THE SPANISH PASTORAL AND THE RENAISSANCE SONNET
It
has been said that three elements – pastoral novel, autobiographical novel, and
lyrical anthology – formed the El Prado
de Valencia by Don Gaspar Mercader (1600).[1] This is true of the majority of Spanish
pastoral romances, in varying degrees; however, we must leave the issue of the
roman à clef (or ‘novela de clave’) to one side, for what is of greatest
pertinence to this study is the degree to which the poetry is integrated to the
prose (or vice versa). The
insertion of poems into a narrative – as opposed to their simply ending a
chapter, as in Boccaccio’s Ameto and
Sannazaro’s Arcadia – was a feature
of the chivalric romances, and could be found in Bernardim Ribeiro’s
(1482-1552) Menina e moça (1554).[2] It is now generally recognised that Gil
Polo’s poems are appropriate to their context, in opposition to the earlier
view, of Menéndez Pelayo, that they represented the intercalation of previously
written texts.[3] Diana
Enamorada is also distinguished by a rhythmic prose – one that is to be
recited, one that lies close to poetry – and therefore harmony between both
manifestations of literary language.[4] The same synthesis of poetry and
narration has been claimed for Montemayor.[5] Features of his prose style such as the
use of opposites, the delaying of the verb until the end, the intense use of
epithets (in the pastoral tradition), the accumulation of terms,[6]
are also evident in his poetry. One
feature of Yong’s style is his attempt to poeticise his prose[7];
the desire to endow this comparatively recent medium with literary dignity was
a factor behind the rise of Euphuism, and it is necessary to remark on the
salient features of this mode of writing.
The
association of pastoral and sonnet was primarily Spanish,[8]
then transmitted to French[9]
and German through translation; indeed, in Baroque Germany, this setting was to
play a role in the dissemination of this poetic form.[10] The association was in no way
incongruous. It had, in a way, been
foreshadowed by Sannazaro, who made Petrarchian conventions amenable to the
pastoral through the avoidance of flamboyant excess in his sonnets.[11] Moreover, the style of Petrarchan poetry
lent itself to prose, in the guise of euphuism. It is this proximity to poetry that is
most interesting about the euphuistic style. In such prose, “…the sentence has a
symmetrical structure imposed on it analogous to that of verse… a sentence may
assume an almost stanzaic form.”[12] Moreover, the features of this style –
the parallel sentence structure, the careful balance and antithesis, and the
emphasis on sound relationships (alliteration, assonance, the pleasure of
contrasting similarities) – offer many correspondences with that type of poetry
we find in the Petrarchan sonnet.[13] Of course, these figures of sound are
dependent on syntax, and they are therefore instruments of thought.[14] In this respect, Euphuism can be
considered to be Petrarchism in prose; this is less applicable to the elaborate
similes, often drawn from natural history, that impressed contemporaries[15]
and brought the weight of scorn bearing down on this style,[16]
although even they can be found in the very beginnings of the sonnet.[17] The euphuistic aspect of poems such as ‘The
lowest trees haue topps, the ante her gall,’ – which takes its opening lines
from Euphues and his England (1580)[18]
– has been noted.[19] Such a poem is typical of the ‘sixain
Petrarchanism’ we find in Watson’s Hekatompathia. The similarities between the heroine of
romances and the Petrarchan heroine are also strong: in John Davies of
Kidwelly’s The Extravagant Shepherd,
a 1653 translation of Charles Sorel’s anti-romance Le Berger Extravagant,[20]
there is an illustration entitled: ‘A Poet’s Dream Realised,’ in which his
mistresses eyes are portrayed as two suns, lilies and roses cover her cheeks,
her teeth are pearls – and so on.[21] The reader who turns into this
illustration will not only be shocked at seeing
the literal representation of poetic claims, but will also assume that it is
Petrarchan conventions, and the Petrarchan use of language, that are being
parodied.
