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XLV. Thomas Deloney's Euphuistic Learning and The Forest

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Hyder E. Rollins
Hyder E. Rollins*
Affiliation:
Harvard University
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Extract

Thomas Deloney's four novels are generally praised for their vigor of style and their realism. Indeed, his modern editor, Mr. F. O. Mann, in singling out for commendation “his faithful and sympathetic rendering of commonplace human life,” insists that in Deloney is to be found “the highest achievement of the Elizabethan novel.” Not infrequently, however, Deloney's “commonplace human life” yields to high-flown and altogether improbable romances of earls and ladies, princes and princesses, kings and queens, just as his ordinary familiar prose style at times is embellished with all the euphuistic tricks he was capable of imitating. In particular his apparently casual references to strange birds, queer beasts, and other wonders of nature and to historical and mythological characters give a surprising air of learning; and the notes of his various editors suggest that he was acquainted with such authors as Boccaccio, Belieforest, Pliny, Sextus Empiricus, and Cornelius Nepos.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , September 1935 , pp. 679 - 686
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1935

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References

1 The Works of Thomas Deloney (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1912), pp. xiv, xxx.

2 For example, A. F. Lange, The Gentle Craft by Thomas Deloney, Palaestra, xviii (1903), xxxiii, explains a reference to Iphicrates as based upon a reading of Cornelius Nepos and Plutarch; and Mann (p. 517) and W. J. Halliday, Deloney's Gentle Craft (Oxford, 1928), p. 94, partially duplicate his note. For the real source used by Deloney see p. 000, below.

3 (London, 1903), p. 81.

4 (New York, 1911), iii, 605.

5 Editing The Complete Works of John Lyly (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1902), R. W. Bond notes one instance (i, 249). Another is the reference to “the Uine [that] beareth three grapes” (ii, 54, and see also i, 248), which came from Fortescue, sig. Dd2v. Lyly could, however, have learned about the three grapes in William Baldwin's A treatise of Morali phylosophye (1555 [?] ed.), sig. E4, where also occur (sigs. G8v, D1v–D2) Deloney's “chast-hearted Xenocrates” (p. 78) and his philosopher Thales (p. 250).

6 The references are to Mann's edition by pages, to Fortescue's book by signatures.

7 In Philotimus (1583), sig. 03, Melbancke likewise borrows the story of “Eratis.”

8 So Melbancke, sig. D4, writes: “The Lion feares the little crowing cocke.”

9 At sig. L2v Melbancke likewise borrows this story of “Erastus.” There is some reason to believe that Deloney took it from Thomas Bowes's translation of Pierre de la Primaudaye, The French Academie (1586), p. 196, since his reference (p. 50), “Artemisa being a Heathen Lady, loued her husband so well, that shee drunke vp his ashes, and buried him in her owne bowels,” seems from its wording to come from Bowes, p. 519, “Artemisia Queene of Caria, for the great loue she bare to hir husband that was dead, dranke all the ashes of his bodie, meanyng thereby to be his sepulchre.”

10 Compare Melbancke, sig. 03v: “carrie the dust about thee, wherein a mule sweating hath wallowed, or annoint thy selfe with the stale of a mule, and this thy loue will turne to hate.”

10a Here Fortescue is a parallel, not Deloney's exact source as I shall point out in a subsequent article.

11 Mann, pp. 40–43.

12 Sigs. V4v-X3.

13 Edward Fenton, Certaine Secrete wonders of Nature (1569), sig. Ee 1, telling this story, remarks: “there was a certain common Woman brought forth. vij. boyes at one tyme, who for the horrour of hir sinne, cast them into the water,” and so forth.