This post is the second part of my Critical Definitions and is a continuation of my overall emphasis on Renaissance Teaching Methods. In this post I will offer definitions for the terms that I have learned associated with the skill of literary genesis in that era.Imitation: Imitation in Renaissance education means much more than simply copying another’s work. The activity of Imitation is a graduated sift that makes it easy to measure a student’s grasp of the concepts inherent in the work being studied. For instance, two students can imitate the same piece and each Imitation will then be held up against the original to check for interpretive accuracy. This activity measures the closeness that a student can have to a work. There are multiple ways that imitation can be performed, but as stated it is not simply copying. The student must transfer the content into a different form, or keep the form but alter the content. Success is based on fidelity tot the conventions of the original. I think it is a great idea, and I wish that we engaged in this exercise more frequently in modern education. It helps the student to recognize the varying avenues established for essentially saying the same thing, thereby developing flexibility on multiple scales. I found a section of Dr. Burton’s rhetoric website thoroughly engaging on this subject. It contains even greater explanations of this process.
Amplification: This process for genesis of a document entailed the detailed comprehension of the varying uses of language as applied to style and theme. I find that Amplification mostly affects style as the practice begins with a small statement and requires that the student expounds the statement by enhancing the comprehension of it from various vantage points. For instance go from “He smells.” To “To behold him caused the very eyes to weep that they might not shrivel into hardened casks for indeed the putrid smell that oozed forth from the crevices of his being would have befouled the lowliest pits of Hell.” You employ the other senses in order to broaden the scope of the original while still completing the image. There is a superb example given by the Renaissance rhetorician Thomas Wilson that I read in Dr. Burton's essay on rhetoric that I think even more precisely illustrates the complexity that this practice can embody. Wilson begins with the sentence:
“If a gentleman and officer of the king's, being over charged at supper with overmuch drink, and surfeiting with gorge upon gorge, should vomit the next day in the Parliament house,” says Wilson, he might amplify that brief comment as follows:
O shameful deed, not only in sight to be loathed, but also odious of all men to be heard. If thou hadst done this deed at thine own house being at supper with thy wife and children, who would not have thought it a filthy deed? But now for thee to do it in the Parliament house, among so many gentlemen, and such, yea, the best in all England: being both an officer of the kings, and a man of much authority, and there to cast out gobbets (where belching were thought great shame) yea, and such gobbets as none could abide the smell, and to fill the whole house with evil savor, and thy whole bosom with much filthiness, what an abominable shame is it above all other? It had been a fowl deed of itself to vomit where no such gentlemen were: yea, where no gentlemen were: yea, where no Englishmen were: yea, where no men were: yea, where no company were at all: or it had been evil, if had born no manner of office, or had been no public officer, or had not been the king's officer: but being not only an officer, but a public officer, and that the kings' officer: yea, and such a king's, and doing such a deed: I cannot tell in the world what to say to him.Amplification served many purposes in the Renaissance classroom. Sometimes it was assigned as a way to lengthen and give additional rhetorical force to an established argument. Sometimes to amplify simply meant to compose–it was that central to the curriculum.
Variation: The practice of variation is to take one sentence and rather than amplifying the subject, it is to take that sentence and to rephrase it in as many ways as possible. It is word play, in the sense that the consistent focus is to reformat the words and convey the same meaning. Erasmus, an Renaissance rhetorician emphasized this point emphatically in his book De Duplici Copia Verborum ac Rerum (“On the Twofold Expression of Abundance and Ideas”). For instance, in chapter 33 of this text he provides 150 variations of the phrase “Your letter pleased me greatly.” The purpose of this practice was again, not to illustrate a particular droning exercise, but to emphasize the versatility of language. The advantage of Yeats Irish dialect helped him to form a particular style of poetry that hinges on the concept of repeated lines and phrases containing only minor variations. This form is complex because of this forced repletion and I don’t often attempt it or see it attempted, perhaps practicing this type of Renaissance education would facilitate quicker access to a broader range of similarities in the language and allow me to produce a similar work? Either way, though perhaps a tad monotonous, I think this exercise yields splendid results.
Thank you for bearing with me while your eyes were acclimated to these terms. In my next series of posts I will show the model of Genesis applying it to various plays and source texts for Shakespeare. Be sure to roll up your sleeves it will be a lot of work!
