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The Immediate Source of Euphuism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

William Ringler
William Ringler*
Affiliation:
Princeton University
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Extract

No other product of the Elizabethans' attempts to improve and heighten the style of their writings is quite so remarkable as the ornate and jingling prose which goes under the name of Euphuism. Its unique character and great popularity have caused many to discuss the problems of its origin, but no satisfactory specific source has so far been discovered. The old theories of Landmann and Feuillerat, who suggested, respectively, that the style was the result of the imitation of Guevara, and of the imitation of the classics, have now been abandoned. In their place the theory now generally accepted is the one put forward by Professor Croll, who said that Euphuism was merely one manifestation of the general medieval tradition, continued into the sixteenth century, of writing patterned prose. Professor Croll demonstrated completely and finally the ultimate origins of the style; but Euphuism is a unique and special variety of schematic prose, and the steps by which the simple and frequently varied patterns of medieval writings came to be elaborated into the stiff, formalistic structure of Euphuism, with all its wealth of learned similes and recondite allusions, has not been explained.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 53 , Issue 3 , September 1938 , pp. 678 - 686
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1938

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References

1 F. Landmann, “Shakspere and Euphuism,” New Shakspere Society Transactions, ix (1884), 241–276. A. Feuillerat, John Lyly (Cambridge, 1910), p. 460 ff. M. W. Croll, “The Sources of the Euphuistic Rhetoric,” Lyly's Euphues, ed. Croll and Clemons (London, 1916).

2 An excellent analysis, by a contemporary, of the most important characteristics of the style is in John Hoskins's Directions for Speech and Style, ed. H. H. Hudson (Princeton, 1935), pp. 16, 37.

3 “Pierces Supererogation” [1593], Works of Gabriel Harvey, ed. A. B. Grosart (1884), ii, 125.

4 “To Henry Reynolds of Poets and Poesie,” Works of Michael Drayton, ed. J. W. Hebel (Oxford, 1932), iii, 228.

5 Edmund Blount said of Lyly, “Our Nation are in his debt for a new English which hee taught them.” Works of John Lyly, ed. R. W. Bond (Oxford, 1902), iii, 3.

6 The first recorded use of the word is in Harvey's “Fovre Letters, and certaine Sonnets” [15921, Works, i, 202.

7 Works of John Lyly, i, 142–143.

7a P. W. Long, “From Troilus to Euphues,” Anniversary Papers by Colleagues and Pupils of George Lyman Kiitredge (Boston, 1913), pp. 367–376.

8 A Discourse of English Poetrie [1586], ed. Edward Arber (London, 1870), p. 46.

9 For the biography of Rainolds, see the D.N.B. and Thomas Fowler, History of Corpus Christi College (Oxford, 1893), by index. Rainolds is chiefly famous as a theologian and controversialist. He was foreman of the Puritan group at the Hampton Court Conference, and was on the committee that made the Authorized Version of the Bible. He has been given some attention by literary historians because of his controversy with William Gager on the lawfulness of stage plays; but his academic lectures have gone entirely unnoticed, so far as I am aware, except by bibliographers.

10 “Oratio Post Festum Paschatis, 1576,” Orationes Duodecim (London, 1619), p. 416.—My quotations are from the copy in the Huntington Library. Editions of Rainolds's Orationes are rather rare, less than a dozen copies being recorded. Compare this passage with Lyly's Euphues, in Bond's edition, I, 191, 196. Note that “Anthemidem” is the ever-present Euphuistic camomile. Rainolds was apparently the first to say “the more it is trodden and pressed downe, the more it spreadeth,” and the Euphuists copied it from him. Classical and medieval writers on natural history refer to the camomile merely as an herb which grows close to the ground.

11 “Oratio Post Festum Natalis Christi, Contra felicitatem Aristotelicam. 1574,” Orationes Duodecim, pp. 199–200.

12 “Oratio Post Festum Michaelis. 1575,” ibid., p. 450.

13 Rainolds greatly influenced Gosson, both by his ideas and by the specific details in his writings. I have found thirty-two passages in Rainolds's orations which parallel passages in Gosson's printed works—and we have only twelve of the hundred-odd lectures Rainolds probably delivered. Oxford students were subject to fine if they did not take lecture notes, and Gosson, when he came to London, evidently brought with him a paper book of notes which he used in composing his various prose works.

14 The Schoole of Abuse, ed. Edward Arber (London, 1868), p. 50.

15 Fowler, History of Corpus Christi College, p. 38.

16 “The Life and Death of John Remolds” in Thomas Fuller's Abel Redevivus, ed. William Nichols (London, 1867), ii, 220.

17 Pettie's home was at Tetsworth, near Oxford. His friendship with William Gager, who did not matriculate until 1574, indicates that, if he did not continue in residence after receiving his degree, he at least kept in close touch with the University until 1574 or later. John Grange, who was also an Oxford man, matriculated at Queen's College in January, 1574/5.

18 Introduction to selections from Stephen Gosson in English Prose Selections, ed. Sir Henry Craik (London, 1893), i, 392.

19 Works, ed. Bond, ii, 5.

20 Works, ed. Grosart, ii, 124.

21 “Epistle Dedicatorie,” Ephemerides of Phialo (London, 1579), sig. ∗4v.

22 Works, ed. A. Feuillerat (Cambridge, 1923), iii, 132.

23 Orationes Duodecim, sig. A3–A3v: Genus fortasse dictionis meae incurret in maiorem reprehensionem; qui è poëtis alijsque scriptoribus tam multa decerpserim, è quibus tam pauca orationibus suis intexuerint oratores Graeci Romanique, principes eloquentiae. Sed animaduertatur velim, auditores, quorum pro discrimine variari debet ratio dicendi … Namque in schola ad doctos & literatos, ea ex historijs fabulis, carminibus, autorum dictis, apophthegmatis, similibusque, adhibenda, quae ad Senatum aut populum non decerent, Vives, peritissimus earum quas tractauit Magister, prudenter obseruauit. Idque Ciceronis adeò exemplo manifestum fiet, si, quae in foro dixit aut Curia, cum disputationibus quas in Tusculano habuit, comparemus. Quanquam si plusculum aut affectui meo, aut nostrorum studijs adolescentulorum in eo indulserim, quàm aut Viues praecepto de dicendi ratione, aut exemplo Ciceronis in Tusculanis probari possit: excusabitis, scio, qui vester est in me amor.

24 Ibid., p. 117.

25 Ibid., p. 120.

26 For a comparison of Euphuism with the writings of these two men, written about 1599, see Hoskins's Directions for Speech and Style, p. 37.