With
Montemayor, the pastoral lost in atmosphere and nostalgic lament, and it gained
in depth of exploration of the psychology of love[22];
the sonnet seems the ideal form in which to continue this exploration, and this
supposition will find confirmation in our examination of Yong’s translations
from Gil Polo. The other poetic
forms are perhaps more suitable for the expression
of an amatory state; it would be overstating the case to claim that they do not
provide opportunities for exploration, but on an individual, poem for poem
basis, they do not exert the same pressure on language. This suggests that the sonnet is one of
the most objective poetic forms; and
the distance that this objectivity creates is actually helpful to the
translator. It makes it easier to
engage with the text in a creative capacity; poems that are more overtly
subjective may arouse a
higher degree of empathy.
Moreover,
as one eminent critic has remarked, the pastoral novel has an advantage over
the sonnet-cycle in the analysis of the nature of love: whereas a cycle
portrays an individual’s range of states of mind,[23]
the characters in the novel can react against each other, thus creating a
network of divergent voices that constantly question theory and experience[24];
the monologual restrictions of the sonnet-sequence are, at least in theory,
overcome.[25] The aim of the pastoral is to debate the
merits of the different kinds of love.
Neoplatonism, the sense of love as the supreme binding cosmic force,
pervades this genre.[26] Indeed, the multiplicity of personages
and the polymorphic poetry can all be said to represent manifestations of one
Idea[27];
there is the sense that the writer, like the characters, is striving after a
seemingly inaccessible unity.
However,
English pastorals after Sidney and Yong did not take advantage of the
opportunities offered. The English
pastoral romances, with the exception of
[1] Juan Bautista Avalle-Arce, La novela pastoril española (Madrid: Revista de Occidente, 1959), p. 141.
[2] Ed. Teresa Amado (Lisboa: Editorial Comunicaçao, 1984). However, this work contains only 3 poems, all
in native measures (p. 120, p. 131, and p. 179).
[3] Rafael Ferreres ed., Diana Enamorada. Gaspar Gil Polo. (Madrid: Espasa-Calpe, 1953), pp. xxviii-xxix; Estrada ed., Diana Enamorada (Madrid: Castalia, 1987), pp. 44-45.
[4] Estrada ed. (1987), p. 43.
R.O. Jones, in A Literary History
of
[5] Bruno M. Damiani, ‘Aspectos Estilísticos
de La Diana de Jorge de Montemayor,’ Revista de Filología Española 63 (1983),
pp. 291-312 (311-312).
[6] Estrada ed. (1987), p. 43.
[7] Judith M. Kennedy ed., A Critical Edition of Yong’s
Translation of Montemayor’s Diana and Gil Polo’s Enamoured Diana (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968), p. lxviii.
[8] From small acorns – only 4 sonnets in
Diana – there grew a number of moderate-sized oaks: 14 in Pérez’s continuation,
13 in Gil Polo, 20 in Cervantes’s La
Galatea (1585), and 24 in Lope’s Arcadia
(1598). Jerónimo de Tejeda’s new continuation of Diana in 1627– La Diana de Montemayor. Nuevamente compuesto [sic] por Hierónymo de Texeda Castellano… do se da
fin a las Historias de la Primera y Segunda Parte – included 45 sonnets
from other sources (9 from Gil Polo, whom he plagiarised heavily in general; 5
from Lope de Vega’s non-dramatic work, and 30 from his dramas; and one from La Galatea). –Avalle-Arce (1959), pp.
115-118.
[9] In the first French pastoral novel, Remy Belleau’s La Bergerie (1565), there are 24
sonnets. –Oeuvres Poétiques (2 Vols.
ed. Guy Demerson.
[10] Especially by translations of Montreulx’s Les bergeries de Juliette and D’Urfé’s Astrée. –Joseph Leighton, ‘Das barocke Sonett als Gelegenheitsgedicht’ in Martin Bircher and Eberhard Mannack (eds), Deutsche Barockliteratur und europäische Kultur: Zweites Jahrestreffen des Internationalen Arbeitskreises für deutsche Barockliteratur in der Herzog August Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel 28. bis 31. August 1976 (Hamburg: Dr Ernst Hauswedell & Co. Verlag 1977), 141-167, (151).
