
such is not derived from and produced by the imagination; it is rather a purely
objective law which the artist does not have to invent but only to discover in
the nature of things. Boileau considers reason as the epitome of such objective
laws, and in this sense he commands the poet to love reason. The poet is not to
seek external pomp and false embellishment; he should be content with what
his subject itself offers. If he portrays it in its simple truth, he may be sure that
he has satisfied the highest standard of beauty. For beauty can be approached

78
only along the path of truth. Ernst Cassirer: The Philosophy of Enlightenment
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), p. 285.
45
. Nous trouvons dans lptre aux Pisons comme chez Boileau, des conseils de travail, lide que le poete nest pas seulement un inspir ou un reveur,
mais un bon artisan. Mizrachi, Boileau ou lordre des mots, in: Boileau: LArt
Poetique, ibid., p. 9.
46
. Boileau: The Art of Poetry, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 225, my emphasis.
[Aimez donc la raison: que toujours vos crit / Empruntent delle seule et leur
lustre et leur prix. / La plupart, emports dune fougue insense, / Toujours loin
du droit sens vont chercher leur pense: / Ils croiraient sabaisser, dans leurs
vers monstrueux, / Sils pensaient ce quen autre a pu penser comme eux. / vitons ces excs: Boileau: LArt Poetique, ibid., p. 22]
47
. Pope: On Criticism, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 340.
48
. Boileau: The Art of Poetry, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 245. [Que la nature donc soit votre tude unique, / Auteurs qui prtendez aux honneurs du
comique / Quiconque voit bien lhomme et, dun esprit profond, / De tant de
curs cashs a pntr le fond; / Qui sait bien ce que cest quun prodigue, un
avare, / Un honntte homme, un fat, un jaloux un bizarre / . . . / Prsentez-en
partout les images naves; / Que chacun y soit peint des couleurs les plus vives.
/ La nature, fconde en bizarres portraits, Boileau: LArt Poetique, ibid., p.
51]
49
. Pope: On Criticism, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 335.
50
. Pope: On Criticism, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 341-43, my emphasis.
51
. David Hume: On Simplicity and Refinement in Writing, in: Essays;
Moral, Political, and Literary (Indianapolis: LibertyClassics, 1987), p. 193, my
emphasis.
52
. David Hume: On Simplicity and Refinement in Writing, ibid., p. 194.
53
. David Hume: On Simplicity and Refinement in Writing, ibid., p. 194.
54
. David Hume: On Simplicity and Refinement in Writing, ibid., p. 194, my
emphasis.
55
. David Hume: On Simplicity and Refinement in Writing, ibid., p. 194,
Humes emphasis.
56
. Pope: On Criticism, in: Smith/Parks, ibid., p. 336.
57
. Dryden: A defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poetry, in: Dryden: Of
Dramatic Poesy vol. 1 (London, 1962), p. 122.
58
. Aristotle: Poetics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982), 5.
59
. Corneille: Discourse on the Three Unities, in: Adams, ibid., p. 223.
[Beaucoup dclament contre cette rgle quils nomment tyrannique, et auraient raison, si elle ntait fonde que sur lautorit dAristote Corneille: Discours des Trois Units, in: Thtre complet, Tome Premier, (Rouen: Publications de lUniversit de Rouen, 1984) p. 90]

