Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature 9781501711183

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Writing from History

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Writing from History THE RHETORIC OF E X E M P L A R I T Y IN RENAISSANCE LITERATURE

Timothy Hampton

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 1990 by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publiher. For information, address Cornell University Press, 124 Roberts Place, Ithaca, New York 14850. First published 1990 by Cornell University Press. International Standard Book Number 0-8014-2460-7 (cloth) International Standard Book Number 978-0-8014-9709-4 (paper) Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 90-1322 Printed in the United States of America Librarians: Library of Congress Cataloging information appears on the last page of the book.

) The paper used in the text of this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI 739.48-1984.

For Jessica, vraye exemplaire

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Contents

Preface

ix

1 Introduction. Exemplarity and Interpretation:

Reading in History 2

Budé, Erasmus, Machiavelli: Reading from History

3 Tasso: Writing on History 4 Montaigne: Writing against History 5 Shakespeare (Corneille): Writing after History 6 Cervantes: Writing out of History

7 Writing from History Index

1 31 81

134 198 237 297

305

Excellent is culture for a savage; but once let him read in the book, and he is no longer able not to think of Plutarch's heroes. —EMERSON

Preface

This book examines conventions of reading and writing in the European Renaissance. Its general subject is the rhetorical value of the representation of the past in literature. Its specific focus is the changing depiction of exemplary figures from antiquity and their function as models of action for Renaissance readers. The promotion of ancient images of virtue as patterns that aim to form or guide readers is a central feature of almost every major text in the Renaissance. The importance of the representation of historical exemplars as a way of defining relationships among texts, their readers, the authority of classical antiquity, and the sphere of public action is paramount in the cultural history of the early modern period. The exemplary figure embodies the heroic ethos that, since Jacob Burckhardt, has been acknowledged as central to Renaissance humanism. My study offers a history of exemplarity in literature from the age of high humanism in the early Renaissance to the onset of absolutism in the seventeenth century. During that period, I argue, the representation of exemplarity underwent a series of transformations which undermined the authority of ancient exemplars as models of action. From those transformations were born new modes of representing virtue, of understanding the relationship between politics and literature, and of depicting the self. The chapters of this book are intended to be read in order, for they offer an argument that unfolds conceptually as it advances chron-

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ologically. Following the Introduction, which analyzes the question of exemplarity as both a historical issue and a problem of literary theory, chapter 2 focuses on three contemporaries writing in the second decade of the sixteenth century: Guillaume Bude, Desiderius Erasmus, and Niccolo Machiavelli. These figures—each a major influence on the intellectual life of his day—are associated in various ways with the humanist culture that dominated European intellectual life in the early 15005. My discussion traces the ways in which the depiction of exemplarity in the writings of these thinkers is marked by a series of rhetorical and epistemological paradoxes involving the interpretation of the past and its application to practical political action. Humanist writing on exemplarity is seen as caught between a veneration of the timeless value of ancient models as patterns for action and a sharp awareness of the contingency that divides modern readers from ancient exemplars. The succeeding chapters trace the "responses" to the paradoxes raised by humanist treatments of exemplarity in a series of major texts in various languages and genres: Tasso's epic of the first Crusade, the Gerusalemme liberata, Montaigne's Essais, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, and Cervantes's Don Quixote. These responses register a crisis in the representation of exemplarity in the late Renaissance. As the paradoxes of humanist discourse are assimilated, the question of exemplarity becomes intertwined with issues of political and ideological struggle. Ideological anxiety and epistemological scepticism lead to an erosion of the authority of exemplary figures. This erosion signals the beginning of a new, posthumanist attitude toward the representation of antiquity in literature. At the same time it helps to define the terms whereby literary discourse breaks away from the Renaissance privileging of ancient heroism and begins to develop new models of virtue and selfhood. My juxtaposition of the texts of Tasso, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes is not merely the result of their importance and influence. Each of them emphasizes a different aspect of the problem of exemplarity. Yet, when seen in sequence as my argument progresses, they articulate a developing concern with the relationship between literature and the stage of political action. Ever since the publication of Hans Baron's Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance in 1955 students of the period have noted the important link between civic consciousness and the changing appropriations of ancient models of government. The fact that exemplary figures are depicted in Renaissance literature as guides for action in the world links exemplarity to the issue of how literature relates to the public and political spheres in which its readers define themselves. As humanist ideals of political

Preface

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community are questioned in the late sixteenth century, the writers discussed here use the depiction of exemplary figures as the locus for attempts to work out new relationships between the individual and the public space of political action. From Tasso's merging of the heroic discourse of epic with new developments in Counter-Reformation piety, to Montaigne's attempt to turn away from the public world, to Shakespeare's exploration of interpretation and social struggle, the transformations seen in the representation of exemplary figures are symptomatic of the evolution of public life itself, and of the changing relationship between reading the past and acting in the public sphere. Exemplarity also raises issues about the politics of literary forms. In his study Deceit, Desire, and the Novel, Rene Girard argues that the history of the novel is marked by the progressive interiorization of "triangular desire"—the notion that the desires and actions of novelistic characters are structured by their attempts to imitate the figures around them. I suggest that the close relationship between problems of imitation and the rise of the novel takes on its full political significance only when seen against the breakdown of humanist notions of exemplarity in the late sixteenth century. The central role of models of action in the pedagogy and ideology of Renaissance humanism thus means that the history of exemplarity weighs on the history of the heroic literary forms through which humanism is articulated. The texts analyzed here represent the major transformations or turning points in the history of exemplarity and offer insights into the evolution of literary genres in the early modern period. The crisis of the aristocracy, writ large in the texts of Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, is reflected in the depiction of exemplars of aristocratic heroism. From transformations in the reading and representation of heroic models one can trace the genesis of the novel, the representative genre of the bourgeois era. But the images of exemplars in Renaissance texts are intended as more than guides for practical political action. The heroic or virtuous figure offers a model of excellence, an icon after which the reader is to be formed. The representation of the exemplary figure functions as the occasion for reflection on the constitution of the self. The transformations undergone by exemplarity in the late sixteenth century open the way for the emergence of the new models of selfrepresention that characterize the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The history of exemplarity is thus also, on one level, a history of figurations of the self. This history, moreover, involves the close relationship between a particular mode of discourse and a particular

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object. The mode of discourse is narrative and the object is the body— most specifically here, the heroic body—since it is through the conjunction of narratives and bodies that "selves" are represented. The texts studied here articulate a series of explorations of the link between body and narrative, leading, in several authors, to a scepticism toward the reading of both narratives and bodies. The rhetoric of exemplarity thus leads to a study of the ideological significance of the body. The question of exemplarity raises important issues not only for the study of Renaissance literature today but also for critical practice in general. The problems addressed by figures such as Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes, as they look with nostalgia on humanist traditions of exemplarity, might be of some importance to us, since we inherit so much of what their nostalgia creates. Just as the figures discussed here seek to define themselves with respect to the traditions of aristocratic humanism, so too we in our own historical moment look back on bourgeois humanism and witness its end. Thus, it is no accident that criticism today is characterized by reflection, in a variety of intellectual disciplines from psychoanalysis to theology, on the same relationships among narrative, character, body, and the public sphere that are of interest in the late Renaissance. Contemporary fascination with the dissolution of the self in language and the fragmentation of narrative reflects changes in the relationship between the self and the public world that are no less monumental than those marking the late sixteenth century. The widening breach between the individual and the space of political action in the bureaucratic state, the manipulation of manufactured "exemplars" as a key strategy in both advertising technique and political image making, the programmed amnesia of the mass media, among other factors, render increasingly problematic all attempts to read and appropriate the past. The responses to this state of affairs are varied. They range from critical denunciation of the writer-intellectual as "universal" exemplar of civilization (in, for example, the late work of Michel Foucault), to the attempts by philosophers such as Alasdair Maclntyre to reappropriate Aristotelian moral philosophy, to the claims of conservative pedagogues that the heroic ideals preached by Renaissance humanism need somehow to be revived. The texts and problems studied in this book illuminate these current debates in compelling fashion. Here, as in so many other ways, we are baroque. Since this is a book about education, it is a special pleasure for me to acknowledge and thank friends, teachers, and institutions for support and guidance over the course of my work. My first and greatest

Preface

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debt is to Jessica Levine, whose wisdom, love, and sense of humor have helped to make heavy labors seem light. To David Quint, for remarkable personal generosity and intellectual commitment far beyond the call of duty. Exemplary indeed. To Francois Rigolot, for his valued scholarly guidance and friendship. Also, for their helpful comments on various sections and stages of the manuscript, thanks to Edwin Duval, Alban Forcione, Anthony Grafton, Thomas Greene, Richard Halpern, Cyrus Hamlin, Elizabeth Harvey, Victoria Kahn, Jacob Meskin, Lauren Scancarelli Seem, and Howard Stern, as well as several anonymous readers. I also thank Ora Avni for her support and encouragement. For their friendship and conversation my appreciation goes to Paul Holdengraber, Patrizia Lombardo, Paul R. Dixon, and Ehsan Ahmed. I recall with pleasure the participation of Cleo Levine. I offer sincere thanks to Bernhard Kendler, Carol Betsch, Franci Duitch, and the staff of Cornell University Press. Finally, I acknowledge the teaching and guidance of my family, and of Patricia Parker, Kenneth G. Peterson, Henry A. Sauerwein, Jr., and Katherine Simons. For financial support I thank the Graduate School of Princeton University and the Gladys K. Delmas Foundation of New York. Portions of chapters 3 and 4 have appeared in slightly different form in MLN and Stanford Italian Review. Permission to reprint them is gratefully acknowledged. TIMOTHY HAMPTON New Haven, Connecticut

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Writing from History

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1

Introduction. Exemplarity and Interpretation: Reading in History There are exemplars of greatness, living texts of renown. BALTASAR GRACIAN

THE RHETORIC OF HISTORY

I begin with an example. In 1476, on the day after Christmas, the Milanese tyrant Galeazzo Maria Sforza was murdered in the church of Santo Stefano. The stabbing had been planned by three young local patricians and was intended to spark a popular uprising that would free Milan from the domination of the despotic Sforza clan. The assassination was achieved, but the expected revolt never took form, and the three were soon apprehended. Their motives were varied: two of the conspirators, Giovanni Andrea Lampugnani and Carlo Visconti, were apparently driven by matters of honor and money. The third member of the cabal, Girolamo Olgiati, presents a more interesting case. The confession extracted after his capture allows one to piece together his curious motivation for the attack. Olgiati mentions his study of Roman history under his humanist preceptor Cola Montano. In reading ancient historians he developed a deep hatred of tyranny. He came to believe that the duty of any virtuous citizen is to act in emulation of the illustrious ancients, to follow in their very footsteps ("vestigia immitando") in the cause of liberty. There may even be a connection between Olgiati's violent gesture and a specific text: we know that in the weeks preceding the attack he had been reading Sallust's history of Catiline's plot to seize control of Rome in 63 B.C. The "footsteps" followed by the impetuous Olgiati seem in

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Writing from History

effect to have been those of Catiline, whom the youthful idealist took as the model or exemplar of virtuous action against tyranny. 1 If there actually is a connection between Olgiati's deed and the text of Sallust, the historical ironies surrounding this episode are many. First, Olgiati read the wrong text. The most authoritative classical model for blows against tyranny is, of course, not Catiline but Brutus. This fact was certainly known to Olgiati's Florentine contemporaries. One of the members of the anti-Medici conspiracy of 1513 called from the gallows to a passing friend, "Take Brutus from my mind so that 1 may pass from the world a perfect Christian."2 Moreover, Olgiati's reading of Sallust was clearly skewed and fragmentary. If he had read the whole text with any care, he would have seen that the Roman historian's depiction of Catiline is consistently unsympathetic. To strike against tyranny in imitation of Catiline is clearly to go against the grain of Sallust's history. Furthermore, the plots for the two scenes do not quite match up; Catiline's conspiracy is a coup d'etat aimed against an oligarchy. The Catilinarian drama lacks a tyrant to play the role later taken unwillingly by Galeazzo Maria Sforza. In fact, the only assassination attempt in Sallust's text is aimed, unsuccessfully, by Catiline's friends at his enemy Cicero. This may be the greatest irony of all, since the rhetoric taught by preceptors such as Cola Montano in humanist schools like the one attended by Girolamo Olgiati was preeminently Ciceronian, and since Cicero's speeches against Catiline were taken as oratorical models. Thus, in attacking Sforza, 1 The political ramifications of this episode are explored by Vincent Ilardi, in "The Assassination of Galeazzo Maria Sforza and the Reaction of Italian Diplomacy," in Violence and Civil Disorder in Italian Cities, 1200—1500, ed. Lauro Martines (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972), 72-103. Bortolo Belotti's II dramma di Girolamo Olgiati (Milan, 1929) treats the background to the events in detail; for a near contemporary view, see Niccolo Machiavelli's Istorie fiorentine (7.33). Olgiati's confession is conserved in Bernardino Corio, Storia di Milano, ed. Anna Morisi Guerra, 2 vols. (Torino: UTET, 1978), 2:1401-1407. Let me establish from the outset that my practice in this book of referring to the reader as "him" is pursued neither for convenience nor from the assumption that the reading subject is necessarily masculine. Given the topic of the representation and use of exemplars, it is safe to say that, as they were exhorting their readers to imitate ancient models, Renaissance authors generally envisioned a principally male reading public. Through an analysis of the problems raised by this most patriarchal type of pedagogy (rather than, say, by the more obviously paradoxical imposition of male exemplars on female readers), the contradictions of the discourse of heroism can be brought to light more sharply. 2 On the importance of the image of Brutus as an exemplar of sedition in fifteenthcentury Italian politics, see D. J. Gordon's essay "Giannotti, Michelangelo, and the Cult of Brutus," in The Renaissance Imagination, ed. and comp. Stephen Orgel (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), 233-46. On the late-Renaissance permutations of the image of Brutus, see my chap. 5 on Shakespeare.

Introduction

3

the humanist-trained Olgiati tried to imitate Catiline. His target, however, recalled Cicero, the model not for tyrants but for humanists. It is unclear whether one should read this anecdote as a parable about politics or education. In either event the unfortunate Girolamo Olgiati might be the hero of these pages, which are about the relationship of tradition, interpretation and public action. His story dramatizes in history the literary problem to be treated in this book. Olgiati's attack on the Milanese tyrant in imitation of a Roman model is, in the largest sense, an act of reading. It constitutes an attempt to interpret ancient history and apply it to action in the world, to move beyond word to flesh. Though his acts are misguided and imprudent, Olgiati's admiration of an exemplary figure from history accords with the precepts of humanist pedagogy, which links the study of the past and the imitation of models to public action. This juxtaposition of a figure of ancient virtue, a text in which that figure is represented, and an ethical system promoting political action raises a series of interpretive and rhetorical problems that I attempt to sort out in this first chapter. For the evocation of the exemplary ancient in a Renaissance text is distinct from other rhetorical gestures of citation and allegation in that the exemplar makes a claim on the reader's action in the world. Allusion to the virtuous or heroic model sets up an implicit moral comparison between modern reader and ancient exemplar. For the Renaissance reader, to "practice those great souls of the best ages," as Montaigne phrased it, was to define the self in relationship to ideal images from the past. Thus, the evocation of an exemplary figure constitutes that textual moment at which the authority of the past is brought to bear on the reader's response to the text. The exemplar can be seen as a kind of textual node or point of juncture, where a given author's interpretation of the past overlaps with the desire to form and fashion readers. Or, to express this relationship schematically, in the representation of exemplary figures the hermeneutic procedures through which Renaissance culture has appropriated the texts and actors of the past interface with the rhetorical procedures through which Renaissance texts fashion the responses of their own readers. To understand the contours of this problem, it is best to begin with a general consideration of how acts of reading and writing in the Renaissance relate to ancient culture, the rediscovery of which was humanism's crowning achievement. Much recent work on Renaissance literature has stressed the central role of imitation in Renaissance poetics. The complex dialogue that Renaissance writers carry on with literary predecessors can be a source of extraordinary energy and

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anxiety. Implicit in this notion of art as imitation, as the reworking of ancient textual models, there lies a theory of reading. As Terence Cave has written, "imitation as a theory of writing contributes to a change in habits of reading. If venerable texts are to be fragmented and eventually transformed by the process of rewriting, it becomes visibly less necessary to regard them as closed and authoritative wholes."3 By imitating ancient texts, then, Renaissance authors teach their readers to read in new ways. Yet, to understand imitatio as merely a question of poetics, as Cave does, is to tell only one side of the story. For perhaps to a greater degree than those of any other period, the texts of the Renaissance stress the importance of their relationships to their readers.4 They seek to provide the reader with a variety of options for possible action in the world. They educate the faculty of judgment and seek to influence behavior within a specific social sphere. They aim to move readers to various types of moral and political behavior. And the representation of exemplary figures from history is a principal rhetorical technique in this process of shaping the reader. "Nothing," says Petrarch in a letter to Giovanni Colonna, "moves me like the examples of famous men." The deeds of the illustrious ancients, he remarks, combine "pleasure" and "authority" ("cum delectatione insit autoritas").5 Heroism is a rhetoric—a deliberative rhetoric intended to provoke action. The image of the exemplary figure exhorts the reader, recalling in the most direct way Cicero's definition of rhetoric as "speech designed to persuade" ("dicere ad persuadendum accomodate") or Augustine's characterization of the aim of rhetoric as "inducement to action."6 In humanist discussions of exemplarity it is common to note how exemplars "inflame" the reader, how they "incite" 3 Terence Cave, "The Mimesis of Reading in the Renaissance," in Mimesis: Mirror to Method, ed. John D. Lyons and Stephen D. Nichols, Jr. (Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1982), 155. For fuller discussions of the dynamics of poetic imitation in the Renaissance, see Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982); and David Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983). 4 For a valuable discussion of the central role of the reader in Renaissance texts (without, however, attention to either the problems of history or the questions of politics and heroism analyzed here), see Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985). 5 "Me quidem nichil est quod moveat quantum exempla clarorum hominum"; Francesco Petrarca, Le familiari, ed. Vittorio Rossi (Florence: Sansoni, 1933—1942), bk. VI, 4 (my translation). 6 Quoted in Kenneth Burke, A Rhetoric of Motives (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1969), 49.

Introduction

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or "animate" him to imitate them, as Girolamo Olgiati seems to have been "animated" by the example of Catiline. It is through this type of rhetoric that Renaissance texts mediate between individual readers and the ideals of public action promoted by humanism. Thus, the question of exemplarity involves the ways in which texts are public artifacts, documents designed to affect the political sphere. As such, their depictions of the relationship between models of action from the past and readers in the present are inevitably marked by transformations in the public space addressed. Changes in representations of exemplary figures can be seen as symptoms of political and ideological struggles that demand new figurations of the self. These figurations, embodied in the heroic model held up as an image to the reader, in turn act dialectically to produce new discursive modes for representing virtue and, ultimately, new literary forms. Thus, Cave's assertion that imitation as writing produces new notions of reading in the Renaissance might well be reversed, and one might say that it is in fact from their relationships to their readers and to the space in which those readers define themselves through action that Renaissance texts derive their structure and rhetorical strategies. Likewise, it is through developing interplay between the literary representation of historical exemplars and the sphere of public action that the evolution of literary forms in early modernity can be understood. Exemplarity, then, shifts the problem of imitation, much discussed by recent critics as a cornerstone of writing in the Renaissance, to the level of reading. The exemplary figure in a Renaissance text can be seen as a marked sign that bears the moral and historical authority of antiquity and engages the reader in a dialogue with the past, a dialogue to be played out—sometimes clumsily, as in the case of Girolamo Olgiati—on the stage of public action. Through their depictions of exemplars Renaissance texts project the problems of what is today called "reader-response" criticism, into the domain of social practice and ideology.7 The representation of the exemplary figure constitutes the moment in the Renaissance text at which the matter of ancient history becomes rhetoric. The use of models to teach or indoctrinate is, of course, a universal phenomenon, as is imitation as a response to texts. Already I have 7 The question of imitation and "reader-response" criticism has been addressed by Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, trans. Timothy Bahti (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), 23ff. For a historical account of the relationship between reader-response criticism and aesthetic doctrine, see Jauss, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, trans. Michael Shaw (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982), esp. 3-151.

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Writing from History

mentioned the importance of the rhetoric of heroism in the reception of Sallust. One could adduce countless other instances, from Plato's discussion of education in the Greater Hippias, to the search by contemporary liberation movements such as feminism for historical "role models."8 Yet, what must be stressed is that acts of imitation are always mediated by particular historically defined structures of understanding and action. Renaissance humanism talks about exemplar!ty in a vocabulary that it has appropriated largely from Roman moral philosophy. Its heroic rhetoric finds its authority in the texts of Plutarch and Suetonius, and in such canonical formulations as Cicero's claim that "History... is the witness to the passing of the ages, the light of truth, the life of memory, the mistress of life, and the ambassador of the past."9 This Ciceronian rhetoric and praise of classical heroism rings throughout early humanist pedagogical discourse. So, for example, the fact that Girolamo Olgiati imitates Catiline and not, say, Christ, can be traced to specific strategies of humanist education, to notions of decorum governing virtuous action in a particular social sphere, and so on. To investigate the ways in which Renaissance literature appropriates tradition for specific rhetorical ends, thereby placing texts and their readers in history and society, it is necessary to insist on the close relationship between exemplarity and Renaissance humanism. For not only did the humanists most systematically 8 On the function of history (introduced by Isocrates) in ancient education, see Henri I. Marrou, A History of Education in Antiquity, trans. George Lamb (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1982), 83ff. In Plato's Greater Hippias Socrates discusses the importance of images of heroism among the Lacedemonians. Johan Huizinga points out that the imitation of past models is a central gesture in all historical understanding. Yet, he privileges the Renaissance as that moment at which imitation achieved its most sophisticated and influential form in political theory and moral philosophy. He contrasts the Renaissance to the modern era, in which the rise of nationalism has led to a closing off of a true dialogue with the past and has substituted cliches or myths: "The national historical ideal is drawing more and more nourishment from history as it is studied more intensively. Nonetheless, it usually remains rather a mere symbol than an example for direct imitation. The modern world no longer seeks general historical examples of virtue and happiness, but seeks all the more historical symbols expressing national aspirations" (92); see "Historical Ideals of Life," in Men and Ideas, trans. James S. Holmes and Hans van Marie (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), 77—96. The occasion of Huizinga's text (his reception of a chair of history at the University of Leiden in 1915) and the subsequent history of Europe lend a certain pathos to these remarks of a humanist who condemns nationalism and pleads for a true dialogue with history. Jauss, Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, 288, stresses the role of negativity (as opposed to positive identification and imitation) in distinguishing romantic from classical modes of reader-text relationships. 9 Cicero De oratore 2.9.36. I cite the Loeb Classics edition of E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979). I have altered the translation slightly.

Introduction

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articulate the central role of ancient history in promoting ideals of public virtue, but so too in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the ideological tenets of humanist pedagogy spread to every corner of Europe. This chapter sets forth the hermeneutic and rhetorical problems raised by a study of exemplarity and traces the contours of the humanist appropriation of ancient heroism. My aim is to delineate the various features of humanist culture that intersect to define the representation of exemplars in the Renaissance and distinguish it from the use of models at other historical moments. In chapter 2, through readings of texts by Bude, Erasmus, and Machiavelli which explicitly confront the practicalities of applying historical models to public action, I investigate the specific role of exemplarity in humanist advice literature. I trace the ways in which exemplarity absorbs the contradictions that mark humanist discourse, functioning paradoxically both to affirm the rhetoric of heroism and to question it. Because- of the central importance of exemplary figures from antiquity in humanist ideology, the history of exemplarity and the history of humanism are closely linked. During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the humanism from which exemplarity derives its authority undergoes a series of transformations—from the civic humanism of the quattrocento Italian city state, through the Reformation, to the world of the early modern nation. Throughout this political and social transformation the limits of the Ciceronian praise of heroic history quickly come to light. Scepticism toward humanism and, indeed, toward the authority of history itself begins to emerge. As a consequence, the rhetoric of humanist heroism is drained of its power. Thus, the humanist model of reading "in" history or from history is itself historical—it is caught "in" history. Yet, the rhetorical use of ancient exemplars survives long after the aristocratic humanism of the early Renaissance has lost its intellectual dominance. In the late sixteenth century exemplarity is enlisted by new ideologies, such as Counter-Reformation religious orthodoxy or political absolutism, ideologies that turn away from many of the tenets of quattrocento humanism. Out of the transformations of humanist culture new models of interpreting history and representing virtue emerge. These models are central to both the genesis of new literary forms and the history of figurations of the self in the period after the Renaissance. The image of the exemplary ancient can thus be seen as a vestige of a particular strain of heroic humanism, as an ideologeme—a fragment of discourse originally linked to a specific ideology and moment of social relationships but later wrenched from its initial context. To

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Writing from History

study its fortunes is to offer steps toward a genealogy of the act of reading the past in early modernity.10 The genesis of these responses to the crisis of humanist culture is traced in my discussions of Tasso, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. Each of these writers uses heroic material from the humanist tradition of exemplarity. Yet, each attempts to move beyond the contradictions raised by humanism's depiction of exemplars. Each takes figures from ancient history as a point of departure, but eventually displaces the moralizing vocabulary of humanism to invent both new forms of literary discourse and new ways of figuring the self. I suggest this paradoxical exploitation of the humanist tradition of exemplarity by the ambiguous prepositions connecting the key terms "writing" and "history" in my chapter headings. By the term history, I mean, as did the Renaissance reference, both deeds done in the past and the narratives that recount them. In its promotion of heroism the discourse of exemplarity cuts across the domains of moral philosophy, pedagogy, historiography, and what we would today call "literature." Since both history writing and the literary forms treated below rely on narrative, it is in the representation of exemplars that they seem to overlap. Though this book is in no way a history of historiography, the focus of my interest might be seen to lie at the spot where historiographical concerns bleed over into other types of writing that we might call literary. Yet, as both historiography and literature turn away from the heroic concerns of much of humanist discourse, they split apart and undergo separate evolutions—one of which I trace in these pages. EXEMPLARITY AND HERMENEUTICS: NARRATIVES OF APPROPRIATION

For humanist historiography—as, indeed, for all secular historiography up to Hegel—the past is seen as a reservoir of models for 10 On the ideologeme, see Fredric Jameson's discussion in The Political Unconscious: Narrative as a Socially Symbolic Act (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982), Syff. Jameson's analysis draws upon the work of V. N. Volosinov. See Volosinov's Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Ladislav Matejka and I. R. Titunik (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986). On the relationship between history, theory, politics, and moral philosophy Alasdair Maclntyre writes: "There ought not to be two histories, one of political and moral action and one of political and moral theorizing, because there were not two pasts, one populated only by actions, the other only by theories. Every action is the bearer and expression of more or less theory-laden beliefs and concepts; every piece of theorizing and every expression of belief is a political and moral action"; After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1981), 61.

Introduction

g

present action. Past and present are linked through a relationship of similitude. "History is philosophy teaching by example," ran the commonplace taken from Dionysius of Halicarnassus.11 The words, deeds, and even the bodies of the illustrious ancients were seen as signs of excellence and patterns for behavior. Without them, and without the theory of history as repetition, the very notion of a cultural rebirth or re-naissance is unthinkable. The early Renaissance is imbued with a somewhat anxious reverence toward the classical world. It understands the priority of antiquity to be ontological as well as historical: ancient poetry, political life, and philosophy are seen to be sources of value—moral, martial, linguistic—which modernity must appropriate through the hermeneutic motion of a leap across centuries of perceived darkness toward a past light. Thus, to imitate an ancient exemplar as Girolamo Olgiati imitated Catiline is to place the self in history, to form it on a tested model.12 The formation of the self is a 11 Quoted by George H. Nadel, "Philosophy of History before Historicism," History and Theory 3 (1964), 298. Nadel's essay is an excellent summary of the background to the exemplar theory of history. Reinhart Koselleck has explored the importance of the exemplar for historiography up to Hegel in "Historia Magistra Vitae: Uber die Auflosung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte," in Natur und Geschichte: Karl Lowith zum 70. Geburtstag, ed. Hermann Braun and Manfred Riedel (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1967), 196-219. On the Renaissance notion of history as repetition see, Frank Manuel, Shapes of Philosophical History (Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1965), 46-69; Eckhard Kessler, Introduction to Theoretiker Humanistischer Geschichtsschreibung (Munich: W. Fink Verlag, 1971); Myron P. Gilmore, "The Renaissance Conception of the Lessons of History," in Facets of the Renaissance, ed. Wallace K. Ferguson (New York: Harper & Row, 1959), 71-101; and Felix Gilbert, "The Renaissance Interest in History," in Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance, ed. Charles S. Singleton (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1967), 373—87. The primacy of the study of history for Renaissance schoolboys and schoolgirls is stressed by Leonardo Bruni in his "De studiis et litteris liber." See Hans Baron, ed., Leonardo Bruni Aretino: Humanistisch-Philosophische Schriften (Lepizig: B. G. Teubner, 1928), 13. Karlheinz Stierle has discussed the relationship between the early modern exemplum (as anecdote) and narrative theory in "L'histoire comme exemple, I'exemple comme histoire," Poetique 10 (1972), 176—98. 12 On the Renaissance notion that the self can be modeled or "fashioned," see Thomas M. Greene, "The Flexibility of the Self in Renaissance Literature," in The Disciplines of Criticism, ed. Peter Demetz, Thomas Greene, and Lowry Nelson, Jr. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), 241—68; and, from a different perspective, Stephen Greenblatt, Renaissance Self-Fashioning from More to Shakespeare (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Greene's essay introduces the two notions of the "formation" of the self through humanist pedagogy and the "transformation" of the self through mystical rapture, as characterizing Renaissance concepts of the self. My insistence on the historical exemplar should serve to distinguish this study from analyses of the allegorical traditions that attach themselves to ancient gods and heroes. I think, for example, of Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), and of the work by John M. Steadman, such as Milton and the Paradoxes of Renaissance Heroism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987)-

io

Writing from History

product both of self-consciousness and of the awareness of ideals toward which the self must constantly strive. This emphasis on ancient models is expressed clearly by the Florentine humanist Pietro Paolo Vergerio, in his influential pedagogical treatise, theDe ingenuis moribus. Vergerio recalls Socrates' recommendation that boys examine themselves in a mirror, since "the boy of dignified bearing may feel himself bound to act worthily of it, the boy of less attractive form braced to attain an inner harmony to compensate for his defect." It is better however, he remarks, to contemplate the images of others, "as Scipio, Fabius and Caesar kept before their eyes the images of Alexander or other heroes of the past." One of the main purposes of teaching poetry and history is to disseminate these images and bring them before the mind of the student. In a letter of 1397, Vergerio defends the moral utility of poetry by saying that the reader who sees the images of heroes ("illustrium virorum imagines") is excited by them to imitation ("magnopere se ad earum imitationem concitari").13 For Renaissance humanism, idealism is structured historically, present action and the formation of the self take shape through constant glances to the past. The imitation of an exemplar involves what hermeneutic theory calls applicatio, the application of a text to action in the world. Thus, in his treatise on the art of letter writing, the De conscribendis epistolis, Erasmus prescribes a method for study that demonstrates the central function of all types of examples in humanist models of interpretation. Every text, he says, should be read four times: once to seize its sense, once for its grammatical structure, once for its rhetorical technique, and a fourth time "seeking out what seems to relate to philosophy, especially ethics, to discover any example that may be applicable to morals."14 The assumption of application is that past words and deeds embody a value which the modern reader can appropriate to guide practical action. Past acts are signs in time, texts that must be inter13 1 quote William Harrison Woodward's translation of De ingenuis moribus in his anthology Vittorino da Feltre and Other Humanist Educators (New York: Teachers College Press, 1963), 98. The passage from Vergerio's correspondence is cited from Leonardo Smith, ed., Epistolario (Rome: Tipografia del Senate, 1934), 201. 14 Erasmus, Literary and Educational Writings 3, vol. 25 of Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. J. K. Sowards (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1985), 194-95. The translation is by Charles Fantazzi. Here is the original passage, quoted from the 1703 Amsterdam edition of Erasmus's works (1:447): "Releges igitur quarto, ac quae ad Philosophiam, maxime vero Ethicon referri posse videantur, circumspicies, si quod exemplum, quod moribus accomodari possit." Two recent studies have reaffirmed the primacy of a moralizing or pedagogical conception of poetry for the Renaissance: Marion Trousedale, "A Possible Renaissance View of Form," ELH 4 (1973), 179—204; and John M. Wallace, " 'Examples Are Best Precepts': Readers and Meanings in SeventeenthCentury Poetry," Critical Inquiry i (1974), 276-90.

