The Model of Poesy

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The Model of Poesy (1599), by William Scott, is a

Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas
.

Author

William Scott was born in Kent, England, in the early 1570s and died in 1617.

Westenhanger, Kent.[4]

Summary

Philip Sidney’s crititical work in An Apology for Poetry (1595) was a key precedent for Scott's treatise, The Model of Poesy (1599).

The treatise of The Model of Poesy (1599) is in three sections;[5] in the first section, Scott defines poetry and makes clear his debts to earlier theorists:

All antiquity, following their great leader

Simonides (after whom Sir Philip Sidney saith) the poem is a speaking or wordish picture.[6]

Scott then discusses the genus (matter), difference (form), and end (purpose) of poetry, dealing with creative questions such as the source of poetic inspiration and the temperament required of the poet.

The second section discusses the genres of poetry:

satire, and lyric. The third section discusses poetic practice: about what subjects to write; what are the distinctive qualities of good poetry; and what rules of composition apply to individual genres of poetry. Examples from classical and modern poetry illustrate how poetry achieves its purposes: to teach, to move, and to delight the reader. Proceeding from the work of scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger
(1484–1558), Scott dwells upon the four virtues of poetry, which apply to the poet's choice of matter (genus) and style of writing, noting that Scaliger:

observes that to strike with the pleasure of our poem the doors of men’s sense, these four virtues are especially requisite: first a proportionableness or uniformity; secondly variety; thirdly sweetness; lastly that energeia, force effectualness, or vigour, which is the character of passion and life of persuasion and motion. [7]

Literary influences

La Sepmaine, ou creation du mond (1578), by Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas. In The Model of Poesy (1599), Scott's praise of du Bartas is followed by Scott's translation of the first two days of The Week, or the Creation of the World.

William Scott's knowledge of Classical literature included works by Aristotle (the Organon and the Nicomachean Ethics), Horace (Ars Poetica), Quintilian, Cicero, and Plutarch (Parallel Lives),[8] and contemporary works by the scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger (Poetices libri septem), Giovanni Antonio Viperano (De poeti libri tres), Baldassare Castiglione (Il Libro del Cortegiano), and Gian Paolo Lomazzo (Trattato dell'arte della pittura, scoltura et architettura).[9]

The poetical works of Philip Sidney were central to Scott's conceptions of what is poetry and of what poetry can achieve; in The Model of Poesy he cites Sidney's Astrophel and Stella, the Arcadia and An Apology for Poetry. The editor Gavin Alexander said that "The Model of Poesy is a commentary upon The Defence of Poesy, adopting its basic theory [of poetics], filling in its gaps, interrogating and weighing its sources, glossing and elaborating its difficulties. But it is also a very different sort of work, a much more ambitious and comprehensive exercise inspired by the Defence but not bounded or constrained by it."[10]

Scott also knew the contemporary poetry of his time, such as the

Giovanni Batista Guarini
.

Well known in English literary circles in the 1590s, the French poet

Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas held pride of place in Scott's literary thinking, as a model of Protestant poetry. About La Sepmaine, ou la creation du monde (1578), Scott said that "our incomparable Bartas" has "opened as much natural science in one week, containing the story of Creation, as all the rabble of schoolmen and philosophers have done since Plato and Aristotle" and "hath minced and sugared [divine teachings] for the weakest and tenderest stomach, yet thoroughly to satisfice the strongest judgement".[13] His English translations of the first two days of La Sepmaine, by Du Bartas, are linked to The Model of Poesy as a demonstration of Scott's literary theories (several times quoted in the treatise) and a text with similar words, imagery, and ideas.[14]

Manuscript

The extant copy of The Modell of Poesye: Or The Arte of Poesye drawen into a short or Summary Discourse is in the

La Sepmaine (1578), by Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas. Scott's English translation ends mid-sentence, during ‘The Second Day’, and some lines of text are illegible, because of water damage to the manuscript.[18]

Modern Edition

In 2013, the Cambridge University Press published an edition of The Model of Poesy, edited by Gavin Alexander,

Guillaume de Salluste du Bartas. The contemporary edition of The Model of Poesy uses modern English spelling and punctuation; however, an original edition of The Modell of Poesye (G. Alexander, Ed.) using 16th-century spelling, pagination, and lineation, is available as a free download from the Cambridge University Press website.[20]

In a book review for Spenser Studies, the critic Roger Kuin commended editor Alexander's thorough work in making accessible a literary text of ‘incalculable value’ to scholars and students of English Renaissance literature: ‘for anyone working, in any way, with the literature and the literary scene of the sixteenth century’s last two or three decades, Scott’s Model is indispensable.’[21] In 2015, a special issue of the Sidney Journal presented the significance of The Model of Poesy for students and scholars of Elizabethan literature, and identifies areas of further research.[22]

Notes

  1. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. xix. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  2. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. xx, xxx. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  3. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. xxi. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  4. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. xxvii. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  5. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. lxx-lxxi. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  6. ^ The Model of Poesy, Cambridge edition, p. 6.
  7. ^ The Model of Poesy, p. 33.
  8. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. xlv-xlvii. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  9. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. xlviii. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  10. ^ The Model of Poesy, Gavin Alexander, Ed., p. liii.
  11. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. lxi. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  12. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model of Poesy. p. lx-lxi. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  13. ^ Scott, William. The Model of Poesy, p. 20.
  14. ^ Auger, Peter (2015). "A Model of Creation?: Sidney, Scott and Du Bartas" (PDF). Sidney Journal. 33: 69–90 – via Queen Mary Research Online.
  15. ^ "British Library Archives and Manuscript Catalogue".
  16. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model. p. lxxii. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  17. ^ Alexander (ed.). The Model. p. lxxiv. {{cite book}}: |last1= has generic name (help)
  18. S2CID 148581055
    – via University of Chicago Press Journals.
  19. ^ "Cambridge University Press website".
  20. ^ "Original Spelling Edition".
  21. ^ Kuin. "William Scott. The Model of Poesy". {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  22. ^ "Sidney Society website".

References

External links

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