79
60

. Corneille: Discourse on the Three Unities, in: Adams, ibid., p. 223. [la
raison naturelle qui lui sert dappui Corneille: Discours des Trois Units, ibid., p. 90]
61
. Corneille: Discourse on the Three Unities, in: Adams, ibid., p. 223. [Le
pome dramatique est une imitation, ou pour en mieux parler, un portrait des
actions des hommes, et il est hors de doute que les portraits sont dautant plus
excellents quils ressemblent mieux loriginal. La reprsentation dure deux
heures, et ressemblerait parfaitement, si laction quelle reprsente nen demandait pas davantage pour sa ralit. Ainsi, ne nous arrtons point ni aux
douze, ni aux vingt-quatre heures, mais resserrons laction du pome dans la
moindre dure quil nous sera possible, afin que sa reprsentation ressemble
mieux et soit plus parfaite. Corneille: Discours des Trois Units, ibid., p. 9091]
62
. Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 606
63
. Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poesy, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 606.
64
. Sidney: The Defense of Poesie, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 449.
65
. Corneille: Discourse on the Three Unities, in: Adams, ibid., p. 225.
[Quant lunit de lieu, je nen trouve aucun prcepte ni dans Aristote ni dans
Horace. Cest ce qui porte quelques-uns croire que la rgle ne sen est tablie
quen consquence de lunit du jour, et se persuader ensuite quon le peut
tendre jusques o un homme peut aller et revenir en vingt-quatre heures. Cette
opinion est un peu licencieuse; et si lon faisait aller un acteur en poste, les
deux cts du thtre pourraient reprsenter Paris et Rouen. Je souhaiterais,
pour ne point gner du tout le spectateur, que ce quon fait reprsenter devant
lui en deux heures se pt passer en effet en deux heures, et que ce quon lui fait
voir sur un thtre qui ne change point, pt sarrter dans une chambre ou dans
une salle, suivant le choix quon en aurait fait; mais souvent cela est si malais,
pour ne pas dire impossible, quil faut de ncessit trouver quilque largissement pour le liur, comme pour le temps. Corneille: Discours des Trois Units,
ibid., p. 92]
66
. Howard quoted from Dryden: A Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy,
ibid., p. 124.
67
. Dryden: A Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, ibid., p. 125.
68
. To demonstrate obedience to this rule of unity of place, Corneille introduced his so-called liason des scenes. One should avoid changing places in
the middle of an act. And in order to show that the place remains the same
throughout the act, one is recommended to bind together the scenes by never
emptying the stage for actors. Thus, the poet must continue to introduce still
new characters onto the stage with some business with characters already there.
This is also conceived as giving the play a certain continuation; all the persons
in the play know each other.
69
. Dryden: An Essay of Dramatic Poetry, in: Gilbert, ibid., p. 607.

80
70

. Dryden: A Defence of an Essay of Dramatic Poesy, ibid., p. 126-27.

. As we here and in the following sections take for granted that Le Cid is
well-known, and freely refer to its characters and action, it may convenience
the reader to offer a brief summary of the work. The young couple, Chimne
and Rodrigue, are in love, and their fathers have agreed to their marriage. Secretly, however, the infanta, the kings daughter, also loves Rodrigue, but because of their difference in social statushe is the son of one of the kings
generals, she the kings daughtershe must suppress her love. As a means to
forget her own love, she has encouraged Chimne in her inclinations for Rodrigue. Don Diego (Rodrigues father) receives a prestigious official appointment
from the king who thus passes over Don Gomez (Chimnes father), who had
expected to receive the same position. In his disappointment, Don Gomez insults Don Diego, who is too old to take up the challenge and defend his honor,
and instead urges his son to defend the family name. Rodrigue is now torn between his love for Chimne, daughter of Don Gomez, and his loyalty towards
his father. However, he realizes quickly that it is his duty to avenge the insult,
and when Don Gomez refuses to retract his insult and apologize, Rodrigue is
forced to challenge him. Against all odds, the inexperienced Rodrigue successfully defends his fathers name and kills his opponent. But now the same duty
of avenging family name lies upon Chimne, as the code of honor demands that
she seeks retribution for her slain father. Despite her love for Rodrigue, she
therefore must implore the king to aid her in having Rodrigue executed. As
both Chimne and Rodrigue know that Rodrigue has only done what he had to,
and that Chimne now has the similar duty to avenge her father, Rodrigue tries
nobly to solve the conflict by offering Chimne his life. She refuses, and reveals her love to him; still vowing to seek revenge. The city, Seville has been
under attack by the Moors, and San Diego persuades his son to forget Chimne
and take over the defense, with the result that Rodrigue defeats the enemy.
Chimne, however, still requests the death of Rodrigue, and, on the condition
that she promises to marry the winner, the king reluctantly allows her to choose
someone to defend her name and fight Rodrigue. Faithful to Chimne, Rodrigue is determined to die in the duel and let his opponent win, although
Chimne urges him to put up a serious fight. When her defender returns from
the fightbecause Rodrigue has defeated him but spared his lifeshe believes
Rodrigue to be dead, and blames the defender thus openly revealing her love
for Rodrigue. The king perceives this affection and determines that the strife
has to end. He orders Chimne to forgive Rodrigue andafter one appropriate
year of mourning her fatherto marry him.
72
. Corneille, my translation [Mais il nen va pas ainsi du combat de don
Sanche, dont le roi tait le matre, et pouvait lui choisir un autre temps que
deux heures aprs la fuite des Maures. Leur dfaite avait assez fatigu Rodrigue
toute la nuit pour mriter deux ou troix jours de repos. Corneille: Examen, in:
71

