Early Tudor Poetry: Courtliness and Print

After noting the evidence for the public performance of poetry in Continental Europe, this chapter turns to the impact of print on English poetry: from the late fifteenth century, the printers Caxton and de Worde gave readers a new way to experience poems. At the court of Henry VIII, Skelton exploited both manuscript and print. The Devonshire manuscript, which circulated around Henry’s courtiers, is discussed, as is Tottel’s 1557 Songes and Sonettes, whose cachet lay partly in its making the private poetry of the elite available to a large public. Another popular collection was A Mirror for Magistrates, in which a gathering of poets impersonating famous tragic victims of the past was staged. Although there were signs of a suppler use of metre, the 1560s and 1570s were characterized by highly regular verse. The most skilled poet of this period, Gascoigne, was also responsible for a pathbreaking treatise on poetry.

Chaucer, Gower, and Fifteenth-Century Poetry in English

By the end of the fourteenth century, a sizeable audience for poetry in English among the gentry and the commercial classes had emerged. Chaucer wrote for this readership, and his poetry shows a successful absorption of French and Italian models. This chapter scrutinizes his work for evidence of the manner in which it was performed and received. Throughout his oeuvre, Chaucer appeals to both hearers and readers, using images both of books and of oral performers. His invention of the English iambic pentameter made possible a fuller embodiment in verse of the speaking voice, unlike Gower, who chose to write his major work, Confessio Amantis, in strict tetrameters. In the fifteenth century, the changing pronunciation of English made writing in metre a challenge, as is evident in the work of Hoccleve and Lydgate. The chapter ends with a consideration of the Scottish poets Henryson, Dunbar, and Douglas.

Late Antiquity: Latin and Greek, Private, Public, Popular

The fourth to sixth centuries AD witnessed considerable poetic activity, which is the subject of this chapter. Itinerant poets gave performances, and festivals flourished. Poetry in both Latin and Greek was composed, and the reading of poems remained both a public and a private activity. This chapter pays particular attention to two poets: Ausonius, as an example of a poet who wrote for private consumption, and Claudian, whose poetry was performed in public for political ends. The rise of Christianity produced a more popular body of verse derived from Jewish psalmody: hymns in Latin metres that evolved from quantitative to accentual, reflecting the loss of quantitative distinctions in the language. The same loss occurred in Greek, the language of the eastern Empire centred on Constantinople, where one verse composer of particular interest in the sixth century was Romanos the Melodist.

Archaic to Classical Greece: Festivals and Rhapsodes

Some of the so-called Homeric Hymns, dating from the seventh century BC, provide evidence of poetic performance at festivals in Greece. Alongside the sung hexameter epics, two other verse traditions appear to have been recited without music: iambics and elegiacs, both of which were used in public performances. We hear of a new kind of recited performance in the sixth century, that of the rhapsode, the fullest account of which (admittedly from a hostile perspective) is that given by Plato in the Ion. This chapter discusses the figure of the rhapsode, and the significance of a performance tradition in which a fixed text is used, perhaps with the aid of a written script. The chapter ends with a consideration of Plato’s hostility to poetry and Aristotle’s response to his arguments.

Homeric Greece: Courts and Singers

This chapter traces the pre-history of Western poetry as revealed in the two Homeric epics, which contain vivid representations of oral poets in archaic Greece performing epic poems to court audiences as well some other evocations of poetic song. By examining these representations, some conclusions are reached about the nature of the performances and the experience of the audiences. Although this verse was different in important ways from the poetry of later periods, notably in its association with music and the practice of composition-in-performance, the effects on hearers suggest a similar pleasurable response to its poetic art. The poems attributed to Hesiod from around the same time reveal a different performance context, that of the poetry competition, and imply a more sharply defined singer. The trope of the Muses in both poetic corpuses throws light on the role and perception of the poet-singer.

Introduction

By way of introduction, the issue of a poem’s mode of existence is raised, and the centrality of the listener’s or reader’s experience is emphasized. Some of the difficulties of writing a history of that experience from archaic Greece to the English Renaissance are discussed: one of these is the paucity of evidence and the consequent debates among scholars; another is the porousness of the boundaries between poetry and drama, on the one hand, and poetry and music, on the other. Although verse was valued for a number of different qualities and effects throughout this period, its function as poetry is inseparable from its power to provide pleasure.

The Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries

This chapter is concerned with the vernacular poetry of Europe in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Side-by-side with the monastic production and preservation of poetry, the castles and courts of the nobility became centres of culture. France, in particular, saw extensive poetic activity, notably in the genres of the chanson de geste and the troubadour lyric. Other French genres of the time include saints’ lives, romances, lais, and fabliaux; the use of the octosyllabic line for these poems is examined. Poetry in the Germanic languages, notably the Middle High German courtly epics and Minnesänger lyrics and the Old Norse eddic and skaldic poetry of Iceland, is discussed, as is the lyric poetry of Italy. The evidence for the experience of poetry in Dante’s Vita nuova is considered. The rhythmic variety of Middle English verse, it is argued, suggests some uncertainty in the adoption of French metres.

Ancient Rome: The Empire after Augustus

This chapter focuses on the institution of the recitatio, characteristic of late Augustan and post-Augustan Rome, whereby poets read out their unfinalized poetry for an audience to criticize before revising it for publication. The main source of evidence is the Letters of Pliny the Younger, who describes in some detail both the recitationes he organized in his own house and those he attended. Comments by other writers on recitationes are cited, both those in favour and those opposed, and the value of the institution to Roman poetry is considered. The symposium as a site for the reading of verse continues to be attested, and there is evidence for the continued inclusion of poetry contests in celebratory games. Other places where poetry might be found, such as walls and monuments, are reviewed.

Ancient Rome: The Republic and the Augustan Age

This chapter begins with earliest form of Latin verse, the Saturnian, dating from the early centuries after Rome’s founding; little is known about it, however. A native tradition of written verse was established when Ennius created a Latin equivalent of the Greek hexameter, and there is evidence of public performances of his epic verse. During the Late Republic, the two major poets were Lucretius and Catullus, the former inviting a reader imbibing versified philosophy on the page, the latter inviting performance in a convivial setting—but also incorporating performance in the verse itself. Cicero, in the same period, provides testimony to the practice of having skilled readers at symposia. The two poets who dominate the Augustan era, Virgil and Horace, also represent opposing attitudes to performance, the former embracing it, the latter professing to abhor it. Allusions by Ovid and Propertius to poetic performance are also discussed.

Classical Greece to Ptolemaic Alexandria: Writers and Readers

When the Phoenician alphabet was adapted for use in Greece remains a matter of debate, but the impact of writing on poetry appears most clearly around the end of the sixth century BC when papyrus rolls became more common. However, it was not until the establishment of Alexandria as a major centre of Greek culture in the later fourth century that the reading of poetry on the written page became the norm. This chapter focuses on the experience of poetry in Alexandria in this period. With the loss of the musical dimension of Greek lyric, poetry became more exclusively a matter of the speaking voice, and the epigram became a favoured genre. The extensive collection of papyrus rolls in the Library of Alexander made the work of earlier writers accessible and encouraged highly allusive verse. These qualities are best demonstrated in the poetry of Callimachus, one of whose poems is discussed as an example of the dramatic recreation of performance in a work designed to be read.