[11] His Rime, written in his youth in the Neapolitan dialect, and revised into Tuscan at the end of his life, were published in 1530, soon after his death. They include 80 sonnets in 2 parts, but with no discernible order. –William J. Kennedy, Jacopo Sannazaro and the Uses of Pastoral (Hanover and London: University Press of New England, 1983), pp. 39-40.
[12] Ernest A. Baker, The History of the English Novel (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963[1936]), II:63-64.
[13] G.K. Hunter, John Lyly. The Humanist as Courtier (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul, 1962, p. 263)lists 8 features of Euphuism: 1) Parison; 2) Isocolon;
3) Paromoion (same sound patterns); 4) quasi-rhymes (similiter cadens,
similiter desinens, anaphora, epistrophe); 5) alliteration, especially
transverse; 6) ‘unnatural history’ similes; 7) proverbs and exemplums, often in
lists; 8) rhetorical questions.
[14] Jonas Barish, ‘The prose-style of John Lyly,’ ELH 23 (1956), pp. 14-35 (16), referring to isocolon and parison.
[15] Hunter (1962), p. 276. These similes were used to pattern and organise nature; whereas Medieval bestiaries drew a parallel between nature and the divine scheme, Lyly drew a parallel nature and man (S.L. Wolff, Sewanee Review 31 (1923), p. 25, q. p.279).
[16] Baker (1963) mentions that it was this aspect of Euphuism which
gave rise to criticism. -II:64.
[17] For example, Lo basilisco a
lo speclo lucente by Giacomo da Lentino, in which the basilisk, the swan,
the peacock, and the phoenix, isocolonise the octet.
[18] Lines 1-2, from Lyly (1902), II:90; line 3, ibid, II:372; and line 8, ibid, II:219. –Ralph M. Sargent, The Life and Lyrics of Sir Edward Dyer (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968; formerly entitled At the Court of Queen Elizabeth [1935]), p.211.
[19] Gerald Hammond (ed.), Elizabethan
Poetry: Lyrical and Narrative (London: Macmillan, 1984), p.10 and n.2. This was written by Sir Edward Dyer
c.1580; it was doubtfully attributed to Lyly in Vol.III of the 1902 edition of
his complete works (ed. R. Warwick Bond.
[20] The youthful
[21] This illustration appears on p. 401 of J.J. Jusserand, The English Novel in the Time of Shakespeare,
translated by Elizabeth Lee (London: Ernest Benn, 1966 [1890]). This ‘sonnet-lady’ picture has an
interesting history; the 3 versions of it, each one less realistic and more
ridiculous than the last, can be found in Thomas Roche (Petrarch and the English Sonnet Sequences.
[22] Kennedy ed. (1968), pp. xxi-xxii.
[23] Wording taken
from Greg Walker, ‘The Renaissance in
[24] Arthur Terry, Seventeenth
Century Spanish Poetry (Cambridge University Press, 1993), p. 30. On the
other hand, the writing of a sequence allows – or enforces – more controlled
experimentation. -Spiller (1992), p. 108f.
He has in mind
[25] The sonnet appeared as a monologue in Spanish plays. Lope de Vega, in line 308 of his ‘Arte Nuevo de Hacer Comedias’ (Obras Poéticas. Ed. J.M. Blecua.
Barcelona: Planeta, 1983, p. 265), remarked: “El soneto está bien en los que
aguardan.” A
sonnet is for those in waiting: for those on the stage alone, with an audience
to entertain. –Lucile K.
Delano, ‘The Sonnet in the Golden Age Drama of
[26] According to Leone Ebreo (Judah Abravanel, c.1460-c.1523), in his Dialoghi d’Amore (published 1535), a work strongly influenced by Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, love is identified with God. The chances of rhyme supply few partners for ‘love’ in English: but one of this small group – ‘above’ – seems as appropriate as any other term.