Introduction

11

preted and applied to the present. And it is worth considering for a moment the dynamics of this gesture of application. Just as for modern hermeneutics texts are seen to be acts, so also for readers of exemplars past acts are texts to be read. The great seventeenth-century Spanish Jesuit Baltasar Gracian, whose work encapsulates so much of Renaissance moral philosophy, calls exemplars "living texts" ("textos animados").15 In this context Hans-Georg Gadamer's analysis of the interpretation of texts illuminates the process whereby exemplary deeds are appropriated to guide the present: The interpreter dealing with a traditional text seeks to apply it to himself. But this does not mean that the text is given for him as something universal, that he understands it as such and only afterwards uses it for particular applications. Rather, the interpreter seeks no more than what this piece of tradition says, what constitutes the meaning and importance of the text.16

When we understand a document from the past, Gadamer suggests, we have already applied it to the present, insofar as we understand what we need, taking from the past event's particularity whatever is required by our own context and situation. As Gadamer says, "Understanding is always already application."17 The imitation of exemplars as models for comportment is one form of hermeneutic application, a technique whereby the Renaissance seeks to reactivate the past. This application is made possible through a process of appropriation, through which a contingent past activity is raised to a momentary universality that makes discernible its value for the present. For Gadamer, the ground which makes this activity possible is none other than tradition itself. The distance between present and past, he suggests, "is not a yawning abyss, but is filled with the continuity of custom and tradition, in the light of which all that is handed down presents itself to us."18 Yet, Gadamer's confident postHegelian assertion of historical continuity would probably strike a Renaissance humanist as unrealistically cheery. For humanist culture 15

Baltasar Gracian, in Oraculo manualy arte deprudencia, no. 75, ed. Luys Santa Marina (Barcelona: Planeta, 1984), 166. 16 Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. William Glen-Doepel (London: Sheed and Ward, 1975), 289. For a brief history of the category of applicatio, see Gadamer, Introduction to Seminar: Philosophische Hermeneutik, ed. Hans-Georg Gadamer and Gottfried Boehm (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1976), 7-42. 17 Gadamer, Truth and Method, 275. I have slightly altered the translation here to conform with the original. 18 Ibid., 264-65.

12

Writing from History

was marked by a radical consciousness of the fragility of tradition. Indeed, Gadamer's image of "the light" of tradition which illuminates the past is strangely apposite here, since the first humanists' return to antiquity was in fact an attempt to reconstitute a tradition that, though promising illumination, had been snuffed out by the "dark ages" of medieval culture. Tradition itself, which Gadamer seems to take as a given, was itself a problematic construct for humanism. Not only did the attempt to unearth the past require endless philological labor, but also the application of past deeds to present action was a delicate business fraught with ideological complexity and practical risk. What Gadamer calls "tradition" and "custom" included the weight of a medieval system which humanism, for whatever reasons, wished to throw aside. If Gadamer's notion of tradition seems too broadly drawn to account for the interpretive tasks of Renaissance humanism, it has the virtue of suggesting the dialectical relationship of concrete and universal that characterizes appropriation of the past. Post-Gadamerian thinkers, however, have begun to define the present's attempt to understand the past in more precise terms, suggesting that the past can only be appropriated for the present when it is set in a narrative. Here is Alasdair Maclntyre: We identify a particular action only by invoking two kinds of context, implicitly if not explicitly. We place the agent's intentions... in causal and temporal order with reference to their role in his or her history; and we also place them with reference to their role in the history of the setting or settings to which they belong. In doing this, in determining what causal efficacy the agent's intentions had in one or more directions, and how his short-term intentions succeeded or failed to be constitutive of long-term intentions, we ourselves write a further part of these histories. Narrative history of a certain kind turns out to be the basic and essential genre for the characterization of human action.19

The appropriation of past action is understood as the creation of a narrative. First, the exemplary deed is placed in the exemplary life; it is read as a momentary sign of the hero's virtue (I discuss the 19

Maclntyre, After Virtue, 209. For a similar insistence on narration and history, see Paul Veyne, Writing History, trans. Mina Moore-Rinvolucri (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), esp. 84ff. On the relationship between narrative and ideology in historical discourse, see Hayden White, "The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry 7 (1980), 5-27. Similar problems have been addressed at greater length in White, Metahistory: The Historical Imagination in NineteenthCentury Europe (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973). See especially the Introduction, "The Poetics of History."

Introduction

13

relationship between individual act and exemplary life in a moment). Then that life is inscribed in a narrative of "long term intentions." Yet, this process of emplotment, of placing a past event in a narrative which makes it available to the present, involves an implicit narrative, a larger story that is the movement of history itself, whereby a past event relates to or illuminates the present and the future. The clearest instance of this transformation of the past into narrative is offered by medieval culture itself, which, as Thomas Greene has noted, bore what might be called a metonymic relationship toward the great events and texts of its past.20 Medieval miracle plays, for example, presented themselves as extensions of Scripture, as parts of a giant narrative containing all action. Or, to take an example from a slightly different context, we might think of the system of fourfold scriptural exigesis—adapted to poetry by Dante in the Divina cornmedia—which made it possible for an act to exist simultaneously in both past and present. Past acts and actors retained their own historical particularity even as they were simultaneously understood as universal types or figurae of later acts and actors. Both present and past take their respective places as moments in the great master narrative of Christian salvation history, which stretches from time's beginning to its end. 21 For Renaissance humanism, however, such typological resolution of the relationship between past and present is largely an impossibility. Humanist philology took as its principal object of study not sacred history but rather the secular, pagan history of Greece and Rome. 20

See Greene, Light in Troy, 86. On the genesis of typological criticism, see Erich Auerbach, "Figura," in Scenes from the Drama of European Literature (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), 11—76. On the function of the example in antiquity and the Middle Ages, see the collection Rhetorique et histoire: L'exemplum et le modele de comportement dans le discours antique et medievale, ed. J.-M. David, Melanges de VEcole Fran^aise de Rome 92 (1980). David's introduction is especially helpful, as is a review article on the collection by Carlo Delcorno, "Nuovi studi sull, 'exemplum,' " Lettere Italiane 36 (1984), 49-68. On exemplarity in rhetorical and juridical theory, see Nadel, "Philosophy of History before Historicism," 296. On antiquity in specific, see J.-M. David's essay in Rhetorique et histoire, titled "Maiororum exempla segui: 1'exemplum historique dans les discours judiciaires de Ciceron," 68-86; Michel Rambaud, Ciceron et I'histoire romaine (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1953), 25-54. Aquinas had suggested that the example was the least effective mode of argumentation, but Renaissance humanists such as Juan Luis Vives sought to rescue the form: "In moral philosophy examples are more useful than precepts; for one imitates more quickly and more profitably what one admires.... We are moved to defy all trials undergone in the name of Christ, and we are influenced more by the examples of martyrs than by the reasoning of theologists." I translate from the Spanish version of Vives's De disciplinis, by Lorenzo Riber, ed., Obras completas, 2 vols. (Madrid: Aguilar, 1948), 2:649. On the question of martyrs as exemplars, see chap. 3 here on Tasso. 21

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Writing from History

The strangeness or alterity with which the past inevitably appears to the present was intensified in the humanist return to classical antiquity. The vast distance between past and present, the perceived "darkness" of medieval culture and the ideological and moral differences between Christian and pagan world views placed massive obstacles in the way of the student of antiquity. For the cyclical structure of the exemplar theory of history frequently stands in tension with the linear pulse of Christian eschatology. And, whereas the Middle Ages had attempted to neutralize the temporal and ideological alterity of pagan culture through various allegorical or moralizing techniques, humanism aimed to read the past on the past's own terms, by returning to original textual sources and by attempting to recreate the cultural landscape which produced them. This historicizing impulse inevitably produced a kind of "shock," as the otherness of the past was confronted.22 The words and deeds of the pagan ancients appeared radically strange to minds shaped by Christian dogma and scholastic structures of understanding. We can understand the problems raised in this process by considering the social context of humanist interpretation, at least in its most influential, Italian phase. The humanist rediscovery of and return to the texts of Roman culture coincided with the rise of the Italian citystate, where social structure required an educated elite able to read and write good administrative Latin.23 The obvious stylistic models for Latin instruction were Roman, and humanist education's return to Roman style brought a new appreciation of pagan moral philosophy, wherein the emphasis on virtuous public action neatly fit the 22 Of the humanist anxiety regarding the fragility of the past, Greene has written: "If a remote text is composed in a language for which the present supplies only a treacherous glossary, and if it is grounded in a lost concrete specificity never fully recoverable, then the tasks of reading, editing, commenting, translating, and imitating become intricately problematized—and these were the tasks that preoccupied the humanists. There was of course pride in the acquired learning and the skill that dealt with these problems But there is also an anger in the humanists' antimedieval polemic that is not purely perfunctory, since for them it was precisely the crime of the Middle Ages to have stood between the modern age and that which it hypostatized as lost"; Light in Troy, 8. 23 On the social and political context of humanist pedagogy, see Peter Burke, The Italian Renaissance: Culture and Society in Italy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972); Charles Trinkhaus, In Our Image and Likeness, 2 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970); Eugenio Garin, Italian Humanism: Philosophy and Civic Life in the Renaissance, trans. Peter Mung (Oxford: Blackwell, 1965); and, on Florence in particular, two works by Lauro Martines, The Social World of the Florentine Humanists (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963) and Power and Imagination (New York: Knopf, !979)-

Introduction

15

administrative and diplomatic requirements of Italian civic life. This return to classical ideals of action demanded a hermeneutic that would appropriate the signal achievements of antiquity for the purposes of guiding social and political comportment. The groundwork for this model was laid by Petrarch, in his De viris illustribus of 1337, which presented a series of heroic biographies as models of virtuous action. But it was only a generation later, with the civic humanists of the early fifteenth century, that the link was consolidated between ancient models of virtue and the vita activa or the vita civile. Whereas both the shape of Italian politics during the fourteenth century and the solitude of life in exile kept Petrarch's notion of exemplarity close to medieval models of spiritual progress (to what Hans Baron has called "the half-monastic vita solitaria ideals of the Trecento humanists"),24 the early fifteenth century saw the Italian city state reaching its most developed form as a full-scale mercantile economy began to take shape. In this newly formed public space, ancient political life became, as Johan Huizinga has noted, "a true cultural ideal." "The classical way of life," he writes, "was the first that could be made the object of faithful imitation down to details."25 The presentation of exemplary ancients as models is a pedagogical technique for disseminating these ideals. In the ideology (if not always the actual practice) of the humanist schoolroom, sons of noble families were taught to find ideals for themselves in the political virtues of Caesar or Marcus Aurelius, in the civic values of Cicero and Cato, in the martial excellence of Alexander and Scipio, and in the personal integrity of Epaminondas and Socrates. As Vergerio noted in the De ingenuis moribus: "History ... gives us the concrete examples of the precepts inculcated by philosophy. The one shows what men should do, the other what men 24

Hans Baron, The Crisis of the Early Italian Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 112. I do not suggest here that Petrarch lacked concern for the vita activa, or for political and social action, only that his notion of exemplarity remains closer to the spiritual ideals of the Middle Ages than to the more public ideals of the later Renaissance. His canzone "Spirto gentil," for example, depicts ancient Roman exemplars as possible models for action that would reawaken the glory of the dormant city. Yet, as Aldo Bernardo has demonstrated, even in his explicitly "heroic" texts (the unfinished Latin epic Africa, his life of Scipio, etc.) Petrarch is more concerned with defining his own poetic self-identity than with presenting coherent ideals of public action. See Bernardo, Petrarch, Scipio, and the "Africa" (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1962). On the distinctions between Petrarchan historiographical writing and full-scale historical narrative, see Erich Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), i6ff. On Petrarch's notion of history, see Eckhard Kessler, Petrarca und die Geschichte (Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 1978), esp. mff. for the question of exemplarity. 25 Huizinga, "Historical Ideals of Life," 90.

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Writing from History

have said and done in the past, and what practical lessons we may draw therefrom for the present day."26 The rise of humanism as a civic philosophy demanded the rise of exemplarity. Thus humanism is marked by an essential paradox. As over against the pedagogical traditions of the Middle Ages and the abstractions of scholasticism (Saint Thomas had condemned the example as the least powerful mode of proof) humanism preached a return to ancient history. Moreover, the civic values of humanist philosophy extolled the virtues of public action. This created an atmosphere in which the veneration of ancient exemplars flourished. Classical culture was accorded transcendental status. Yet, at the same time, the development of humanist philology helped to sharpen awareness of the gulf between ancient culture and modernity and of the contingency that defines life in time. Humanism needs and promotes exemplarity even as it subverts it.27 The fact that exemplars both embody ethical ideals and demonstrate practical action suggests the implicitly political and ideological aspects of the processes of appropriation and application of past to present. Just as past deeds must be raised from their roots in ancient 26 In Woodward, Vittorino da Feltre, 106. It should be stressed that this praise of exemplars is principally an ideological gesture, linked to humanism's own sense of its moral importance. The actual practice of Renaissance pedagogy, as Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine have recently demonstrated, focused much more on practical questions of grammar and rhetoric, frequently to the exclusion of moral philosophy. See their important study From Humanism to the Humanities (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987), which documents the split between theory and practice in humanist education. The standard history of humanist education is Eugenio Garin's L'educazione in Europa, 1400—1600 (Bari: Laterza, 1957). Elsewhere Garin has written elegiacally about the humanist hunger for ancient models: "Con l'Umanesimo comincia la ricerca precisa del volto di ognuno: diventa essenziale ritrovare 1'aspetto di un uomo. Per parlare con Socrate, per andare a scuola da Socrate, io devo ritrovare Socrate, il vero, 1'autentico Socrate. Quel che vale non e tanto una universalita astratta, quanto una persona vivente, e vorrei dire il timbro della sua voce"; Medievo e Rinascimento (Bari: Laterza, 1954), 204. Garin's willingness to place himself in the position of the humanist reader suggests, of course, his own commitment to a certain bourgeois humanism—a commitment that Grafton and Jardine argue has distorted his perception of what really went on in Renaissance schoolrooms. For their critique see From Humanism to the Humanities, chap. i. 27 This dialectic between the ahistorical acceptance of past texts and acts as exemplary and the nascent historicism which marks much of humanist thought has been explored by Anthony Grafton in "Renaissance Readers and Ancient Texts: Comments on Some Commentaries," Renaissance Quarterly 38 (1985), 615—49. For a discussion of the exemplary status enjoyed by ancient history as content for Renaissance poetry, with a helpful discussion contrasting classical and historicist positions, see David Quint, "Alexander the Pig: Shakespeare on Poetry and History," Boundary II (Spring 1983), 49~67-

Introduction

17

culture, so is hermeneutic activity, the choice of what moment from the past one applies to the present, by definition rooted in the reader's specific sociopolitical context and shaped by particular needs. Public action is limited by certain accepted notions of decorum which define what constitutes proper action and proper speech. The application of the past to the present involves an act of judgment, itself a moral activity, that takes place at the intersection of modern notions of what can be said and done and the authority provided by ancient historical content. Its aim is to facilitate and guide practical action within a given social space. It promotes consensus between members of a given community. As Jiirgen Habermas has noted: In its very structure hermeneutic understanding is designed to guarantee, within cultural tradition, the possible action-orienting selfunderstanding of individuals and groups as well as reciprocal understanding between different individuals and groups. It makes possible the form of unconstrained consensus and the type of open intersubjectivity on which communicative action depends. It bars the dangers of communication breakdown in both dimensions; the vertical one of one's own individual life history and the collective tradition to which one belongs, and the horizontal one of mediating between the traditions of different individuals, groups and cultures.28

The application of past to present aims at the maintenance of social relations, at the production of practical knowledge and communicative action. Habermas represents these processes in terms of two "axes," the vertical axis of tradition (which itself implies a narrative or story) and the horizontal axis of relations between groups and traditions. This means that the gesture of interpretation involves the individual's relation both to the past and to those with whom he shares a set of common stories. It must take place within a context defined by some type of consensus or agreement as to what constitutes valid action. This agreement, of course, is less easy to obtain than one might hope. For communicative and interpretative acts, as Habermas has shown elsewhere, are defined by power relationships and structures of interest. Habermas has criticized Gadamer's claim that hermeneutic understanding can overcome ideological distortion and make possible unfettered dialogue with the past. For Habermas true dialogue, with 28 Jiirgen Habermas, Knowledge and Human Interests, trans. Jeremy J. Shapiro (Boston: Beacon Press, 1971), 176. On the notion of decorum in Renaissance rhetoric, see Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism, esp. chap. 2.

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Writing from History

others and the past, can only exist in an ideal space, free of ideological distortion and power relationships.29 The Utopian element that Habermas senses in communicative activity is an important element of depictions of Renaissance exemplarity. In fact, community and exemplarity seem to be dialectically related. For we shall see that at moments of interpretive crisis, when the appropriation of the words and deeds of the ancients seems so difficult as to be impossible, humanist writers evoke images of interpretive communities within which reading can be anchored. These communities, to be sure, may be only myths that idealize the political role of the aristocratic reader and veil the fact that much humanism flourished under tyranny. They have, however, the essential rhetorical function of helping to circumscribe the moral and semantic slipperiness of ancient deeds. And, by the same token, when political or social communities are in disarray, as is the case during the French wars of religion or when political absolutism and a rising bourgeoisie begin to threaten the hegemony of the aristocracy, the relationship between the heroic ancients and the modern self becomes a source of extreme anxiety, taking us from questions of practical action to questions of ideology. Effective application of past to present is contingent upon a dialectic between the alterity of the past and the needs of the community. The reading of history takes place at the intersection of the matter of ancient history and the decorum defined by social convention. This encounter sharpens the faculties of prudence and judgment, enabling the humanist reader to choose appropriate models which speak to the moment. Girolamo Olgiati's imitation of Catiline, with which I began, demonstrates this dialectic between modern decorum and ancient model. On the one hand, it involved an entire minidrama, in which Milan becomes Rome and Olgiati plays the role of the new Catiline, 29 See Habermas's remarks in "Der Universalitatsanspruch der Hermeneutik," Hermeneutik und Ideologiekritik, ed. Jurgen Habermas et al. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), 120-59. Maclntyre, too, stresses the essential "deep shared agreement" within a community which must subtend productive hermeneutic activity; see After Virtue, 173. For an investigation of the relationship between interpretation and community which counters Gadamer while avoiding the Utopian thrust of Habermas, see Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980). Grafton and Jardine stress the close relationship between humanist education and political and social power structures: "What we are stressing is that the independence of the liberal arts education from establishment values is an illusion. The individual humanist is defined in terms of his relation to the power structure, and he is praised or blamed, promoted or ignored, to just the extent that he fulfils or fails to fulfil those terms"; From Humanism to the Humanities, 44.

Introduction

19

who longs to seize liberty. Yet, the fact that Olgiati's gesture moves directly against the grain of Sallust's text, which depicts Catiline in highly unsympathetic terms, suggests that it was in fact civic conscience, Olgiati's sense (however aberrant) of himself in a particular social context, that shaped his misreading of antiquity and accounts for the nature of his actions.

EXEMPLARITY AND RHETORIC: NARRATIVES OF SELFHOOD In addition to its function as a guide for practical action, exemplarity has a more complex, ideological role as well. In setting forth the deeds of the exemplar the Renaissance text provides the reader with an image of the self, a model of an ideal soul or personality which mediates between ideals of public virtue and the reader's selfunderstanding. In this sense it aids in processes of socialization, of the creation of norms of behavior—procedures crucial to ideological hegemony and to practices of subjectivization. Through his relationship to exemplary figures the Renaissance schoolboy grows into the garments prepared by family and society. As rhetoric, the image of the exemplar aims to promote what Michel Foucault has called "the arts of existence," which he describes as "those intentional and voluntary actions by which men not only set themselves rules of conduct, but also seek to transform themselves, to change themselves in their singular being, and to make their life into an oeuvre that carries certain aesthetic values and meets certain stylistic criteria."30 It is these values and criteria which ideology seeks to define—though not always successfully—as a way of normalizing subjects. Nowhere is the function of the exemplar as a model of selfhood more programmatically set forth than in Cristoforo Landino's preface to his famous commentary on the Aeneid. Landino was an influential teacher and rhetorician in the Florentine humanist movement. His P. Vergilii Maronis operum interpretationes (1488) was intended to be the 30

Michel Foucault, The Use of Pleasure, trans. Robert Hurley (New York: Vintage, 1986), 10-11. On the importance of identification with models as a technique whereby subjects are ideologically marked and "normalized," see Etienne Balibar and Pierre Macherey, "On Literature as an Ideological Form," in Untying the Text, ed. Robert Young (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 79-99. On the importance of education as an ideological tool, see Louis Althusser, "Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses," in Lenin and Philosophy, trans. Ben Brewster (London: New Left Books, 1971), 121-73. Althusser defines ideology as the self's imaginary relationship to the reality of social and economic life.

2O

Writing from History

first Renaissance commentary capable of standing beside the great ancient glosses of Donatus and Servius. Its popularity and influence on literary criticism in the late fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was immense.31 Landino reads the Aeneid as a Neoplatonic allegory of the soul's journey from darkness to light, from ignorance to wisdom. Yet, when he considers the rhetorical impact of the poem on its reader, his interests are surprisingly worldly. He focuses on the representation of character and its impact on moral activity. In his preface, Landino claims that Virgil's poem can be taken as a guide for all human behavior. This is so, he says, since in the figure of Aeneas Virgil depicted an ideal of virtue: "He feigned and represented Aeneas—the perfect man in every way—so that we might all take him as the sole exemplar for the living of our lives."32 He compares the Aeneid to Xenophon's Cyropaedia, claiming that "just as Xenophon unfolded the life of Cyrus from the cradle so that the finest prince might be formed by following the example of his rule, so does Maro's poem portray the type of every human life so that no order of man, no age, no sex, in short no condition may not learn its duty therefrom."33 Having asserted the universal value of Aeneas as model for action, Landino goes on to enumerate the ways in which Virgil's protagonist illustrates virtue in all areas of human endeavor: we see him act courageously in battle, justly in civic affairs and moderately in his personal life. Through the consistently heroic deeds of his protagonist, Virgil represents virtue in action. Imitation of these deeds can bring about the moral and practical formation of the reader. Unlike the scholastic philosophers, who can only tell us how to live virtuously, says Landino, 31 Landino was a leader of the Guelph party, a secretary of the prima cancelleria, a close associate of Piero de' Medici and holder of a chair of oratory and rhetoric. For a succinct summary of the publication history of the Interpretations, see Roberto Cardini, Introduction to Cristoforo Landino: Scritti critici e teorici, ed. Roberto Cardini, 2 vols. (Rome: Bulzoni, 1974), irxviiff. On Landino's general critical method and intellectual evolution, see Cardini, La critica del Landino (Florence: Sansoni, 1973). On Landino's interpretations of Virgil, see Vladimiro Zabughin, Vergilio net Rinascimento italiano da Dante a Torquato Tasso, 2 vols. (Bologna, 1921), 1:194-201. On the importance of Landino's criticism for Renaissance poetic theory, see Michael Murrin, The Allegorical Epic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 27-52. 32 "In uno Aenea absolutum omnino atque ex omni parte perfectum virum finxit atque expressit, ut omnes ilium nobis tanquam unicum exemplar ad vitam degendam proponeremus" (translation mine); Cardini, Cristoforo Landino, 1:215. 33 "Nam ut Cyri vitam Xenophon ita a primis incunabulis producit, ut eius regis exemplo optimus princeps informari possit, sic Maronis poema omne humanae vitae genus exprimit, ut nullus hominum ordo, nulla aetas, nullus sexus sit, nulla denique conditio, quae ab eo sua offkia non integre addiscat" (translation mine); ibid.

Introduction

21

Virgil sets virtue before the reader "as in a shining mirror" ["nitidissimo in speculo"], thereby "inflaming" ["inflamat"] him to imitation. In place of history as exemplum, as the contingent moment from the past raised to momentary universality seen a moment ago, we have here a focus on the exemplar or heroic personality.34 Landino's gloss presents Aeneas as a suprahistorical figure, removed from the contingency that, in Gadamer's formulation, characterizes life in time. The virtue or excellence residing in the exemplar's soul speaks to the reader on all occasions. Aeneas' value as model is revealed in his consistent excellence, in the way he creates signs of his virtue through his actions. The reader of Virgil's text who is able to decipher these signs is spurred to emulation. Landino's description of Aeneas is characteristic of a deep-seated humanist fascination with the virtuous souls of antiquity and the cult of the ancient personality. The image of the mirror used to describe Virgil's representation of Aeneas is a commonplace in discussions of exemplarity.35 For Landino, however, the miracle of Virgil's poem seems to be that its action alone is sufficient to offer an image of a completely virtuous character. Whereas the philosophers (presumably Aristotle, who is attacked elsewhere) only tell us about virtue, Virgil shows it. The reader who looks into the Aeneid as into a mirror sees a reflection of the perfect image of what he should be, an image that merges history and philosophy, showing both his ideal self and a fictional hero acting in a heroic world. This praise of the ancient as model of selfhood appears throughout humanist advice literature. For example, in his vastly influential Dial 34 Landino's characterization of Aeneas as a universal model is by no means unique, of course. One of the most influential late trecento humanists, Coluccio Salutati, had made essentially the same statement, speaking of Virgil as the one "who had gathered all virtue into Aeneas and proposed him to us for imitation" (translation mine) ["qui Eneam cunctis exornando virtutibus nobis proposuit imitandum"]. I quote from a letter to Giuliano Zonarini of 25 October 1378 in Salutati's Epistolario, ed. Francesco Novati, 4 vqls. (Rome: Forzani, 1891), 1:298. The English text of this and two other letters "on liberal studies" can be found, with commentary, in Emerton Ephraim, Humanism and Tyranny: Studies in the Italian Trecento (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1925), 299ff. 35 The image of the mirror places Renaissance writing on exemplarity in the tradition of the speculum principis or "mirror for princes" genre of advice literature which flourished from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century, though I attempt to demonstrate that humanist historiography raises interpretive issues for advice literature that are specific to Renaissance culture. For a discussion of three humanist advice tracts, see chap. 2 here. For the medieval history of this genre, see Wilhelm Berges, Die Furstenspiegel des hohen und spaten Mittelalters (Leipzig: Hiersemann, 1938).

22

Writing from History

for Princes, the Spanish humanist Antonio de Guevara presents Marcus Aurelius in terms that recall Landino's depiction of Aeneas. Guevara urges his reader to take "this wise philosopher and noble emperor as teacher in youth, as father in government, as leader in war, as guide on expeditions, as friend in labor, as example in virtue, as master in learning, as target in ambition and as rival in deeds."36 It is worth noting that in neither Landino nor Guevara is any epistemological distinction made between poetic discourse and "historical" discourse, between Virgil's "fictional" Aeneas and the "historical" Cyrus and Marcus Aurelius. From the point of view of moral philosophy both can offer effective exemplary figures. Only in the late sixteenth century, following the renewed interest in Aristotle's Poetics, does the problem of the relationship between poetic models and historical models become a burning ideological issue that will plague writers such as Tasso, as we later see. For Guevara, the life of the philosopherking provides the reader with an entire course of moral philosophy and political prudence, supplying models for both the active and the contemplative life. The reader is to keep the image of Marcus Aurelius before him at all times, setting his own life in parallel with that of the emperor. Seneca himself had advised Lucilius to take an image of virtue ("species virtutis") and hold it before him, to be worshipped, "not with incense or garlands, but with sweat and blood." He recommended the figure of Cato.37 This perception of the historical or poetic actor as model for the self can help us to understand the specific contours of exemplarity for humanist culture. Habermas's description of the "vertical axis" of interpretative activity includes both the historical continuity of tradition and that of "one's own life." Following Dilthey and Freud, Habermas uses self-understanding as the model for all hermeneutic 36 "A este sabio filosofo y noble emperador [Marco Aurelio] tome Vuestra Merced por ayo en su mocedad, por padre en su gobernacion, por adalid en sus guerras, por guion en sus jornadas, por amigo en sus trabajos, por ejemplo en sus virtudes, por maestro en sus ciencias, por bianco en sus deseos y por competidor en sus hazanas" (translation mine); Reloj' de principes, ed. Angel Rosenblat (Madrid: Signo, 1936), 21. Quentin Skinner quotes Meric Casaubon as saying that the Reloj was, following the Bible, the most widely read book in the whole of sixteenth-century Europe. See his discussion in The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. i, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 215. Montaigne mentions that Guevara's text was his father's favorite reading matter in Essais 2.2, "De 1'yvrognerie." 37 "Cape, quantam debes, virtutis pulcherrimae ac magnificentissimae speciem, quae nobis non ture nee sertis, sed sudore et sanguine colenda est"; Epistulae Morales, ed. Richard M. Gummere (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classics, 1970), letter 67.

Introduction

23

comprehension. And this process is, once again, a process of understanding narrative. Making sense of one's life, appropriating one's past for one's present, involves, as it does in psychoanalysis, the process of writing or composing the narrative of one's life. The important difference presented by humanist exemplarity, however, is that humanist pedagogy advocates the application of the narrative of someone else's life to one's present situation. I use the term narrative advisedly here. Not only is it central to theories of interpretation, but ancient exemplars come to the Renaissance as narratives, as the Lives of Plutarch, the heroic biographies of Xenophon and Quintus Curtius, the epics of Virgil and Lucan. As Landino noted, Aeneas' story parallels Xenophon's fictional life of Cyrus the Great, which is told "from the cradle." Moreover, it is only through narrative, that is, through a sequence of actions, that the exemplar proves his virtue. This point was made by Aristotle himself, near the beginning of the Nichomachean Ethics, where he suggests that the happy man is the virtuous man, but that we cannot judge a man virtuous and happy until we have examined the entirety of his biography, until we have considered his comportment and fortune throughout "a complete life" (bio teleio). Seneca recasts this formulation in spatial terms when he warns Lucilius that it is reason, rather than the senses, that can survey the various deeds of a life, looking to future and past, and that from such perspective alone can one create a "succession of actions" and "the unity of a life"—"a unity which will proceed in a straight course."38 As Maclntyre points out, premodern cultures seem to work with "a concept of a self 38

Seneca passage, ibid., letter 66: "Non potest ferre sententiam, nisi in rem praesentem perductur est. Nee futuri providus est nee praeteriti memor; quid sit consequens, nescit. Ex hoc autem rerum ordo seriesque contexitur et unitas vitae per rectum itura." For Aristotle's discussion, see The Nichomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, Loeb Classics, 1960), 1.7.32. Leonardo Bruni's Latin translation of the phrase "a complete life" is "in vita perfecta." In a 1456 lecture on the Ethics (based on Bruni's influential early fifteenth-century translation), delivered at the University of Florence, the humanist Johannes Argyropulos points out that Aristotle asserts "summum esse hominis bonum operationem animi secundum virtutes et in vita perfecta." He goes on to say that Aristotle "ostendit non eum esse appellandum felicem, qui uno die aut modico vitae tempore sit, sed qui multo tempore longaque aetate operetur secundum virtutem bonisque externis non careat, quibus exercere possit suas studiosas operationes"; Reden und Briefe Italienischer Humanisten, ed. and comp. Karl Miiller (Vienna, 1899), 25. For yet another early Renaissance text that underscores the narrative structure of exemplarity, see the prologue to the Illustrations de Gaule et singularitez de Troye, by the man often called the first French humanist, Jean Lemaire de Beiges.

