CC BY
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Section 10. Philology and linguistics
Vlasenko Nataliya Ivanovna, Dnepropetrovsk National University, Senior Lecturer, the Faculty of Philology E-mail: [email protected]
From mimesis to demiurgia: aesthetic renovation of traditional poetics in the english renaissance novel
Abstract: the article deals with the problem of the genesis of the English Renaissance novel. The basic approaches to the genre modification in question are analyzed in the light of their connection with the general epistemological and methodological tendencies predetermining the dynamics of the literary criticism. It is clarified that the contradictory historical and literary reputation of the Elizabethan long-form narrative manifesting in the dilemma of the genre start and its false-start was established on the ground of the identification of the novel genetic model and its structural matrix. The creative experiments of Shakespeare’s contemporaries focusing their literary activity on the renewal of the romance are examined in their connection with the transformations of the Renaissance artistic consciousness revealed on the base of the correlation between the recent historical-poetological conceptions and ideas of the structural theoretical poetics.
Keywords: genesis, romance, novel, Renaissance, poetics, rhetoric, mimesis, demiurgia.
Revealing the correlation between the aesthetical worldview criteria newfound in the course of the romance renewal occurred in the Elizabethan era (1558-1603) and the principles of creative activity established in the epoch of traditionalism initiates the going out of the scientific thought focusing on the English Renaissance novel of the limits of genre reflection verifying the logic of its genesis by the order of its structure. Such a shift of the retrospection determining the vision of the genre in the academic history of the novel forms the preliminary outcome of examining the ambivalent genre status attributed by it to the Elizabethan modification of the novel as a sign of non-coming out the deadlock of its study predicted by the reversion of the primary theoretical approach to this genre supposing the comprehension of its form in the light of the formation of the romance and the novel.
In this area of the genre meta-narration the scientific dis-cursion about the English Renaissance novel inspired by the opposition of “the genre start” (J. Jusserand) [1] and “the genre false start” (E. Baker) [2] arisen as a dilemma of its definition at the turn of the nineteenth century [3] is to be continued against the background of the recent historical-poetological typologies of artistic consciousness (S. S. Averintsev, M. L. Andreev, M. L. Gasparov, A. N Grintser, A. V. Michaylov
[4]) supporting the genealogical study of literature by unfolding the dynamics of the interaction of its main sources forming the literary creative intentionality and manifesting in the concepts of style, genre and author. Discovering the transmission of the poetical dominant in the history these conceptions draw attention to the variety of superposing modal, thematic and formal parameters of the genre formation defined in the great syntheses of the literary theory — from Plato and Aristotle to G. Hegel and M. M. Bakhtin — summarized in the theoretical poetics of structuralism founded by J. Jennette in the course of developing the idea of the architext [5].
Actualizing the epistemological premises of the literary criticism connected with the mainstream of the methodological innovations in the modern humanitarian study stimulated by “post-metaphysical” (J. Habermas) epistemology [6; 7] such an emphasis on the aesthetic dimension of self-other relationship displaying the personal multiplicity of the subjectivity [8] ensures overcoming the primary and broadly accepted view of the long-form narrative created in the Elizabethan era as a starting-point of the genre formation in England surpassing the architectonics of the romance formed in the continental Europe and, at the same time, incomplete and imperfect in comparison with the classical form of the novel established from the eighteenth to the nineteenth centuries.
Based upon the identification of the genetic models of the literature with its structural matrix corresponding to the classical concept of the subject renovating “the presumptions of metaphysics” (J. Derrida) this angle of the genre reflection has predetermined the contradictory historical and literary reputation of the English Renaissance novel.
