Against the vernacular: Ciceronian formalism and the problem of the individual.

Publication: Texas Studies in Literature and Language

Publication Date: 22-MAR-04

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My goal is to show the significance of a family quarrel within Renaissance humanism for the humanism, much more broadly conceived, of current debate. Renaissance humanism, at its narrowest and most orthodox, required the imitation of approved classical authors and especially the cultivation of Golden Latin prose style. Golden Latin meant Cicero preeminently, but also included Livy (the focus of my argument later on), who had applied Ciceronian rhetoric to the writing of history, the one major prose form Cicero himself did not attempt. Even a northern, Protestant, and relatively late practitioner of humanist pedagogy could limit his Latin curriculum to these two authors alone, as Roger Ascham reports having done with his foremost student, the princess Elizabeth. (1) Initiated by Petrarch as an enthusiasm for the writings and character of Cicero the man, Ciceronianism developed over the course of a century into a dogma of style, an insistence that Cicero was the only acceptable model for Latin prose. (2) Inevitably, such dogma met with resistance. Often cited in this regard is a letter, written around 1490, from the Italian humanist Angelo Poliziano to his friend Paolo Cortesi. Cortesi had sent Poliziano some essays in strict imitation of Cicero, but Poliziano responded by firmly rejecting this inflexible approach to style, both because it unduly restricted the range of possible literary models and because it discouraged the expression of what was truly one's own: "For I am not Cicero. Nonetheless, as I see it, I express myself." (3) Thus, before the close of the fifteenth century, Ciceronianism had already been set in opposition to the value of individual self-expression.

Ciceronianism cannot help but appear to us now, even more than it did to Poliziano, as a formalist crotchet. Not content to prefer style over content, it endorsed one formal standard alone to the exclusion of all others. The endeavor itself seems unduly arbitrary, and this impression is only exacerbated by the failure of Renaissance Ciceronians to defend the alleged superiority of Golden Latin prose on the basis of clear formal criteria. Instead of formal analysis one finds, over and over again, the bare assertion, the stubborn but unexplained conviction that Cicero was the best, most eloquent, and most correct of all authors. (4) This problem in turn besets modern accounts of the Ciceronian and anti-Ciceronian movements, including the one given by John D'Amico in his thorough study of humanism at Rome. As the language of choice for papal imperialism, Ciceronian neo-Latin had a stronger hold and longer life at Rome than anywhere else. This prose style, D'Amico maintains, "had definite characteristics which rendered it the appropriate vehicle by which to present the Roman humanist ideology." (5) What "definite characteristics" these were, however, we are never told; D'Amico can only reiterate the party-line pronouncements of Roman humanists themselves, to the effect that Ciceronian periods were "the best possible Latin" and the definitive literary expression of ancient Roman culture and values. (6) One is tempted to concur with Thomas M. Greene, who regards Ciceronianism as "misguided or pathological" in its obvious "preoccupation with the signifier, with the verbum," at the expense of "creative freedom." (7) Ciceronian purists appear to us now to have put their faith "in pure repeatability, in imitation as secular ritual." (8)

Greene's judgment, however, assumes that the boundary between literary form and content, between verbum and res, is clearly marked; if form can so thoroughly supersede content, the two must be distinct in principle. As it happens, a general effect of linguistics and literary criticism in the century since Saussure has been to erase these very distinctions, and critical thought over the past few decades has tended to deny the possibility of a truly vacuous formalism, arguing that aesthetic values must always and everywhere have ideological implications. To introduce an example that will prove relevant to my argument below, Terry Eagleton maintains that the species of formal analysis ("close reading") practiced by F. R. Leavis and his followers cut them off from political reality; thus, despite their radical intentions, they became "a defensive elite," conniving at the "virulent sexism, racism and authoritarianism" of their favorite, D. H. Lawrence. (9) Likewise, but worse still, the exaggerated emphasis of American New Criticism on formal balance and harmony reflects a yearning for the agrarian hierarchy of the antebellum South. (10) On this line of reasoning, the aesthetic canons of Ciceronian humanism cannot have been purely formal ones, but must have been ideologically invested as well. This is not merely to say, as D'Amico and others have, that adherence to these canons became, over time, a hallmark of reactionary papalism. I will argue instead that the "definite characteristics," the formal specifics of the Ciceronian period, neglected by commentators then and now, are ideologically significant per se, in and of themselves. (11)