24

Writing from History

whose unity reside[s] in the unity of a narrative which links birth to life to death as a narrative beginning to middle to end."39 This insistence on "a complete life" is of seminal importance to the representation of exemplars, for it sets up an uneasy dialectic between the character of the virtuous "self and the various actions that constitute that self and function as signs of its virtue. Landino and Guevara begin their presentations of exemplarity with the presupposition that Aeneas and Marcus Aurelius are virtuous "selves." From this belief they deduce that each act in the life is a sign of virtue. Every moment in the life of the exemplar thus becomes a kind of synecdoche of the "complete life" evoked by Aristotle. This conception of the exemplar as embodiment of a universal virtue seems to refute Gadamer's postHegelian assertion that the appropriation of the past is hindered by historical contingency. By imagining allegorized images of historical or pseudohistorical actors, Landino and Guevara flee particularity. Their texts betray an impetus to idealism which marks much of humanist exemplarity and influences the later literary representation of exemplary figures. Yet, the idealizations of Landino and Guevara skirt a number of rhetorical and epistemological problems.40 Since we are dealing with figures who seem at once universal models and embodiments of practical wisdom, we must ask how, on the most specific level of 39 After Virtue, 205. Maclntyre's entire discussion in chap. 15, "The Virtues, the Unity of a Human Life, and the Concept of a Tradition" (181—224), is relevant to this concern for selfhood and narrative. The unity of the exemplary life as narrative is stressed by Jacques Amyot in the preface to his vastly influential French translation of Plutarch's Lives. He distinguishes between biography and other types of history writing: "L'un qui expose au long les faicts et aventures des hommes, et s'appelle du nom commun d'Histoire: 1'autre qui declare leur nature, leurs diets et leurs moeurs, qui proprement se nomme Vie." Both forms, he says, are valuable, since they show the modern reader, "pas seulement comme il faut faire, mais aussi impriment affection de le vouloir faire, tant pour une inclination naurelle, que tous hommes ont a imiter, que par la beaute de la vertu qui a telle force que partout ou elle se voit, elle se fait desirer et aimer"; "Au lecteur," in the first edition of Vies paralleled (Paris, 1559). Erich Cochrane stresses the importance of narrative history as characteristic of a newly developing humanism and in contrast to medieval chronicle: "History promoted morality not by providing an occasion for marginal moral reflections, as it did for the chroniclers. Rather, it assumed that men are more apt to do what they see other men have done than they are to put into practice the 'tedious' precepts of ethical treatise writers, particularly those of Aristotle. It therefore proposed, in an attractive literary garb, 'the example of the illustrious kings, nations, and men for the imitation ... of posterity' " (he is quoting Coluccio Salutati); Historians and Historiography, 16. 40 This escape from contingency was noted by other thinkers of the time. For example, in De disciplinis Vives mocks the easy solutions to hard historical problems offered by Landino and other allegorizers; Riber, Obras completas, 2:413.

Introduction

25

reading, this dialectic of universal and particular is played out. If the exemplar is universal, how may his "personality" be represented through specific action? How is a narrative of heroic action processed by the reader? How is the reader who confronts the narrative lives of ancient personages to read their actions as embodiments of virtue and to appropriate the images of their "selves" as yardsticks by which to measure his own moral status and development? We can begin to see the scope of these problems if we consider the smallest semantic unit whereby the great life is represented: the exemplar's name. The reader who comes upon the name of a heroic ancient exemplar in a text has come upon a single sign which contains folded within it the entire history of the hero's deeds, the whole string of great moments which made the name a marked sign in the first place. Expressed differently, we might say that the name is a noun with a verb phrase (the various great deeds) condensed inside it. The task of the Renaissance reader who is well schooled in ancient history and poetry is to unpack those great deeds from the mere appearance of the name, recognizing them as models by which to measure his own action in the world.41 The process of unpacking calls to mind the analysis of character in literature put forward by Roland Barthes. Barthes suggests that a literary character is in fact nothing more than the gathering of a collection of characteristics or features (what he calls "semes") around a specific name: "When identical semes traverse the same proper name several times and appear to settle upon it, a character is created. Thus, the character is a product of combinations: the combination is relatively stable (denoted by the recurrence of the semes) and more or less complex (involving more or less congruent, more or less contradictory figures); this complexity determines the character's 'personality.' "42 He goes on to stress, as I have done, that the various elements folded into the eternal present of the name make up, when again unfolded, the character's history: "The proper name acts as a magnetic 41 The image of unfolding to describe the connotative function of the name is suggested by Kenneth Burke's essay on naming, "What Are Signs of What? A Theory of Entitlement," in Language as Symbolic Action (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1966), 359-79, esp. sGgff. Burke has raised similar questions in the opening pages of The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970). 42 Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974), 67.

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Writing from History

field for the semes; referring in fact to a body, it draws the semic configuration into an evolving (biographical) tense/'43 In the case of an exemplary figure such as Aeneas or Marcus Aurelius, we can replace what Barthes calls "personality" with virtue. Thus, the reader of the Aeneid is confronted, as Landino points out, not with a mundane biography but rather with an epic series of virtuous acts (in battle, in civil society, at home), all of which display the "semes" or seeds of Aeneas's celebrated pietas. Barthes's analysis has the virtue of posing the problem of character in structural, rather than psychological, terms. To the extent that Barthes's own analysis is historically limited, however, it permits us to see the rhetorical and ideological problems raised by the reading of exemplars. His suggestion that the combination of the character is marked by a relative stability, that its semes can be "more or less" contradictory, is rooted in his discussion of Balzac in S/Z and in his general interest in nineteenth-century writing. Balzac's characters "work" on us by virtue of the verisimilitude of their "personalities." In the Renaissance, however, verisimilitude is not the only, or even the principal, concern. Of equal or greater importance is the power of the exemplary character to move the reader to virtuous action. Thus the exemplar, if his ideological function of inspiring the reader is to be effective, must demonstrate consistently admirable action throughout the narrative of what Aristotle called "a complete life." Without such consistently virtuous action the exemplar's excellence remains hidden from the reader. Even when such virtue can be seen to exist, however, it does not follow that it will speak through the process of reading and inflame the reader to the type of action that Landino and Guevara desire. Though humanist hermeneutics is confident in its veneration of ancient history, the specific relationship between modern imitators and ancient exemplars is far from stable. This instability is produced by the mode of transmission: the heroic life is presented as narrative. The form of the narrative undermines the persuasive power of the exemplar. Since the life of the exemplar belongs to the textual canon of ancient history which all educated humanists share, since the name speaks from tradition, the story of the great life can be unfolded to include and describe an infinite variety of actions; the life of the hero can easily be sliced into a multitude of discrete metonymically related segments or moments. Some of these may connote virtue, but some may suggest vice, and their interaction always produces conflict and 43

Ibid., 67-68.

Introduction

27

moral dialectics, with the potential to turn back and subvert the pedagogical intention of the humanist who evoked the exemplar as a model for his student or reader in the first place. In other words the persuasive function of the name may be undermined by the ambiguity of certain of the hero's acts.44 To counter this ambiguity, potentially opened up by the movement of unpacking the life from the name, some sort of filtering or censoring gesture must be imposed. If the humanist text is to carry the rhetorical burden of moving the reader to virtuous action, the reader must draw forth from the name an exhortative ethical message devoid of irony or contradiction. The various moments of the heroic life must each bear the same message, defining the name and the life as a single, morally homogeneous unity, thus making the name a kind of fetish object toward which the reader's responses will always be the same. The most ideologically correct and rhetorically powerful exemplar would be morally unambiguous, his name would be a signifier whose signified is already defined by humanist ideology—a representation reduced to absolute semiotic stasis, devoid of ideological ambiguity or figural play. In humanist discourse the representation of exemplarity is marked by an anxious tension between two contrary movements: On the one hand, the humanist veneration of antiquity sanctions a model of reading in which the reader actualizes tradition by opening the exemplar up, by calling to mind the great deeds as they are stored in the name, by replaying the entire narrative of the heroic life. On the other hand, at the same time, the moralism of humanist pedagogy favors a gesture of closure which fixes the name's ideological significance.45 In the late Renaissance, however, this del44 Barthes has suggested that actions in narrative are always linked to a process of naming and hence both name and action can be "decomposed" into fragments or shards. Like Burke (see n. 41 above), he uses the image of the fold: "What is a series of actions? the unfolding of a name. To enter? I can unfold it into 'to appear' and 'to penetrate.' To leave? I can unfold it into 'to want to,' 'to stop,' 'to leave again.' To give? 'to incite,' 'to return,' 'to accept.' Inversely, to establish the sequence is to find the name"; ibid., 82. See his remarks on "folding, unfolding." 45 This emphasis on the stability of the image shades into the realm of visual representation. There is, of course, a rich history in Renaissance plastic arts of the representation of exemplary figures. See, for example, the Icones virorum Illistrium, published by J. J. Broissard in Bruges in 1541. The likeness of Vives from this collection is published on the first page of volume 2 of the Aguilar edition of his Obras completas (see n. 21 above). The most popular example of this genre was Paolo Giovo's Elogia veris clarorum virorum of 1546, which, in its original design, was to consist of portraits of great men accompanied by poetic epitaphs. When this plan proved unworkable, biographical sketches were introduced to replace the portraits, a development of obvious relevance to the issues raised in this section. On Giovio's work, see P. O. Rave,

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Writing from History

icate tension, which is made possible by the relationship described a moment ago between interpretation and the social space, is upset. For writers such as Tasso the dialogue with the past becomes a source of ideological anxiety that can be mastered only by fixing once and for all the meaning of the exemplar. For Montaigne, in contrast, political and social chaos render problematic the very process of reading history. Exemplary figures from antiquity are seen as dangerously ambiguous, and the essayist turns away from exemplarity altogether. This particular form of the struggle between ideology and representation is peculiar to the Renaissance and emerges when the alterity of antiquity meets the moralism of humanist pedagogy. The interplay of conflicting moments within the history of a character poses quite a different problem for, say, the narratives of the age of high realism, in which characters are required primarily to be believable or "real." The Balzacian character, to return to the object of Barthes's analysis, works on us by virtue of the "relative coherence" between the image we see of him as we move through the present of the story and what we know of his life's history from description, from the narrator's accounts of his past, from the remarks of other characters, and so on.46 In the High Renaissance, however, texts are interested in the moral value of a character's life as well as in its aesthetic function; docere is required as well as placere. Or, to take a somewhat different counterinstance, we might consider the Confessions of Saint Augustine—an exemplary story, to be sure, but one that unfolds solely within a Christian model of history. In the Confessions the moral fragmentation produced by the opening of the name into an entire life's history is resolved. The mere fact of the saint's conversion serves to recuperate his narrative in a synecdoche: the image of Saint Augustine seated beneath the fig tree in Milan, reading from the text of the Apostle, stands as the icon that retrospectively gives direction and organization to all of his actions. For the Christian reader seeking redemption, the saint's earlier sins have no intrinsic significance; they point only to the "Paolo Giovio und die Bildnisvitenbiicher des Humanismus," Jahrbuch der Berliner Museen i (1959), 119-54. I am indebted to Robert Williams for this reference. On the ideological function of the visual image, see Roland Barthes, "Rhetorique de I'image," in L'obvie et Vobtus (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1980), 225-42. On the problem of unity of character in modern literature, see Leo Bersani, A Future for Astyanax (New York: Columbia University Press, 1984). 46 This distinction between the verisimilitude of the "realist" character and the pedagogical/ideological function of Renaissance exemplar does not mean, of course, that realism fails to achieve certain ideological effects. The "realist" character simply offers a different image of selfhood, the prehistory of which this book aims to trace.

Introduction

29

crucial image, to the exemplary moment of repentance and conversion, the value of which for the reader is then underscored by Augustine's offering of the book to his friend Alypius. When seen through the lense of the conversionary moment, Augustine's early robbery of a bunch of pears, for example, becomes retrospectively transformed into the type of his later redemption, and the pear tree transmutes into a figura of the fig tree. Even were the narrative of Augustine's life to extend infinitely backward and forward from the moment of his most important action, that action would still center it and give it its form. Here again, however, typological resolution lies beyond the reach of Renaissance humanism, with its interest in models from pagan antiquity. Without a typological hermeneutic every heroic act in the narrative of the exemplary life poses a problem of interpretation, a question of yes or no which the reader must answer in judging the actions of the past. The moral heterogeneity of ancient history catches humanism in a kind of double bind. On the one hand, humanism's defense of letters rests on a recognition of the authority of antiquity, and the exemplar appears in the Renaissance poem or treatise as the mark of an entire historical discourse that sanctions the idea of history as repetition; on the other hand, that very mark, by virtue of its alterity, of the semantic residue which it drags forward from the pagan past, resists easy integration into a Christian or humanist system of values. Humanist culture is marked both by its nascent historical consciousness and by its commitment to the words, deeds, and texts of antiquity as sources of value for all men at all times. The question of exemplarity thus implies the understanding of the self in terms of narrative. This central function of narrative is, moreover, linked to the function of the exemplar in the promotion of processes of socialization, or what Foucault has called "arts of existence." And these processes involve not merely a series of precepts to be followed or avoided but also the subject's very relationship to his body. Exemplarity aims at exhorting the reader to move from words to deeds, from language to action. Thus, it is no accident that the surface on which much attention is focused in writing on exemplarity is the surface of the body—the surface that lies at the frontier of word and deed, the zone that both acts and signifies. Just as the words and deeds of the heroic ancient function as signs of his excellence, so too the image of his body, held up to the reader, functions as a text to be read, as a surface on which are inscribed the signs of heroism. As Michel de Certeau has written, "Normative discourse

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Writing from History

'operates' only if it has already become ... a law made into a story and historicized, recounted by bodies."47 One of the normalizing functions of exemplarity is to offer images of coherent, ideologically marked subjects whose bodies and histories function in harmony. Yet, here again, as we later see, this politicization of the body functions only imperfectly. The transformations of humanist culture in the late sixteenth century bring with them a crisis in the reading of the heroic body. And this crisis in turn helps to generate new modes of understanding and representing the self in time. 47

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Kendall (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984), 149. The same author's remarks on the "place" of reading are instructive in light of my argument in this chapter: "Reading is... situated at the point where social stratification (class relationships) and poetic operations (the practitioner's constructions of a text) intersect: a social hierarchization seeks to make the reader conform to the 'information' distributed by an elite (or semi-elite); reading operations manipulate the reader by insinuating their inventiveness into the cracks in a cultural orthodoxy" (172). De Certeau's observations on the inventiveness of the reader, offered in the context of a poststructuralist critique of bourgeois society, might well apply to the late-aristocratic reading practices of a Montaigne. See my discussion in chap. 4.

2

Bude, Erasmus, Machiavelli: Reading from History Quand 1'Histoire seroit inutile aux autres hommes, il faudrait la faire lire aux princes. —BOSSUET

BUDE: FROM THE HISTORIES TO HISTORY The second decade of the sixteenth century—the first moment of a truly pan-European humanism—witnessed the composition of three advice treatises by major humanists whose work was influential in the late Renaissance: Guillaume Bude's Livre de Vinstitution du prince, Erasmus's Institutio principis christiani, and Machiavelli's // principe. The humanist advice treatise provides a necessary bridge between the preceding discussion of exemplarity and the study of Tasso, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Cervantes. First, the advice treatise constitutes a hybrid genre between obviously "literary" works and full-scale historiography. By its hybrid status advice literature helps us to define the borders of the problem of exemplarity as it relates to Renaissance literature. For it gives us the opportunity to see humanist thinkers attempting to appropriate models from ancient culture for the purposes of influencing practical action. Yet, because of its emphasis on moral and political issues it permits us to explore the relationship between historical exemplars and practical advice without being forced into a study of historiography proper, which would make this a book of unmanageable length. For though the representation of exemplars is a principal feature of much humanist historiography, my interest here, as in the discussions of literary works, is with how writers whose concerns are not explicitly historiographical evoke exemplars from the pagan past and set them loose in their texts. And

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since the advice treatise presents the issue of exemplarity in "nonfictional" texts, the problems raised by the humanist representation of exemplars shine forth here in much sharper outline than they would were we either to concern ourselves uniquely with "literature" or to attempt a sally into the terrain of history writing. Second, advice literature has the methodological advantage of permitting us to move from the theoretical concerns of the previous chapter to contingent, socially and politically defined acts of reading. For between reader and exemplar we must now insert the voice of the humanist who appropriates the past and elucidates its exemplary role. And both this humanist voice and the reader to which it speaks operate in precise historical contexts. The tensions seen in the efforts by Bude, Erasmus, and Machiavelli to present practical models for their readers adumbrate the more ideological problems marking the depiction of exemplarity in late Renaissance writers. The humanist writes to a privileged reader of history—the prince himself. This encounter between writer and reader is shaped by a curious relationship of exchange that sets in relief the problematic link between exemplarity and political action. By exhorting his reader to virtuous action, the humanist seeks to inject moral concerns into politics, to impose some type of ethical control on the ruthless maneuvers of political life. As the ever optimistic Erasmus wrote: "There is no such efficacious mode of making a prince better, as that of setting before him, under the guise of praise, the example of a good sovereign, provided you so attribute virtues and deny vices, as to persuade him to the former and deter him from the latter."1 At the same time, however, the humanist seeks favor from the prince, who controls his destiny. Thus, the humanist must walk the narrow line between advice and flattery, seeking both to cajole the prince and to consolidate his own position of favor. Descendants of the medieval moral tract and of the "mirror for princes" tradition of political counsel, the humanist advice treatises examined here seek to integrate commonplace wisdom about political prudence with a new interest in the matter of ancient history. The humanist demonstrates the breadth of his learning and his control of 1 Quoted by J. H. Hexter, The Vision of Politics on the Eve of the Reformation (New York: Basic Books, 1973), 13. Hexter comments on the outpouring of advice literature in the years between 1515 and 1520, just before the Reformation: "Surely in no period of five or six years, before or after, did as many men of such extraordinary distinction in their own day and later write books of advice to princes" (12). On the general context for this type of literature, see also Quentin Skinner, The Foundations of Modern Political Thought, vol. i, The Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), i93ff.

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history by presenting historical action and interpreting it for the prince. But the very fact that the humanist draws from a variety of sources raises a specific compositional problem. For history itself, as Koselleck has pointed out, remains conceptually plural until the eighteenth century.2 History, for Renaissance humanism, means "the histories," the multiplicity of historical narratives which come down from antiquity. Though late sixteenth-century historiographers sought to define "methods" that would marshall all deeds of the past under a single "universal" or "perfect" history, it is safe to say that until Hegel the exercise of historiography, at least as it involved antiquity, was marked by a play of multiple versions or stories. Even Jean Bodin, the major figure in the late sixteenth-century search for a method to unify history, termed his own treatise a method for the easy cognition of histories [Methodus ad facilem historiarum cognitionem]. Not only did the histories of pagan antiquity compete on many levels with the sanctioned or authorized version of sacred history but also the sheer variety of accounts from the Greek and Roman historians complicated any endeavor to draw concrete moral lessons from the great acts and lives of the past. Bodin even quotes Plutarch to the effect that the ancients possessed no fewer than three hundred separate histories of the Battle of Marathon alone.3 This vast material had to be marshaled by the humanist, and from it relevant examples had to be presented to the prince. Nowhere can the importance of this discursive multiplicity for the social context of advice literature be seen more clearly than in the case of Bude's Institution du prince. Bude was the dominant figure in the rise of French humanism under Francis I; and his connection to the Valois court shapes his humanism. Bude elaborates a version of northern humanism distinct from that of his more famous friend Erasmus in that it shifts emphasis away from the Christ-centered pedagogy of the Dutch master, seeking instead to blend humanism and the vestigial medieval chivalry of the court of Francis I. This 2 See Reinhart Koselleck, "Historia Magistra Vitae: Uber die Auflosung des Topos im Horizont neuzeitlich bewegter Geschichte," in Natur und Geschichte: KarlLowith zum jo, Geburtstag (Stuttgart: W. Kohlhammer Verlag, 1967), 201. 3 See Pierre Mesnard, ed. and trans., La methode de Vhistoire (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1941), 67. For discussions of the search for a unified historical model in the late sixteenth century, see Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970); and George Huppert, The Idea of Perfect History (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1970). On the question of "the authorized version" of history with regard to the conventions of Renaissance epic, see Patricia Parker's discussion of Ariosto in Inescapable Romance: Studies in the Poetics of a Mode (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), 39ff-

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courtly context was responsible for the composition of Bude's text. Though published in three separate versions in a single year, 1547, the Institution was written around 1517 and presented to the young king as a way for Bude to gain recognition. As an advisor to the ambitious Francis, Bude helps pave the way for the rise of French nationalism which would lead later to projects to "illustrate" the French language and literature. And throughout his text he is concerned to demonstrate the value of letters for politics by presenting a sufficient exemplar who might authorize and guide the actions of his patron.4 The Institution is a somewhat shapeless and rambling work. It consists of a series of anecdotes of varying length, interspersed with passages from the Bible, references to Bude's other works, and meditations on the value of humanist rhetoric, historiography, and moral philosophy for the education of the king.5 The terms Bude uses to describe his text recall the lexicon of the collector: "And this will be, Sire, the conclusion of the present book, which I have composed by assembling [en assemblant] diverse things and accumulating [accumulant] the words and deeds of several grand characters greatly authorised by the consent and common judgments of the ancients, and collected [colligez] by me from several Greek and Latin authors."6 4 For a good discussion comparing the chivalric humanism of Bude with the Christian humanism of Erasmus, see James D. Tracy, The Politics of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), esp. chap. i. On Bude at the Valois court, see David O. McNeil, Guillaume Bude and Humanism in the Reign of Francis I (Geneva: Droz, 1975), esp. chap. 8. On Bude's Gallicanism, see Kelley, Foundations, 58—63. So as not to overstate the secular nature of Bude's work it is important to recall that later in life he turned his back on the study of pagan antiquity toward a renewed interest in Scripture. 5 Critics have not been kind when discussing the form of the Institution. For example, Louis Delaruelle, Guillaume Bude: Les origines, les debuts, les idees mattresses (Paris: Champion, 1907), laments: "On cherche en vain quelle idee 1'a pu guider: il semble vraiment qu'il aille a 1'aventure" (209). Marie-Madeleine de la Garanderie, Christianisme et les lettres profanes (Paris: Champion, 1976), hardly mentions the Institution in a study of some three hundred pages devoted to all aspects of Bude's life and work. Robert Aulotte, Plutarque et Amyot: La tradition des moralia au XVIe siecle (Geneva: Droz, 1965), 79-80, summarily dismisses the importance or possible interest of the text. Its importance for both sixteenth- and seventeenth-century pedagogy and political theory is now well recognized, however, and has been underscored by Claude Bontems, who reprints and discusses the text in Le prince dans la France des XVIe et XVIIe siecles (Paris: P.U.F., i965)6 Bontems, Le prince, 139. At this writing we have no complete modern edition of the Institution. Maxim Marin has published the first volume of a critical edition, Livre de ^institution du prince (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1983). The earliest manuscript (which seems to have been corrected by Bude's hand) resides in the Bibliotheque de 1'Arsenal in Paris and has been published by Bontems in Le prince (see previous note). For the most part I cite this edition in the text. The Arsenal manuscript is incomplete, however,

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This concern for collecting sets up the problem of the relationship between the narrative of an exemplary life and the more variable structure of a collection of deeds. Texts such as Valerius Maximus's Facta et dicta and Petrarch's Rerum memorandum had popularized the technique of presenting singular moments from the past as tableaux to be admired or studied, even as the Plutarch's Lives and Diogenes Laertius's Lives of the Philosophers had, from the fifteenth century, exemplified the counter-genre of the heroic biography. Bude's text, as we later see, seems to move between a desire to "collect" as many heroes as possible and the need to find a single narrative that would guide the deeds of the prince.7 Despite the variety of sources from which Bude has drawn his material, two chief textual models lie behind the Institution. The first of these is Plutarch's Apophthegmata (later to be translated by Erasmus around 1531). When he acknowledges his debt to Plutarch, Bude points out that the Apophthegmata were offered by their author to his patron Trajan, thereby implicitly evoking his own relationship to Francis. Yet, though Bude borrows material from Plutarch, he disregards the structure adopted by his precursor. Whereas Plutarch organizes his collection of words and deeds according to hero, listing them without commentary, Bude constantly imposes his own interpretive voice on the material he presents. This imposition of the pedagogue's voice between the matter of history and the privileged reader is an important feature of this text, since it sets in relief the conflict between the humanist's claim that the past can speak for itself and his own desire to speak for it. In addition to the Apophthegmata Bude evokes the Book of Proverbs, at the opening and closing of his book.8 Both allusions accompany discussions of the origin and purpose of the Institution itself. The second of these moments, in the tract's final paragraph, cites the fifth chapter of Proverbs: "boy de 1'eaue de ta cisterne" (137). Bude explains that the water of a cistern comes not from the ground but from and for the missing section I refer to the still incomplete edition of Marin. Translations are my own. 7 For the background to the genre of biography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Erich Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), chap. 14. 8 Aulotte, Plutarque et Amyot, 79, cites the Apophthegmata, the Lives, Proverbs, and the history of Quintius Curtius as the main models for the Institution. For the specific relationship of the Institution to the Apophthegmata, see Aulotte, "Autour de Guillaume Bude: Traductions latines des 'Moralia' de Plutarque au debut du XVIe siecle," in Robert Aulotte, ed., Association Guillaume Bude: Actes du VIHe congres (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1969), 628-29.

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heaven. For this reason, he goes on, the author of Proverbs (himself a "collector" of the words of Solomon) recommends that princes and kings should read ancient history and "collect" ["colliger"] authoritative examples, just as ancient historiographers collected the words and deeds of great kings and philosophers. What is striking in Bude's usage of the source topos is his insistence on the celestial origin of the water in the cistern, for this effectively lends divine authority to his own enterprise while sanctifying pagan history as an object of study.9 He follows his praise of history with what he calls a "mystical" interpretation of the proverb. He equates the water of the cistern with doctrine, since man cannot live without either. Princes, he points out, drink the water of their own cistern when they nourish their minds with the "sweetness of reading" ("la doulceur de lecture" [138]), learning thereby how better to govern the republic ("la chose publique"). Yet, Bude's praise of history minimizes his own role as interpreter. As the prince is enjoined to become a "collector" of ancient history, the pedagogue, Bude himself, becomes merely an adjunct, someone with "the leisure and ability to create books and treatises in correct form" (137). The assumption is that the lessons of classical history are everywhere and always the same, that the interpreter's arrangement of material will remain essentially transparent, allowing the water of the cistern to be tasted without mediation. Such an optimistic model of reading ignores the social circumstances of the Institutions own composition and its function as a way for the ambitious young scholar to find favor with his king. For if princes can teach themselves they obviously do not need humanist advisers. But the courtly context is evoked in the very first lines of the book, where Bude cites the eighteenth chapter of Proverbs, claiming that "a man's gift makes room for him and brings him before princes." Bude follows the advice of Solomon; and the presentation of the book accompanies the selfpresentation of the writer. This presentation scene has classical precedents as well, as Bude demonstrates when he repeats the story (absent from the text of Plutarch) of how the Corinthians offered Alexander citizenship following his conquest of the world. The offer was spurned until the Corinthian ambassadors pointed out that it had only been made once previously, and that to Hercules, at which point Alexander accepted with pride. The parallel scenes of donation suggest a series 9 Regarding Erasmus's much different use of the cistern proverb to describe not the riches of history but the heart of the interpreter of Scripture, see Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 84; and David Quint, Origin and Originality in Renaissance Literature: Versions of the Source (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), igsff.

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of prototypes for Bude's patron. The water Bude proffers from the cistern of history must be accepted graciously by Francis; but since the book is as rare as the Corinthian offer of citizenship, Francis's acceptance will place him in a line that includes only Hercules and Alexander. In fact, in the following sentence Bude goes the ancients one better by asserting that, unlike the Corinthians, he has made no such offer before. The evocation of the exemplary pagans thus enables Bude the humanist pedagogue to open the Institution by placing his king in a tradition of great heroes later to be recommended as models, while Bude the courtier uses history to praise both king and book. Surely, it is no accident that Bude opens his Institution with a reference to Alexander. For this most famous of all exemplars dominates the first half of the text, and Bude uses him to define his relationship to Francis. Bude speaks of Alexander's courage, his ambition, and even of his arrogance, in the most laudatory terms. He also speaks of a theme close to his own heart, the hero's esteem for letters. He asserts that, as the ancients realized, history can have no authority unless it is set in writing by competent orators who can transform it into a pleasant and believable artifact. Yet, his principal discussion of Alexander is centered on his depiction of the Macedonian's legendary visit to the tomb of Achilles. Before the image ("la pourtraicture" [85]) of the legendary Greek, Alexander noted Achilles' good fortune at having had Patrocles as a friend and Homer as the bard to advertise his deeds. Alexander himself was not so lucky, adds Bude. For however great his own deeds, Alexander was never celebrated by a great poet. It is important that this scene at the tomb appears in conjunction with a praise of writing. For just as the courage of Achilles is represented by the stony icon of the sepulcher, so too the great deeds of the hero have sense for future generations only when hardened into textual form. Elsewhere Bude compares the texts of the Greek and Latin historians to sepulchers ("beaulx monumens et haultes sepultures" [90]) that preserved their glory. And again later (94) he likens them to royal epitaphs. Writing is a kind of funereal inscription. The histories are seen as a series of stones wherein the hero is preserved for eternity, with the hope that his virtue will be reanimated by a future imitator. Despite these parallels between the fixity of script and the concreteness of the sepulcher, however, Bude's approximation of text and tomb may, on another level, simply be wishful thinking provoked by his own pedagogical enterprise. For by framing his tomb scene with references to writing, he sets up a contrast between two distinct forms of representation: image and narrative. The tomb, of course, signifies by a single sign, the "pourtraicture" of Achilles,

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whereas the narratives of the historians and poets work through the syntagmatic interplay of an entire series of signs. The compact form of the image is pedagogically useful, since the reduction of the hero's life to a single sign imposes coherence on it, making it easy to define or interpret. The compactness of the image corresponds in this case to the compactness of the heroic name, as described in the previous chapter. The image's authority depends on the reader's ability to unpack the hero's life from its stony facade. The moral heterogeneity which that unpacking process can reveal is forestalled in the case of Achilles, however, by the presence of the text of Homer—Alexander's bedside book, it should be recalled—which offers an authorized version of Achilles' life and functions as the mediator between heroic image and imitator. The tomb represents the Achillean image in its most pedagogically potent form, but the great deeds of the legendary hero have been made known to Alexander through the portable form of the written text.10 This tomb scene must be seen as a kind of ideal or Utopian moment in Bude's text. It is probably no accident that Bude represents the scene that he would like Francis to replay before the tomb of his own text through a kind of dramatization of the act of reading. For if Achilles is the exemplar for Alexander, Alexander is the exemplar for Francis. Yet, it is here that the question of the heroic figure as a narrative raises problems for Bude's venture to find a definitive ancient model for Francis. We have no authorized history of the life of Alexander that can compare to Homer's rhetorically perfect rendition of Achilles' deeds. Alexander is known through a series of legends and anecdotes set down by various hands, none of which commands the authority of a Homer. In effect, the problem for anyone imitating Alexander is that we know too much about his life: Alexandre fut note de plusieurs choses, car apres qu'il cut la grant fortune et qu'il fut paisible du royaume de Perse, il se enyvra par maniere de parler des grandes delices d'orient, et se laissa couler en autres nouvelletez reprehensibles et insolences barbaricques, en se departant des meurs de Grece et degenerant de sa maison de Macedonie. (129) [Alexander was known for many things, for after he had the great fortune to conquer the kingdom of Persia, he became intoxicated, so 10 On the function of the image as a sign with an ideological message powerfully overdetermined, see Roland Barthes, "Rhetorique de 1'image," in L'obvie et Vobtus (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1986), 25-42.

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to speak, by the delights of the Orient, and let himself slide into other reprehensible novelties and barbarian insolences, leaving behind the customs of the Greeks and bringing down his house of Macedonia.]

