Book by George Puttenham Arte of English and Posie

16th-century English author and literary critic

George Puttenham (1529–1590) was an English language writer and literary critic. He is generally considered to be the author of the influential handbook on poetry and rhetoric, The Arte of English Poesie (1589).

Family and early life [edit]

Puttenham was the 2nd son of Robert Puttenham of Sherfield-on-Loddon in Hampshire and his wife Margaret, the daughter of Sir Richard Elyot and sis of Sir Thomas Elyot.^{[1] [2]} He had an elder brother, Richard.^{[ane] [two]} He matriculated at Christ's College, Cambridge, in November 1546, aged 17, but took no caste, and was admitted to the Middle Temple on 11 August 1556.^[3]

In belatedly 1559 or early 1560 Puttenham married Elizabeth, Lady Windsor (1520–1588), the daughter and coheir of Peter Cowdray of Herriard, Hampshire. She was the widow of both Richard, blood brother of William Paulet, 1st Marquess of Winchester, and William, Businesswoman Windsor.^{[1] [2]} She brought a substantial dowry to the matrimony.^[4] They had at least one daughter.^{[1] [2]}

Somewhere around 1562, Puttenham travelled abroad to purchase Sherfield Business firm from his elder brother Richard.^[5] He immediately quarrelled at Sherfield Firm with Lady Windsor's brother-in-constabulary, Thomas Paulet, for inciting others to steal a goshawk from him; Paulet admitting to having confronted Puttenham with a dagger and wounding him twice.^[v] His circle of enemies notedly widened when Lady Windsor separated from him, suing him for divorce in 1566.^[5]

Domestic disputes and later legal troubles [edit]

Much of the data known about Puttenham'due south later personal and professional life stems from court records of the dissolution of his marriage and of his attempt to go out of debt by wresting control of Sherfield House from his niece Anne Morris and her hubby, Francis.^[5] These documents pigment a troubled picture of Puttenham as a compulsive adulterer, a serial rapist and a married woman-beater.^[1] In addition he seems to take followed his elder brother's precedent in having at to the lowest degree one child with his maidservants.^[i] 1 he took to Flanders and abandoned.^[ane] One of the more lascivious stories asserts that when Puttenham was forty-iii, he also had his servant kidnap a 17-yr-old daughter in London and bring her to his farm at Upton Grey nearly Sherfield, where he raped her and kept her locked upwards for iii years.^[1]

While the veracity of these court records should reasonably be questioned (given the especially nasty nature of Puttenham's divorce and the tendency of early modern court cases to present the well-nigh fantastical accounts of their participants), surprisingly piddling was said in defense force of Puttenham's grapheme. It is, peradventure, telling that the neutral observer Richard Horne, Bishop of Winchester, reacted with surprise and disdain to Puttenham's date as a Justice of the Peace, writing to William Cecil, Lord Burghley hoping that it "exist not true, for his evil life is well knowne."^[6]

In 1579 he presented to Elizabeth I his Partheniades (printed in a collection of manuscript Ballads by F. J. Furnivall), and he wrote the treatise in question specially for the delectation of the queen and her ladies. He mentions nine other works of his, none of which are extant. Puttenham is said to have been implicated in a plot confronting Lord Burghley in 1570 and in Dec 1578 was imprisoned. In 1585 he received reparation from the privy quango for alleged wrongs suffered at the hands of his relations. His volition is dated 1 September 1590.

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The Arte of English Poesie was entered at Stationers' Hall in 1588, and published in the following year with a dedicatory alphabetic character to Lord Burghley written past the printer Richard Field, who professed ignorance of the writer's proper noun and position. Nevertheless, alterations to the text made during the printing run indicate that the writer must have been alive and that Field must have known his identity. The first reference to the piece of work was made in the preface to Sir John Harrington'southward translation of Orlando Furioso (1591) in reaction to Puttenham's view of translators equally mere versifiers. Harrington disparages Puttenham'due south assertion that poetry is an art rather than a souvenir, holding up Puttenham's ain poetry equally proof because "he sheweth himself so slender a gift in it." Although Harrington does non proper name Puttenham, in a surviving manuscript annotation concerning the publication of his ain book, he asks Field to publish it "in the same print that Putnams book is", which he did.^[vii]

In an essay published in the second edition of William Camden'south Remaines (1614), Richard Carew writes, "look into our Imitations of all sorts of verses by any other linguistic communication, and y'all shall finde that Sir Phillip Sidney, Maister Puttenham, Maister Stanihurst, and divers more have made use how farre wee are within compasse of a fore imagined impossibility in that behalfe".^[viii] Effectually the same fourth dimension, in his Hypercritica (non published until 1722), Edmund Bolton writes of "the elegant, witty, and artificial book of the Art of English Poetrie, (the work equally the fame is) of one of [Queen Elizabeth's] Admirer Pensioners, Puttenham". Since Puttenham received ii leases in reversion from the queen in 1588, this seems to clearly identify him every bit the writer.^[nine]

Certain biographical details in The Arte may point to a Puttenham every bit the author. He was educated at Oxford, and at the age of 18 he addressed an eclogue entitled Elpine to Edward Six. In his youth he had visited Espana, French republic, and Italy, and was better acquainted with foreign courts than with his own.