Nowhere has the opposition between Golden Latin formalism and the desire for individual self-expression been explored more fully than in a series of essays written by Morris Croll between 1921 and 1927. Croll regarded Ciceronian purism as a regressive orthodoxy consistent with the prevailing tendency of medieval thought to concentrate on the forms rather than the content of educated discourse. (12) In this respect Ciceronianism was chief among "a congeries of similar dogmas," all of which evinced "the love of authority and a single standard of reference which still flourished in the medieval mind of the sixteenth century" (119, 120). Against this conservative bent, Croll argues, there arose in the same century "a new emphasis on the inner and individual life of men in contrast with the plausible and public forms of their social existence" (113). The impulse toward self-expression in turn required a non-oratorical prose, a style devoted "to a vivid and acute portrayal of individual experience rather than to the histrionic and sensuous expression of general ideas" (89). When discovered in the late sixteenth century, this style provided an instrument for "the full exercise of curiosity and the free play of individual differences" (180). Indeed, Croll goes so far as to say, the new anti-Ciceronian style would supply "for every classical virtue of the Renaissance ... a counter-virtue of romantic individualism and violence" (161).

The models for this new prose were found in the decidedly un-Ciceronian writers of the Silver Latin age, especially Seneca and Tacitus. Marked by brevity, metaphorical density, sudden turns of wit, and the omission of syntactic connectives, anti-Ciceronian prose was perfectly suited, Croll believes, "to render one's own experience in the encounter with reality as exactly, as vividly, as possible." (13) Moreover, this style became current at that unique moment in the literary history of Europe when "the two kinds of languages, the ancient and the vernacular, were present in the minds of most well-educated people in relations of almost exact balance and equality" (182). Senecan syntax, in the hands of a vernacular writer like Montaigne, could be "exactly adapted to the character of his mind and the state of his language" (186). The immediate success of this anti-Ciceronian prose in all the major European vernaculars, Croll argues, was "proof of its fitness to serve as the model on which a standard modern prose could be formed" (186). A truly Ciceronian prose, on the other hand, "cannot be reproduced in English, or indeed in any modern language," chiefly because "the ligatures of its comprehensive period are not found in the syntax of an uninflected tongue" (185). For Croll, then, even though anti-Ciceronian prose had its origins in classical Latin models, it would ultimately tip a delicate balance between Latin and the vernaculars in favor of the latter.

Another main concern of Croll's analysis appears in the claim, quoted above, that anti-Ciceronian prose was designed for the exact and vivid representation of an "encounter with reality." In this regard, anti-Ciceronianism was part of a broad movement toward the sceptical rationalism that Croll repeatedly (and anachronistically) calls "positivism." (14) Ciceronians and their opponents reenacted, on the doorstep of modernity, the ancient antagonism between rhetoric and philosophy. Thus, while Ciceronian prose conveys "general and communal ideas which the open design of the oratorical style is so well adapted to contain," Senecan prose can instead "fill up all the nooks and crannies of reality and reproduce its exact image to attentive observation" (61). And, whereas oratory provides "nothing that is pleasing to an intellect intent upon the discovery of reality," the philosophical style orients itself "toward the direct observation of the facts" (56, 120). Again, Ciceronianism best exemplifies for Croll "the tendency to study the forms of knowledge, as the Middle Ages had done, rather than the facts of nature and history" (110). In his view, modern individualism, scientific rationalism, and standard vernacular syntax emerged together as triplets at the same birth, all midwifed by anti-Ciceronian prose.