It is the moral heterogeneity coloring the various moments of Alexander's life, his weakness for what Bude euphemistically ("par maniere de parler") calls "les delices d'Orient," which eventually obliges the pedagogue, after having devoted more space to Alexander than to any other ancient, to conclude his discussion of the Macedonian's rise and fall by rejecting him. He acknowledges that Alexander had many virtues, but that his vices obscured the luster of his reputation ("aussi y eut il des vices qui ont moult effaces a la grande clarte de sa renomme, et obscure la memoire illustre de ses gestes pleins de merveilles" [130]). This rejection of Alexander is a curious gesture. One might suggest that Bude, as a good humanist, is simply demonstrating for Francis the exercise of good judgment. The prudent humanist tests his faculties against the matter of history and concludes that Alexander falls short of the ideal of virtuous action. But the crucial interpretive problem here is posed by Bude's obvious desire to find an absolute model, a model whose life offers consistent images of excellence in the way that the life of Marcus Aurelius was seen by Guevara to embody perfection. It is because of this need for a narrative demonstrating consistent virtue through "a complete life" that Bude must ultimately reject Alexander. For Bude it is not enough merely to suggest that at times one should imitate Alexander and at other times avoid his example. An exemplar must be consistent in his actions; any flaw or deviation places his exemplary status in question. The metaphor used to describe Alexander's unworthiness suggests the configuration of the problem; a single cloud can spoil a sunny day. Indeed, Alexander's inconsistency forces Bude to shift focus. The light imagery is extended, and the relationship between consistent virtue and narrative is suddenly thrust into the foreground, in the lines directly following those just quoted. Bude turns from Alexander to Pompey, whom he has compared to the Macedonian throughout the first section of the text in a manner recalling Plutarch's Lives. Directly following his rejection of Alexander, at the rhetorical climax of his text, Bude asserts that the true exemplar ("vray exemplaire") for Francis is not Alexander, after all, but Pompey, whose glory was unobscured by clouds of reproach ("sans aucune nubilosite de vergogne" [130]). But in the very next sentence Bude qualifies his recommendation by remarking that a prince seeking virtue can do no

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Writing from History

better than to imitate "what Lucan says about Pompey" in the ninth book of the Pharsalia. This turn to the text of Lucan effectively brushes aside all other stories of the hero's life and institutes an authorized version of it. What is particularly striking about this gesture, however, is that the passage alluded to is Cato's famous eulogy of Pompey— itself a reading of a life already finished. Not only does Bude not recommend a text depicting Pompey in action, a text that shows the great deeds to be imitated (as Landino argued that Virgil showed the virtue of Aeneas) but, by pinpointing the eulogy as the exemplary moment for his student Francis, Bude reduces the life of the "vray exemplaire" to twenty-five lines of Latin! These various gestures of displacement and reduction in Bude's presentation of Alexander and Pompey set in relief the pedagogue's control over the matter of history that he presents to the student. Bude's claim that princes can read and "collect" histories for themselves is roundly contradicted by the rhetoric through which he attempts to appropriate Pompey and Alexander. The Institution is marked by a tension between inventio and dispositio, between the material to be presented and the interpretive, organizing voice of the humanist. Moreover, this voice itself alternates between several distinct postures. The curious shapelessness of the Institution seems to emerge from the split between the humanist as collector and the humanist as pedagogue. On the one hand, Bude seems destined to wander from anecdote to anecdote, in search of a sufficient model for his patron and, on the other hand, he is driven by ideological compulsion to censor and interpret each life that is proposed, to create a metadiscourse that will make ancient heroism morally acceptable to the formation of a Renaissance prince.11 It is surely no accident that this movement of displacement finally pauses when it evokes Lucan's Pharsalia, a text of curious hybrid status between history and poetry that will tie an interpretive knot for critics later in the century. For the very form of Lucan's poem lends itself perfectly to Bude's needs. It offers a compact historical narrative that concludes with Cato's eulogy of Pompey—a virtuoso rhetorical performance which retrospectively interprets, defines, and authorizes the great man's actions. But it is only when Bude turns to consider the political value of his own activity that the rhetorical strain marking his presentation of Alexander and Pompey seems to ease. Bude makes it clear throughout 11 For an insightful discussion of the process of constituting a "text" in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, see Francois Rigolot, Le texte de la Renaissance: Des rhetoriqueurs a Montaigne (Geneva: Droz, 1982).

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his work that his education of Francis aims at the promotion of a new and glorious future for France through the creation of a unified national history that will challenge and supplant the multiple histories of the ancients. Early in the Institution Bude asserts that the cultivation of literature and history is nothing less than his patron's duty, that it provides him with "prudence par doctrine" (84) and permits him to develop his own natural talents.12 This juxtaposition of history, letters, and national tradition raises questions about Bude's own language. For the greatest Hellenist and one of the most brilliant (if somewhat eccentric) Latin stylists of the early French sixteenth century to choose to write in French, "the language in which I am least practiced" (91), as he says, is symptomatic of a rising sense of national identity at the Valois court. Erasmus had lamented the decadence of French when compared with Italian and Spanish, as well as with Latin, and though Bude sees himself as neither a true heir to the great historians nor an illustrator of French, he is convinced of the importance of writing in the vernacular, of the need for a Gallic eloquence/3 He points out that the illustrious deeds of French kings have remained uncelebrated by the world at large because the French have neglected to cultivate great orators and writers (89). Thus, to "translate" ("translater" [139]) 12

McNeil, Guillaume Bude, 82, comments on the relationship of letters to politics at the Valois court: "To a great extent, Bude's Institution du Prince reflects the intellectual atmosphere of the court of Francis I, who surrounded himself with humanists, whose actual duties and political power were very minor. According to Bude the disciplinae liberates or disciplinae humanae bring out the best conduct in men. This is especially true of the Prince; every man, even the King, should be devoted to philology." Francis's reading habits and his predilection for Roman history and the heroic exploits of antiquity have been noted by R. J. Knecht, Francis I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), 272ff. On Bude as a royal propagandist, see Orest Ranum, Artisans of Glory (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980), 41-57. 13 For Erasmus's remarks on French see the De ratione studii, trans. Brian McGregor (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978), 674. On the question of Bude's choice of the vernacular, see Milosch Triwunatz, Guillaume Bude's de institution du Prince: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Renaissancebewegung in Frankreich (Leipzig: Deichert, 1903), 37ff. Triwunatz suggests that the text was intended for the eyes of Francis alone and, as such, was written in the king's native tongue. He also advances the idea, however, that the brilliant Latin of Erasmus's Institutio principis christiani of 1516 may have driven Bude to write in a language which would remove him from comparison with his illustrious colleague, an assertion that hardly makes sense if the text were intended only for Francis and if Francis could hardly read Erasmus's Latin anyway. On the general question of Bude's Latin style, see Marie-Madeleine de la Garanderie, "Le style figure de Guillaume Bude et ses implications logiques et theologiques," in L'humanisme franqais au debut de la renaissance, ed. Andre Stegmann (Paris: Vrin, 1973), 333-56. She notes Bude's fondness for overblown and overplayed metaphors and cites letters from Erasmus upbraiding Bude for his style. She also notes, however, that More and Vives, among others, admired and appreciated it.

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ancient history into French is to vindicate the Gallic tradition and encourage the great deeds of Francis. It is to write a new narrative connecting past and present, bringing the light of history to elucidate the deeds of the French Pompey. This politico-rhetorical activity, with its combination of courtly epideictic, historical revisionism, national pride, and personal ambition is, however, exemplified by yet another figure from the pagan past. That figure is Hercules, who was mentioned at the outset of the Institution as the recipient, with Alexander, of the gift of Corinthian citizenship, a privilege rivaled by Bude's gift of his text to Francis. Bude, like Du Bellay, Ronsard, and others of the period, appropriates Hercules from the text of Lucian's Heracles and transforms him into an image authorizing linguistic nationalism. Bude paraphrases Lucian's remark that the ancient Celts (unlike other nations, adds Bude proudly) took not Mercury but rather Hercules as their god of eloquence.14 And he includes a portrait of the hero: Us faisoient Hercules ung vieil homme chenu et chaulue, et portoit en facon de manteau la peau d'ung lyon sur les epaules, tenant en sa dextre une massue, en la main senestre ung arc bende et la trousse a son coste. Et y avoit grant multitude de gens de toutes sortes qui le suyvoient comme par force, car il les tenoit attachez tous par les oreilles a chesnes menues d'or et d'argent, et si se laissoient mener tout voluntiers, et tenoit Hercules les boutz de ces chesnettes en sa bouche. (89) [They made Hercules an old, hoary man, who wore as a coat on his shoulders the skin of a lion, carrying in his right hand a club and in the left a bow, with his quiver at his side. And there was a great multitude of people of all kinds who followed him as if by force, for he held them by the ears with slender chains of gold and silver, and they let themselves be led voluntarily, and Hercules held the ends of the chains in his mouth.]

The dual role of Hercules, as a mythological presence authorizing Gallic eloquence—the figure behind the figures of Bude's discourse— and as an exemplary political leader or virtuous hero, sets him above both Alexander and Pompey. In order to find an adequate model 14 On the general question of the Gallic Hercules, see Marc-Rene Jung, Hercule dans la litterature frangaise du XVIe siecle (Geneva: Droz, 1966); and Robert E. Hallowell, "L'Hercule gallique: expression et image politique," in Lumieres de la pleiade, ed. R. Antonioli et al. (Paris: Vrin, 1966), 243—54. Marie-Madeleine de la Garanderie, "Le style figure," 355, has noted a repeated contrast of Mercury and Hercules throughout Bude's work. On the image of Hercules as a commonplace of late medieval and Renaissance panegyric, see Jean Seznec, The Survival of the Pagan Gods, trans. Barbara F. Sessions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), 24—25.

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Bude has glided out of history and into myth. The difficulty of appropriating ancient historical material from the lives of Alexander and Pompey is offset by the evocation of Hercules, the only sufficient exemplary image, a figure able to inspire both Bude and Francis. Hercules urges both valor and eloquence, he is Greek, but his place in French history authorizes Bude's own social relationship to his prince, even as Hercules's mythic role as protector of the muses (evoked elsewhere in the text) prefigures Francis's role as patron of the arts. Bude's restless project to marshall the diverse material of "the histories" inherited from the past appears to have found an icon that can unify past and present, arms and letters. Yet, Bude's depiction of this icon, too, suggests the rhetorical difficulties of finding a unified universal image to guide action. It is only in the final paragraphs of the Institution that Hercules' deeds are shown. The story is told of his conflict with the city of Argos. When ambassadors from that city reproached him for violating their boundaries and refusing to negotiate, he drew his sword and declaimed: "Tout homme qui bien veult parler de limites de royaumes et empires, doit avoir 1'espee au poing" (135) {"Any man who wishes to speak of the borders of kingdoms and empires, must have his sword in his hand"]. The message conveyed by this anecdote is clear enough. But this image of Hercules in action is offset by the scene that directly precedes it and tells of Hercules's wily descendant Lysander, who, as reported in Plutarch (Apophthegmata 129; Life of Lysander), drew criticism from his subjects for his way of defeating his enemies through language instead of, like his mythic ancestor, through arms. When great deeds give way to mere words, the Spartans complain to Lysander, the excellence of the family line is endangered, "pource qu'ilz estoient descenduz de Hercules et vouloient imiter la prouesse et generosite qui estoit en luy" (134) ["for they were descended from Hercules and wanted to imitate the valor and generosity in him"]. Lysander's defense of his behavior, though taken from Plutarch, suggests the Machiavellian kairos of the Renaissance statesman: Quant il cut entendu le bruit qu'on luy donnoit, il respondoit en ceste maniere: "Je suis d'advis que si un homme vestu de la peau d'ung lyon ne peult venir a fin de son entreprise... il la doibt fourrer de la peau d'un regnard." (135) [When he had heard the rumors about him, he answered in this way: "I am of the opinion that if a man dressed in a lion's skin cannot reach his goal... he should dress it in the skin of a fox."]

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Bude then comments, saying that the Greeks have a proverb: "Ou la peau d'ung lyon ne peult attaindre et advenir, tu dois adjouster la peau du regnard" (135) ["When the skin of a lion will not suffice, add the skin of a fox"]. Thus far Bude has followed the text of the Apophthegmata almost verbatim. But he departs from it in recounting that the proverb was invented because of Hercules, who in portraits ("en portraicture" [135]) wears a lion's skin and carries a club ("revestu de la peau d'ung lyon tenant une massue en sa main"). The important difference between the proverb, the anecdote, and the image of Hercules is that Lysander chooses eloquence over force, the fox over the lion. His ancestor Hercules, however, though described elsewhere as an exemplar of both eloquence and force, does not wear the skin of a fox, but only that of a lion. Within the context of the anecdote, Hercules becomes a figure of force, an image of the man who defends his boundaries with arms, while his descendant Lysander shows more flexibility, choosing language over violence. Lysander's subjects, as descendents of Hercules, want "prouesse et generosite," which they understand to be martial virtues. Lysander knows better and imitates his ancestor's greatness by not imitating him, by donning a fox's skin instead of the lion's skin worn by the hero. The Lysander anecdote not only articulates in proverbial form the relationship between language and violence, but through Lysander's dealings with his subjects it also demonstrates the value of eloquence. Bude then tries, clumsily, to link the deeds of Lysander to the iconography of Hercules, in the process reinterpreting Hercules as a figure not of force and eloquence but merely of force. Thus, at the very moment that ancient history and national history, arms and letters, seem to come together in a single exemplary figure, that figure's meaning shifts, as Bude tries to articulate its relationship to the rest of the historical material he has inherited from Plutarch. History and proverb, image and wisdom, fit together only imperfectly, through the interpretive gloss added by the humanist.15 The rhetorical burden of defining the exemplary life as narrative, which I analyzed in my introductory chapter, weighs heavily on Bude's text. Bude promotes the reading of history and the study of various 15 Barthes, "Rhetorique de 1'image," 32, notes the function of the motto or proverb in fixing through interpretation the meaning of the image in advertising. Bude's gesture, of course, has analogous ideological implications. The importance in the French Renaissance of the comparison of the lion and the fox as a meditation on political prudence merits fuller consideration than I can give it here. One might see it, for example, as a paradigm structuring the episode of the walls of Paris and the fable of the "Lyon et regnard" in Rabelais, Pantagruel, chap. 15.

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texts as material to guide the prince in practical affairs. Yet, his courtier's ambition and his philologist's erudition oblige him to collect as many models as possible. The humanist's quest to find a sufficient model who might guide his prince leads ultimately to a kind of struggle for the textual mastery of history, whereby Bude imposes his voice on the past through repeated gestures of reduction, misreading and rejection. Personal ambition and political enterprise push Bude to recast the multiple voices of "the histories" as a master narrative of French nationalism which would link past and present, model and interpreter. The myth of French history enables Bude to bind his destiny to the king's, to appropriate, however problematically, the image of Hercules as guide for both ancient and modern, orator and soldier, humanist and prince. But Bude praises more than his king in the Institution. He frequently praises himself as well, and most insistently when the discussion turns to money. For then he is quick to point to and promote another of his own works, the De asse, which broke new philological ground by attempting to translate the coinage systems of the ancients into contemporary terms.16 Thus, for example, in his discussion of the great poets and historians, Bude points out the size of Virgil's paycheck (with an obvious thought for his own), asserting that the Roman poet was payed one hundred sesterces, "which sum in your money comes to two hundred and fifty thousand ecus" (87). Bude's pride in the De asse is scarcely disguised throughout the Institution, and it might be said that he uses the vernacular work to present and promote his more specialized philological and numismatic treatise, a text which, as he tells Francis, he has dedicated to the honor of France (127). Bude even goes so far as to suggest that through philological reconstructions such as the De asse we can be released from our own historicity and wander freely in time and space: "[De asse] is like a book, or a letter of exchange [une lettre de charge] for doing business between one country and another and communicating in all countries at all times" (Marin, 130). It is ironic that Bude should so insistently sing the praises of the De asse within the text of the Institution, for the spatial and temporal mobility opened up by the De asse implies an epistemology that contrasts sharply with the pedagogy of exemplarity. Instead of according 16

For a discussion of the De asse as a combination of "philology and archeology with a sensitivity to issues then current," see McNeil, Guillaume Bude, 25. Roberto Weiss calls the text "the philological masterpiece of the early cinquecento" and discusses its place within the rise of numismatic studies during the Renaissance in The Renaissance Discovery of Classical Antiquity (Oxford: Blackwell, 1969), 177.

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eternal validity to the fiscal system of the ancients—instead of making it exemplary, in other words—the De asse looks to adapt it by transforming it, by accepting its otherness and then translating that otherness into terms appropriate to the present. Thus, the praise of the De asse already reflects a latent historicism in Bude's method that contradicts the stasis implicit in the exemplar theory of history. Antiquity as an object of investigation and antiquity as an object of imitation stand at odds. This contrast between a veneration of the timeless excellence of the ancients and a historicist awareness of the alterity of the past marks, as I suggested earlier, all of humanist discourse. Bude's acknowledgment of the alterity of the past in the De asse suggests that, on one level at least, he has already moved beyond the naive Ciceronian faith in the universal value of the ancients that marks so much of the Institution, taking us from an interest in the rhetoric of exhortation to a concern with philological method. Indeed, the shapelessness of the Institution, with its contrast between exhortations to imitate the past and its lists of collected anecdotes from the lives of heroes who never quite fit the strictures of humanist moral philosophy, may itself be read as a sign of the limitations of the heroic biography of the political man as a genre for representing virtue.17 These limitations certainly show themselves to contemporaries of Bude such as Vasari and Giovo, who are already expanding the limits of the genre of biography beyond the sphere of politics to include arts and letters. And later in the century Bude's compatriot, the cosmographer Thevet, will publish his own collection of heroic biographies, the Prosopographie (1584), which will include a biography of Bude himself and hence redress his complaint that France had neglected its men of letters. This development in the genre of biography, as Eric Cochrane has noted, shifts emphasis from the questions of political action so important to the Institution and focuses attention 17 On the contrast between the more sophisticated techniques of philological antiquarianism and the naivete of heroic historiography J. G. A. Pocock writes, "It is one of the great facts about the history of historiography that the central techniques evolved during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were only very slowly and very late combined with the writing of history as a form of literary narrative; that there was a great divorce between the scholars and the antiquarians on the one hand and the literary historians on the other"; The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal Law: English Historical Thought in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Norton, 1967), 6. Certainly, Guillaume Bude, author of De asse, an antiquarian work, and the Institution, a work of history, embodies this contradiction. The fundamental study of the issue is Arnaldo Momigliano's "Ancient History and the Antiquarian, "Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 13 (1950), 285-315. On Bude's refinement of the methods of philology developed by Italian humanism, see Kelley, Foundations, 8off.

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on the character of historical agents, a concern that is already important for Machiavelli and later also preoccupies the Essais of Montaigne.18 A similar contradiction between the Institution and the De asse can be seen in the way each is described. Bude's description of the De asse as a "lettre de charge" clearly calls upon the lexicon of the rising mercantile bourgeoisie, with its gradual intensification of commercial relations throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and the establishment of a pan-European market based on a system of international exchange/9 Yet, by contrast, the gift of the Institution itself has been compared to the Corinthian citizenship offered Alexander. The feudal custom of the ritual offering suggested by the exchange of the book for favor at court stands in an unresolved tension with the philological laisser passer of the De asse—a text that can put a price on antiquity itself. The great extent to which the latter, mercantile model still depends on the ceremony and custom of the feudal aristocracy is evident from Bude's use of the Institution to introduce the De asse, and not vice versa. Indeed, Bude's ability to move with relative ease from exemplar to exemplar and his lack of anxiety over the epistemological and rhetorical problems which his text raises are in fact results of the very limited and local circumstances of his activity. Every line of the Institution is aimed at a single privileged reader, whose habits and limitations the humanist knows well. The particularity of this sociopolitical context helps to anchor Bude's presentation of ancient historical material and neutralize its contradictions. The circumscribed space of the Valois court provides Bude's chivalric humanism and nationalistic model of exemplarity with an arena that defines the past's value for practical action in the present. Less simple is the relationship of Bude's friend and colleague Erasmus to his reading public. For perhaps more than any other humanist Erasmus seeks in his writings to define models of virtuous action that would be truly universal and stand beyond the confines of the national state celebrated by Bude. 18 On the rapid diversification of the subject matter of heroic biography in the early sixteenth century, see Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 4o6ff. 19 Jean Delumeau notes the importance of the lettre de change (or "lettre de charge," as Bude calls it, though this may be a mistranscription) for the development of Renaissance mercantilism: "[La lettre de change] etait deja devenue, au debut du XVe siecle, un instrument indispensable au grand commerce. Sa formulation fut sans doute, dans le domaine des affaires, la principale innovation technique de 1'epoque que nous etudions." La civilisation de la renaissance (Paris: Arthaud, 1967), 239.

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The role of humanist as adviser was played to its fullest by Erasmus. The author of advice treatises on virtually every subject, from epistolary style, to marriage, to juvenile table manners, Erasmus embodies, more than any other contemporary writer, the attempt of humanist culture to influence practical action. With unflagging idealism, the political writings of Erasmus seek to inject ethical and moral concerns into public life and thereby control (or at least check) the political ruthlessness of the early modern prince. Of Erasmus's two principal writings on exemplarity, the Enchiridion militis christiani (The guidebook for the Christian soldier) and the Institutio principis christiani (Education of the Christian prince), it is the latter that most explicitly deals with the relationship between ancient exemplars and modern readers. Published by Frobenius at Basel in May 1516, the Institutio was dedicated and directed to the young Charles of Burgundy, who had just succeeded his father as king of Castile and was soon to become Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, and the political rival of Bude's patron Francis. It soon became the standard and most frequently quoted humanist text among advice books for princes. The Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives, for example, even recommended it to Mary, future queen of the Scots.20 Though the text draws on many conventions from both ancient and medieval political theory and moral philosophy, Erasmus describes it, in his preface, as a simple translation into Latin of Isocrates' admonitory writings on education and statecraft.21 He also states, 20

Vives makes his recommendation in the De institutione foeminae christianae of 1538. See, on this question, Ruth Kelso, Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1956), 73. On the circumstances surrounding the composition and publication of the Institutio, see Tracy, Politics of Erasmus, 52. 2 'The Latin text used in this discussion of the Institutio is vol. 4, pt. i of the Opera Omnia (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1974), edited by Otto Herding. Translations are from Lester Horn's version, published as The Education of a Christian Prince (New York: Columbia University Press, 1936). Where necessary, I have altered the translation to make it conform more closely to the original. All page numbers are included in the text, with references to the Latin original listed first. On the relationship of Erasmus's text to the early Renaissance reception of Isocrates, see Otto Herding, "Isokrates, Erasmus und die Institutio Principis Christiani," in Dauer und Wandel der Geschichte: Aspekte Europdischer Vergangenheit, ed. Rudolf Vierhaus and Manfred Botzenhart (Munster: Verlag Aschendorff, 1966), 101-43, as we^ as Herding's "Einleitung" to the Amsterdam edition. He notes that the Institutio and the Ad nicolem were frequently published together well into the eighteenth century. In "The Literary Conventions of Erasmus's Education of a Christian Prince: Advice and Aphorism," Renaissance Quarterly

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however, that he will depart "not a little" ("haud parum") from his predecessor's advice. The extent of that difference is suggested by the terms he uses to describe himself, Isocrates and their two pupils: "That sophist [sophista] was instructing a young king, or rather a tyrant: one pagan instructing another [ethnicus ethnicum]. I, a theologian [theologus], instruct a distinguished and pure hearted prince—one Christian to another [Christianus Christianum]" (135; 134). From the outset Erasmus notes the ideological difference and historical distance between him and his textual model, between ancient pagan and modern Christian, while suggesting that his relationship with Charles implies an equality absent from the subservience shown by Isocrates toward his tyrant master. In this model of history Christians are implicitly equals; pagans live in hierarchies.22 Erasmus consistently seeks to downplay the social differences between himself, his reader Charles, and Charles's subjects, so as to assert the universal value of his teachings. Bude's reliance on conventions of nationalist propaganda and his manifest concern with finding favor at the Valois court contrast sharply with Erasmus's celebrated resolve to preserve his independence amid the shifting sands of early sixteenth-century political life.23 Indeed, Erasmus is quick to assert the importance of what he has to say by describing the Institutio as a text of value, not only to Charles but also to his subjects and to fellow princes. The Institutio, he says, is written to the prince, but for 35 (1982), 151—63, Richard F. Hardin notes the juxtaposition of two textual traditions in the Institutio: the positive recommendations for human behavior of the advice literature tradition and the illustrations of human frailty from the de casibus tradition. Hardin suggests that the juxtaposition of these two modes of teaching (essentially a Platonic concern with the distance between ideal and reality) can be linked as well to the heterogeneous nature of Erasmus's reading public: "Throughout the Education he encourages [his] larger audience to ponder the difference between the dismal performance of actual rulers and the exemplary behavior that people should expect of them" (162). 22 Herding, "Isokrates, Erasmus und die Institutio," no, notes that Charles's greatgrandfather, Frederick III, had been presented with a translation of the Ad nicolem back in 1468. He points out that in Latin translations of Isocrates' text the writer names himself many times as a philosophus. Erasmus is thus working against that textual tradition by using the pejorative term sophista to describe Isocrates. 23 On Erasmus's desire for independence, see Johan Huizinga, Erasmus and the Age of Reformation, trans. F. Hopman (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1957), chaps. 1314. On his relationship to Charles, see p. 95. On the importance of Latin for the creation of a moral universe "emancipated from the limitations of time," see pp. 4243. Lucien Febvre has stressed the link between Erasmus's internationalism, his linguistic proficiency, and his moral authority; Au coeur religieux du XVIe siecle (Paris: Livre de Poche, 1983), 97-108. Norbert Elias suggests that a similar desire for detachment from any social group marks Erasmus's discussions of comportment; The History of Manners, trans. Edmund Jephcott (New York: Pantheon Books, 1982), 77.

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everyone. If Bude offers advice of value in a specifically French context, Erasmus points out that his book escapes contingency by offering an ideal image of a prince ("optimi principis simulachrum") in the name of Charles ("tuo sub nomine") but for the good of all ("in commune") [134]. In this way, he says, the example of Charles shows other princes how to rule, even as Charles's subjects demonstrate their appreciation of his virtue: "Qui magnis imperiis educantur, per te rationem accipiant administrandi, abs te exemplum quo simul et tuis auspiciis haec vtilitas ad omnes permaneret et nos iam tui his ceu primitiis animi in te nostri studium vtcumque testificaremur" (134) ["Those who are being brought up to rule great kingdoms will receive their theory of government through you and take their example from you. At the same time the good from this treatise will spread out to all under your auspices, and we of your entourage may manifest somewhat by these first fruits, as it were, the zeal of our spirit toward you" (135)]. The close proximity envisioned between the text's diffusion and Charles's behavior is suggested by Erasmus's discourse. For it is unclear whether "haec vtilitas," the benefit to be derived by Charles's followers, is to come directly from reading the text ("optimi principis simulachrum"), as the translator would have it, or from observing their prince's own practice and example ("per te rationem ... abs te exemplum"), as will be the case for other princes. Unlike Bude's simple collection of sayings, Erasmus's Institutio proposes to paint a portrait of an ideal prince who is, on one level, Charles himself. Charles thus becomes both an exemplar and an exemplary reader of exemplars.24 This is possible within the context of medieval and Renaissance political thought through the doctrine of the king's two bodies. This tradition, as Kantorowicz has described it, defines two distinct bodies or selves for the ruler: one public, official, and "mystical" body (which is also, symbolically, the body of the state) and a second private, personal and mortal body.25 The doctrine of the two bodies enables Erasmus to both flatter and admonish the king. By simultaneously representing a simulacrum of the mystical body and educating the mortal body, he turns the doctrine into a rhetorical device and inscribes it into the very form of his treatise. His book functions both as an ideal portrait of the mature prince, offering an 24 For an analysis of the use of idealized images in advice literature see Hexter, The Vision of Politics, 12. 25 See Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King's Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957), esp. chaps, i and 2. Otto Schottenloher, "Erasmus und dieRespublica Christiana," Historische Zeitschrift 210 (1970), 295-323, mentions the doctrine of the dual body with reference to Erasmus.

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image of what the public man should be, and a pamphlet for the student who has just mounted the throne. The mature Charles is projected as an imaginary mid-point between the ideal of the prince depicted in the treatise and the royal youngster. Both bodies are addressed at the close of the epistolary dedication, where Erasmus distinguishes between their responses to his text: "Among the countless distinctions and praises which virtue, by the will of God, will prepare for you, this will be no small part: Charles was such a one that anyone could without the mark of flattery present to him the likeness of a pure and true Christian prince [integri verique Christiani principis simulachrum], which the excellent prince [optimus princeps] would either happily recognize, or wisely imitate as a young man [adolescens] eager to better himself (135; 136; my emphasis). The alternative "either/or" construction with which Eramus closes suggests the actual distance between the two bodies. The task of the Institutio must be to unify them as much as possible, to make the real life adolescens (the term means "student" as much as "youth" in the sixteenth century) into an embodiment of the optimus princeps, which he is at present only in title and to bring the political and moral complexion of the self into phase with the phrase that names it, thereby unifying words and things. Erasmus's moralism is signaled by the ethical urgency that his Christian humanist pedagogy injects into an ontologically based model of kingship.26 In contrast to the more chivalric humanism of Bude, with its celebration of glory and martial conquest, Erasmus's Christian humanism is always concerned first with the problem of virtue, with the moral causes of acts rather than their practical effects.27 This humanist piety is frequently at odds in Erasmus's work with the contingency that marks life in time. For example, in the very first sentence of the dedicatory epistle Erasmus reveals his intention to teach Charles wisdom, or sapientia: "Wisdom is not only an extraordinary tribute in itself, Charles, most bountiful of princes, but according to Aristotle no form of wisdom is greater than that which teaches a prince how to rule beneficiently [salutarem agere principem]" (133; 133). Erasmus begins with a notion of general virtue before moving to the level of specific, contextual virtue. This reductive gesture leads immediately into the realm of practice and the domain of political action.28 Wis26

This point is made by Herding, "Isokrates, Erasmus und die Institutio" 132. This general contrast between Bude's interest in deeds and Erasmus's concern for virtue is highlighted in Tracy, Politics of Erasmus, chap. i. 28 This concern for practice is traditional. In the opening pages of the De officiis, Cicero defines sapientia as the most important of virtues and asserts its close relationship 27

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dom, however, can only be demonstrated through example. While one may speak of "virtue" as a general quality that can be distilled from a past deed and applied to a present one, wisdom cannot be described in abstracto as can, say, a theological virtue. Erasmus can in fact only define it negatively, setting it at one point as the contrary of stultitia or folly (176; 165). More than any virtue, wisdom is contingent. It shows itself through prudent action in specific situations. The depiction of these situations as models for the prince thus raises the problem of how such wisdom can be represented. This problem is confronted throughout the Institutio. and the intricacy of Erasmus's task is set in relief when he speaks of Solomon ("sapientissimus vir" (170; 185), who, when given a wish for anything in the world, spurned pleasure and asked for wisdom to rule effectively. The tautological nature of the choice suggests the difficulty of representing wisdom: the wise man proves he is wise by asking for wisdom.29 This problem of the teaching of wisdom is exacerbated when one deals with the education of a prince. For if wisdom is only rendered tangible through practice, the natural mode of education would be apprenticeship, akin to what Montaigne later calls "experience." Yet, because the prince is a public figure with great responsibility, he has no margin for error or experimentation. Erasmus contrasts the prince to a lute player, who, as he is learning, can break several instruments without disaster (169; 183). Instead of trial and error, he suggests, the prince must be prepared for his work through a wide range of studies, consultation with older, more experienced men, and consideration of historical exemplars. But though he privileges the study of history, Erasmus begins his discussion of the prince's education by offering an extended description of an exemplar who seems totally ahistorical: Deliniet igitur coeleste quoddam animal numini quam homini similius, omnibus virtutum numeris absolutum, omnium bono natum; imo datum a superis subleuandis rebus mortalium, quod omnibus prospiciat, omnibus consulat, cui nihil sit antiquius, nihil dulcius republica, cui plus to prudentia. Aristotle discusses the relationship of virtue to action in Book 2 of the Nichomachean Ethics. See also Victoria Kahn, Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985), chap. 2. On the relationship between sapientia and action in the sixteenth century, see Eugene F. Rice, Jr., The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1958), chap. 6. 29 The epistemological problem which the necessity to represent virtue through example raises for humanism has been noted by Victoria Kahn, "Humanism and the Resistance to Theory," in Literary Theory IRenaissance Texts, ed. Patricia Parker and David Quint (Baltimore, Md.: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986), 373-96.

