Plagiarism and Imitation During the English Renaissance

A Study in Critical Distinctions

Harold Ogden White

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136265235
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This book defines the attitude of English writers between 1500 and 1625 toward the question of literary property rights, of imitation, of what today is called plagiarism.

CHAPTER I

Classical and Continental Renaissance Theories of Imitation

DOUBTLESS Horace wass correct in saying that a poem on the Trojan war should not begin as far back as Leda’s egg. But a study of the theory of imitation in the English Renaissance must, comparatively, begin even farther back. For since sixteenth-century England avowedly derived its critical doctrines from the classics either directly or through the interpretations of Continental Renaissance writers, a brief summary of the Greek and Roman principles of imitation and of the adaptations of those principles by sixteenth-century Italy and France is essential to an understanding of the English point of view.

“It is a universal rule of life that we should wish to copy what we approve in others,” writes Quintilian.¹ It is likewise a universal rule of classical literature. To the author of On the Sublime, “zealous imitation” of the great writers of the past is a “road … which leads to sublimity”; it is “the aim, … and we must hold to it with all our might.”² To be eloquent is to possess Attic eloquence, Cicero declares, and to imitate Demosthenes is to achieve an eloquence at once Attic and perfect.¹ Quintilian devotes a chapter of his Institutes to imitation because, he says, “it comprises a great part of art.”² A century later, Lucian attributes the decline of letters in his day chiefly to the attempted substitution of short-cuts to literary success for the painstaking imitation of the ancients.³ But classical writers were sent to their predecessors for more than inspiration: they were to get subjects and material as well. Isocrates, for example, strongly insists that “one must not shun the subjects upon which others have spoken before,”⁴ Pliny the Younger advises a correspondent to “write something on the same topic” as that discussed by his model,⁵ and Horace even suggests turning the Iliad into a drama.⁶

That the practise of such a widely held theory should receive commendation is to be expected: there is scarcely a tribute to an author in classical times which does not praise his imitation of some other author. Horace’s approval of Lucilius for “hanging wholly” on Greek Old Comedy;⁷ the paean to Plato, “who has irrigated his style with ten thousand runnels from the great Homeric spring,” in On the Sublime;⁸ and the pleasure of Pliny the Younger at being told that one of his orations resembled a speech of Demosthenes⁹ — these are but incidental manifestations, taken at random, of the general attitude. Of the numerous systematic studies, two are famous: Quintilian devotes a long section of his Institutes to the laudation of Roman imitations of Greek literature;¹ and Macrobius devotes most of two books of his Saturnalia to the citation by parallel passages of hundreds of cases of Virgil’s indebtedness to Homer and others. Nowhere is there a hint of disapproval of Virgil’s borrowings. On the contrary, his method of using what he read is held up as a universal example: “the fruit of reading is to emulate what one finds good in others, and by suitable adaptation to convert what one most admires in others to one’s own use” — which, Macrobius continues, is just what the best Greek and Roman poets had always done.²

Open avowal of imitation is likewise a cardinal point in classical literary theory. Five of Plautus’s prologues announce that the play to follow is a Latin rendering of a Greek original; four of these name the author. Terence makes a similar avowal in five of his prologues, naming the Greek author in three. He declares that “he has combined many Greek plays” into a “few Latin ones” and that he “will do it again,”³ resting on the authority of Naevius, Plautus, and Ennius, “whose freedom he is … earnest to imitate.”⁴ Cicero, Lucretius, Horace, Propertius, Phaedrus — these are but a few of the many classical writers who make it a matter of pride to acknowledge their models and sources.⁵ The correct attitude of the literary debtor toward his creditor is summed up by Seneca the Elder:¹ “Ovid, … as he had done with many other lines of Virgil, borrowed the idea, not desiring to deceive people, but to have it openly recognized as borrowed.”²

Independent fabrication, consequently, plays a far from leading rôle in classical theory. Isocrates praises “not those who seek to speak on subjects on which no one has spoken before,” but those who know how to treat the old subjects as no one else could.³ Lucian refuses to “rest content … with the mere credit of innovation.” If his work “is not good as well as original” he will “be ashamed of it,” and “its novelty shall not avail to save [it] from annihilation.”⁴ Because “it is hard to treat in your own way what is common,” that is, common among mankind — human nature, for example — Horace considers it daring to write on an untried theme or to fashion a new character. The poet will do better, he says, by “spinning into acts a song of Troy” than by presenting “a theme unknown and unsung.” He advises following tradition, but admits that independent fabrication may succeed if the result is self-consistent.⁵

Underlying these two basic principles — imitation is essential, fabrication is dangerous — is a third which goes far to account for them: subject-matter is common property, the publica materies of Horace.¹ “The deeds of the past are … an inheritance common to us all,” declares Isocrates.² Cicero refers to the works of his predecessors as “the common fund.”³ When one writes on topics already treated, Seneca insists, “he is not pilfering them, as if they belonged to someone else, … for they are common property.” “The best ideas are common property,” he further maintains; therefore, since what is common to all belongs equally to each, he asserts that “any truth is my own property,” even that “whatever is well said by anyone is mine.”⁴

Now these three principles concern only the unoriginal aspect of classical literature. But the ancients were as eager for originality in their way as writers of today are in theirs. Quintilian’s “first point” in regard to imitation is that it “alone is not sufficient”; furthermore, he considers it “a positive disgrace to … owe all our achievement to imitation,” and is certain that “no development is possible for those who restrict themselves” to such a method.⁵ Similarly, Seneca urges a friend to “make … not memorize,” to “put forth something from [his] own stock.” “Truth lies open for all,” he continues; “it has not yet been monopolized. And there is plenty of it left for posterity to discover.”⁶ The type of originality desired by classical writers is different, that is all. When Isocrates advises treating an old subject “as no one else could” instead of seeking “subjects on which no one has spoken before,” he half defines classical originality as originality of expression. When he further demands that the writer find in previously used subjects “topics which are nowise the same as those used by others,”¹ he gives the other half of the definition: the supplementing of material. Supporting this second half-definition, Cicero wants it understood that he has added “certain observations of his own to the common fund.”² And Seneca insists that one “should play the part of a careful householder” in one’s use of the treasure of earlier literature: “we should increase what we have inherited. … Much still remains to do … and he who shall be born a thousand ages hence will not be barred from his opportunity of adding something.”³ To the ancients, then, combining old material with new and expressing the combination in an original manner constituted originality. This originality was achieved by a composite process which may for convenience be divided into three steps: selection, reinterpretation, and improvement.

Selection is a convenient title for the classical principle that one should imitate only the best features of the best writers. Opinions naturally vary about the number and identity of these models. Cicero, to be sure, recommends the faithful following of a single model,⁴ and he has already been cited as declaring that to imitate Demosthenes is to achieve perfect eloquence. The first statement may be ignored, as it is applied to boys in school. As for the second, Quintilian affirms that Cicero imitated Isocrates and Plato as well as Demosthenes;¹ and Cicero himself says, in another connection, that, far from following a single model, he has collected all the authors who have discussed his subject and has chosen the best from each. For, he continues, of all the authors who deserve preservation, there is not one who does not offer something worth imitating.² Seneca, less catholic, recommends “a limited number of master-thinkers,”³ and Lucian would exclude all but the ancients.⁴ Quintilian studies the question in detail, insisting that “the nicest judgment is required” in deciding “whom to imitate,” and “what … to imitate in the authors … chosen.” The answers to both questions will depend, of course, on the “natural gifts” of the imitator and the genre he is working in, but Quintilian follows Cicero in holding that there is scarcely an author who has “stood the test of time who will not be of some use,” provided that the imitator...