There is no direct evidence beyond Bolton'due south ascription to identify the author with George or Richard Puttenham, the sons of Robert Puttenham and his wife Margaret, the sister of Sir Thomas Elyot, who dedicated his treatise on the Education or Bringing up of Children to her for the benefit of her sons. Furthermore, since Bolton'due south ascription occurs 15 years subsequently George's death and four after Richard'south neither man would have been able to either accept or refuse the attribution. Both made unhappy marriages, were constantly engaged in litigation, and were oft in disgrace. One fact that points towards George's authorship is that Richard was in prison when the book was licensed to be printed, and when he fabricated his will in 1597 he was in the Queen's Demote Prison. He was cached, according to John Payne Collier, at St. Clement Danes, London, on 2 July 1601. Richard Puttenham is known to have spent much of his time abroad, whereas George is simply known to have left England a single time, to get the act for Sherfield Business firm from his blood brother. This agrees better with the writer's account of himself; but if the statement that he addressed Elpine to Edward Half-dozen when he was 18 years of age exist taken to imply that the product of this piece of work fell within that king'due south reign, the date of the writer's birth cannot be placed anterior to 1529. At the engagement (1546) of his inheritance of his uncle, Sir Thomas Elyot's estates, Richard Puttenham was proved in an inquisition held at Newmarket to accept been twenty-6 years erstwhile. The history of the Puttenhams is discussed in H. H. Due south. Croft'southward edition of Elyot'south Boke called the Comprehend nour. A careful investigation brought him to the conclusion that the evidence was in favour of Richard. There are other modern editions of the book, notably one in Joseph Haslewood's Ancient Disquisitional Essays (1811–1815). For editions with critical apparatus see Willcock and Walker's Cambridge edition of 1936 and Whigham and Rebhorn's new critical edition (Cornell UP, 2007).

The Arte of English Poesie [edit]

Whoever the writer may take been, there is no doubt virtually the importance of the work, which is the about systematic and comprehensive treatise of the fourth dimension on its subject. It is "contrived into three books: the offset of poets and poesies, the 2d of proportion, the third of decoration." Puttenham'south book covers a general history of the art of verse, and a discussion of the various forms of poetry; the second treats of prosody, dealing in plow with the measures in employ in English poetry, the caesura, punctuation, rhyme, accent, cadence, proportion in figure, which the writer illustrates by geometrical diagrams, and the proposed innovations of English quantitative verse; the department on ornament deals with style, the distinctions betwixt written and spoken language, the figures of voice communication; and the author closes with lengthy observations on good manners. He deprecates the use of archaisms, and although he allows that the purer Saxon spoken language is spoken across the Trent, he advises the English writer to take as his model the usual oral communication of the court, of London and the home counties.

Book I, "Of Poets and Poesie," contains a remarkably credible history of poesy in Greek, Latin and in English. All subjects, including science and police, were in primitive times written in verse, and the types of poetry number in the dozens. Because it is busy with versification and figures of speech communication, poetry is a more persuasive and melodious grade of linguistic communication, and is very much given to construction and accuracy. The countless examples of dignities and promotions given to poets throughout history, and the numerous examples of royal poets, show upwards the ignorance of Renaissance courtiers who suppress their poetry or publish under a pseudonym.

In Book II, "Of Proportion Poetical," Puttenham compares metrical class to arithmetical, geometrical, and musical blueprint. He adduces five points to English poesy structure: the "Staffe," the "Measure out," "Concord or Symphony," "Situation" and "Effigy".

The staff, or stanza, is four to ten lines that join without intermission and finish up all of the sentences thereof. Each length of stanza suits a poetic tone and genre. Each is overlaid by a closed rhyme scheme. This latter, termed "ring" (65) and "enterlacement" (seventy), is of chief business organization to Puttenham. He views English as having solely a syllabic system of measure, or metre. The length of lines may alternate in patterns that support the rhyme scheme, and so increase the band. Syllabic length is a cistron simply accentuation is not. Caesura should occur at the aforementioned place in every line; it helps to continue up distinctness and clarity, two virtues of civil language.