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quam paternus sit in omneis animus, cui singulorum vita charior sit quam sua, quod nocteis ac deis nihil aliud agat nitaturque, quam vt optime sit omnibus, apud quern praemia parata sint bonis omnibus, malis venia, si modo sese ad frugem meliorem referant, quod adeo gratis cupiat de ciuibus suis benemereri, vt si necesse sit, non dubitet suo periculo illorum incolumitati consulere, quod patriae commodum suum ducat esse lucrum, quod semper vigilet, quo caeteris liceat altum dormire, quod sibi nullum relinquat ocium, quo patriae liceat in ocio vitam agere, quod se iugibus curis discruciet, quo ciuibus suppetat tranquillitas. A cuius vnius virtute publica pendeat felicitas. Et hanc admoneat esse veri principis imaginem. (154) [Let the teacher paint a sort of celestial creature, more like to a divine being than a mortal: complete in all the virtues; born for the common good; yea, sent by the God above to help the affairs of mortals by looking out and caring for everyone and everything; to whom no concern is of longer standing or more dear than the state; who has more than a paternal spirit toward everyone; who holds the life of each individual dearer than his own; who works and strives night and day for just one end, to be the best he can for everyone; with whom rewards are ready for all good men and pardon for the wicked, if only they will reform, for so much does he want to be of real help to his people, without thought of recompense, that if necessary he would not hesitate to look out for their welfare at great risk to himself; who considers his wealth to lie in the advantages of his country; who is ever on the watch so that everyone else may sleep deeply; who grants no leisure to himself so that he may spend his life in the peace of his country; who worries himself with continual cares so that his subjects may have peace and quiet. Upon the moral qualities of this one man alone depends the felicity of the state. Let the tutor point this out as the picture of a true prince. (163)] The contingencies of history are here neutralized as Erasmus presents an allegorical figure who is of divine origin yet totally devoted to the state, a model who can form both of Charles's bodies by combining the idealism of the adolescens with the sagacity of the optimus princeps. Moreover, Charles's reading of Erasmus's own treatise is here implicitly mirrored as the ideal exemplar for the prince is presented within the ideal prince's portrait. In a Utopian moment Erasmus imagines the perfect exemplar, both concrete and universal, both other worldly and utterly practical. This allegorical figure—who recalls in many ways the ideal soldier of the Enchiridion—offers rhetorical and ideological advantages that soon become apparent. For in the pages that follow this portrait, when Erasmus begins to speak of actual historical examples, he must confront the alterity of ancient culture, already pointed to in the opening

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distinction drawn between himself and Isocrates. And this alterity is dangerous. In Bude, reading the past may be confusing, in Erasmus, as is noted again and again, it is a morally risky activity capable of leading unsuspecting Christian readers into error. Even as he praises history, Erasmus painstakingly traces out a method of interpretation designed to protect all of his readers, princely or otherwise, from the moral dangers of the pagan past. Christian readers may imitate and even surpass pagan exemplars, says Erasmus, but they must remain constantly aware that reading is dangerous: "As it would be most disgraceful to be surpassed by them in any honorable deed of theirs, so would it be the last degree of madness [extremae dementiae] for a Christian prince to wish to imitate them without change [totos imitari]" (181-82; 202-3). Erasmus's mistrust of antiquity extends beyond Bude's concern with the diversity of pagan history to include virtually all non-Christian texts. He even cautions against reading the humanists' favorite, Xenophon, who he says tried to present the image of the perfect prince ("egregii ducis imaginem") but only succeeded in painting the worst type of ruler ("pessimus ... principis exemplar" [180; 201]). He goes on to caution against the Old Testament. For the powerful rhetoric of its "wisdom" books and the adventures of its kings—even David and Solomon (182; 202)—can easily lead the Christian reader astray: "The prince should have thorough warning that not all of the things that he reads in the Holy Scriptures are to be straightway imitated [continuo imitanda]" (182; 203). And it is here that we can see the limits of Erasmus's hermeneutic and link it to other forms of humanist discourse. For even as he affirms the dangers of the Old Testament, he also concedes that it is possible to escape them through proper interpretive procedures. He offers two techniques for forestalling misapplication: First, he cautions that the battles and massacres of the Hebrews are to be taken allegorically, "otherwise it would be most disastrous to read them" (203) ["alioqui pestiferam esse horum lectionem" (182)]. Second, he warns the Christian reader to keep in mind that those events transpired in a different historical period. This is a remarkable juxtaposition of two modes of reading. On the one hand, the reader is told to allegorize, to forget the movement of history altogether. On the other hand, he is advised to historicize, to place past events in another time frame so as to recognize their distance from the present. Like Bude, who can juxtapose a timeless veneration for antiquity in the Institution with the historicizing tendencies of the De asse, Erasmus offers two contrasting responses to the past. The fact that Erasmus applies what are essentially opposing techniques of inter-

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pretation—flight from history into allegory and acceptance of historical contingency—to the same historical material suggests his anxiety over the moral danger of reading.30 In the case of Erasmus, however, these interpretive techniques seem valid only for the Bible. They do not cover pagan history; and the appropriation of pagan exemplars for Christian readers raises problems that Bude's Gallicanism carefully avoided. For if Erasmus moves too far in one direction by contextualizing the deeds of pagan exemplars in order to neutralize their moral danger, he undermines the humanist claim that ancient history can guide modern readers. Yet, he is not enough of a Platonist to slip definitively into the allegory used by a Landino. If Erasmus is to rescue pagan exemplars for the modern Christian reader, he must find a ground on which Christian morality can be reconciled with pagan heroism and the dangers of reading neutralized. This ground turns out to be another exemplary narrative, the life of Christ: Hie quern legis, ethnicus est; tu qui legis Christianus. Hie cum multa praeclare dicat, tamen exemplar boni principis parum recte adumbrauit; cave ne quicquid vsquam offenderis, id protinus tibi putes imitandum. Sed omnia ad Christi regulam exigito. (179) [He whom you are reading is a pagan; you who are reading are a Christian. Although he speaks with authority on many subjects, he by no means represents an exemplar of the good prince. Look out that you do not chance upon something in his works which you think you must therefore imitate directly. Measure everything by the rule of Christ. (199)]

It is to the regula Christi, the life of Christ, whom Erasmus describes elsewhere as "the exemplar of all wisdom and virtue" (177) ["omnis virtutis ac sapientiae exemplar" (165)], that the lessons taught by all pagan exemplars must be compared.31 The Cospels offer the Chris30 A similar dialectic between absolute contingency and allegorical gloss runs throughout Erasmus's work. For a discussion of the problem with reference to the Praise of Folly, see Quint, Origin and Originality, 8—21. On the general question of Erasmus's biblical hermeneutics, see Henri de Lubac, Exegese Medievale (Paris: Aubier Montaigne, 1964), 4:427ff.; J. B. Payne, "Toward the Hermeneutic of Erasmus," in Scrinium Erasmanium, ed. J. Coppens (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1969), 13—49; Cave, Cornucopian Text, 78-124; Albert Rabil, Erasmus and the New Testament: The Mind of a Christian Humanist (San Antonio, Tex.: Trinity University Press, 1972). 31 Erasmus's golden rule is, of course, "omnia ad Christum referentur," which he sets forth in the introduction to the Enchiridion. See de Lubac's discussion, Exegese medieviale, 139. The turn to Christ is also stressed in the introduction to the Paraclesis. Myron P. Gilmore has suggested that Erasmus's historiography is caught between the circularity

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tian counterpart to the narrative biographies of Xenophon and Plutarch, and, not surprisingly, the Christian model of history emerges as the master narrative connecting past and present, as the story within which the biographies of exemplars take on meaning. Given that all pagan heroism must be filtered through the life of Christ, one may wonder why Erasmus tries to reconcile Christian morality and pagan history in the first place. Why does he not, as in the Enchiridion, simply recommend Christ as the only model for the self, thereby forestalling both the problems of ideological difference seen here and the difficulties posed for Bude by the multiplicity of historical narratives? This question comes into focus directly following Erasmus's introduction of Christ as exemplar. It is when he addresses the problem of royal authority and the privileges and duties to be exchanged between prince and subject that Erasmus shows Christ in action. The question of royal authority is absolutely central to the practice of Renaissance statecraft. Principally, it involves the issue of how much the prince may tax his subjects, and how much, in turn, they owe their ruler. It is a problem that plagued Charles throughout his career. His attempt to levy new tax assessments in Flanders in 1515—presumably, at the very moment Erasmus was composing his treatise—met with heavy local resistance. And a few years after the composition of the Institutio the emperor's imposition of a new servicio in Castile in 1520 sparked peasant revolts.32 Moreover, the problem of taxation raises again the rhetorical problem of Erasmus's relationship to his own reading public and his claim to offer universally valid practical and moral advice. For all of Erasmus's readers, be they princes, nobles, or bourgeois, have a stake in the issue of taxation. In a moment of political unrest their conflicting interests create a divided of ancient historiography and the linearity of Christian salvation history. It is precisely this tension, I should point out, that makes the Institutio the representative Erasmian text for discussing the problem of exemplarity. The Enchiridion is concerned with imitation but focuses principally on Christ. See Myron P. Gilmore, "Fides et eruditio: Erasmus and the Study of History," in his Humanists and Jurists (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1963), 87—144. On Erasmus's theory of biography, see Peter G. Bietenholz, History and Biography in the Work of Erasmus of Rotterdam (Geneva: Droz, 1966). 32 For background on the question of taxation and royal authority, see Gaines Post, Studies in Medieval Legal Thought (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), esp. pt. 2. For the relationship between secular authority and ecclesiastical authority, see Ernst H. Kantorowicz, "Mysteries of State: An Absolutist Concept and Its Late Medieval Origins," Harvard Theological Review, 47 (1955), 65-92. For background on Charles's taxation problems, see discussions by C. A. J. Armstrong ("The Burgundian Netherlands 1477-1521") and H. Koenigsberger ("The Empire of Charles V in Europe") in The New Cambridge Modern History, 14 vols. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1958-1971), i:245ff. ar|d 2*.3i8ff., respectively.

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body of readers. It is within the context of this problem of taxation that the practical limits to Christ's exemplarity emerge. Erasmus suggests that the problem of deciding how much master and servant actually owe each other may be resolved by looking at the New Testament. He begins with Paul's recommendations in Rom. 13:8. When a pagan prince demands tribute, he says, Paul recommends payment, for there is no need to anger him needlessly.33 As for Christians, they must not let debts interfere with their commandment to love each other. And he asks, "Do you believe that Christ really owed tribute to Caesar just because He is said to have paid him a didrachma?" (179) ["Alioqui num ideo Christus debebat caesari tributum, quia legitur soluisse didrachmum?" (166)]. Then he relates a locus classicus for discussions of the issue, the story told in Matthew 22:16-22 of Christ's response to a question invented by the Pharisees in order to trap him. When asked whether tribute should be paid to Caesar, Christ replied ambiguously ("ambigue"): "Give unto Caesar what is Caesar's and unto God what is God's" (179) ["Date caesari, quae sunt caesaris, quae Dei sunt Deo" (166)]. Erasmus then explains how this utterance freed Christ from the Pharisees' trap and enabled him to turn his piety to his Father. Yet, any reader familiar with Scripture would immediately recognize that when Erasmus quotes Christ, he misquotes the Vulgate, which actually reads: "Reddite ergo quae sunt caesaris, caesari, et quae sunt Dei, Deo" (my emphasis). Jerome's use of the verb reddo for Matthew's 'apodote is followed elsewhere by Erasmus in his translations and discussions of this biblical passage. Only here does he depart from the canonical version, substituting "give" for "give back" or render.34 This lexical nuance does not change the general point made by Erasmus's Christ. Regarding the practice of taxation both Erasmus and Christ preach submission. Yet, the shift to do, to a verb that suggests that paying taxes is a gift to the emperor, rather than a return of what the emperor already rightfully owns, sparks a moment of tension in the text. For Erasmus immediately brushes off a hypothetical objection to what he has just said: "I hope that my remarks have not caused such questions as this to arise in the minds of anyone: 'Why do you deprive the prince of his own rights and grant more to a pagan than 33

Hexter, Vision of Politics, 11, notes that Rom. 13 was a locus of controversy in debates over political sovereignty during the period. 34 Erasmus's New Testament follows Jerome exactly. The text in the Paraphrasis in Evangelio Matthei reads: "Reddite igitur, inquit, Caesari, si qua sunt Caesaris, sed imprimis reddite Deo, quae sunt Dei." I have consulted, in both cases, the edition of the Opera published in Amsterdam, 1706, vol. 6, 116, and vol. 7, 117.

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to a Christian?'" (179) ["Ne vero inter haec cuiquam obrepat huiusmodi cogitatio: Quid igitur principi suum ius adimis et plus tribuis ethnico quam Christiano?" (166; my emphasis)]. The hypothetical interlocutor, the "anyone" who can only be Erasmus's projection of Charles himself, wonders why his adviser should give the pagan king the chance to levy tribute and then portray the great Christian exemplar paying his taxes but belittling the emperor. Erasmus is parrying a question he imagines will be asked by Charles, who, after all, exacts tribute from his subjects and thus finds himself here in the position not of Christ but rather of Caesar. Why, Charles might wonder, does Christ let Caesar be Caesar, while you, Erasmus, denegrate the legitimacy of levying tribute and demand that Charles be Christ? Erasmus answers this objection, as he answers so many, with an appeal to salvation history. But the syntax of the Latin underscores the focus of the exchange: "Why do you deprive the prince of his rights? ... I defend the rights of the Christian prince" (17q) ["Quid igitur principi suus ius adimis... Imo principi christiani suum ius vindico" (166; my emphasis)]. Even though Christ is presented as an exemplar whose life can be imitated by all, this imaginary encounter between model and reader is a troubled one. Erasmus's haste to pose and answer a hypothetical complaint from his reader betrays his awareness that the scene he has chosen cannot but pose a problem for the future Holy Roman Emperor. For the exemplary universality of Christ is not shared by Erasmus's readers, subjects who inevitably read the exemplar from distinct social and political positions, each with its own interests and concerns. Christ's gesture of indifference toward Caesar, for instance, would offer an authoritative model for anyone chafing under the yoke of imperial taxation, just as his poverty provided impetus to Protestant attacks against Catholic wealth. If Christ's exemplarity speaks to Charles at all, it is to the ideal image of the optimus princeps, whose traditional duty is submission to God and pope. When the real-life adolescens, whose own problems levying taxes Erasmus addresses in a later passage, looks into the mirror of the Institutio, he sees himself in Caesar, who rules the world: "Date Carolo, quae sunt Caroli, quae Dei sunt, Deo" might well be his words. Erasmus begins his discussion of Christ's exemplarity with the problem of tolerating masters; he ends it by appeasing a reader who, because he desires to levy taxes, has seen himself mirrored in a pagan prince. His attempt to depict Christ's exemplarity is marred by an awareness of social differences, of the distinct perspectives from which various subjects regard the image of the same exemplar. In this case those differences—what contemporary political theorists call "subject

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positions"35—emerge at the center of the royal personage himself, between the ideal ruler and the real-life student, and split the reading king's two bodies asunder. From this perspective it becomes clear why Erasmus dwelt so on the figure of the imaginary exemplar, described in the long passage cited earlier. Only in that Utopian moment was he able completely to reconcile the dual roles of the prince and depict an exemplar who was both morally correct and politically wise. In the ideal so rhapsodically painted there he depicted a model who was spiritually a Christ but legally a Caesar. The imaginary protest which Erasmus registers in his text suggests the self-consciousness marking his attempt to reconcile moral idealism with the social and temporal contingencies that define life in history. In light of the political realities of the sixteenth century, the fragility of the link between reader and exemplar, between reader and pedagogue, and between one reader and another is thrown into relief. If Bude struggled with problems of narrative and text, with the difficulties of marshaling the multiple voices of the past into a coherent figure or exemplar to guide his patron, Erasmus is plagued by a social dilemma produced by the fragmentation of the reading public. And his response to the moment of self-consciousness that registers this fragmentation is to turn to a model of interpretive community in which all social differences are effaced. Paul himself, he assures his reader a moment later, told us that we can indeed owe each other money so long as economics does not taint brotherly love. In the Christian republic, he says, all Christians are brothers. The relationship between those who happen to be in command and those who happen to serve, between the Caesars and the Christs, is described as a common bond ("mutuum commercium"): the prince's wise leadership and protection, the attributes of a good prince ("bonum ac vigilantem principem") are exchanged for the people's money and honor ("censum" and "obsequium"). Before the prince taxes his subjects, cautions Erasmus, he should ask himself if he has fulfilled his duty toward them (167; 180). Within the respublica Christiana it is possible for Charles to be Caesar insofar as he exacts tribute from his subjects, and to be Christ insofar as he spurns the temptations of this world. Literally he is in command, but metaphorically he is the spiritual servant of his people. Hierarchy is abolished in the respublica, 35

In the wake of Foucault, postmodernist political theory has attempted to base a model of action on the distinct "subject positions" that can be articulated over and above the traditional Marxist model, with its insistence on class as the organizing principle of society. See, for example, Stanley Aronowitz, "Post-modernism and Politics," Social Text 18 (1987-1988), 99-115.

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just as it is abolished in the relationship of the adviser Erasmus to his king Charles, "Christianus Christianum." The reader's two bodies are absorbed into a body of readers, all of whom imitate the great model of Christ.36 Thus, at the moment that his project of appropriating the past seems most problematic, when the deeds of the "exemplar of all wisdom and virtue" provoke a moment of discord, Erasmus turns to a mythical model of community in which interest and desire are neutralized. Perhaps more than any reader in the history of the West, Erasmus knows that the voices of history may be indistinct, that signs may be slippery, that interpretation may be difficult. Yet, he seeks to respond to hermeneutic anxiety by evoking a community of readers whose consensus guides interpretive choice and makes reading possible—a kind of sixteenth-century equivalent of the ideal dialogic situation imagined by Habermas.37 When in doubt about how to read history, cautions Erasmus, first measure its lessons against the privileged narrative that is the life of Christ. If this process raises problems, as it does in the scene just discussed, turn to the model of the Christian republic, where all readers are members of the same body and love, not money, mediates social relationships. Just as Bude's chivalric humanism, in order to ground its search for a sufficient model for Francis, turns (however problematically) to the political and cultural model of a new French nationalism and the mythical figure of Hercules, so too Erasmus's Christian humanism anchors the reading of history in an ideal community of readers. Erasmus's turn to a model of community, in which the prince figures 36

On the images used by Erasmus to figure the relationship of the prince to his people see Margaret Mann Phillips, Erasmus and the Northern Renaissance (London, 1949), 130. On the respublica Christiana as it figures throughout Erasmus's works, with special reference to the depiction of the early Church, see Schottenloher, "Erasmus und die Respublica Christiana." A paraphrase of Erasmus's ideas on the makeup of the state is offered in Eberhard von Koerber, Die Staatstheorie des Erasmus von Rotterdam (Berlin: Dunckes und Humblot, 1967), esp. 55-79. On Erasmus's general political theory, with a succinct description of its shortcomings, see Pierre Mesnard, L'essor de la philosophie politique au XVIe siecle (Paris: Vrin, 1977), 86—140. 37 Habermas has stressed the ideal space required for true dialogue (and hence truly productive interpretation): "Eine kritisch iiber sich aufgeklarte Hermeneutik, die zwischen Einsicht und Verblendung differenziert, nimmt das metahermeneutische Wissen iiber die Bedingungen der Moglichkeit systematisch verzerrter Kommunikation in sich auf. Sie bindet Verstehen an das Prinzip verniinftiger Rede, demzufolge Wahrheit nur durch den Konsensus verbiirgt sein wiirde, der unter den idealisierten Bedingungen unbeschrankter und herrschaftsfreier Kommunikation erzielt worden ware und auf Dauer behauptet werden konnte"; "Der Universalitatsanspruch der Hermeneutik," Hermenentik und Ideologiekritik, ed. Jiirgen Habermas et al. (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1975), 154.

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as both head of state and another member of the body of Christ (167; 180), is in many ways a necessary gesture. For in the final pages of the Institutio it is far from clear that the exemplary deeds of the narrative of Christ's life are quite sufficient to neutralize the moral dangers that pagan history poses for the Renaissance prince. Near the end of the treatise, for example, he recommends the imitation of a whole series of pagan heroes: Scipio, who was never less at rest than when at leisure, so much did he love his people; Aeneas, who Virgil depicts at watch over his sleeping men in Aeneid i, and so on. But all of these examples are evoked in conjunction with the life of Christ, itself now a mere formula of authorization: "The prince who has been instructed in the teachings of Christ and in the fortresses of wisdom [Christi decretis et sapientiae praesidiis] will consider nothing dearer (or rather, nothing dear at all) than the prosperity of his people, whom he ought to love and care for equally as members of one body" (210; 244). The example of Christ is now reformulated as "his teachings" and serves as a mediating grid or hermeneutic cushion that can mitigate the dangers inherent in any Christian prince's imitation of ancient exemplars. And, yet, Erasmus has added a new term to his model. Inexplicably, the expression "fortresses of wisdom" ["sapientiae praesidia"] appears alongside the reference to Christ. Here, the problem of representing wisdom through exemplarity reaches its paradoxical end. The model of the perfect exemplar does not seem sufficient to teach the prudence that will filter out the bad effects of imitating pagans. Erasmus has moved us in a circle. At the outset of his work he asserts that he will teach wisdom or "sapientia" through example, he recommends the imitation of exemplars, he proposes the figure of Christ as a guide, but then he accompanies that figure with something called "the fortresses of wisdom." In order to learn wisdom from pagans like Scipio and Aeneas we must, it seems, already have it. We are like Solomon, who demonstrated his wisdom by asking for more. The problems raised by Erasmus's project to blend the matter of ancient history with the moral piety of Christian humanism may explain his penchant, especially in the more practically oriented portions of the Institutio, to shift to natural or quotidian metaphors for describing the prince's relationship to his people. If the prince is likened to Alexander or Caesar, he risks imitating the imprudent deeds of these pagans "without change." If he takes his model from Christ, he must contend with the fact that, as we have seen, many of Christ's actions were committed against or at least with indifference toward the political and religious authority represented by the privileged

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reader. But if the state is described as a beehive, a garden, a smithy, or even a body, no historical, ideological, or social rifts can trouble the relationship between the Christian prince and the image of the queen bee, the gardener, the smith, or the doctor. The natural metaphor, as both Machiavelli and Montaigne realized as well, offers a safe model, an image free of the problems of historical contingency and social distinction. At the same time, of course, it locates wisdom and virtue in nature, dislodging it from the realm of history altogether. Though Erasmus evokes these natural metaphors throughout his text, his model for virtuous action, like that of all humanism, remains rooted in the attempt to read the past. A more perceptive reader than his friend Bude, Erasmus recognizes both the ideological problems posed by any Christian reader's encounter with the past and the social and political issues that mark any plan to advise a prince in the changing political climate of the early sixteenth century. Yet, he optimistically asserts that a Christian humanist reading of pagan history can lead to ethical political action, despite the countervailing pressures of political and social reality. The pious optimism of Erasmian Christian humanism can be seen as a fleeting moment of equilibrium in the history of Renaissance exemplarity. It aims to expand the local civic concerns of the Italian quattrocento humanists and the chivalric courtliness of Bude to all of Christendom, affirming the value of the past for the present and the unity of the Christian community. It is an optimism inextricably bound to the personality and energy of Erasmus himself—and as fragile as a single life. Indeed, neither Christian humanism nor its model of exemplarity could withstand the political and ideological fragmentation brought on by the middle years of the sixteenth century. And even as Erasmus was asserting the possibility of controlling political action through a Christian reading of history, his contemporary Machiavelli was elaborating a much darker vision of politics and of exemplarity.38 MACHIAVELLI: FROM THE EXEMPLARY TO THE ANECDOTAL

The political and moral scepticism of Machiavelli contrasts sharply with both the Christian humanist pieties of Erasmus and the optimistic 38

Many of the implicit tensions seen here in Erasmus's text emerge as thematic concerns 120 years later in the Politico, de dios of Francisco Quevedo (1635). Quevedo's text is a fascinating attempt to resolve the exemplary nature of Christ and certain aspects of Machiavellianism.

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nationalism of Bude. Bude scans the horizon of history for a model whose life might provide a narrative sufficient to authorize and guide the nationalist projects of Francis I. Erasmus's interests are primarily moral. The model for reading history set forth in the Institutio principis christiani reveals his faith that a harmony, however fragile, between classical history and Christian ethics can moderate the ruthlessness of power politics at a moment of increasing international tension. For during the early 15205 the rivalry between Bude's patron Francis and Erasmus's pupil Charles constantly threatened the peace of Europe. And the principal pawn in the game between the two rulers was the Italian peninsula, the political destiny of which preoccupied Machiavelli throughout his career. Given the volatility of the Italian situation, it is not surprising that Machiavelli's most famous contribution to advice literature, // principe, concerns itself not with the moral constitution of the self or the creation of a national tradition, as is the case with his two influential contemporaries to the north, but rather with the details of practical action and the difficulties of daily political survival. At crucial moments in their texts, Bude and Erasmus thematize the unity of the reading community within which interpretive activity occurs (as either a unified and glorious France or the respublica christiana). Machiavelli's social and political situation confutes such idealism. The barely disguised social tensions beneath the surface of Erasmus's text are for him an accepted feature of the political landscape. The fragility of political consensus is a constant theme of his work. Whereas Erasmus proposes to write a text with universal moral value, advising both the prince and his subjects on how to act, Machiavelli's 77 principe takes as its point of departure an antagonistic situation in which the prince must manipulate and trick his subjects so as to ensure his power over them. This problematic relationship between prince and people, between the privileged reader of history and those affected by his deeds, underlies a central paradox of Machiavelli's work. Although 77 principe offers an almost systematic refutation of the exemplar theory of history, Machiavelli seems to believe in the exemplary value of the pagan past, and he affirms this faith repeatedly in his Discorsi on Livy. The tension seen in Bude and Erasmus between a veneration of the timeless models offered by antiquity and a nascent historicism that accepts historical alterity is driven to its breaking point in II principe, yet the Discorsi define the pragmatic value of Roman culture for the present. These contrasting attitudes toward exemplarity can be linked to the relationship between reading and the public sphere. So long as Machiavelli can maintain, even as a myth, the hope of a coherent public arena in which productive

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virtuous action is possible, the past can speak to the present. When the possibility for unifying that space fades, the reading of history becomes a private activity, and exemplarity as a technique for guiding public action is lost. The friction between prince and subject presupposed in Machiavelli's political thought informs the circumstances surrounding the composition of // principe?9 Machiavelli writes from exile; his treatise is addressed to his former political adversary, Lorenzo de' Medici, who had helped topple the short-lived Florentine republic that Machiavelli had supported.40 This historical fact accounts for the way Machiavelli introduces himself. Erasmus derives authority from both his unparalleled knowledge of classical antiquity and his status as a theologus. His advice to Charles pretends to lie beyond the contingencies of history and to enjoy absolute moral authority. Machiavelli, in contrast, tells Lorenzo in his preface that he speaks both from erudition ("una continua lezione delle [cose] antique") and from experience ("una lunga esperienza delle cose moderne"). Unlike Erasmus, he depicts himself already in history. He has lived the events he analyzes. And, by the same token, // principe will describe not the ideal ruler imagined by Erasmus but rather a prince who is already caught in the subterfuges of political life. Erasmus defines how one should act. Machiavelli describes how one must act.41 39 All references are to Niccolo Machiavelli, Tutte le opere, ed. Mario Martelli (Florence: Sansoni, 1971). English translations are from Luigi Ricci and E. R. P. Vincent's version of The Prince and Christian E. Demold's rendering of the Discourses, in the one-volume Modern Library College edition edited by Max Lerner (New York, 1950). On occasion I have slightly altered the translations to conform to the language of the original. Since the chapters of // principe are quite short, I simply indicate chapter numbers for each of my citations. References to the Discorsi cite book and chapter numbers. 40 Machiavelli expresses his opinion of his present situation by describing his position as among "luoghi bassi," an echo of Inferno 1.61: "Mentr ch'i' rovinava in basso loco." Note that "ruinare" is Machiavelli's favorite phrase for political disaster. On the background to the short-lived Florentine republic, see Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970); and J. G. A. Pocock, The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the Atlantic Republican Tradition (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975), pt. 2, chap. 4. I am indebted to Pocock's fine study for much of my understanding of Machiavelli. On Machiavelli and "civic humanism," see Mark Hulliung, Citizen Machiavelli (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983). 41 Allan Gilbert has traced in some detail Machiavelli's relationship to the speculum principis tradition in Machiavelli's "Prince" and Its Forerunners (Durham: Duke University Press, 1938; New York: Barnes and Noble, 1968). My reading of Machiavelli disagrees with Gilbert's attempt to see // principe as a "typical" representative of the genre. On the general ideological issues addressed in Machiavelli's book, see Isaiah Berlin, "The Originality of Machiavelli," Studies on Machiavelli, ed. Myron P. Gilmore (Florence: Sansoni, 1972), 149-206.

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Machiavelli's assertion that his advice originates in both history and experience extends to the key term virtu, which is central to an understanding of his work. The contexts in which this word is used are so varied and its semantic instability so dizzying that it seems to defy definition. In contrast to humanist traditions, which posit a model of virtue that is timeless or ideal, Machiavellian virtu, as Victoria Kahn has recently noted, suggests a power that is totally contingent, "not a general rule of behavior that could be applied to a specific situation but rather, like prudence, a faculty of deliberation about particulars."42 Like Erasmian sapientia, virtu can only be taught through example. But unlike sapientia, it is shorn of moralistic trappings and aims to ensure survival in an immoral political world. Neither Christian virtue nor Roman virtus, virtu can only be seen in its effects, in the success of the strong man who imposes his will on fortuna. It can be read in past acts, or what Machiavelli calls "le cose antique," but its exercise demands a firsthand knowledge of "le cose moderne." Approximately the first half of // principe treats the many forms of the principality (principatus). In the second half (to judge, if nothing else, by the chapter headings, which shift terminology from principatus to princeps exactly at the book's midpoint), Machiavelli discusses the dealings of the prince. And despite his subversion of traditional humanist notions of virtue, Machiavelli's text follows conventions of humanist advice literature by its repeated discussion of ancient exemplars. This discussion opens in chapter 6, one quarter of the way through the book: Non si maravigli alcuno se, nel parlare che io faro de' principati al tutto nuovi e di principe e di stato, io addurro grandissimi esempli; perche camminando li uomini quasi sempre per le vie battute da altri, e procedendo nelle azioni loro con le imitazioni, ne se potendo le vie d'altri al tutto tenere, ne alia virtu di quelli che tu imiti aggiugnere, debbe uno uomo prudente intrare sempre per vie battute da uomini grandi, e quelli che sono stati eccellentissimi imitare, accio che, se la sua virtu non vi arriva, almeno ne renda qualche odore: e fare come li arcieri 42 For a fine discussion of the problem of virtu as it relates to the epistemological problems raised by the experience of reading Machiavelli's text, see Victoria Kahn, "Virtii and the Example of Agathocles in Machiavelli's Prince," Representations 13 (1986), 63-83. For an analysis of the relationship between the semantic openness of virtu and problems of closure in the text, see Thomas M. Greene, "The End of Discourse in Machiavelli's 'Prince,' " Yale French Studies 67 (1984), esp. yoff. Hexter has charted the various appearances of the word virtu by chapter in the Appendix to "The Loom of Language and the Fabric of Imperative: The Cases of// Principe and Utopia," in Vision of Politics, 179-203. On the general question of virtue, see Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, pt. i, chap. 2; and J. H. Whitfield, Machiavelli (Oxford: Blackwell, 1947), 92-105.

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Writing from History prudenti, a' quali, parendo el loco dove disegnono ferire troppo lontano, e conoscendo fino a quanto va la virtu del loro arco, pongono la mira assai piu alta che il loco destinato, non per aggiugnere con la loro freccia a tanta altezza, ma per potere, con lo aiuto di si alta mira, pervenire al disegno loro. (6) [Let no one marvel if in speaking of new dominions both as to prince and state, I bring forward very great examples, for men walk almost always in the paths trodden by others, proceeding in their actions by imitation. Not being always able to follow others exactly, nor attain to the excellence of those he imitates, a prudent man should always follow in the path trodden by great men and imitate those who are most excellent, so that if he does not attain their greatness, at any rate he will get some odor of it. He will do as prudent archers, who when the place they wish to hit is too far off, knowing how far their bow will carry, aim at a spot much higher than the one they wish to hit, not in order to reach this height with their arrow, but by help of this high aim to hit the spot they wish to.]