Having laid the foundations of its discovery in the study byJ. Jusserand realized the cultural-historical approach to the literature introduced by H. Taine, the application of the poetical criteria characteristic of other (former or later) genre historical modifications to the novel arisen in the age of W. Shakespeare resulted in its underestimation revealed in the diachronic representations of the genre formation in England performed by the positivistic literary criticism (E. Baker [2], W. Dawson [9], R. Church [10], A. Kettle [11], J. Knight [12]) and preserved in the attempts of their renovations undertaken on the sociological ground
(M. Schlauch, [13] D. M. Urnov [14]). In these areas of the genealogical thought the creative experiments given rise to the long-form narrative in England at the end of the sixteenth century appeared as the genre transformations coinciding in their aesthetic direction with the achievements of the English
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From mimesis to demiurgia: aesthetic renovation of traditional poetics in the english renaissance novel
novelists of the Enlightenment but linked in their poetics with the romance stereotypes.
Such an ambiguity of the position in the process of the genre formation prescribed to the Elizabethan novel was not overcome in the synchronic reconstructions of its genesis made in the field of structural (W. Davis [15]) and post-formalistic (P. Selzman [16]) fields of view of the genre modification in question. Aimed at thinking the connections of the long-form narrative emerged in the age of W. Shakespeare with the principles and markers of the Renaissance artistic consciousness these visions of the novel inspired by Elizabeth I didn’t reveal the peculiarities of the aesthetic renovation of the traditional genre poetics embodied in it because of generalizing M. M. Bakhtin’s concept of the novel dialogism
[17] and Y. N. Tinyanov’s idea of the genre self-alienation
[18] marked by the incompleteness of the authors’ definitions complicating the comprehension of the historical specifics of the romance/novel formation in their light.
A real break-through the underestimated historical and literary reputation of the Elizabethan novel was initiated by the scholars of Dnepropetrovsk National University started its study under the supervision of L. Y. Potyemkina in 1990th years. Having anticipated the renewal of the histori-cism as a method of literary criticism performed at the end of the twentieth — in the early twenty-first centuries in the sphere of historical poetics this initiative was realized in the series of investigations which revealed historical-poetological peculiarities of the long-form narrative appeared in Shakespeare’s England in the course of examining its genre typology (L. P. Privalova) and its authors’ variants (T. I. Vlasova, L. R. Nickiforova, H. N. Sklyarova, N. N. Torkut). All these lines of the scientific search applying to the English Renaissance Novel emphasized the connection of the Elizabethan genre innovations in question with the transformation of the poetical dominant from the style into the genre laying the foundations of the author’s fulfillment in the movement of late-traditionalistic artistic consciousness from the superiority of literary canon to the priority of the individual creative activity. Strengthening on the historical-theoretical ground formed by the correlation between the genre genealogical models and its structural matrix realized in the course of the emerging methodological renovation of the literary criticism such a vision of the long-form narrative created in the age of W. Shakespeare contemplates the investigation of its genesis in the aspect of the Renaissance comprehension of two main ways of the traditional interaction of genre, style and author manifested in the categories of mimesis to demiurgia.
The English Renaissance novel was founded in the creative experiments performed John Lyly (1554-1606), Philip Sidney (1554-1586), Robert Greene (1560-1592), Thomas Lodge (1558-1625), Thomas Nashe (1567-1601) and Thomas Deloney (1543? — 1600?). Revealing the historical dichotomy of the genre established by the late traditionalistic poetological transformation of the romance resulted in the appearance of the novel [19, 97] their genre innovations real-
ize in its modification remote from the poetical characteristics of the romance and, at the same time, distant from the poetics of the novel. The creators of the long-form narrative ensuring the expansion of the genre to the British cultural areal completed a historic transformation of romance aesthetics by returning to the principles of the genre formation founded by the classical rhetoric. In such a resumption of the initial model of the romance genesis [20, 136] actualized in its love-adventured variant created by Heliodor at the end of antiquity they became involved into the process of establishing the literature of late traditionalism as «conscious poetic and rhetorical unity» (S. S. Averintsev) based on the approval of the variety of forms of literary creative activity.
The type of the interaction of rhetorical and poetical sources of the literature embodied in the creative works by the Elizabethan novelists differs from the way of intermingling the criteria of poetics and rhetoric characteristic of the continental creative experiments directing on the renewal of the romance narrative matrix (from M. Bojardo and L. Ariosto to M. Cervantes and anonymous authors of picaresque novel).