For those in accord, around 1580 and following, with "the modern spirit of progress," Ciceronianism had thus contrived a remarkable failure, suppressing individual subjectivity and at the same time ignoring objective reality. (15) To these charges, however, as Croll acknowledges, the Ciceronian faithful had a ready response: independent explorations of reality were all fine and good for those "arduous and solitary minds" mulling essays in philosophical retirement, but they would hardly supply a basis for the practical education at which humanism chiefly aimed (95). The defining purpose of humanist education was to remedy "the gross ignorance and provinciality" of the ruling classes; it was aimed at those "ordinary sensual beings who have the means of paying for it" and who would then become governors of the state (117). No encounter between individual sensibility and reality, however exquisite, could expunge "the barbarism of inherited manners and customs" from such students (117). Instead they must have, as Croll beautifully phrases it, "a palpable design, a single and sensuous pattern" upon which to model "their speech, their manners, their external lives" (117). This palpable design, this instrument of moral improvement was, of course, the Golden Latin periodic sentence. Ultimately, in Croll's view, Ciceronianism functioned as a pedagogical doctrine, deeply reactionary and authoritarian, which would have halted the progress of modernity if it could. It was, moreover, inextricably bound up with the professional activities of humanist schoolmasters as servants of the state.

Some major features of this critique recur, sixty years later, in From Humanism to the Humanities, an attack on humanist pedagogy by Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine. However, whereas Morris Croll thought Ciceronianism consistent with the formalist tendencies of medieval learning, these authors see humanism as a usurper guilty of "murder" upon its more vital predecessor, scholasticism. (16) Grafton and Jardine focus on the gap between declared educational goals and classroom practice. They harshly criticize Renaissance humanist pedagogues, like Guarino Gaurini of Verona, for claiming to effect moral improvement while in fact subjecting their students to the "assault" of a stultifying, mechanical formalism (11). Guarino's Ciceronian curriculum, far from emphasizing Cicero's moral content, was designed on the one hand to teach a correct Latin prose style and on the other to convey a vast body of "disconnected 'facts'" about antiquity, both goals to be achieved by "regimented note-taking, rote-learning, repetition, and imitation" (15, 22). The upshot of all this philological and rhetorical training was that Guarino's pupils could at long last compose Latin essays in which each of them was "not to express his own emotions, or to treat the topic in a fresh or striking manner. Rather, he is to execute a stylised set-piece in a stylish way" (17). Thus, Grafton and Jardine conclude, the goal of teaching Ciceronian style was met, but only at a "high price in boredom and fatigue"--never mind the apparent enthusiasm of at least some of Guarino's students. (17) Leaving the particulars of this critique aside, its spirit is manifestly Romantic: how different the subsequent history of the West might have been if humanist Gradgrinds like Guarino had only encouraged these unfortunate boys to express their emotions!

As did Croll before them, so Grafton and Jardine argue a close relation between the social function of Ciceronian humanism and its formalist allegiance to a single authoritative model. When Guarino and his kind claimed to build character, they meant that education in eloquence prepared the student "for full and active life in the service of his community," an ideal derived from the ancient world. (18) Given the autocratic reality of the Italian signories, however, this obligatory appeal to civic participation meant little or nothing. In fact, what the "ruthless drilling" of a humanist education inculcated was not civic virtue but instead the "personality traits that any Renaissance ruler found attractive: above all, obedience and docility" (27, 24). Built on the dual supremacy of a schoolmaster and a Ciceronian literary standard, humanism "offered everyone a model of true culture as something given, absolute, to be mastered, not questioned--and thus fostered in all its initiates a properly docile attitude towards authority" (xiv). Although marketed as a training in virtue, it actually delivered "suitable potential servants of the state" (25). How could education in the mere forms of neo-Latin discourse, so paltry in content compared to the "vast, unsuspected veins of insight" tapped by scholasticism, do anything else (xiii)? Because they can locate no "regular and causal link" between the practice of formalism and the formation of character, Grafton and Jardine attribute the professional success of humanist pedagogues like Guarino not to the fruition of their moral claims but to their complicity with power (28).