At first glance this passage seems to affirm in conventional language the exemplar theory of history. It suggests that though political actors cannot exactly follow those they seek to imitate, they can still recuperate something from the uomini eccellentissimi of the past. Yet, Machiavelli subverts notions of exemplarity such as those seen in Bude and Erasmus from within a humanist vocabulary. For though the notion of following the footsteps of the other is a commonplace of Renaissance imitation theory, the rest of the passage is troubling.43 In the first place, if the exemplar is so elevated that one can succeed while only aiming at his virtue, why is he needed at all? The passage becomes even more baffling when Machiavelli states that a failed quest for virtu will render up "qualche odore." What, exactly, is the odor of virtu? How does one distinguish between virtue and its odor? Is the odor a product of the exemplar's virtu, or is it produced by the self-knowledge achieved by the imitator?44 43 On the imagery of Renaissance imitation, see George Pigman III, "Versions of Imitation in the Renaissance," Renaissance Quarterly 33 (1980), 1-32; and Thomas M. Greene, The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), chap. 4. 44 Greene, "End of Discourse," 62-63, also notes this "flaw" in the image of the archer. Georges Poulet's illuminating remarks on the phenomenology of odor help to elucidate my interest in the ambiguity of Machiavelli's image: "L'odeur est aussi puissante a la circonference du cercle de propagation que dans le centre emanateur. Bref elle se manifeste comme le plus parfait de tous les mouvements par lesquels la force sensible prend possession de 1 espace. Elle se repand sans deperdition. Enfin, sans rien changer a la configuration des etendues qu'elle occupe... elle s'infiltre partout"; Les metamorphoses du cercle (Paris: Plon, 1961), 401. And see, in similar terms, Jacques Derrida:

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If the space of play opened up by the imprecision of odore and the image of the archer suggests that the exact relationship between modern actors and even the most authoritative exemplars is difficult to represent, the situation is complicated even more when we consider that // principe presents not a unified model for a prince in the manner of many other texts in the institutio tradition but rather, as Pocock has demonstrated, a whole series of models, "a gallery of specimen types of innovation."45 Pocock sees the book as a study of innovation, and proposes various paradigms—the legislator, the prophet, the military leader—as subcategories of the larger class he calls "innovators," that is, subcategories "all located along a spectrum of degrees to which virtu is independent of fortuna."46 At one end of this spectrum lies the great class of uomini eccellentissimi just evoked. These are what Pocock calls the "classical legislators," described by Machiavelli as "Quelli che per propria virtu e non per fortuna sono diventati principi, dico che li piu eccellenti sono Moise, Giro, Romulo, Teseo e simili" (6) ["Those who have become princes through their own merits and not by fortune, I regard as the greatest, Moses, Cyrus, Romulus, Theseus, and their like"]. Their excellence is demonstrated by the way in which they were able to take hold of occasione and impose a shape on it ("a potere introdurvi drento quella forma") through the exercise of virtu, as Moses, for example, seized the opportunity provided by the captivity of the Jews to demonstrate his heroism. But the exercise of virtu does not consist in the mere seizure of power. The mythical legislators whom Machiavelli calls uomini eccellentissimi all seized power and kept it, thereby demonstrating their excellence over time. Thus, their lives offer continuous stories of prudent and effective action. Exemplarity is here once again linked to the problem of narrative understanding, but now the exemplary narrative no longer need be composed of consistently virtuous action. It simply needs to exist as narrative, that is to say, it needs to offer evidence that the hero's virtu permitted him to survive political challenges. One might say that Machiavelli has displaced the question of exemplarity from the moment of the great gesture to the space between moments, to the hero's very ability to extend the moment of "L'essence de la rose, c'est sa non-essence: son odeur en tant qu'elle s'evapore. D'ou son affinite d'effluve avec le pet ou avec le rot: ces excrements ne se gardent, ne se forment meme pas. Le reste ne reste pas. D'ou son interet, son absence d'interet. Comment 1'ontologie pourrait-elle s'emparer d'un pet?" Glas, 2 vols. (Paris: Denoe'l/ Gonthier, 1981), 1:82. 45 Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 180. 46 Ibid., 173.

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political survival through time. This displacement is made quite clear by his depiction of several figures from recent Italian history; for these men, individual strength was insufficient to the occasion provided them by fortune. Principal among them is Cesare Borgia, who stands at the opposite end of the spectrum from the uomini eccellentissimi. For even though he was able to ride the bandwagon of his father's election to the papacy, he was never able to free himself sufficiently from that event to establish his independence and thus maintain power. Machiavelli obviously admires Cesare's dramatic seizure of power (which has often led readers to identify him as the "hero" of // principe), but he laments Cesare's inability to hold it. A similarly paradoxical status is accorded Savonarola, who is depicted as an unarmed prophet ("tutt'i profeti armati vinsono, e li disarmati ruinorono"), admirable for the rhetorical gifts that convinced the people to follow him ("e facile a persuadere loro una cosa") but unable to achieve true excellence, since his followers abandoned him ("ma e difficile fermarli in quella persuasione") (6). This question of virtu as the strength to survive through time—as the capacity not merely to seize power but to keep it as well—is articulated in slightly different terms in the middle portion of the text. Following the introduction of the great ancient exemplars in chapter 6, Moses and "those like him" all but disappear from the book until its final chapter. Specifically, the focus shifts to the description not of great men or great deeds but rather of memorable moments of passage or transition in ancient history, of noteworthy attempts by successors to imitate and learn from their predecessors. The traditional humanist concern with the split between modern culture and ancient culture, between Christian and pagan, is set aside as Machiavelli turns to consider what might seem the simplest gesture of political imitation imaginable: the imitation of fathers by their sons. The evidence he adduces, however, overturns an entire tradition of humanist moral philosophy by suggesting that the imitation of past action lacks any pragmatic value. For example, in chapter 19, De contemptu et odio fugiendo, Machiavelli discusses a series of Roman emperors from Marcus Aurelius to Maximinus, arguing, as the chapter title suggests, that rulers who incite the hatred of their people come to a bad end. Of the various emperors discussed, Marcus Aurelius and Severus are described as exemplars who offered worthy models for their successors. The former is presented as the only one of the group to have lived and died happily, while the latter is seen as an example of sagacious behavior. Yet, the attempts of successors to follow in these men's footsteps ("seguire le vestigie") end for the most part in disaster.

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Commodus, for example, had only to follow the precedent of his father Marcus (whose image, one should remember, provided a universal model for the humanist Guevara). But Commodus's naturally cruel spirit ("animo crudele e bestiale") led to his downfall. Though he was in many respects an excellent man ("avea parte eccellentissime"), the same fate befell Antoninus, son of Severus. Pertinax and Alexander, though virtuous, were unsuccessful at imitating Marcus because they came to power without the support of a ius hereditarium. Machiavelli concludes his analysis of these various cases by recommending that a new prince should not imitate either Marcus or Severus but should take ("pigliare") from Severus those things necessary to founding a state ("quelle parti che per fondare el suo stato sono necessarie") and from Marcus those pertinent to its preservation ("a conservare uno stato che sia gia stabilito e fermo") (19). Thus, unless one is imitating one of the uomini eccellentissimi, it seems that the extension of domination through time, the consolidation of power, inevitably requires the choice of two or more different exemplars. Unlike Bude, who seeks a sufficient model for all occasions, and in contrast to Erasmus, who advocates the juxtaposition of pagan models with the privileged narrative of the life of Christ, Machiavelli advocates combining models, distilling what is necessary for a specific situation from the actions of various predecessors. This notion defines the reading of history as a test of judgment. On one level, it seems to follow traditional models of humanist rhetoric.47 But at the same time Machiavelli's insistence on the contingency of all action undercuts the pragmatic value of this type of exemplarity. Machiavelli asserts that both he and his patron are already on the political stage, rather than safely protected by a humanist schoolroom. And life on the political stage, he has shown, is dominated by the urgency of time. The principal task of the prince is survival, the transformation of fondare into conservare, the extension of his power from moment to moment. This implies rapid decisions, and the ability to move quickly and ruthlessly. It means that Machiavelli's prince has even less opportunity than Erasmus's Christian prince for apprenticeship, for processes of trial and error, for the tranquil contemplation of historical models and the study of what one should take or "pigliare" from each. Thus, Ma47

In "Virtu and the Example of Agathocles," Kahn expands on points made in her book Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism by arguing that the experience of reading Machiavelli's text poses problems of judgment germane to issues it thematizes. Thus, Machiavelli's rhetoric follows humanist conventions in many ways (just as terms like virtu seem to suggest that we are in a humanist ambit), while offering counsel directly contrary to the pieties of humanist moral philosophy.

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chiavelli's introduction of the problem of time, of the prince's need to conserve rather than merely seize power, erodes the pragmatic benefit of historical models. Nowhere is this clearer than in his famous discussion of the lion and the fox: Dovete adunque sapere come sono dua generazioni di combattere: 1'uno con le leggi, 1'altro, con la forza: quel primo e proprio dell'uomo, quel secondo delle bestie: ma perche el primo molte volte non basta, conviene ricorrere al secondo. Per tanto a uno principe e necessario sapere bene usare la bestia e lo uomo.... Sendo adunque uno principe necessitato sapere bene usare la bestia, debbe di quelle pigliare la golpe et il Hone; perche il Hone non si defende da' lacci, la golpe non si defende da' lupi. Bisogna adunque essere golpe a conoscere e' lacci, e Hone a sbigottire e' lupi. Coloro che stanno semplicemente in sul Hone, non se ne intendano. (18) [You must know, then, that there are two methods of fighting, the one by law, the other by force: the first method is that of men, the second of beasts; but as the first method is often insufficient, one must have recourse to the second. It is therefore necessary for a prince to know well how to use both the beast and the man A prince being thus obliged to know well how to act as a beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. One must therefore be a fox to recognise traps, and a lion to frighten wolves. Those that wish to be only lions do not understand this.]

As in Bude and Erasmus, the introduction of metaphors from the natural world eliminates the problem of the historical distance between exemplar and reader. Yet, there is an important difference between the ways Bude and Machiavelli perceive the imitation of the lion and the fox. Bude presented a set of alternatives for action that was structured diachronically: If you do not succeed wearing a lion's skin then try a fox's skin. Machiavelli uses this diachronic model in setting beast against man: If human laws do not suffice then use the law of the jungle. But there is no clue as to which beast is to be imitated first: "Bisogna adunque essere golpe... e lione." By suggesting that one must choose at any moment between two or more models, Machiavelli undermines the pragmatic value of exemplars. If success depends upon a series of choices to be made in the present, the appropriation of virtii from antiquity suddenly becomes irrelevant. Pagan exemplars may be seen as models only in retrospect, if one has imitated them and had the luck to survive. The prince is thus enjoined to study history and imitate exemplars, but historical models seem to offer little in the way of practical guid-

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ance. This paradox becomes explicit in chapter 20, where Machiavelli gives conflicting advice on the building of fortresses. He begins by pointing out the value of fortresses as refuges from sudden disaster, suggesting that history sanctions such a strategy: "lo laudo questo modo, perche li e usitato ab antiquo." ["I approve this method, because it was anciently used."] He follows this, however, with the stories of Niccolo Vitelli and Guido Ubaldo, who built fortresses and met ruin. And he concludes: "Son dunque le fortezze utili o no, secondo e' tempi; e, se le ti fanno bene in una parte, ti offendano in un'altra" (20) ["Therefore fortresses may or may not be useful according to their times; if they do good in one way, they do harm in another."] Even the most solid foundation can become an illusory protection. What is striking about the passage is that it can recommend a technique of defense on the mere authority of antiquity. Machiavelli, who has told Lorenzo that his experience is both practical and bookish, seems to be at odds with himself here. The classically trained humanist recommends a precedent that his own observations of recent history contradict. Machiavelli's accent on the contingency of the moment here goes hand in hand with his emphasis on the importance of maintaining power through time. It also recalls his concern for the details of royal succession mentioned in the earlier discussion of Severus and Marcus Aurelius. Pertinax cannot imitate Marcus because the details of ins hereditarium create differences between their respective situations. The modern prince cannot know whether to build fortresses because times may have changed and turned the possession of fortifications from a blessing to a curse. The "nascent materialism"48 of Machiavelli's technique of analysis shatters the moment into all of the possible tiny details that might constitute it. Since, inevitably, not all of these details will correspond in both the model and the imitation, the exemplar model of history is rendered pragmatically inoperative. Prudent action is only possible, according to Machiavelli, after one has considered all of the contingencies that combine to constitute a given form of political activity. In Machiavelli's model of history, difference undoes repetition, the similitude linking exemplar and imitator is rendered at the very least useless and at the most a dangerous illusion. The only possible positive result of such isolation in the present moment is self-knowledge. For if the exemplary model has been rendered invalid, one can only seek to know one's own limits and capacities in 48 The phrase is applied by Pocock to numerous aspects of Machiavelli's thought: see Machiavellian Moment, 211, for instance.

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as much detail as possible. This self-awareness was suggested as far back as chapter 6, in the image of the archers who aim higher than their target, "conoscendo fino a quanto va la virtu del loro arco." Given the pragmatic limitations of self-awareness as a ground for public action, it is no accident that, later in the century, when Montaigne accords a similar importance to self-knowledge, he locates the testing of the self in the less perilous sphere of private activity. This reading of Machiavelli brings him quite close to the extreme scepticism of his contemporary and fellow Florentine Guicciardini.49 Guicciardini's mistrust of the exemplary status of the past is described powerfully in one of his most memorable Ricordi: E fallacissimo el giudicare per gli essempli, perche se non sono simili in tutto e per tutto, non servono, conciosa che ogni minima varieta nel caso puo essere causa di grandissima variazione nello effetto: e el discernere queste varieta, quando sono piccole, vuole buono e perspicace occhio.50 [To judge by example is very misleading. Unless they are similar in every respect, examples are useless, since every tiny difference in the case may be a cause of great variations in the effects. And to discern these tiny differences takes a good and perspicacious eye.]

Perhaps because of his innate conservatism and aristocratic background, however, Guicciardini sees the dispersion of historical repetition into endless difference as the end of all action. He takes history's own instability to be its only lesson. Felix Gilbert has seen in Guicciardini's resignation the origin of a modern notion of historiography, of history writing as description rather than prescription: If the study of history did not reveal the existence of a permanent order behind the multiplicity of events, then the schemes which theology or moral philosophy had imposed upon the course of history were extraneous, and the historian need no longer concentrate on the search for recurring and generally valid patterns. He could turn his attention to the description of diverse and singular historical phenomena, he would aim at factual correctness, and more important, he would focus on his particular area of investigation: constant change. Thus the historian gained his own peculiar function, and history took on an independent 49

Pocock treats Machiavelli's obsession with difference as revealed through detail in Machiavellian Moment, 237. He compares Machiavelli's scepticism to Guicciardini's in 266ff. 50 1 cite Emilio Pasquini's edition of the Ricordi (Milan: Garzanti, 1975), no. 117. The English translation is by Mario Domandi in Maxims and Reflexions (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1964), 71.

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existence in the world of knowledge; there was no other place to look for the meaning of history than in history itself.51 Unable to change the world, Guicciardini interprets it. Although his scepticism toward history parallels Guicciardini's, Machiavelli does not accept his friend's passivity.52 On the contrary, the final chapter of // principe consists in an exhortation to action and a reaffirmation of the value of exemplars. And it is not totally surprising, given what we have seen in Bude and Erasmus, that this return to exemplarity is accompanied by an evocation of the political space within which interpretation and action occur. For what is at stake is the future of Italy. The entire final chapter echoes the language of chapter 6, in which the uomini eccellentissimi were first introduced, and Machiavelli begins it by recalling his earlier discussions of Moses, Cyrus, and Theseus. He points out the importance of occasione, of the ripeness of the moment at which those men acted. He then suggests that the present moment is ripe too, that Italy is in worse shape than any of its exemplary predecessors ever were, and in need of "la virtu d'uno spirito italiano." In order to be liberated, he says, Italy had to be reduced to its present misery, which exceeds the sufferings of the Jews, the Persians, and the Athenians. This description of an Italy "headless" and "beaten" ("sanza capo... battuta") is followed by a call for its redemption, which is placed in the hands of the Medici, whose "fortune" and "virtue" are now in control of the Church. The liberation of Italy is possible, says Machiavelli, "se vi recherete innanzi le azioni e vita de' soprannominati. E benche quelli uomini sieno rari e maravigliosi, non di manco furono uomini, e ebbe ciascuno di loro minore occasione che la presente" (26) ["if you call to mind the actions and lives of the men I have named. And although those men were rare and most excellent, they were nonetheless men, and each of them had less opportunity than the present"]. Giovanni de' Medici's election to the papacy is seen as the occasion whereby Lorenzo can become one of the exemplary heroes of Italian history. Yet what is striking is that Machiavelli here transforms the status of the exemplars discussed 51

Felix Gilbert, Machiavelli and Guicciardini: Politics and History in Sixteenth-Century Florence (New York: Norton, 1965), 300—301. 52 See Pocock, Machiavellian Moment, 269, on this question: "// Principe and the Ricordi both depict the individual in the post-civic world; but Machiavelli's individual is a ruler seeking to shape events through virtii in the sense of audacity, Guicciardini's a patrician seeking to adapt himself to events through prudence. Both men hold that audacity and prudence are appropriate in different circumstances, that these circumstances are brought to us by fortuna, and that it is exceedingly difficult for the individual to tell what they require."

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in chapter 6. Instead of depicting heroes so excellent that men can only recuperate the odor of their virtu, Machiavelli now exhorts the Medici to imitate these same exemplars because "they were nonetheless men." The stress in the key phrase uomini eccellentissimi has shifted from the second term to the first; mythical exemplars become models for Medici action. And this action is presented with the rhetoric of salvation history: Qui si veggano estraordinarii sanza esemplo, condotti da Dio: el mare s'e aperto; una nube vi ha scorto el cammino; la pietra ha versato acqua; qui e piovuto la manna; ogni cosa e concorsa nella vostra grandezza. El rimanente dovete fare voi. (26) [Unexampled wonders have been seen here performed by God, the sea has been opened, a cloud has shown you the road, the rock has given forth water, manna has rained, and everything has contributed to your greatness, the remainder must be done by you.]

The tradition of apocalyptic rhetoric, which Machiavelli absorbed from his reading of Savonarola, reintegrates exemplarity into a historical dynamic.53 The pragmatic value of models from antiquity may be limited, but when the wind of history blows right Lorenzo is swept into a line of typological exemplars. As Moses liberated the Jews, so are the Medici to save miserable Italy (and, presumably, in return for his help, to free Machiavelli from exile on his farm at San Casciano). The depiction of exemplarity in // principe consists of three distinct stages or moments. Early on, in chapter 6, Machiavelli praises the imitation of uomini eccellentissimi, among them Moses, Theseus, and Cyrus the Great. The middle chapters of the book then systematically undermine the pragmatic value of past models for action. Yet now, in the final chapter, Machiavelli reactivates the dynamism of history through the rhetoric of salvation. This is not to suggest, however, that this redemption of exemplarity is complete or that the doubts raised earlier are neutralized. For the paradox of the description just cited is that the recent political developments Machiavelli evokes (the misery of Italy and the Medici papacy) are depicted as both types (in the biblical sense) and "unexampled wonders," both figural repetitions of 53

On the apocalyptic rhetoric of Savonarola, see Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence. Savonarola's influence on Machiavelli may have been quite strong. J. H. Whitfield has adduced evidence to demonstrate that IIprincipe even echoes passages from Savonarola's short treatise Del reggimento e governo della citta di Firenze of 1498; see Discourses on Machiavelli (Cambridge: W. Heffer and Sons, 1969), 77—110.

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past events and unprecedented occurrences. The epistemological contradiction between modernity as copy of antiquity and modernity as absolute newness must ultimately be resolved by the power of exhortation. The links between past figures and present actors clearly exist only because Machiavelli's language posits them through such phrases as "the sea has been opened." Thus, the rhetoric of exemplarity becomes just that, pure rhetoric, as we would say nowadays. It stands as a language devoid of grounding in a model of history that coheres with the rest of Machiavelli's analyses, reliant on nothing but its own exhortative power and the receptivity of its listeners for effect. Machiavelli urges Lorenzo to action with the discourse of biblical typology, itself a mode of historical understanding that his own scepticism could never accept or advocate. Machiavelli seems to sense that his biblical rhetoric is not enough to redeem exemplarity. For a few lines later he adds that Italy itself has recently witnessed heroic action worth imitating. He evokes the "disfida di Barletta" (1503), an episode from the wars with the French in which some Italian knights freed themselves from their captors by defeating them in a tournament: "Specchiatevi ne' duelli e ne' congressi de' pochi, quando li Italian! sieno superiori con le forze, con la destrezza, con lo ingegno" (26) ["Look in the mirror of the duels and the contests of a few, where the Italians are superior in strength, dexterity, and intelligence"].54 The verb of reflection, "specchiatevi," suggests the importance of this reference to recent history. Conventionally, it figures the relationship between exemplar and imitator; here it appears at the exact center of the chapter and is the only imperative form in a passage filled with exhortations. But the logic of Machiavelli's argument simply does not follow: there is no guarantee that the disfida means anything whatsoever for contemporary politics; it is an isolated mock-epic anecdote, a story perhaps bettersuited to Don Quixote. No less striking is the imaginative distance between Moses and the Italian knights. The exemplary biblical hero is a bare outline or pattern, whereas the knights from the more recent past model the Italian capacity for martial excellence. Or, in other terms, the uomo eccellentissimo lends ideological authority to an act where the true model is a local curiosity. The split seen in Bude and Erasmus between a desire to imitate timeless models from antiquity and a gnawing awareness of the historical rootedness of those models 54 In his notes to the Mursia edition of Machiavelli's Opere (Milan, 1969), Ezio Raimondi notes this passage as an allusion to the disfida.

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is driven to its extreme at the close of // principe. In his final chapter Machiavelli tries to spur his reader to action by evoking both the mythical and the anecdotal.55 This tension between world-historical allegory and local incident indicates the contradiction that marks the depiction of exemplarity in // principe. For though the main theoretical arguments of Machiavelli's text work to dismantle the foundations of any endeavor to appropriate the past through repetition, // principe ends with a powerful exhortation to imitate past models. Certainly, on one level, this conflict can be seen as evidence of Machiavelli's own peculiar authorial posture, of his claim to speak from both his knowledge of ancient history and his personal experience. The historian often stands athwart the political analyst. But this contradiction is symptomatic of a much larger problem within the humanist approach to history. Machiavelli's final turn to salvation history and the anecdote of the "disfida di Barletta" suggest that it may not be possible in the Renaissance to have a humanism at all without some sort of exemplarity. For Machiavelli's powerful demystification of historical repetition leaves action mired in the present, caught in an absolute contingency that kills the past and forestalls all possibility of resurrecting it. And yet, from within this radical contingency Machiavelli can make comments such as his claim that the construction of fortresses is good since it is an ancient custom: "lo laudo questo modo, perche li e usitato ab antiquo" (20). His praise is evidence of the humanist historian's resistance to his own historical scepticism, of a residue of confidence in the voices of the past. This confidence—perhaps better called faith— arises in response to the total desolation which Machiavelli sees as characteristic of his age. And nowhere is his sense of modern decadence better expressed than in the preface to the first of the Discorsi on Livy: Veggiendo... le virtuosissime operazioni che le storie ci monstrano e . . . che di quella antiqua virtu non ci e rimasto alcun segno; non posso fare che insieme non me ne maravigli et dolga Infiniti che [le storie] leggono, pigliono piacere di udire quella varieta degli accident! che in esse si contengono, sanza pensare altrimenti di imitarle, iudicando la imitazione non solo difficile ma impossibile; come se il cielo, il sole, li 55

Though working within a somewhat different context, Victoria Kahn sees the final chapter as marked by a paradox similar to the one I have traced here. She argues that human action becomes absorbed in abstract historical laws and, hence, "depersonalized." In response to this process, she suggests, Machiavelli's famous characterization of fortune as a woman may be seen as a way of bringing action back into the realm of the possible. See "Virtu and the Example of Agathocles," 78.

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elementi, li uomini, fussino variati di moto, di ordini et di potenza da quello che gli erono antiquamente. Volendo pertanto trarre li uomini di questo errore, ho giudicato necessario scrivere. (Preface) [Seeing... the wonderful examples which the history of ancient kingdoms and republics presents to us... and that not the least trace of this ancient virtue remains, we cannot but be at the same time as much surprised as afflicted.... The majority of those who read the histories take pleasure only in the variety of the events which they relate, without ever thinking of imitating the noble actions, deeming that not only difficult, but impossible; as though heaven, the sun, the elements, and men had changed the order of their motions and power, and were different from what they were in ancient times. Wishing, therefore, so far as in me lies, to draw mankind from this error, I have thought it proper to write.]

The passive admiration of the past decried here—a forerunner of what Nietzsche calls monumental history—can be seen as the aestheticized form of Guicciardini's scepticism. But Machiavelli refuses it; in a world where no signs of ancient virtue can be read, one must write, creating signs that can define and affirm the value of the past. The process of writing aims to clarify the rhetorical exhortation to virtuous action which, within humanist thought, antiquity makes on modernity. If the Discorsi present a more traditionally humanist Machiavelli, one with much more faith in the exemplary value of history than // principe seems to allow, this may have to do with the relationship between exemplarity and the public world. The relationship between the prince as reader of the past and the political stage on which he acts is generally depicted in the Discorsi in more harmonious terms than those seen in // principe. Whereas the political animal shown in 77 principe stands as an isolated reader of history, in constant conflict with the political and social context around him, the Discorsi are concerned precisely with the relationship between sixteenth-century Italy or Florence and the exemplary civilization of Rome, whose excellence Machiavelli here accepts unquestioningly. Machiavelli repeatly suggests in the Discorsi that modern peoples can indeed imitate the Romans. They are hindered only by their lack of valor. And even if the Romans far exceed modern Italians in valor, this by no means suggests that their example is useless, or that ancient history cannot serve as a guide. At one point, for example, when Machiavelli discusses the expansion of republics, he notes that, though circumstances may render imitation of Rome impossible, his fellow Tuscans could at least imitate the ancient Tuscans ("gli antichi Toscani" [2.4]), whose greatness was eclipsed by Rome's but who nevertheless "lived for a long

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time in security, with much glory of dominion and of arms, and high praise for their manners and religion." Thus, the actors who imitate past models are no longer single individuals, such as those seen in Bude, Erasmus, and // principe. They are, as later too in Milton's Areopagitica, whole peoples. The narrative that the modern student of history reads is no longer the biography of the heroic individual but rather an ethnological narrative describing the customs and virtues of nations.56 The act of interpreting history in the Discorsi is seen as an eminently social gesture. It projects the community essential to socially productive hermeneutic activity. This means that the political tensions which disturb consensus in both Erasmus and II principe have, so to speak, been circumvented from the outset. Machiavelli's turn in the Discorsi to the social sphere as the ground for interpreting history parallels the key moments at which Bude and Erasmus sought to root their models of exemplarity in a community of readers. His feverish evocation, in the last chapter of // principe, of both the battered social body of Italy and the exemplary heroes from the past who point the way to its redemption is a less serene gesture, one that suggests the chaos of Florentine political life in the early sixteenth century. Yet, the stakes of Machiavelli's exhortation are high. For given his scepticism toward the lessons of history, one might say that the destiny of Italy and the destiny of humanist exemplarity become suddenly intertwined in the final pages of 11 principe. To follow ancient exemplars and save Italy is to reaffirm the value of the past as model and, in the process, to save exemplarity from an overwhelming scepticism which would deny it any authority. Ultimately, the burden of that 56 In his exhaustive commentary on the Discorsi, Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr., has remarked that they generally depict action and education as the attributes of groups, rather than of individuals. This seems to support my own emphasis on the relationship between the reader and the social space. See his discussion in Machiavelli's New Modes and Orders (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979), 2ooff. and 4o8ff. It is worth noting that Guicciardini's work features a number of texts directed against Machiavelli, some of which have recently been collected and published by Gian Franco Berardi in AntiMachiavelli (Rome: Riuniti, 1984). Chief among these are the "Considerazioni intorno ai Discorsi del Machiavelli" of 1530, in which Guicciardini disputes points of Machiavelli's interpretation of Roman history, principally by attacking his interpretation of specific examples. Phrases such as "Questo esemplo si puo ritorcere in contrario" (63), for example, abound. Here, as always, Guicciardini's emphasis is on the judgment of historical events, as when he concludes his critique of the proemio to the second book of Machiavelli's Discorsi: "E adunche vera conclusione che non sempre e' tempi antichi sono da essere preferiti a' presenti, ma non e gia vero el negare che una eta sia qualche volta piu corrotta o piu virtuosa che 1'altre" (82). Thus, one might say that Guicciardini reading the more "humanist" text of the Discorsi sounds like the Machiavelli of 11 principe talking about humanist exemplarity.

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redemption is located in the power of Machiavelli's own rhetoric and in the question of whether it can find an audience receptive to its message. The progression traced in this chapter does more than offer perspectives on three influential early sixteenth-century writers about exemplarity. It marks a historical and theoretical trajectory central both to the history of humanism and to the remaining chapters of this book. The essential conflict within humanist discourse between, on the one hand, a faith in transcendent models of action from the past and, on the other hand, a sensitivity to the rootedness of ancient heroism in its own cultural moment, reveals itself with increasing sharpness as we move from Bude to Erasmus to Machiavelli. The somewhat naive faith in exemplary heroism evinced in Bude's Institution is counterbalanced by the acceptance of the past's alterity seen in the De asse. Both of these tendencies are in turn recuperated by the ideology of Gallicanism. In Erasmus, the promotion of both ancient heroes and of the exemplary life of Christ is subverted by the difficulties that arise when their deeds are applied to the practical details of political action. To offset these complexities, Erasmus evokes the Christian community as the space within which both interpretation and action occur. For Machiavelli, however, solutions to the problem of reading the past come less easily. The coherent narrative of the exemplary life—celebrated in Landino and Guevara, looked for in Bude, and attributed by Erasmus to Christ—finds itself, Machiavelli's vision of a "post-civic"57 world, splintered into a multitude of contingent fragments. This shattering essentially drives a wedge between the particularities of quotidian political action and the ahistorical virtue of the great men of the past. Machiavelli's fragmentation of the heroic image is paralleled by the fragmentation of Italy itself, as Machiavelli seeks, in the final paragraphs of // principe, to exhort the Medici to deeds that would rekindle the virtue of the most excellent ancients. Machiavelli is the pivotal figure in the development of Renaissance exemplarity. His demystification of historical repetition shows up the limitations of the exemplar theory of history. It is still possible for Machiavelli's contemporaries—Rabelais, Ariosto, More—to parody the imitation of the past without questioning the past's value for the present.58 For these figures the anxiety produced by the difficulty of 57

This is Pocock's phrase; Machiavellian Moment, 269. For analyses of the importance of interpretive community in Rabelais, see Quint, Origin and Originality, 167—206; and Dennis Costa, Irenic Apocalypse: Some Uses of Apocalyptic in Dante, Petrarch, and Rabelais (Stanford, Calif.: Anma Libri, 1981). On More's 58

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applying past to present can still be offset through appeals to interpretive consensus. By the middle years of the sixteenth century, however, political and intellectual developments radically transform the representation of exemplarity for those writing in the footsteps of Machiavelli. In the realm of philology, the humanist sensitivity to the alterity of the past is itself widely assimilated in a variety of disciplines, leading to a diffusion of early humanism's interest in heroic political figures.59 The most important political development, of course, is the Reformation, with its irreparable splitting of Europe along religious and ideological lines. This means that both the evocation of interpretive communities which we have seen here and the promotion of virtuous action in the public sphere will become much more ideologically problematic gestures than they are for Bude, Erasmus, and Machiavelli. The political and ideological struggles brought on by the Reformation do not, of course, spell the end either of humanism or of the heroic ethos promoted through the representation of ancient exemplars. To be sure, that ethos remains intrinsically linked to aristocratic humanism and to the literary forms through which it expresses itself up to our own day. Yet, as post-Machiavellian writers seek both to confront the lessons taught by humanism's discovery of historical contingency and to preserve faith in the value of exemplars as guides for action, we see them turn away from the humanist tradition in important ways. Moreover, as we shift from humanist advice literature to the more "literary" genres of epic, essay, tragedy, and novel, the focus changes from political and military action to questions of ideology and social struggle. Exemplarity becomes the locus for reflection, not merely upon practical political behavior and issues of public virtue but also on the relationship between the individual and the public sphere, on the development of new literary forms, and, ultimately, on the very constitution of the subject itself. This involves attention to the ways in which the heroism represented by exemplars from antiquity becomes the source of ideological anxiety and then of nostalgia. relationship to notions of Christian community, see Hexter, Vision of Politics, 94ff. On Ariosto, see Albert Ascoli, Ariosto's Bitter Harmony (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987), chap. 2. 59 On this diversification of the field of historical inquiry, see Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, bks. 2,5, and 6; and Kelley, Foundations, pts. 3-4.