The writers of the Elizabethan England focusing on the rethinking of the rhetorical foundations in the course of creating the long-form narrative took into consideration the idea of imitation of the sample transforming to the competition with its author. Thus they realized the disposition of the cultural dialogue formed by the Renaissance artistic consciousness and inspired the coordination ofAristotle’s and Horatio’s models of literary creative activity.
But in contradistinction to the experience of the continental European novelists of this epoch, who changed the object of imitation from natura naturata to natura naturans in the process of the extension of the objective sphere of the literature moving genre thematic limits, the founders of the genre modification appeared in the age ofW. Shakespeare preferred to transform the correlation of modality and topic in the genre-forming matrix founded by Horacio’s poetics advancing in such a way to the neoplatonic reinterpretation of Aristotle’s conception of poesy ensuring the substitution of mimesis by demiurgia on the base of mannerism.
This tendency manifests itself through the author’s genre definitions applied to the species of the English Renaissance novel. The creators of this genre modification oriented on the narrative forms of rhetoric emphasized in their modal characteristics and non-limited in thematic parameters varying in their choice from the history and discourse to treatise and pamphlet.
These genre nominations formed the metatexual dimension of the Elizabethan novel predetermining its reception beyond the romance tradition transformed in different way in the authors’ variants of the novel modification in question represented by such creative works as: “Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit" (1578) and “Euphues and his England" (1580) byJ. Lyly, ‘The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia Being the Original Version” (1580) and “The Countess of Pembroke’s Arcadia” (1591-1592) by Ph. Sidney, “Pandosto, or the Triumph of Time” (1588) and “The Groath Worth ofWitte, Bought with a
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Section 10. Philology and linguistics
Million of Repentance" (1592) by R. Greene, “The Delectable History of Forbonius and Prisceria” (1582) and “A Margarite of America” (1596) by Th. Lodge, “The Unfortunate Traveller, or the History ofJack Wilton” (1594) by Th. Nash, “The Pleasant History of John Winghcomb, In his younguer years called Jack of Newberry” (1597) and “The Pleasant History of Thomas of Reading” (1600) by Th. Deloney.
The ways of the genre formation paved by the novelists of Shakespeare’s England differ in the poetical dominant interacting with the rhetorical narrative form.
Thus, J. Lyly, Th. Lodge in his creative debut and R. Greene in the work crowning his creative activity choose the Italian Renaissance nouvella, offering its different rhetorical counterparts:pamphlet and treatise (“Euphues: the Anatomy of Wit” and “Euphues and his England”); history (“The Delectable History of Forbonius and Prisceria”); pamphlet (“The Groath Worth ofWitte, Bought with a Million of Repentance”).
Ph. Sidney in both versions of his “Arcadia” performs the unique combination of the rhetorical treatise with the epic model and chivalry and pastoral matrix of the romance.
R. Greene in the mainstream of his creative activity represented, in particular, by “Pandosto, or the Triumph of Time” and Th. Lodge in “A Margarite of America” marking the final of his genre innovation combine the connection of history
and treatise formed on the ground of rhetoric with Heliodor’s, chivalry and pastoral types of the romance.
Th. Nash creates the variant of the English Renaissance novel close to the continental genre modifications of the epoch changing the central image of the chivalry romance by the contrary type of hero emphasizing the appearance of the picaresque novel. But in contradistinction to the continental way of its formation extending the narrative model of the Italian Renaissance novella, the writers of the Elizabethan England uses the matrix of rhetorical speech. This aesthetical preference complicates the realization of the motive of the hero’s initiation revealing the specifics of the author’s transformation of the romance poetics.
The uniqueness of Th. Deloney’s creative experiment is based upon the connection of pamphlet and treatise with hagiography and jest-biography directed to the estrangement of the romance poetics renovating the axiological basis of its aesthetics.
Realizing the concept of the author as the demiurge inspired by the correlation of neoplatonism and mannerism the Elizabethan novelists in the course of the correlation of Horatio’s model of the literary activity with its matrix created by Aristotle change the idea of imitation/mimesis implying the comprehension of the world to the concept of demiurgia supposing its formation.
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