[27] Rallo ed. (1991), p. 42.
[28] The combination of prose and verse was essential to the genre. It is evident in such titles as,
[29] There are no
sonnets in Robert Greene’s Menaphon
(1589), his only prose work to contain interspersed poems, nor among the poems
of Thomas Lodge’s Rosalynde, nor in
Robert Parry’s (fl. 1540-1612) Moderatvs
(1595), the poetical component of which consists almost entirely of sixains,
his favoured form (his Sinetes [1597]
contains 46 ‘Passions’ of four-sixained poems). John Dickenson (fl. 1594-98), Arisbas, Euphues amidst his slumbers
(1594), a collection of lyrics with a tenuous prose link in the manner of
Sannazaro, includes 10 poems, with one sonnet (Arisbas his Sonet) in Shakespearean form, with the quatrains and
couplet printed as separate units; his The
Shepheardes Complaint (1596) contains sixains and rhyme royal, but no
sonnets. The English Arcadia (Pt. 1,
1607; Pt. 2, 1613) of Gervase Markham (1568?-1637) contains 4 Shakespearean
sonnets in the first part (‘Strong heart, my strong eares vnconsumed throne’;
‘In vaine my wittes you labour to excuse’; ‘I doe not now complaine of my
disgrace’ and ‘Care keepe that absent presence in my brest’) as well as four
poems composed of quatrains/sixains.
The second part includes only 1 Shakespearean sonnet (‘Care and
complaint, you sonnes of loues vnrest’) which, unlike those in the first part,
is not named as a sonnet. As
concerns the other continuations of Sidney’s pastoral: Richard Belling (d.
1677), A Sixth Booke to the Countesse of
Pembroke’s Arcadia (1624), contains an acrostic sonnet in the dedicatory
section (abab abab cc dede) by ‘H. Delaune’,
but almost all the poetry in the text is couplet-based; and Anna Weamys (b. ca.
1630), A Continuation of Sir Philip
Sydney’s Arcadia (1651), contains no poems. Finally, there are no sonnets in
Spenser’s Shepherd’s Calender, the
initiator of the pastoral genre in
The closest
imitation of
[30] The Shakespearean ones, ‘My hart & tongue were twinnes, at once
conceaved’ and ‘Hearbs, words, and stones,
all maladies haue cured,’ both of which were sung before the Queen. Also M. Bird’s ‘As I beheld, J saw a
Heardman wilde’; ‘As withereth the Primrose by the riuer,’ a double-sonnet by Edmund
Bolton in Shakespearean form; Richard Barnfield’s ‘My fairest Ganimede disdaine
me not’ in his usual abba cddc effe gg style; the anonymous translation of
Petrarca 310, ‘Zephirus brings the time that
sweetly senteth’ (abababab cdc ede); Sidney’s Shakespearean ‘In wonted
walkes, since wonted fancies change,’ ‘Vertue, beauty, and speach, did strike, wound,
charme,’ and ‘A Satyre once did runne away for dread’; and Sir Edward Dyer’s
Shakespearean ‘Prometheus, when first from heauen hie.’
The additions to the 2nd edition (1614) did not include any sonnets.
[31] There are no sonnets in A Book of English Pastoral Verse ed. John Barrell and John Bull (New York: Oxford University Press, 1975); English Pastoral Poetry. From the Beginnings to Marvell ed. Frank Kermode (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1952) contains only one, William Drummond’s ‘To hear my Plaints faire River Christalline,’ a translation from Sannazaro. This does not explain the absence of the epithalamion, “Let now each meade,’ Yong’s best-known poem, which appeared in Robert H. Case’s English Epithalamies (London: John Lane, 1896, pp. 4-5). Case refers in his introduction to “the beautiful poem of Bartholomew Young” – although it cannot be “seriously compared” with Spenser’s Epithalamion (p. xxvii).
[32] Hyder H. Rollins ed.,