3

Tasso: Writing on History Allora si viveva anche morendo, ed ora si muore vivendo. —LEOPARDI

EPIC THEORY AND THE "SEEDS" OF HISTORY

Even as they celebrate the study of ancient history, figures such as Bude, Erasmus, and Machiavelli demonstrate the paradoxical nature of the humanist claim that ancient exemplars can serve as models of comportment for modern readers. Attempts to apply past models to present action bring to light the extent to which ancient pagan exemplarity resists easy assimilation by modern humanist structures of value and meaning. The more humanism seeks to appropriate past acts and actors, the more deeply they show themselves to be rooted in the historical contingencies of classical culture. The enterprise of raising particular figures from the past to a level of universality from which they can illuminate the present sparks a discernible anxiety in humanist thinkers. Humanist advisers must confront the difficulty of reading signs of ancient valor even as they seek to define their own relationship to the audience they counsel. To counterbalance this anxiety, advice literature thematizes the importance of interpretive communities that define and anchor the public act of reading history. This dialectic between interpretation and community on which humanist exemplarity relies underwent a series of transformations in the late sixteenth century. The success of the Reformation in northern Europe ushered in a period of widespread religious conflict which rendered Erasmus's ideal of a unified Christian community completely unrealistic and brought to the forefront the social tensions registered in his Institutio principis christiani. In France, the political and cultural unity briefly established by Francis I was destroyed by the

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onset of religious fanaticism. From the time of the Affaire des Placards in 1534 the alliance of humanism and nationalism envisaged by Bude was undermined by the increasing uncertainty of royal power in the face of Protestant challenges, as well as by the attraction that the new sect held for a number of humanists. What remained of the Gallic humanism of Bude would only reappear later in the century, in a much attenuated and less heroic form, in the work of the group known as the Politiques, who, like their sometime associate Montaigne, attempted to combine humanist toleration with political conservatism as a response to the political disaster of the wars of religion.1 But it was in the post-Tridentine Italy of Torquato Tasso that this fragmentation of the social space had its most dramatic consequences for literature after the age of high humanism. Machiavelli's concern for the political destiny of Italy was well founded. The years immediately following the composition of // principe were disastrous for Italian political fortunes. The sack of Rome in 1527 and Charles V's consolidation of his authority over the Holy Roman Empire destroyed the fragile balance of power between Spain and France that had made Italian independence possible. The Council of Trent, called to respond to the challenges of Protestantism, led to the institution of the Counter-Reformation, which concerned itself actively with the ideological function of art and literature. And though a strong Christian humanist element informed the early stages of the Council's deliberations, the Catholic reformers gradually moved toward an increasingly antihumanist stance on a variety of important issues, from the training of the clergy to the status of the Vulgate as the canonical version of Scripture.2 This hardening of the orthodox line against certain aspects of humanism was accompanied by an increasing official suspicion toward humanism's fascination with classical antiquity. Thus, for example, a pagan triumph planned for the streets of Rome following the victory over the Turks at Lepanto in 1571 was banned on order of Pius V and replaced with a solemn procession behind the standard of Christ. Antagonism toward humanism frequently centered on the figure of Erasmus himself, as, for example, in the Galena of Giambattista Marino (1619), in which the great humanist was condemned as a "false prophet." As Felix Gilbert has written, "A threat 1 On the development of French humanism after Bude, see Donald R. Kelley, Foundations of Modern Historical Scholarship (New York: Columbia University Press, 1970). 2 For discussion of the attempts and ultimate failure of Christian humanism to control the proceedings of the Council, see Hubert Jedin, A History of the Council of Trent, trans. Dom Ernest Graf, O.S.B., 2 vols. (St. Louis, Mo.: B. Herder, 1957), vol. 2, chaps. 2-3-

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to the Christian religion began to be seen in the preoccupation with the literary and artistic legacy of the classical world because it might lead to a revival of paganism."3 Thus, not only did the late sixteenth century see a transformation of the close relationship between classical culture and ideals of social action privileged by fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century humanist thought, but also both notions—the sense of what it means to act virtuously and the ideological significance of the pagan past—were themselves transformed. One of the ways in which these developments affected the act of reading can be seen in the principal pedagogical treatise of the period, Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, which was first disseminated in the 15408. Like Erasmus's Institutio and Enchiridion, the Spiritual Exercises aim at the education of the reader through the contemplation of a particular narrative—the life of Christ. But Loyola's recommendations on how to read history exactly invert Erasmus's more politically oriented model. Whereas Erasmus urges the modern prince to study the deeds of ancient kings and measure them by the regula Christi, Loyola uses the image of the king to illustrate how to contemplate Christ's exemplary story. In the second week of the exercises, he introduces the narrative of Christ's life as a guide for spiritual behavior. First, he says, the reader is to call to mind an image of a king: "I will consider how this king speaks to all his subjects, saying, 'It is my will to conquer all infidel lands. Therefore, whoever wishes to come with me must be content to eat as I eat, drink as I drink, dress as I dress, etc.' " The second half of the exercise then consists in "applying the example of 3

Felix Gilbert, "The Historian as Guardian of National Consciousness: Italy between Guicciardini and Muratori," in his History: Choice and Commitment (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1977), 390. Gilbert's essay is a brilliantly succinct account of the transformations undergone by Italian cultural life with the onset of the CounterReformation. But see as well the volume edited by Erich Cochrane, The Late Italian Renaissance (New York: Macmillan, 1970). Cochrane's introduction is especially helpful, as are, on the Counter-Reformation in particular, the contributions by Jean Delumeau and Paolo Prodi. On the general fragmentation of the humanist model of historiography in the late sixteenth century, see Cochrane, Historians and Historiography in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981), chaps. 13-16; and Cochrane, Florence in the Forgotten Centuries: 1527-1800 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), chaps. 3-4. For another indication of Counter-Reformation antagonism toward humanism, one might consult the official history of the Council (written, however, several decades after the fact and under Vatican patronage), Sforza Pallavicino's Istoria del concilio di Trento, vol. i, bk. 23, sec. 5, where we are told of the humanists' arrogance at the Council and of their claims that no one could understand the Bible without Hebrew. It is no wonder, says Pallavicino, that "the whole crowd of them went over to Luther, who raised the flag of liberty" ["la schiera di costoro accostossi volontieri a Lutero, il quale alzava insegna di liberta"]. I have consulted the Roman edition (Colegio Urbano) of 1835.

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this earthly king to Christ our Lord."4 And Loyola goes on to explain that, if the reader will give allegiance to a terrestrial ruler, he must give even more to Christ. If he will follow the king on his crusade, he must be all the more willing to follow Christ, who asked his disciples to give up everything for him. Thus, Loyola begins with an image of public action, the prince and his crusade, as a way of preparing the reader for a technique of totally private imitation. The war against the Saracens is replaced by a crusade against the infidel within. In Loyola all emphasis has been shifted away from questions of virtuous public action and onto reading as a private activity. The only image in the whole of the Exercises not taken from the the life of Christ, the imaginary prince who appears briefly in the passage cited above, immediately disappears. Not only is Loyola's reader not urged to study ancient history, but he is to focus uniquely on Christ, to fill the space of consciousness with his image so that no other, less pious figures can slip in.5 This turn from public action to mystical contemplation shifts the emphasis in the representation of exemplarity from issues of practical action to questions involving the constitution of the self, from politics to ideology. And this shift is only one of the complexities to be confronted by a poet like Tasso, who works within the tradition of the epic, that genre most closely associated with notions of public action. Tasso's complicated career, so beloved of Romantic poets and psychoanalysts, is marked by attempts to juggle a group of countervailing pressures. My discussion of his work focuses on the ways in which his poetic theory and practice seek to redefine the epic so as to accommodate aspects of humanist exemplarity to the new ideological exigencies of the Counter-Reformation. Tasso might be seen as a figure of transition in the argument of this book. He had a brilliant humanist education and flourished in the aristocratic ambiance of the Este court at Ferrara. Yet the Gerusalemme liberata sets out to be, in many ways, a major statement of the Catholic orthodoxy, reflecting the mistrust of certain features of humanism I alluded to earlier.6 To write a Virgilian epic in late sixteenth-century Italy one must redefine humanist exemplarity in terms of the new piety emphasized by the Counter4 1 quote The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius, trans. Anthony Mottola (New York: Image Books, 1964), 67. 5 For an analysis of the semiology of this technique of indoctrination, see Roland Barthes, Sade, Fourier, Loyola (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1971), 68ff. 6 For a review of Tasso's youth and education, see Angelo Solerti, Vita di Torquato Tasso, 3 vols. (Turin: Loescher, 1895), i:53ff.

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Reformation. In both Tasso's poetic theory and his practice exemplarity becomes the locus for exploring the ideological implications of this recasting of humanist epic heroism. Tasso replaces the humanist interest in pagan history (seen in Renaissance epic as early as Petrarch's Africa) with a new subject for the contemplation of heroism, the Crusades. In his Discorsi del poema eroico (written as early as 1570) Tasso seeks to elaborate an integrated literary model which would merge history and poetry, paganism and Christianity. Yet, precisely because of the various conflicting ideological and literary issues that Tasso is attempting to harmonize, the theoretical poetic model set forth in the Discorsi provides matter for acerbic attacks by the poet's critics. In the Gerusalemme liberata Tasso attempts to work out a solution to the problems raised by his theory. He represents heroic figures as ideological traps or dangers for the reader of the poem and contrasts them with a different type of exemplar, the martyr, whose image offers the reader new notions of action and selfhood. Whereas humanism had attempted to open up a dialogue with pagan antiquity, Tasso seems constantly tempted by gestures of ideological closure that would seal and control the meaning of the past. The ideological stakes of Tasso's literary reshaping of exemplarity show up most clearly in his literary theory, to which I turn first. Following the dissemination of Aristotle's Poetics in the 15605, Tasso's poem became the center of a vicious polemic about the nature of poetic truth, a polemic in which it was frequently compared unfavorably to the greatest jewel of early sixteenth-century Ferrarese humanist culture, Ariosto's Orlando Furioso. Two issues are addressed in the quarrel between the Ariostisti and the Tassisti that are important for the depiction of exemplarity. The first is the debate over poetic unity, which developed out of Aristotle's observation in the Poetics that the plot of tragedy should offer a unified whole, consisting of a single action. Late sixteenth-century theoreticians applied the prescription to all literary forms, including epic, and thereby defined the laws of composition within which Tasso was forced to work. For Tasso to elaborate an Aristotelian theory of the epic, he had to distinguish epic from two rival forms of discourse that closely resembled it. The first of these was the historical or chronicle epic in the mode of Lucan's Pharsalia or Silius Italicus's Punica. While the chronicle epic featured a single plot, it tended to ramble on, offering something less than the unified whole envisioned by Aristotle. Moreover, the generation of Tasso's father had witnessed the unqualified failure of Trissino, who in Ultalia liberata dai Goti had tried to graft Aristotle's strictures re-

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garding the unity of plot onto historical material. The result was a tedious text described by Tasso as "mentioned by few, read by fewer" (396). The second genre that Tasso's poem had to confront and transcend was romance, most specifically the "romance" of Ariosto's Orlando Furioso, which seemed to deny all notions of unity or coherence but still had been enormously successful. Not only had Ariosto's poem mocked historical truth, asserting for example (as Tasso laments, "against Homer's intention") that "i Greci rotti, e che Troia vittrice, / E che Penelopea fu meretrice" (388) ["the Greeks were routed, Troy victorious, / And that Penelope was a harlot"].7 The diversionary poetics of entrelacement which the author of the Orlando Furioso had so brilliantly set in motion challenged the linearity and direct purpose of the Aristotelian precepts that Tasso tried to apply in the Gerusalemme liberata. Thus, Tasso was caught between, on the one hand, a poetic model that was unified but lifeless and, on the other, one that was potentially subversive. For Tasso, however, this subversion of unity represented by Ariostan romance was more than a simple literary problem. In an ideological context that looked with disfavor on all splintering of authority, a unified plot meant a unified vision of the world. The many stories of romance present too many visions of history and thus undermine the centralization of power. As Margaret Ferguson has written: [Tasso] associates epic with Aristotelian principles of formal unity and with political and religious ideas about the value of a single, absolute ruler; he associates romance with "multiple" plots in the aesthetic sphere, with rebellion against political authority, and with polytheistic, pagan values that oppose the doctrines of Christian monotheism.8

Thus, the conjunction of the resurfacing of Aristotle's Poetics and the onset of the Counter-Reformation serves to expand in important ways 7 References to the Discorsi cite Francesco Flora's edition of Tasso's Prose (Milan: Rizzoli, 1935)- Translations are mine. For a general background to the entire debate over literary form, see Bernard Weinberg, A History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1967). Tasso's citation of Ariosto comes from Orlando Furioso 35.27. 8 Margaret Ferguson, Trials of Desire: Renaissance Defenses of Poetry (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 54. Ferguson's discussion sheds important light on the tension between Counter-Reformation orthodoxy and vestiges of humanist thought in Tasso, as does the study of Sergio Zatti, L'uniforme cristiano e il multiforme pagano (Milan: II Saggiatore, 1983). On the tension between humanist historiography and biography and Counter-Reformation ecclesiastical history and biography, see Cochrane, Historians and Historiography, 4i7ff.

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the connection drawn in earlier chapters between the narrative unity of the exemplary life and the ideological function of models. Narrative coherence is now no longer merely an issue of biography. It emerges as a central problem of epic itself. The problem of poetic unity involved exemplarity as well as plot. It was customary for theoreticians of the age to contrast Homer, whose poem was seen to present many heroes exemplifying different virtues, and Virgil, whose central character, as Landino suggested (see my discussion in chapter i and note 31 of that chapter), was seen to embody all virtues together. Tasso, who feared all types of dispersal, especially the dispersal of virtue, favored the Virgilian model, though, ironically, after his early fragmentary epic the Rinaldo, he settled on an epic with several heroes. This anxiety over multiplicity of character applied to the Furioso as well and served to underscore questions about the morality of a humanist poem with a multiple plot. In the debate between the Tassisti and the Ariostisti Tasso's partisans were bothered by the lack of clear-cut exemplars in Ariosto's poem. In // Carrafa overo della poesia, the pamphlet in defense of Tasso which touched off the entire debate, Camillo Pellegrino attacked Ariosto for staging instances of unrewarded virtue and unpunished vice.9 Indeed, the multiple action of the Furioso made it difficult to determine even the poem's main character. And another of Tasso's advocates, Giason Denores, criticizes Ariosto by asserting that the very title of his poem suggests that his readers are to imitate the deeds of a madman.10 Tasso himself, in the Discorsi (373), points out that Ariosto's other principal male character, Ruggiero, was hardly a personage to be followed. Thus the question of poetic unity includes the problem of how exemplary biographies fit into the larger structure of the epic plot—an issue, as we later see, of crucial importance to the ideology of the Gerusalemme liberata. 9

1 use Pellegrino's text in Bernard Weinberg's Trattati dipoetica e retorica del cinquecento, 4 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1972), 3:307—44. For a discussion of comparisons between Homer and Virgil, see Baxter Hathaway, The Age of Criticism: The Late Renaissance in Italy (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1962), i52ff.; Robert Durling, The Figure of the Poet in Renaissance Epic (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), 182—210; and Annabel Patterson, "Tasso and Neoplatonism: The Growth of His Epic Theory," Studies in the Renaissance 18 (1971), 126. Patterson notes that the key text on the question of the distribution of virtues was Robortello's Explicationes to the Poetics (1548). Weinberg, History of Literary Criticism, 1018, points out that the issue arises in the debate between Tasso's advocates and Ariosto's champions chiefly through Lionardo Salviati's attacks on Tasso, in his Risposta all' apologia di Torquato Tasso of 1585. 10 1 use Denores's treatise in Weinberg, Trattati, 3:375-419. A similar point was made by Nicolo degli Oddi, in his Dialogo in difesa di Camillo Pellegrini contra gli Academici della Crusca (1587), cited in Weinberg, History of Literary Criticism, 1033.

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It is through the representation of exemplars that this question of unity is linked to the second principal problem posed for Tasso by the rediscovery of the Poetics. This involved the distinction made by Aristotle between poetry and history. Chapter 9 of the Poetics asserts that history is particular and contingent, whereas poetry is universal and philosophical. Moreover, notes Aristotle in passing, epic poetry may occasionally even take its themes from history. Tasso understands this last observation as a prescription. The epic, he says in the Discorsi, must be founded on history: "L'argomento de reccellentissimo Epico dee fondarsi ne Pistorie" (367). A grounding in history lends the poem an authority which helps to move the reader. But not just any history will do as foundation for epic. Tasso is careful to define exactly which material is suitable. It is important to celebrate the glory of the nation and of illustrious families. One should not celebrate the triumphs of enemies. Ancient history is too far from the present. Sacred history is tied to Scripture and so cannot be tampered with. Recent history is too close to the present; not only can orators praise the living but also the elderly may still recall great deeds from the preceding generations. So Tasso concludes that the most fitting history lies somewhere between the present and antiquity (379). Yet, once the poet has placed his poem in this middle ground, his task is not to reproduce what his sources tell him took place. His poem should merely base itself on history. The poet should write on history ("scrivere sopra istoria"), as the Apologia in defense of the Gerusalemme liberata later phrases it.'' The process of disposing materia into the poem's favola or plot constitutes a shift from truth to verisimilitude: "II poeta si fonda sovra qualche azione vera, e la considera come verisimile" (348) ["The poet bases himself on some true action, and considers it as verisimilitudinous"]. One might well consider Tasso's use of the verb "considerare." It describes the particular perspective whereby phenomena are appropriated to structures of understanding. Early in the Discorsi Tasso claims that the profit ("giovamento") to be derived from the reading of poetry is rendered useful only when considered ("considerate" [326]) from the perspective of politics. And a bit later he asserts that marvelous events are only marvelous when considered alone ("se per se stesse saranno considerate" [361]). When seen through the optic 11 References to the Apologia in difesa del Gerusalemme liberata cite Bruno Maier's edition of Tasso's Opere, 5 vols. (Milan: Rizzoli, 1965), vol. 5. For this passage, see p. 646. All translations are mine.

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of the divine potency which engendered them, they reveal themselves to be verisimilitudinous. Of course, this perspectivism is by no means restricted to Tasso, among writers of the late sixteenth century. Tasso is, however, extreme in his insistence on the mutually exclusive, yet epistemologically authoritative, nature of different "considerations." As he says at the outset of the Discorsi, taking issue with Maximus of Tyre's claim that poetry and philosophy are essentially identical, "lo estimo che '1 modo di considerare le cosefaccia Vuna de Valtre differente: percioche la poesia le considera in quanto belle; e la filosofia in quanto buone" (330; my emphasis) ["I believe that the way things are considered makes them different from one another; so that poetry considers things insofar as they are beautiful; and philosophy insofar as they are good"]. To present the same object through two different perspectives is, for Tasso, to constitute two distinct objects. The implications of this perspectivism become clear when we consider Tasso's accompanying claim, following Aristotle, that the move from truth to verisimilitude involves a shift from the particular to the universal. "La poesia," says Aristotle in the Castelvetro translation which Tasso knew so well, "e cosa piu da filosofante e da assottigliato negli studi che non e 1'istoria, percioche la poesia dice piu le cose universali, e 1'istoria le particolari" ["Poetry is more philosophical and more subtle in studies than is history, since poetry speaks more of universal things, and history of particular things"].12 Tasso glosses: "Dicendo Aristotile che la poesia considera piu 1'universale, c'insegna per consequente I'ofncio de [1'istoria], ch'e di narrare il particolare" (337; my emphasis) ["Aristotle says that poetry considers more the universal, teaching us consequently the duty of (history), which is to narrate the particular"]; and a bit later: "Avra il poeta ridotto il vero ed i particolari de 1'istoria al verosimile ed a 1'universale, che e proprio de 1'arte sua" (391) ["The poet will have brought the truth and particularity of history to verisimilitude and universality, which is proper to his art"]. The shift from particular to universal thus constitutes the very process whereby epic is composed. As epic poetry becomes poetry, "considering" things in their universality, historical particularity loses its significance. As events and characters are placed into the unity of a plot they lose their essentially historical character and become poetic—that is, in the parlance of both Tasso and Aristotle, philosophical. Tasso states that the epic poet's task is to begin with 12 Ludovico Castelvetro, Lapoetica d'Aristotele vulgarizwta e sposta, ed. Werther Romani, 2 vols. (Bari: Laterza, 1978), 1:246. Translation is mine.

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history, to write "on" history ("scrivere sopra istoria"); but, by the time poetry has become poetry, history is no longer history. By writing "on" history the poet effaces its historical character.13 Tasso's reading of Aristotle suggests the extent to which the Poetics offered both a challenge to the humanist heroic tradition and a solution to certain of its paradoxes. The humanist anxiety over the contingency of historical acts is dispelled through the Aristotelian emphasis on plot as the principal element of poetry. The contingent deeds of heroic figures are here integrated into a unified narrative that obeys aesthetic rather than moral rules. And yet this shift to an aesthetic register remains problematic. In Aristotle's model of tragedy aesthetic pleasure leads to the creation of pity and fear in the mind of the spectator. In Tasso's Neo-Aristotelian model of epic the aesthetic unity of plot never abandons the humanist moral concern for exemplary action. Tasso tries to merge Aristotle with the ethical concerns he inherits from humanism. But this emphasis on exemplary heroism, together with Tasso's insistence on the historical grounding of poetry, leads to the contradictions that plague the poet once he attempts to set his model in practice. No sooner was the text of the Gerusalemme liberata circulated than critics, frequently motivated by ideological disagreement or personal jealousy, began to attack it. What is important about many of these attacks is that they were aimed at the very question of the relationship between history and poetry, between particular and universal, which the Aristotelian theory of poetry seems to resolve/4 For here, as in the case of humanism, the contingency that marks acts in history drags its feet. Historical material resists sublimation into the universal aesthetic totality of the poetic plot. The NeoAristotelian doctrine that epic must be grounded on history had led 13 It is generally assumed among modern commentators that the distinction between particular and universal is nothing more than the distinction, as Aristotle himself formulates it, between things as they are and things as they might be. This reading gives rise to the entire problem of the relationship between illusion and reality which is so important to the study of the baroque. The other facet of the distinction between universal and particular, the aspect that concerns me here, regards the comparison between historical events, which are unique, and philosophical or poetic events, which can be repeated and hence applied to the lives of readers in the present. The wager of exemplarity, of course, is that these distinct categories can be fused. On the iterative nature of the universal event, see ibid., 250, where Castelvetro notes that one may call things universal "in quanto s'ha rispetto a molte persone alle quali puo avenire simile accidente." On the relationship of allegory and history in the period, see Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama, trans. John Osborne (London: Verso, 1985), pt. 2. 14 On the general history of the quarrels following the poem's publication, see Weinberg, History of Literary Criticism, 954ff.

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the diligent Tasso to undertake extensive research in the chronicles of the Crusaders so as to affirm the historical authority of his text. This very return to historical detail, however, merely provided Tasso's critics with ammunition for their attacks. For it was simple for them to point out that his presentation of specific acts bore no relationship to history, or that it contradicted the particularities of historical fact. In the battle between Tasso and his critics both the aesthetic integrity of the Aristotelian notion of plot, with its famous insistence on a beginning, a middle, and an end, and the claim of Aristotle's moral philosophy that an exemplary figure must be virtuous through "a complete life" are disrupted by the historical detail out of which Tasso's exemplars are constructed/5 Tasso's letters record his attempts to answer his critics' charges. Thus, for example, in a long letter of 1585 to the Mantuan courtier Curzio Ardizio, to answer charges that his hero Rinaldo, the progenitor of the Este line, has no grounding in historical fact, Tasso evokes a historical personage named Reginaldo, on whom he was supposedly based.16 This is not much of an answer, as any reader familiar with Ariosto's Rinaldo or the hero of Tasso's own youthful epic (both derived from Renaud de Montauban of medieval romance) would soon realize. Elsewhere, writing to Orazio Capponi, he answers those who would question the historical veracity of his introduction of the love intrigue between Armida and Rinaldo. He asserts that "in Paolo Emilio e in Roberto si legge, che ne gli ultimi anni de la guerra, ne' cristiani s'era intiepedito il zelo de la religione, e che commisero molti peccati con le donne saracine" ["in Paulus Emilius and Robertus one reads that in the last years of the war the religious zeal of the Christians had cooled, and that they commited many sins with Saracen women"]. He goes on to claim that the poem's central narrative mechanism, Rinaldo's quarrel with Goffredo and his subsequent absence from the Crusader camp, is rooted in historical fact: "Tutto cio ch'io dico anco de 1'ira del mio Achille, de la seduzione del campo de gli incanti, nasce da alcun seme de 1'istoria" ["Everything I say of the rage of my Achilles, of the seduction of the camp by enchantment, is born from 15

On the relationship between narrative plot and historical event, see Paul Veyne, Writing History, trans. Mina Moore-Rinvolucri (Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1984), i44ff; and Alasdair Maclntyre, After Virtue (Notre Dame, Ind.: Notre Dame University Press, 1981), chap. 15. With specific reference to Aristotle, see Paul Ricoeur, Time and Narrative, trans. Kathleen McLaughlin and David Pellauer, 3 vols. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984), vol. i, pt. i, chap. 2. 16 "E Rinaldo da Reginaldo si e detto con quella medesima figura che Goffredo da Gottifredo." For the full text of the letter, see Cesare Guasti's edition of the Lettere, 5 vols. (Florence, 1853), no. 343, g^agff.

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some seed of history"].17 Thus, Tasso claims that every element of his poem has sprouted from the "seeds" of history, even as his reference to Rinaldo as "my Achilles" ironically evokes the Iliad and suggests the difficulty of merging poetry and history.18 To affirm the authority and correctness of his text, Tasso seeks to ground it as deeply as possible in the contingencies of history. Yet, no less than it did for Bude, the multiplicity of past voices weighs upon his attempt to marshall them. For since particularity is infinite, the poet can never possibly justify every detail of his poem and defend himself from the taunts of his enemies. Indeed, he concludes the passage above with the resigned statement that history is an exceedingly complex domain, and that one must have read everything before making judgments ["ma Tistorie sono molte e molto varie, si che colui che vuol giudicare, bisogne che 1'abbia tutte viste"]. The point here is that the Neo-Aristotelian distinction between poetry and history, which seemed to resolve tensions within the humanist model of exemplarity by providing a theoretical explanation of how history can be "philosophy teaching by example," raised as many problems as it solved for Tasso. For the poet's orthodox claim that epic was defined by its grounding in history was turned back against him by his critics. The particularity of history became a tool in the critical quarrel over the poem, with critics reading the poem (to recall Tasso's lament about Ariosto's use of Homer) "against his intentions." The Aristotelian model of plot, which, ideally, at least, raises history to the level of philosophical universality, does not seem, in the eyes of Tasso's critics at least, to raise it far enough. Only by making events and actors universal can one fix or define their significance. In the oppressive atmosphere of the Counter-Reformation, where problems in fixing the meaning of events could have disastrous consequences, it was vitally important to control the meaning of all signs, whether linguistic signs or acts in history. The ideal poem would be rooted in the past but would tend unswervingly toward the universal, so as to forestall all possible interpretive errors generated by ambiguous particularity. Tasso insists on the universality of his poem throughout the debates, as, for example, in the Apologia, which he wrote to defend his poem after its publication. He praises Virgil and Homer by saying, "1'uno e 1'altro, poetando: non voile narrare come istorico i particolari, ma come filosofo formare gli universal!: la verita de' quali e molto piu 17

Ibid., no. 82, i:ig8ff. My translation. This is not to suggest, however, that Tasso did not understand Achilles as a historical figure. 18

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stabile e moltopiu certo" (Apologia, 655; my emphasis) ["the two of them, in writing poetry, did not want to narrate particulars, like the historian, but like the philosopher, to form universals, whose truth is much more stable and certain']. The stability and certainty of the universal were precisely what the psychically unstable and ideologically uncertain Tasso craved most.19 Tasso's anxiety over the ambiguity of particularity and the practical rhetorical advantage of "considering" things universally are best illustrated in a 1594 letter to Ardizio, with whom he frequently exchanged thoughts on life at court.20 On this occasion Tasso, fearing that his friend may think him a flatterer ("falso filosofo e . . . adulatore"), writes to say that a courtier should never describe as virtue "affections" in men that are not truly virtuous. He points out that one may speak of many types of people at court, and in many ways. One may speak of both real and imaginary people. One may speak as a philosopher, referring to people in abstract, universal terms ("non circonscritte da particolari, quella del re, del capitano, e del padre di famiglia"). Or one may speak as an orator or historian, referring to people in specific (such as Alexander or Cato). When the philosopher at court speaks in the abstract, he can speak clearly, without flattery, calling men's actions and "affections" by their true names. For all men know the duties of men in general, and one should never call, for example, the desire for glory magnanimity, or audacity strength. When speaking of men in the particular, however, prudence must be exercised, since one has no way of knowing the motives of specific men's actions: "Se io d'alcuna persona circonscritta da' particolari ragionasse ... non mi pare ch'io potessi essere cosi securo mai de 1'obietto il quale ella si propone ne Poperare" ["If I were speaking of someone in the particular... it does not seem to me that I could be 19

It is important to recall that this move toward universality in Tasso's poetry hardly leads necessarily to allegory. Tasso's reflections on allegory are frequent, but it is not clear to what extent the Gerusalemme liberate, is an allegorical poem. Rather, ethical action seems to be demonstrated by isolated emblematic moments that acknowledge the risk to unified meaning posed by the particularity of history. These moments, however, as I hope to show, are then "redeemed" through narrative repetition. One should also recall that Tasso was not the only poet writing in the wake of the rediscovery of the Poetics who worried about the historical roots of his text. The prefaces of Racine— another figure concerned with issues of ideological correctness—are filled with references that seek to prove the historical background to his plays. Corneille faced similar questions in the "Querelle du Cid," on which see my discussion in chap. 5, n. 5. Walter Benjamin discusses allegory as a response to crises in historical understanding in Origin of German Tragic Drama, 18gff. 20 On the importance to Tasso of Ardizio's friendship, see Solerti, Vita, i^Gff. The text of the letter is in Guasti, Lettere, no. 291, 2:283. My translation.

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certain of his goals in acting"]. Moreover, he goes on to caution, "se viva sara la persona di cui si parla, con maggio risguardo si dovra ragionare" ["If this particular person is living, even more circumspection is needed"]. And he concludes that the courtier who lives in a republic may speak as an orator, that is to say, in particular. But courtiers who live in principalities should speak as philosophers, that is to say, in general, unless their speech is one of praise, in which case they may speak in particular as if they were orators (and in which case, of course, they look suspiciously like flatterers). In fact, says Tasso, since the courtier should avoid all forms of flattery, the most convenient speech of all is the one that refers to the dead. For the virtues and vices of the dead are known to all: "Perche il cortegiano ogni sospetto di lusingher dovra schivare ... assai piu volentieri de la virtu de' morti che di quella de' vivi scrivera e ragionera" ["Since the courtier should avoid all suspicion of flattery ... he will speak and write more readily of the virtue of the dead than he will of the virtue of the living"]. Tasso's attitude here, of course, reflects the anxiety of the courtier's precarious existence. Yet, it suggests as well his fear over the ambiguity of any brush with particularity, whether in epideictic or in historical discourse. In an age that sought to pin down and circumscribe the nature of truth and the boundaries of what was politically and religiously correct, misinterpretation could be more easily avoided if meaning tended toward the general. In a larger context, of course, this meant that the most convenient mode for closing off the ambiguities of particularity was allegory. When signs are marshaled under the abstract structure of an overarching allegorical model, their specific ambiguities are fixed. Thus, it is not surprising that Tasso appended a prose allegory to the Gerusalemme liberata following its publication.21 THE ERRORS OF HESITATION

Tasso's difficulties in responding to criticisms of his poem raise once again the question of the relationship between a poet of epic, as a genre promoting public action, and his own reading public. It is common among late sixteenth-century critics to insist on the public value of the epic. Thus Giason Denores, mentioned in the prior section, 21

For the claim that the allegory marks the composition of the poem, see Michael Murrin on Tasso in The Allegorical Epic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), chap. 4.