81

Corneille: Thtre Complet, vol. I, ed: Alain Niderst (Rouen: Publications de

lUniversit de Rouen, 1984), p. 647]
73
. Corneille, my translation. [Cette mme rgle presse aussi trop Chimne
de demander justice au roi la seconde fois. Elle lavait fait le soir dauparavant,
et navait aucun sujet dy retourner le lendemain matin pour en importuner le
roi, dont elle navait encore aucun lieu de se plaindre, puisquelle ne pouvait
encore dire quil lui et mangu de promesse. Le roman lui autait donn sept
ou huit jours de patience avant que de len presser de nouveau, mais les vingt et
quatre heures ne lont pas permis; cest lincommodit de la rgle. Corneille:
Examen, ibid., p. 647]
74
. Corneille, my translation. [Que le sujet nen vaut rien du tout, / Quil
choque les principales rgles du pome dramatique, / Quil manque de jugement en sa conduite, / Quil a beaucoup de mchants vers, / Que presque tout
ce quil a de beauts sont drobes. Georges de Scudry quoted from the editors preface to Le Cid, ed: Niderst, ibid., p. 629]
75
. Corneille, my translation. [Les deux visites que Rodrigue fait sa
matresse, ont quelque chose qui choque cette biensance de la part de celle qui
les souffre; la rigueur de devoir voulait quelle refust de lui parler, et
senfermt dans son cabinet au lieu de lcouter; mais permettez-moi de dire
avec un des premiers esprits de notre sicle, que leur conversation est remplie
de si beaux sentiments, que plusieurs nont pas connu ce dfaut, et que ceux
qui lont connu lont tolr. Corneille: Examen, ibid., p. 646]
76
. Corneille, my translation. [Il est vrai que, dans ce sujet, il faut se contenter de tirer Rodrigue de pril, sans le pousser jusqu son mariage avec
Chimne. Il est historique et a plu en son temps, mais bien srement il dplairait au ntre; et jai peine voir que Chimne y consente chez lauteur espagnol, bien quil donne plus de trois ans de dure la comdie quil en a faite.
Pour ne pas contredire lhistoire, jai cru ne me pouvoir dispenser den jeter
quelque ide, mais avec incertitude de leffet, et ce ntait que par l que je
pouvais accorder la biensance de thtre avec la vrit de lvnement. Corneille: Examen, ibid., p. 646]
77
. Corneille: The Cid (New York: Penguin Classics, 1985) p. 79.
[Lhonneur vous en est d; les cieux me sont tmoins / Qutant sorti de vous
je ne pouvais pas moins; Corneille: Le Cid, ed: Niderst, ibid., p. 683]
78
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 80 [Porte encore plus haut le fruit de ta
victoire. / Je tai donn la vie et tu me rends ma gloire, / Et, dautant que
lhonneur mest plus cher que le jour, / Dautant plus maintenant je te dois de
retour. / Mais dun si brave cur loigne ces faiblesses: / Nous navons quun
honneur: il est tant de matresses; / Lamour nest quun plaisir, et lhonneur un
devoir. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 683]
79
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 80 [Ah! Que me dites-vous / . . . / Et vous
mosez pousser la honte du change! / Linfamie est pareille et suit galement /