"Concord, called Symphonie or rime" (76) is an accommodation made for the lack of metrical anxiety in English versification. The matching of line lengths, rhymed at the end, in symmetrical patterns, is a further accommodation. A number of graphs are shown to illustrate the diversity of rhyme schemes and line-length patterns, or situation. The poet who can work melodiously within the strictures of versification proves a "crafts master," a valuable literary virtue. Proportion in figure is the composition of stanzas in graphic forms ranging from the rhomb to the spire.

Book 3, "Of Ornament," which comprises a full half of the Arte, is a catalogue of figures of speech, in the tradition of Richard Sherry, Henry Peacham, Abraham Fraunce, and Angel Twenty-four hour period. Since language is inherently artificial, and "not naturall to man" (120), the added artifice of figures is particularly suitable. Figures give more than "pithe and substance, subtilitie, quicknesse, efficacie or moderation, in this or that sort tuning and tempring them past distension, abridgement, opening, closing, enforcing, meekening or otherwise disposing them to the all-time purpose ..." (134). From page 136 to 225, Puttenham lists and analyses figures of spoken communication. His volume concludes with a lengthy analysis of "decency," and the artificial and natural dimensions of language.

Influence of The Arte of English Poesie [edit]

Many later "poetics" are indebted to this book. The original edition is very rare. Edward Arber's reprint (1869) contains a clear summary of the various documents with regard to the authorship of this treatise. According to George Puttenham, presumptive author of The Arte of English Poesie, Sir Thomas Wyatt and Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, "trauailed into Italie" (49) and brought dorsum the poetry forms that make them "the first reformers of our English meter and stile" (49). The introduction of these new Italian forms in turn necessitated the flurry of Renaissance poetry manuals, by George Gascoigne, Samuel Daniel, Charles Webb, and Sir Philip Sidney, in improver to Puttenham's Arte. In that location is currently contend about Puttenham'southward relative authorization in comparison to these other figures.

References [edit]

1. ^ ^{a b c d e f g h} May, Stephen W (2008). "George Puttenham'southward Lewd and Illicit Career". Texas Studies in Literature and Language. University of Texas Printing. l (ii): 143–176. doi:10.1353/tsl.0.0001. S2CID 162082799.
2. ^ ^{a b c d} Whigman, Frank; Redhorn, Wayne A, eds. (2007). The Art of English Poesy: A Critical Edition. Ithaca: Cornell Upward.
3. ^ "Putenham, George (PTNN546G)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. Academy of Cambridge.
4. ^ M. Eccles, Brief lives: Tudor and Stuart authors (1982): 26–xxx, p. 29.
5. ^ ^{a b c d} Steven W. May, "Puttenham, George (1529–1590/91)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004: 22913.
6. ^ Salisbury MSS, 1.392–3, Horne to Cecil, 21 January 1569
7. ^ Whigham, Frank, and Wayne A. Rebhorn. (2007) The Art of English Poetry, by George Puttenham, A Critical Edition. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, p. 18.
8. ^ Whigham and Rebhorn, p. xix.
9. ^ Whigham and Rebhorn, pp. 17, 19.

• This article incorporates text from a publication at present in the public domain:Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Puttenham, George". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge Academy Press.

Farther reading [edit]

• Steven West. May, "George Puttenham'southward Lewd and Illicit Career," Texas Studies in Literature and Language 2008.
• Frank Whigham and Wayne A. Rebhorn (eds.). The Art of English Poesy: A Critical Edition Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2007.
• Walter Nash, "George Puttenham," The Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 281: British Rhetoricians and Logicians, 1500–1660, Second Serial, Detroit: Gale, 2003, pp. 229–248.
• One thousand. D. Willcock & A. Walker, eds., The Arte of English language Poesie, Cambridge: University Press, 1936, pp. ix–cii.
• W. Grand. Boyd, ed., Vol. 9 of Agenda of the Country Papers Relating to Scotland and Mary, Queen of Scots, 1547–1603, Glasgow: Hedderwick, 1915, pp. 356–388.
• John Bruce & Allan James Crosby, eds., Accounts and papers Relating to Mary Queen of Scots, Westminster: Nichols & Sons, 1867, pp. 257–279.

External links [edit]

• Works by George Puttenham at Projection Gutenberg
• Works by or virtually George Puttenham at Internet Archive
• Steven Due west. May, 'Puttenham, George (1529–1590/91)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford Academy Press, 2004, accessed 8 Nov 2007
• The Arte of English Poesie online from the Electronic Text Middle, University of Virginia Library

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Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Puttenham

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