The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature

Tina Skouen

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780367891336
• eBook ISBN: 9781351402828
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: Literature

The stigma of haste pervaded early modern English culture, more so than the so-called stigma of print. The period's writers were perpetually short on time, but what does it mean for authors to present themselves as hasty or slow, or to characterize others similarly? This book argues that such classifications were a way to define literary value. To be hasty was, in a sense, to be irresponsible, but, in another sense, it signaled a necessary practicality. Expressions of haste revealed a deep conflict between the ideal of slow writing in classical and humanist rhetoric and the sometimes grim reality of fast printing. Indeed, the history of print is a history of haste, which carries with it a particular set of modern anxieties that are difficult to understand in the absence of an interdisciplinary approach. Many previous studies have concentrated on the period's competing definitions of time and on the obsession with how to use time well. Other studies have considered time as a notable literary theme. This book is the first to connect ideas of time to writerly haste in a richly interdisciplinary manner, drawing upon rhetorical theory, book history, poetics, religious studies and early modern moral philosophy, which, only when taken together, provide a genuinely deep understanding of why the stigma of haste so preoccupied the early modern mind.

The Value of Time in Early Modern English Literature surveys the period from ca 1580 to ca 1730, with special emphasis on the seventeenth century. The material discussed is found in emblem books, devotional literature, philosophical works, and collections of poetry, drama and romance. Among classical sources, Horace and Quintilian are especially important. The main authors considered are: Robert Parsons; Edmund Bunny; King James 1; Henry Peacham; Thomas Nash; Robert Greene; Ben Jonson; Margaret Cavendish; John Dryden; Richard Baxter; Jonathan Swift; Alexander Pope. By studying these writers' expressions of time and haste, we may gain a better understanding of how authorship was defined at a time when the book industry was gradually taking the place of classical rhetoric in regulating writers' activities.

1 A history of haste

Early modern literature shows evidence that writers of the period are perpetually short of time. In 1592 the poet Samuel Daniel can be heard accusing “a greedie Printer” of having snatched his sonnets from him, rushing them into print; and the same year the writer Thomas Nashe claimed he was worried that one of his popular narratives was “hasting to the second impression” without his having had the chance to make the final corrections.¹ A century later, John Dryden claimed he was pressurized into releasing his translation of the Aeneid before it was ready.² The history of print is a history of haste. As the author of The Printing Press as an Agent of Change (1979), Elizabeth L. Eisenstein, once commented when I broached the issue of speed among a group of book historians, “concern about meeting deadlines was built into the early printer’s trade and into that of writers who collaborated with printers. Similarly, anxiety about keeping ‘up to date’ was increased by the printing of newsletters and periodicals.”³ In the 1590s the London bookseller Andrew Maunsell remarked upon “the great increase” in printed material that he thought he could see almost daily, thus foreshadowing the enormous expansion of the book industry in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.⁴ Developments in the trade undoubtedly provided many sources of frustration for writers, such as increased demand and competition and more unauthorized manuscripts in circulation. Within the field of book history, much emphasis has been placed on writers’ lack of control when entering the commercial “communications circuit” of book production and distribution, and on their struggle to assert authority and gain copyright of their work.⁵ A key insight in the bibliographical work of D. F. McKenzie and others has been that printed books, not least those produced in the hand press period (1500–1800), were the result of complex “working processes” involving many different crafts and interests besides those of the author.⁶ As one can tell from the printing-house owner Joseph Moxon’s highly detailed description of every aspect of the production process in his Mechanick Exercises … Applied to the Art of Printing (1683–1684), the job had only just begun when the writer handed in the manuscript.⁷ Whereas unforeseen complications and delays might cause frustration, writers were more often daunted by the speedy progress from printer to binder to bookseller, such as when the poet and musician Thomas Campion (1567–1620) marveled at how swiftly his “little booke” of songs (1601) would find its way to the bookstalls of St. Paul’s churchyard in London.⁸

In terms of book history, one might easily—and perhaps too hastily—conclude that whenever early modern writers comment on speed and rapidity, they are really just expressing their anxiety about the changing socio-material and technical conditions of bookmaking and bookselling. But could there be other significant reasons why time, or rather the lack of it, was considered important? One striking feature of prefaces and dedications dating from the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries is that writers not only excuse themselves for being in a hurry but accuse each other of being hasty. This prompts a further question: if worrying about time were merely a prosaic consequence of the rapid growth of an industry, why would writers object when people appeared to be doing their job? To this, one might respond that the surrender of manuscript culture to print culture was not yet complete, and that the courtly or gentleman poet (as well as those aspiring to please an exclusive circle of readers) would be inclined to despise those feeding the presses just to satisfy a multitude of book-buyers.⁹ According to the literary scholar J. W. Saunders in his classic study of “The Stigma of Print” (1951), rushed publication was “the cardinal sin” because it suggested that the writer might be desperate for profit or attention.¹⁰ Despite the long-standing tradition among poets of denouncing worldly ambition, I find this explanation incomplete, because it does not take into account that writers were expected to obey the call for care and composition within the rhetorical tradition. The ancient Roman poet Horace famously recommended in Ars poetica that writers should wait nine years before publishing their work. This rule was not to be taken literally—Horace himself certainly did not live up to it—but was instead interpreted in the way that the Roman rhetorician Quintilian understood it, as a forceful reminder “to put the written work aside for a time” before going over it again.¹¹