82

Le guerrier sans courage et le perfide amant. / A ma fidlit ne faites point

dinjure; / Souffrez-moi gnreux sans me rendre parjure; / Mes liens sont trop
forts pour tre ainsi rompus; / Ma foi mengage encor si je nespre plus, / Et
ne pouvant quitter ni possder Chimne, / Le trpas que je cherche est ma plus
douce peine. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 683]
80
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 45 [Il faut venger un pre et predre une
matresse: / Lun chauffle mon cur, lautre retient mon bras. / Rduit au triste
choix de trahir ma flamme, / Ou de vivre en infme Corneille: Le Cid p. 660]
81
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 46 [Qui venge cet affront irrite sa colre, /
Et qui peut le souffrir ne la mrite pas. / Prvenons la douleur davoir failli
contre elle, / Qui nous serait mortelle. / Tout mest fatal; rien ne me peut gurir
/ Ni soulager ma peine. / Allons, mon me, et puisquil faut mourir, / Mourons,
du moins, sans offenser Chimne. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 660]
82
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 46 [Courons la vengence / Et, tout honteux davoir tant balanc / Ne souons plus en peine. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid.,
p. 660]
83
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 73 [Et ta beaut sans doute emportait la
bamance, / Si je neusse oppos contre tous tes appas / Quun homme sans
honneur ne te mritait pas, / Quaprs mavoir chri quand je vivais sans blme,
/ Qui maima gnreux me harait infme, / Qucouter ton amour, obir sa
voix, / Ctait men rendre indigne et diffamer ton choix. Corneille: Le Cid,
ibid., p. 678-79]
84
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 54 [Sil ne mobit point, quel comble
mon ennui! / Et sil peut mobir, que dira-t-on de lui? / Souffrir un tel affront
tant n gentilhomme! / Soit quil cde ou rsiste au feu qui le consomme, /
Mon esprit ne peut qutre ou honteux ou confus, / De son trop de respect ou
dun juste refus. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 666]
85
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 73 [Ah Rodrigue! Il est vrai, quoique ton
ennemie, / Je ne te puis blmer davoir fui linfamie, Corneille: Le Cid, ibid.,
p. 679]
86
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 36 [Oui, oui, je men souviens, et
jpandrai mon sang / Plutt que de rien faire indigne de mon rang. Corneille:
Le Cid, ibid., p. 653]
87
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 59 [Le comte mobir ne peut perdre sa
gloire. / Dailleurs laffront me touche; il a perdu dhonneur / Celui que de mon
fils jai fait le gouverneur, / Et par ce trait hardi, dune insolence extrme, / Il
sest pris mon choix, il sest pris moi-mme. / Cest moi quil satisfait en
rparant ce tort. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 669]
88
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 85 [Tu poursuis en sa mort la ruine publique. / Quoi? Pour venger un pre est-il jamais permis / De livrer sa patrie aux
mains des ennemis? / Contre nous ta poursuite est-elle lgitime? / Et pour tre

83

punis avons-nous part au crime? / . . . / Ote-lui ton amour, mais laisse-nous sa

vie. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 687]
89
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 85 [Ah, madame, souffrez quavecque libert / Je pousse jusquau bout ma gnrosit. / Quoique mon cur pour lui
contre moi sinteresse, / Quoiquun peuple ladore et quun roi le caresse, /
Quil soit environn des plus vaillants guerriers, / Jirai sous mes cyprs accabler ses lauriers. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 687]
90
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 106 [Sire, un peu trop dardeur malgr moi
la dcue. / Je venais du combat lui raconter lissue. / Ce gnreux guerrier dont
son cur est charm, / Ne crains rien (ma-t-il dit, quand il ma dsarm); / je
laisserais plutt la victoire incertaine / Que de rpandre un sang hasard pour
Chimne. / Mais, puisque mon devoir mappelle auprs du roi, / Va de notre
combat lentretenir pour moi, / Offrir ses genoux ta vie et ton pe. / Sire, jy
suis venu; cet objet l trompe. / Elle ma cru vainqueur me voyant de retour, /
Et soudain sa colre a trahi son amour / Avec tant de transport et tant
dimpatience, / Que je nai pu gagner un moment daudience Corneille: Le
Cid, ibid., p. 701]
91
. Corneille: The Cid, ibid., p. 107 [Ma fille, il ne faut point rougir dun si
beau feu / Ni chercher les moyens den faire un dsaveu; / Une louable honte
enfin ten sollicite; / Ta gloire est dgage et ton devoir est quitte, / Ton pre
est satisfait, et ctait le venger / Que mettre tant de fois ton Rodrigue en danger. / To vois comme le ciel autrement en dispose; / Ayant tant fait pour lui,
fais pour toi quelque chose, / Et ne sois point rebelle mon commandement /
Qui te donne un poux aim si chrement. Corneille: Le Cid, ibid., p. 702]