From Humanism to the Humanities, however, attempts more than a revaluation of early modern pedagogy. As their title suggests, Grafton and Jardine want to show that the present-day humanities, having inherited the pretensions and illusions of their Renaissance forebear, continue to retail "a curriculum training a social elite to fulfil its predetermined social role." (19) Thus, the familiar college-brochure sentiment that "the liberal arts [offer] a 'training for life'" betrays an old alliance between humanist pedagogy and "the Establishment," since this "life," one knows, means a life in service to power (xiv, xvi). As part of this broader offensive, Grafton and Jardine maintain a running skirmish with F. R. Leavis and his followers as the modern avatars of humanist literary education. In keeping with their historical thesis, they write that "what Guarino regards as moral about his instruction is not in fact the content at all. The activity of learning to read perceptively trains the moral faculties." Then, in the same connection, they invite the reader to "compare Arnold or Leavis on the function of literary criticism," a move which involves applying to Guarino the verdict passed by John Casey on these two modern critics: "their notion of the moral, in its extreme formalism, is fundamentally aesthetic." (20) Likewise, the claim by Renaissance humanists to provide training in character, though never realized in practice, finds its precise modern counterpart in the program statements of the first issue of Scrutiny, where Leavis and his associates assert that the disciplined (i.e., formalist) study of literature promotes "a general fitness for a humane existence." (21)

Grafton and Jardine take a major step from humanism toward the current humanities in their chapter on the "northern methodical humanism" of Rudolph Agricola and Erasmus. By laboring to methodize the disordered curricula left by various Italian humanists, they argue, the northern pedagogical reformers helped to ensure that literary studies would become "an institutionalized curriculum subject." (22) From their Italian predecessors, Agricola and Erasmus inherited a bedrock belief in "Latin eloquence as identical with moral rectitude" (130). They also insisted, with uncanny prescience of F. R. Leavis, that the study of literature be rigorous and systematic, supposing that such literary "discipline" would surely entail "a training in responsibility." (23) Christian humanists like Erasmus, moreover, upped the civic humanist ante by claiming that a classically based education could be both "morally regenerative and conducive to the formation of a true Christian spirit" (125). Finally, though, neither Erasmus nor his successors could establish any convincing relation between humanist formalism and the welfare of the soul or begin to "explain how a training in rhetoric on the ancient model is elevated into a spiritually enlightening educatio" (134). Thus even a liberal, Erasmian humanist would at last take the path of Guarino, applying one "killing regimen" or another" not to create different adult individuals but ... to bring different children to the same final condition: the predetermined humanist ideal of eloquence and erudition" (156). Need it be added that this was a bad result and not a good one? Here as throughout, Grafton and Jardine treat the development of the individual through self-expression as the primary and indeed axiomatic value against which to measure the failure of humanist education.

The Romantic quest after self-realization is, however, by no means immune to question, and in fact the very category of human individuality has been exposed to intense scepticism from a number of philosophical and political standpoints. In the same year that Grafton and Jardine put Erasmus and Guarino in their places, David Quint selected the Poliziano/Cortesi correspondence as the point of departure for Literary Theory/Renaissance Texts, a collection of essays by several hands which has proved valuable in disseminating various new approaches to early modern literature. Quint believes that Poliziano adopted a strong anti-Ciceronian position on behalf of "the student's recognition of his own human individuality, an individuality that demands a distinctive mode of self-expression." (24) Paying due respect to Burckhardt, he then rehearses the familiar argument for the origins of modern individualism (as distinct from the corporate identities more typical of the Middle Ages) in the Italian Renaissance. Renaissance literary practices, Quint argues, reveal a newfound conviction that the writer and the reader is each "for all practical purposes an independent agent" (5). All of this may be true, but it cannot...

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