The notion of nine years is endlessly repeated in early modern English literature, its most prominent spokesperson being, as I will contend in Chapter 3, King James in Basilicon doron. During the same period, when the book market was expanding, the nine years served as an impossible (and, to some, highly questionable) ideal across different genres of poetry, philosophy and religion. At the same time, writers throughout Europe were subject to an increasing degree of critical attention, and there was an ongoing debate about the quality of their work. The frequent references to time, the present book argues, play an essential role in defining both the value of the works of writing and the standing of the writers. The allegation that a colleague was a hack hit the mark because haste represented a breach of the ideal inherited from Horace and Quintilian that writers should take their time. Heedless haste also posited an ethical challenge. “Rashness is the product of the budding-time of youth, prudence of the harvest-time of age,” Cicero wrote.¹² The perfect orator was supposed to combine eager enthusiasm with sound judgment and wisdom; good writing stems from inventio, proceeding to dispositio and then to elocutio, and only later to the author communicating or performing in public. “Let the poet’s hand not be swift to take up the pen, nor his tongue be impatient to speak,” Geoffrey of Vinsauf commanded in Poetria nova, the standard textbook for instruction in writing in the late Middle Ages, which was also recommended by Desiderius Erasmus and Renaissance schoolmasters.¹³ Although the idea for a poem may be conceived in a rapture—such as when, in the words of John Skelton, one is “kyndled” by a godly flame and starts to write at “suche spede” that it almost seems as if the Holy Ghost were holding the pen—the dominant view throughout the medieval and Renaissance periods was that the quality of the outcome depended on what happened next, during correction and emendation.¹⁴ The Italian poet Giovanni Boccaccio says in his treatise on poetry, “However deeply the poetic impulse stirs the mind to which it is granted, it very rarely accomplishes anything commendable if the instruments by which its concepts are to be wrought out are wanting,” with these instruments including “the precepts of grammar and rhetoric.”¹⁵

Concentrating on prefatory material written in English in the period from the late sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, and focusing especially on the seventeenth century, I contend that the stigma of haste was a more pervasive phenomenon than the stigma of print, because haste and rashness broke not only with social decorum, but also with moral and poetic rules of conduct. Publicity was not necessarily a problem but prolific writing for publication was, because the more a writer published, the less time they spent on each piece and the less likely it was that a work of lasting value would be created. Combining perspectives from book history and the history of rhetoric, I expand on existing concepts of early modern authorship, which have tended to focus rather one-sidedly on the immediate contexts and forms in which texts were written, preserved and transmitted. Whereas the tradition of New Historicist criticism has been especially dedicated to demonstrating how authorial roles were shaped through “the social controversies surrounding print,” I contend that these roles also emerged through no less vexing struggles with past standards of how to write.¹⁶ A fundamental insight of classical rhetoric was that in order to be a good speaker or writer, one must be a good man.¹⁷ Haste and rashness run counter to both of these aspirations, and the frequent references to speed in early modern writing therefore bear directly on writers’ attempts at self-definition and on critics’ appraisals of their literary reputation. Expressions of haste may further indicate a deeper conflict between the real and the ideal situation: while adjusting to developments in the book trade, writers were expected to obey traditional rules about how to write. This perceived conflict between the ideal conditions and the realities of print publication reflects the complex interaction between material print and humanist principles from the Reformation onwards. On the one hand, print and humanism were two sides of the same coin; on the other, the massive increase in printed material contributed to undermining the centrality of the orally based rhetorical tradition. As long as writers and their critics continued to measure their work against the high standards of classical models, however, this put them under severe pressure. References to the tempo of writing for publication serve an essential function in securing the...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• Notes on the texts
• 1 A history of haste
• 2 Quality versus quantity: the poetics of slow writing
• 3 “Not published rashly”: Henry Peacham’s emblems
• 4 “The Poetess’s Hasty Resolution”: Margaret Cavendish
• 5 “The danger of delay”: The First Booke of the Christian Exercise and its afterlife
• Afterword: the digital age of speed
• Bibliography
• Index