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defines the epic as the imitation of "a supremely praiseworthy action carried out by illustrious persons, at the summit of goodness [sommamente buone]." The deeds represented in epic aim both to inflame readers to imitation ("per accendere gli ascoltatori all'amore ed al desiderio d'imitare 1'imprese magnanime"), and to make them appreciate the monarchy in which they live ("per fargli contentar di viver sotto il loro stato").22 Now, of course, the link between these two activities, imitating exemplars and loving one's government, is hardly self-evident. On the contrary, exemplars are often seen to authorize sedition, as was suggested by both Erasmus's Institutio and the anecdote of Girolamo Olgiati's attack on the Sforza, with which I begin this book. Tasso, whose discussion of the political function of poetry is less naive than Denores's, argues that the relationship between readers and poems is mediated by a notion of common tradition. He insists that reader and exemplar must be linked by a shared religious and cultural context. Ancient heroes, he notes in the Discorsi, could offer virtuous models for ancient readers only because of the essential unity of ancient culture. Figures whom the modern reader would find unbelievable were perfectly acceptable to the ancient reader. As such, the modern reader must read ancient epic from a different "consideration" or perspective ("con altra considerazione, e quasi con altro gusto" [358]) that accepts its alterity. Because of this ideological difference between ancient and modern, the proper exemplars for Christian readers must be Christian: "Molto meglio acendera 1'animo de' nostri cavalieri con 1'essempio de' fideli, che de gl'infideli, movendo sempre piu I'autorita de' simili che dei non simili, e de' domestici che de gli stranieri" (358) ["The souls of our knights will be much better inflamed by examples of the faithful than the unfaithful, since the similar moves with more authority than the dissimilar, and the familiar more than the foreign"]. Thus, whereas Erasmus sought to harmonize pagan and Christian exemplars, Tasso suggests that a new, uniquely Christian epic tradition must be created if past models are to "inflame" readers to virtuous action.23 If, for Machiavelli, the rhetoric of exemplarity seeks to reunite Italy 22

In Weinberg, Trattati, 3:412. My translation. This split between moderns who are to be imitated and ancients whose examples lie beyond the reach of the sixteenth-century reader is not absolute. Alterity is relative for Tasso. For example, he reproaches Achilles for the barbarian gesture of mutilating Hector's body, but he asserts, contrary to the opinions of some of his contemporaries, that Aeneas is perfectly justified in killing Turnus to revenge Pallas, since revenge is a valid motive until the moment of death; Discorsi, 433ff. I am grateful to Lauren Scancarelli Seem for this reference. 23

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at a moment of crisis, so too, for Tasso, the creation of a unified tradition is a task of upmost importance at a moment in which Christendom has been split apart. And if Tasso's theory seeks to wed the ideologically marked strictures of Aristotelian poetic theory with the moral concerns of humanist exemplarity, the reception of his poem sets in relief the difficulty of finding a unified and sympathetic public. This difficulty extends to the conditions surrounding the creation of the Gerusalemme liberata. Tasso is writing for Alfonso, the duke of Este. His poem addresses its patron directly, praises him, and exhorts him to virtuous action. Yet, the courtly rhetoric that marks Tasso's relationship to his patron interfaces with frequent references to the other powerful institution under whose wing Tasso is writing—the Church. With neither of these institutions, it should be noted, was Tasso's relationship a happy one. The son of a man who had joined a rebellion against papal domination, Tasso seems to have been attracted in his youth by various modes of "free thinking" that questioned papal authority and orthodoxy. Yet, his later years were tormented by anxiety over the ideological correctness of his views; he even wrote letters of confession to the Inquisition. His relationship to the Este was no less anxious. In exchange for his services to the Este, Tasso expected protection and honor. When the privileges he sought were not always forthcoming, he took refuge in feelings of persecution, and in various forms of accusation or supplication of those around him. The poet's mental instability and conflicts with the Este ultimately resulted in his legendary imprisonment for madness.24 As if this situation were not complicated enough, the Este and the Church were themselves frequently on strained terms: "Not only had Pius V favored the Medici in their dispute with the Este over precedence. Much more ominously, Pius had published a bull in 1567 that forbade illegitimate family lines 24 See Zatti, Uniforme cristiano, 102: "L'ossesquio al principio d'autorita e quella che regola il ruolo di cortigiano del Tasso. Tutto per lui si esaurisce nell'orizzonte chiuso della corte; in cambio del suo ossequio, il Tasso ritiene di aver diritto alia protezione, agli onori, alia gloria. E la corte che individua e definisce la sua singolarita situandola entro un sistema rigido di obblighi e di privilegi. Quando questi privilegi non gli vengono, a suo parere, adeguatamente riconosciuti, o quando il successo e 1'onore tardano a premiarlo, e dentro la corte che egli cerca le prove di una ostilita che, ove manchino persino gli indizi di una qualche responsabilita umana, viene messa sul conto di una fatalita anonima e imperscrutabile, la Fortuna, da sopportare come un'ingiusta persecuzione. Di qui un vittimismo che riesce talore esasperante nella genericita delle accuse, nella pervicacia dei lamenti e delle suppliche, tali da ingenerare piuttosto il sospetto di un desiderio protagonistico che esibisce narcisisticamente la propria esemplare infelicita." A similar emphasis on the importance of the anxiety of the courtier in understanding Tasso's work is, as Zatti notes, in Giovanni Getto, Interpretazione del Tasso (Naples: Edizioni Scientifiche Italiane, 1951), izff.

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from inheriting feudal titles in Papal domains. The bull was particularly aimed against the Este Duke Alfonso II, Tasso's patron, who was widely (and, as it turned out, correctly) believed to be incapable of fathering a legitimate heir. Thus the very future of the family in Ferrara was threatened, and Alfonso's chief political concern after 1567 was to have the bull revoked."25 Tasso's poem attempts to project an imaginary resolution to these various tensions. By portraying a heroic enterprise (the conquest of Jerusalem) where success would spell the triumph of the Church, and then exhorting Alfonso to imitate the heroes of that enterprise and embark on a new crusade, Tasso's text brings together the courtly concerns of a poet writing in the Virgilian heroic tradition and the piety of a Counter-Reformation Christian. The problem of various readers' relationships to the poem is played out through the struggle between the errant Rinaldo, the fictional progenitor of the Este line, and Goffredo, the pious commander of the Crusade, who, like the pope, has received his mandate from God. Though he is the greatest hero of the Christian army, Rinaldo spends much of the poem absent from the battle for Jerusalem, involved in a romance wandering that recalls in many ways the plot of the Orlando Furioso, the greatest poem of Ferrarese humanism. The process whereby Rinaldo is brought back to camp and transformed into a good Christian knight enacts not only the taming of romance by epic but also the constitution of a single viewpoint through which, within the poem's fiction, the reader is to respond. Goffredo and Rinaldo are bought into phase with each other so that both may promote the specific imitation of the exemplary heroic actions narrated in the poem. Alfonso acts as the fictional reader who "centers" the responses of other readers, thereby consolidating, on an imaginary level at least, his own political authority. The juxtaposition of these two perspectives, Rinaldo's and Goffredo's, is set up by Tasso's addresses to his patron. At the very outset of his poem Tasso holds Goffredo forth as a model for Alfonso, suggesting that someday his patron's deeds will become the stuff of epic poetry. He hopes that one day Christendom will be at peace ("in pace / il buon popol di Cristo unqua si veda" [i-5]),26 so that Alfonso 25

David Quint, "Argillano's Revolt and the Politics of the Gerusalemme liberata," in Renaissance Studies in Honor of Craig Hugh Smyth, ed. Andrew Morrogh (Florence: Giunti Barbera, 1985), 461. 26 All references cite Lanfranco Caretti's edition of the Gerusalemme liberata (Torino: Einaudi, 1980). Canto and stanza numbers are indicated in the text. Translations are mine.

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may lead a new crusade to liberate the Holy Land. While waiting to emulate Goffredo, Tasso says, Alfonso should prepare himself for his task by listening to the poem: "Emulo di Goffredo, i nostri carmi / intanto ascolta, e t'apparecchia a 1'armi" (1.4-5) ["Listen, in the meantime, Emulator of Goffredo, to our songs, and prepare yourself for arms"]. The virtuous action which the text seeks to provoke is named: like Goffredo in the poem, Alfonso will embark on a new crusade and liberate the Holy Land. The process of listening to the poem constitutes a preparation for later action. This injunction to Alfonso is matched by another scene, much later in the poem. In the closing stanzas of canto 17, Rinaldo, whose absence from the Crusader camp has brought on the near ruin of Christian fortunes, is educated for future action by the magus of Ascalon. He is told of the glorious destiny of his descendents, the Este, and of the greatest and last in the line, Alfonso, second in name but first in virtue, who will revive heroism in an age when men will have grown weak ("primo in virtu ma in titolo secondo, / che nascer dee quando, corotto e veglio / povero fia d'uomini illustri il mondo" [17.90]). While only a "fanciullo" (a term used to introduce Rinaldo near the poem's outset, at 1.58), Alfonso will demonstrate extraordinary martial and administrative abilities, gifts that are eventually to be put to use in a new crusade.27 Alfonso is to lead a conquest of the impious who infest sea and land ("gli empi / che tutte infesteran le terre e i mari" [17.93]) and is to take vengence ("faria grave vendetta") in return for outrages visited by the Turks on Christian shrines. The obvious parallel between Rinaldo and Alfonso is underscored by the appearance of the term "vendetta." It echoes a line from a few stanzas earlier (17.84), where, on receiving the sword of the dead Danish prince Sveno, Rinaldo is ordered to avenge Sveno's death. The fiction of the poem, then, is that Alfonso is to imitate both Goffredo and Rinaldo. The reading of the poem will equip him with the examples to follow in the martial endeavor to liberate the East. The working out of the poem's plot must aim at the unification of the two heroes, whose differences keep the Crusaders from conquering the Holy City during much of the poem. Seen in the light of Tasso's calls to his reader, then, the errors of romance, the wanderings of the vagabond hero Rinaldo, take on an added significance. For they not merely threaten the unity of the poem's plot but they also 27

There is a historical irony evoked by these lines. Because of his bad relations with the pope, Alfonso missed the Battle of Lepanto and the chance to meet the Turk face to face.

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divert the reader from his eventual duty. The longer Rinaldo wanders, the longer Alfonso's new crusade is deferred and the longer the East lives in shadow and servitude. Public action is linked to the unfolding and completion of narrative design. This rhetorical link between the working out of the plot and the eventual virtuous action of its privileged reader defines itself thematically as well. At the very outset of the poem Tasso presents his text to Alfonso as a "pledge": "Tu, magnanimo Alfonso.../ queste mie carte in lieta fronte accogli, / che quasi in voto a te sacrate i' porto" (1.4-5; mv emphasis) ["magnanimous Alfonso... welcome with a happy brow these pages of mine, which I bring consecrated to you, as if they were a pledge"]. This narrative pact which likens poem to pledge lends Alfonso's eventual response a certain gravity. For throughout the poem Tasso uses the same term to define Goffredo's enterprise against the Saracens, insisting on the importance of the Christian commander's pledge to liberate the city and worship at the tomb of Christ. Goffredo accomplishes this act in the last lines of the poem: "Viene al tempio con gli altri il sommo duce; / e qui 1'arme sospende, e qui devoto / il gran Sepolcro adora e scioglie il voto" (20.144; my emphasis) ["the commander-in-chief comes to the temple with the others; here he hangs up his arms, and here, in devotion, he worships the great sepulchre and fulfills his pledge"].28 The image of Goffredo hanging up his arms recalls scenes throughout romance in which the momentary disarmament or loss of a weapon or a piece of armor opens up the way to further complication of the plot. Pendant arms tend to be lost or stolen by other knights.29 The finality of Goffredo's gesture lays this tradition to rest. For it spells both the Christians' conquest over the Saracens and the victory of epic over romance. Yet, here again, the Aristotelian concern with unified plot is complicated by the rhetoric of exemplarity. When Goffredo hangs up his arms he both closes and reopens the poem, preparing the way for a different type of plot to be played out in history. 28

The central importance of unifying Goffredo and Rinaldo ideologically has been noted by Andrew Fichter, "Tasso: Romance, Epic, and Christian Epic," in his Poets Historical: Dynastic Epic in the Renaissance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1982), 114. On the importance of the "voto," see Fredi Chiapelli, // conoscitore del caos (Rome: Bulzoni, 1981), i7off. The "voto" constitutes the Tassian form of the exchange or pact between listener and speaker which characterizes all narrative. See the important discussions of this exchange in Roland Barthes, S/Z, trans. Richard Miller (New York: Hill and Wang, 1974); and Pierre Macherey, Toward a Theory of Literary Production, trans. Geoffrey Wall (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978), 69-74. 29 See, for example, Orlando Furioso 23.80; and, for a parody of the convention, Don Quixote 1.13 and 2.66.

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When he fulfills the vow (which is both his quest and the poem itself), Goffredo closes off the endlessness of romance by driving the reader out of literature and into history. Once Jerusalem has been conquered, once Goffredo and Rinaldo have been united and the poem has reached its conclusion, both figures function as models for Alfonso, who is then to enact a series of precise acts in the world. Thus, the presence of Alfonso's response within the fiction of the poem serves both an ideological function and a narrative function. Ideologically, the imaginary figure of Alfonso as reader permits Tasso to focus the responses of all readers on a specific imitative reaction to exemplary heroism. In narrative terms, as a device inscribed into the structure of the text through the teleology of the "voto," or pledge, Alfonso's response enables Tasso's poetic model to reach an epic conclusion that will lead to an epic undertaking. In order for this epic conclusion to be reached, however, the very exemplary figures whom Alfonso is to imitate must be brought into ideological line with one another. And this process has a number of implications for Tasso's use of exemplarity. For the world-historical opposition between Saracens and Christians which forms the epic conceit of the Gerusalemme liberata has resonances that are local as well as international. The tension between pagans and Christians translates, on another level, into a clash between what Sergio Zatti has called two diverse "codes" of behavior: On the one hand, both the pagan knights and the Christian "compagni erranti" such as Rinaldo tend to ascribe to a chivalric ethos taken from the genre of romance. This ethos, with its emphasis on personal heroism and terrestrial glory, recalls in many ways the ideals of self-transformation seen in the courtly humanism of early sixteenth-century writers such as Ariosto, Machiavelli, and Castiglione—in Zatti's words, "a lay humanism that is materialistic and pluralistic." On the other hand, Goffredo's attempt to defeat the pagans and control his own men enacts the authoritarian religious centralization of the Counter-Reformation.30 Thus, the poem's attempt to transform the chivalric code of its heroes into a 30

See Zatti, Uniforme christiano, 12: "Se di conflitto fra codici si tratta, come io credo, esso e potentemente radicato nel seno della societa italiana tardorinascimentale in cui e entrato in crisi quel complesso di valori umanistici che aveva fatto da supporto alia riforma ariostesca del genere cavalleresco. II nuovo sistema ideologico si era espresso in un codice letterario secondo la mirabile definizione del De Sanctis—dalla 'individualita, quella forza d'iniziativa che fa di ogni cavaliere I'uomo libero, che trova il suo limite in se stesso, cioe a dire nelle leggi dell'amore e dell'onore, a cui ubbidisce volontariamente.' Nel clima di restaurazione cattolica si afferma prepotente un'istanza integralistica repressiva che confina progressivamente in una zona di sospetto quella dialettica di valori che si esprimeva nel Furioso sotto il segno della varieta."

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single-minded mode of action centered on the group can also be read as a Counter-Reformation response to the errors of humanist culture. This is not to say either that humanism disappears in the CounterReformation or that this is simply an "antihumanist" poem. My point is only that Tasso's epic figures the "other" that threatens its own unity and ideological singleness of purpose by representing a mode of action characteristic of an ethical system it knows much better than it knows Islam, a system that, as I have already suggested, was seen as disruptive to many aspects of official culture in the Counter-Reformation. The Gerusalemme liberata explores a struggle between two ideologies, one of which is seeking to control the other. Tasso seeks to merge CounterReformation piety and the discourse of heroic exemplarity, defining a new type of epic with new models of action and selfhood. The interplay of Goffredo and Rinaldo constitutes the allegorical representation of this struggle. For Rinaldo must not simply be brought back to the Christian camp from his dalliance with Armida. He must be remade as a good Christian knight, cleansed of his past error and totally submitted to the command of Goffredo. As he says to his commander at the outset of canto 18: "Signore . . . / or vegno a' tuoi richiami, ed ogni emenda / son pronto a far, che grato a te mi rendo" (18.1) ["Sire... now I come to your call, and am ready to make amends; for willingly I surrender to you"].31 Tasso's poem features a number of scenes that thematize the relationship between exemplarity and public action. The first of these occurs in canto 7. Early in the poem Argante, the hero of the Saracen army, challenges the Christian hero Rinaldo to a duel, the outcome of which will decide the war. When Rinaldo is banished from camp for impetuously murdering another knight named Dudone, Tancredi volunteers to replace him. When Tancredi disappears, lured from camp by an image of his beloved Clorinda, it is Goffredo, the Christian captain himself, who proposes to fight Argante: "Ah! ben sarei di vita indegno / . . . lasciando ch'un pagan cosi vilmente / calpetasse 1'onor di nostra gente!" (7.60) ["Ah, I would be unworthy of life ... allowing a pagan to trample so vilely on the honor of our people"]. But Goffredo's resolve is stopped by Raimondo, the aging count of Toulouse. Raimondo objects that the commander is too important to the army to risk his life: "Duce sei tu, non semplice guerriero: / publico fora e non privato il lutto" (7.62) ["You are the leader, not a simple warrior: this fight is public, not private"]. We are thus given a distinction 31 On the psychological implications of Tasso's self-re vision, see Ferguson, Trials of Desire, 111 f f.

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between the search for private glory through public acts (a humanist commonplace, it should be noted) and a "true" public fight which focuses on the good of the group. Raimondo then evokes his own past deeds in order to reproach his fellow Christian soldiers for their lack of heart. He recalls that as a youth he defeated "feroce Leopaldo" before the entire court of Corrado. He then laments his present infirmity, claiming that, despite his age, he never loses heart ("non pero langue / il core in me, ne vecchio anco pavento" [7.65]). And he vows to arm himself for battle. These words suffice to awaken the Christians from their repose. Yet as they clamor for the right to meet Argante in combat, it is Raimondo himself who most burns to fight: "Sovra tutti gli altri il fero vecchio / se ne dimostra cupido ed ardente. / Armato e gia" (7.68) ["Above all the others the ferocious old man shows himself ardent and full of desire. Already he is armed"]. The ideological stakes of Raimondo's ardor are explored through a series of allusions to classical epic woven into the scene. His reproach of his fellows recalls the figure of Nestor, who in the Iliad (1.247 and 7.i46ff.) recalls his own past deeds as a way of spurring his companions to action. Near the beginning of Homer's poem, Nestor scorns the quarrel between Achilles and Agammemnon by claiming, "I fought single handed, yet against such men no one / of the mortals now alive on earth could battle."32 Later, he remembers the days when, though the youngest soldier in the Greek army, he fought Ereuthalion single-handed and shamed his cowardly companions. In contrast to Nestor, Raimondo not only recalls his past triumphs, he longs to revive them. This revision of the epic topos of the wise old counselor is underscored by two specific echoes of the Aeneid. Raimondo's heroic words recall Virgil's descriptions of both Evander (8.56—63), who declares that his youth is past, that he can no longer fight and must therefore send his son Pallas to do battle alongside Aeneas, and the aging Entellus, who in the wrestling matches of Aeneid (5.397-98), decides to gird his loins for one last attempt at glory.33 By evoking two Virgilian moments Tasso proposes two possible functions for the aging warrior. He may retire from battle and send younger men to the fray (like both Nestor and Evander), or he may attempt one final conflict (like Entellus). Raimondo follows Entellus and chooses the latter alternative. The setting of Entellus's battle with Dares in Aeneid 5 reflects 32

1 cite Richmond Lattimore's translation of the Iliad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1974), 66. Tasso's echoes of book i of the Iliad have been noted by Caretti in his notes. The connection with book 7 is pointed out by Maier's notes to the scene in his edition of the Gerusalemme liberata (Milan: Rizzoli, 1965). 33 Caretti has signaled these echoes in the notes to his edition (see above, n. 26).

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ironically on Raimondo's valor. For it is no battle at all. It is a wrestling match, a sporting event, and its sixteenth-century equivalent would be a tournament like the "disfida di Barletta" recalled by Machiavelli. Thus, Tasso's citation of Virgil underscores Raimondo's own testimony of the place in which his valor was tested—not a holy war but a courtly tournament. The evocation of this chivalric context suggests that Raimondo's mind may still be focused on a value system that privileges individual heroics, a value system that the poem's own insistence on unity and group struggle would question. Raimondo's eagerness to fight is praised by Goffredo, who lauds him as the mirror of ancient heroism in which the young might glimpse the valor they lack: "*O vivo specchio / del valor prisco, in te la nostra gente / miri e virtu n'apprenda: in te di Marte / splende 1'onor, la disciplina e 1'arte' " (7.68). If only he had ten knights as valorous as Raimondo, explains Goffredo, he could spread Christianity from Battriana to Thule. Yet, he accompanies his praise of the count's "valor prisco" by enjoining Raimondo to remain in his place and dedicate himself to the practice of "virtu senile" (7.69). He orders a drawing to choose a champion who will face Argante: "Anzi giudice Dio, de le cui voglie / ministra e serva e la fortuna e '1 fato" (7.70) ["Thus God judges; fate and fortune are servants of His sovereign will"]. The play of fortune itself is harnassed by Goffredo's faith, which seeks to recuperate all action under the umbrella of divine potency. The barely muted tensions in the scene between Goffredo's authority and Raimondo's ardor to act on his own seem to find a resolution at the outcome of the drawing. For the lot falls to none other than Raimondo, who is immediately rejuvenated by his election: Ei di fresco vigor la fronte e '1 volto riempie; e cosi allor ringiovenisce qual serpe fier che in nove spoglie avolto d'oro fiammeggi e 'n contra il sol si lisce. (7-70

[And his face and brow are filled with fresh vigor; even so is the serpent rejuvenated, who, wrapped in his new slough, shines golden and slides along the ground.]

Yet though Goffredo applauds the selection of Raimondo, Tasso's continued citation of epic precedents casts an ironic light on the old man's metamorphosis. The serpent image recalls both Pyrrhus, as he advances to murder Priam in Aeneid 2, and Ariosto's Rodomonte, as he threatens Paris in Orlando Furioso 17.11. The Ariostan locus is most

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pertinent, since it immediately follows a discussion of great negative exemplars in history and an exhortation by Charlemagne reminiscent of Raimondo's harangue to the Christian troops. Yet, again Tasso revises his predecessors. A reference in Ariosto to the serpent's three tongues ("tre lingue vibra") disappears altogether.34 The gold of the serpent's new skin that Tasso stresses suggests the splendor of newly armed troops, evoking by metonymy the sheen of the armor that Raimondo has just put on. In fact, Tasso essentially turns the image which he has inherited from epic tradition inside out. For if the serpent is rejuvenated through the shedding of his old skin, it is by donning his armor and buckling on the sword that Goffredo offers him a moment later that the aging Raimondo's "fresco vigor" is manifested. This literal reversal of the serpent image operates on a larger level as well. In both Ariosto and Virgil the serpent image figures strength misused, power in the wrong hands. Here, however, good intentions are undercut by mortal weakness. For if the brow of Raimondo is filled with fresh vigor, his body remains that of an old man. And as Argante taunts the Christian with language recalling the pledges made by both Goffredo and Tasso—"Che non gite avanti? / che non sciogliete i voti? Ecco la strada!" (7.74) ["Why don't you come forth? Why don't you fulfill your pledge? Here is the way!"])—Raimondo rides into battle with a prayer that, like David, he might defeat this pagan Goliath: "Tu fa' ch'or giaccia (e fia pari 1'essempio) / questo fellon da me percosso e vinto, / e debil vecchio or la superbia opprima / come debil fanciul 1'oppresse in prima" (7.78) ["Let me be an example like he was, and let this criminal lie beaten by me, let a weak old man defeat arrogance as the weak youngster did before"]. Raimondo seeks to set himself in a chain of exemplars, taking David as his model or "essempio" in order to illustrate modern heroism. Goliath and Argante are merged as equivalent embodiments of arrogance, whereas Raimondo's weak age replaces David's weak youth. The battle becomes an allegorical struggle between righteous debolezza and infidel superbia. This prayer is a wise move. For God answers both it and Goffredo's faith by sending Raimondo an angel who protects him with a diamond shield. Yet, though Goffredo and Raimondo have both invoked heaven, they have done so with no assurance of success, and the important feature of this miracle is that Raimondo remains ignorant of the heavenly warrior who protects him. Thus when, at the height 34

1 cite Emilio Bigi's edition of the Orlando Furioso (Milan: Rusconi, 1982), 17.11.5

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of the battle, Argante's sword breaks on contact with the angel's shield, Raimondo is as surprised as Argante: II circasso, ch'andarne a terra ha viste minutissime parti, il creda a pena. . . . . E ben rotta la spada aver si crede su 1'altro scudo, onde e colui difeso, e '1 buon Raimondo ha la medesma fede, che non sa gia che sia dal ciel disceso. (7-93-94) [The Circassian, who sees the tiny fragments fall to earth, can scarcely believe it.... And he believes the sword to have been broken on the other shield, the one with which Raimondo has been defending himself. And the good Raimondo thinks the same thing, for he does not know of the shield that has come down from heaven.]

The scene of the broken sword recalls yet another moment from Virgil, this one from Aeneid 12, where the sword of Turnus breaks against the shield of Aeneas.35 In Virgil, Turnus saves himself by immediately taking flight. In Tasso, however, a pause ensues. Raimondo hesitates before attempting to finish off his disarmed foe: Ma pero ch'egli disarmata vede la man nemica, si riman sospeso, che stima ignobil palma e vili spoglie quelle ch'altrui con tal vantaggio toglie. "Prendi," volea gia dirgli, "un'altra spada" quando novo pensier nacque nel core, ch'alto scorno e de' suoi dove egli cada, che di publica causa e difensore. Cosi ne indegna a lui vittoria aggrada, ne in dubbio vuol porre il comune onore. (7-94-95) [But when he sees the enemy hand disarmed, he stops suspended, for he thinks those spoils and honors won by such an advantage to be ignoble and vile. "Take," he wanted to say, "another sword," when another thought entered his heart, that he is falling into disgrace among his own men, for he is the defender of public safety. Thus though such a victory would bring him no satisfaction, he does not wish to place the honor of all in jeopardy.]

35

Again, I am indebted to Caretti's notes here.

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Goffredo's earlier desire to fight Argante so as to avenge "1'onor di nostra gente" (7.60) and Raimondo's own admonishment that the battle is "publico" and not "privato" (7.63) are recalled here in this moment of doubt. Raimondo's instant of hesitation indicates the nature of his virtue. His disdain at taking advantage of an unarmed foe is a product of the chivalric ethos. Oblivious of the mockeries that Argante has heaped on both his comrades and his faith only a few lines earlier, indifferent to the stakes of the battle, Raimondo's first impulse is to see the Saracen enemy as just another knight, as a double to whom chivalric courtesy should be extended. He acts like the noble participant in a tournament or a character from Ariosto, the type of hero whose individualism repeatedly subverts Goffredo's plans to organize the Christian army.36 Though he "knows" what he is to do, Raimondo's instinctive response is to act as a courtly knight rather than as a Counter-Reformation holy warrior. And this moment of indecision permits Argante to escape. There follows a pitched battle in which Raimondo is wounded by an arrow. Following a rout, the Christian army is saved only at the last minute by a rainstorm sent from heaven. Raimondo's exemplary "valor prisco" is an ancient valor indeed. His virtue is the virtue of the courtly tournament and is symptomatic of an ideology which Tasso's poem inherits from Ariosto and which it would displace. In Raimondo's chivalric world aging knights must choose between polite retirement (Evander) and momentary rejuvenation (Entellus). In the world of the Counter-Reformation, however, a third choice is possible: with help from heaven the old can receive a miraculous force greater than the force of youth. Yet, because he is a chivalric exemplar in a postchivalric world, Raimondo is incapable of exploiting the advantage offered by divine intervention.37 36 Raimondo's roots in chivalry have been noted in passing by Zatti, Uniforme christiano, 18-19. The moment of hesitation seen here will be corrected in the duel between Argante and Tancredi in canto 19. Tancredi disarms Argante and then demands that he surrender: "Renditi—grida, e gli fa nuove offerte, / senza noiarlo, il vincitore cortese" (19.25; my emphasis). When, instead of surrendering, Argante attempts most uncourteously to wound his conqueror in the heel, Tancredi slays him. I am indebted to an unpublished paper by Lauren Scancarelli Seem, of Princeton University, "The Limits of Chivalry: Tasso and the Virgilian Solution," for this parallel. On the Christian camp as a scene of ideological and personal struggle, see Riccardo Bruscagli, "II campo cristiano nella 'Liberata,' " Stagioni delta civilita estense (Pisa: Nistri Lischi, 1983), 187223. 37 Given the chivalric associations that the scene projects onto Raimondo's "valor prisco" and "virtu," it is no accident that, at the moment of the Saracen collapse, the ferocious pagan warrior Soldano accuses his companion Aladino with the question,

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Raimondo's virtue is laudable but somehow not quite enough to produce the exemplary acts required by the poem's ideology. And this ambivalence toward exemplarity reappears in only slightly different terms a few cantos later. At the outset of canto 11, in the exact center of the poem, the Christian soldiers prepare to assault Jerusalem. They pass the day in solemn procession, a communal meal and meditation. As dawn breaks and the troops dress for battle, we see Goffredo, busy with his preparations. However, he has clearly spent his time of meditation thinking not of his duty as a commander but rather of himself. For instead of donning his normal suit of armor, he emerges dressed as a foot soldier. This time it is Raimondo who questions his behavior, evoking again the distinction between private virtue and public virtue set up earlier: "Deh! che ricerchi tu? Privata palma / di salitor di mura?" (i 1.21) ["Say, what are you seeking? The private honor of a leaper of walls?"]. And he goes on to stress Goffredo's importance for the success of the enterprise: "Tu riprendi, signor, 1'usata salma / e di te stesso a nostro pro ti caglia" (11.22) ["Return, sire, to your normal burden, and care for yourself for the good of all of us"]. It is, of course, fitting that it should be Raimondo who asks the questions here about private action and public responsibility, since his hesitation in the battle against Argante stemmed from an insensitivity to the public good. Here, in terms that suggest the tenor of Goffredo's own earlier words to him, he seeks to draw on the lesson he has learned. Goffredo, however, defends his actions by evoking a heretofore unknown episode from his personal history. He recalls that, back in France, when he received authority from the pope to command the crusade ("quando in Chiaramonte il grande Urbano / questa spada mi cinse, e me devoto / fe' cavalier Ponnipotente mano"), he made a silent vow to God ("tacitamente a Dio promisi in voto") that he would fight, not as a captain, but as a common soldier ("qual privato guerrier") [i 1.23]. This decision, he says, is tactically wise. His task as organizer is complete. It is thus only right that he should now fight as a commoner. Moreover, since he has placed his trust in heaven, "Ov'e, Signor, la tua virtute antica?" (19.41). It should also be noted that in the Gerusalemme conquistata, Tasso's reworking of the poem, the figure of Raimondo is split in two. In the recast version of this scene, it is a character named Giovanni (absent from the Liberata but introduced in Book i of the Conquistata as "Giovanni... che vide in Francia / re Carlo il Magno, e porto scudo e lancia" [1.41]) who chastises the Christian soldiers with a long, somewhat wandering tale about the past exploits of chivalric heroes. Thus, a space is opened up between Raimondo, an aging soldier who acts, and Giovanni, an ancient adviser who babbles. References to the Conquistata cite the edition of Luigi Bonfigli (Bari: Laterza, 1934), 2 vols. Translations are mine.

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he knows that no harm will ensue: "egli mi custodisca e mi conservi" (11.26). Goffredo's sentiments may be noble, but they are wrong. He mistakenly believes that the "voto" or pledge he made to God at the time of arming (note the chivalric formula, "questa spada mi cinse" [i 1.23]) holds power over all others and nullifies them.38 The first duty of the "cavalier devoto" is not to his personal "voto" but rather to the good of the group—as Tasso's own "voto" or poem aims to provoke an action that would unite ecclesiastical ideology and chivalric heroism. Goffredo's doctrinal error is ironically underscored, both by his description of the pope's hand as "onnipotente" (its command obviously overrides all others) and his description of himself as a "privato guerrier," which echoes the words of Argante to Soldano back in canto 6, when he claims that he will fight Tancredi as "privato cavalier, non tuo campion" (6.13). By placing the words of the individualist pagan Argante in the mouth of the Christian captain at the moment he asserts the piety of his acts, Tasso suggests that individual or privately motivated action is by definition erroneous. The issue is not Goffredo's piety but rather that he claims for himself a particularized relationship with God, that his personal history contains a kind of Montaignian "arriere boutique" in which private virtue can remain separate from public duty. But the issue here is not merely, or exclusively, doctrinal. For Goffredo's hesitation to accept unstintingly his role as captain is simply a more pious version of Rinaldo's rambunctious individualism. And just as Rinaldo's absence from the Christian camp keeps the Crusaders from conquering Jerusalem, so does Goffredo's error immediately lead to military disaster. The French knights all follow their exemplary leader ("i cavalier francesi / seguir 1'essempio" [11.25]), an