verse composition, classical pastoral, eclogues, rhetoric, tropes, schemes, Renaissance, singing contest
<< previous
next >>
8
examination of such poems that is sensitive to their discursiveness and complexity, the richness of their social context and their variety of purpose, characteristics which ought to render these poems attractive subjects of study for “the present critical climate”.
6
She is right, moreover, that the animus of verse composition in the Renaissance, and especially verse answering, is competitiveness; a view that appears to be shared by the Renaissance scholar, Julius Caesar Scaliger, who thought modern poetry to be derived ultimately from the eclogues of classical pastoral among which the singing contest or amœbæan was prominent.
7
While all these scholars point to the need for the development of a better comprehension of the poetics of response in the Renaissance, it must be stated at the outset that it is not the purpose of this thesis to establish a definitive poetics of response but rather to contribute towards the development of such through a process of selective sampling. The full scope of the Renaissance answer-poem is far too broad to tackle comprehensively within the confines of a doctoral dissertation. Moreover, although the ‘Select Catalogue of Answer-Poetry in Print and Manuscript, 1485-1625’ provided in Appendix One is representative of a broad range of verse answers (including many that are not examined during the course of the thesis), it is not comprehensive.
8 Hopefully, the resource succeeds in providing access to the practice of verse answering in its wider generic context and draws attention to potential avenues of further investigation.
It is also necessary to state clearly here that an examination of the linguistic rhetoric of the answer-poem, of its formal tropes and schemes, does not belong to the remit of this
6 Mary Ann Radzinowicz, ‘Reading Paired Poems Nowadays’, LIT, 1:4 (1990), 275-90 (p.275 and p.283).
7 Select Translations from Scaliger’s Poetics, trans. Frederick Morgan Padelford, ed. Albert S. Cook (NY: Holt, 1905), pp.21-2.
8
References to Appendix A are given as “Cat.” followed by the unique alpha-numeric identifier for the citation referenced.
<< previous
next >>
Stumble It!
