22 Introduction to Prose Writing in English

Dr Madhumita Majumdar

Introduction to Prose Writing in English

How Prose writing began in English Renaissance The Romantics critics who rightly weighed the quality of English Renaissance Prose Francis Bacon, Lyly, Gascoigne as prose writers:

Pamphleteers

Religious Prose

Character sketches

Prose Romances

When did Prose make an entry in English Literature?

It is difficult to concretely state the beginning of prose writing in English Literature. Nevertheless, using Renaissance as a term to describe a literary phenomenon and age, then Sidney’s Arcadia or Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy, or the essays of Bacon and the writings of Milton, and Browne, and of course, the very development of the English Bible are to be seen as a cultural phenomenon that ushered prose writing in English Literature.

Critics in the Romantic Age rediscovered English Renaissance prose

What is interesting is the fact that it is the scholars of the Romantic Age who through their critical appreciation gave Renaissance prose its due credibility at par with the poetry and drama of the age. Foremost credit for this should be given to Coleridge and his circle. It was Coleridge’senthusiastic rediscovery of the prose writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries that changed perception for this genre. For Coleridge, the great models of the classical style in English prose writings were Hooker, Bacon, Milton and Taylor. Coleridge saw the existence of an ‘individual idiom’ in each of the Renaissance prose writers. When speaking of the glory of Renaissance prose writers, Coleridge had Sir Thomas Browne in mind but interestingly it is Jeremy Taylor who won the most extravagant praises from a number of Romantic critics. Charles Lamb was also another Browne enthusiastic but he too had much praise for Taylor saying that the latter had more knowledge and more equipped in providing details of human life and manners. Such was the euphemism that Lamb had ended up comparingTaylor’s gentle prose style and sweetness to none other than Shakespeare! The icing for Taylor came from the pen of another great in the field of essay writing, Hazlitt who had this to say: “when the name of Jeremy Taylor is no longer remembered with reverence, genius will have become a mockery, and virtue an empty shade.” Hazlitt’s prediction had proved wrong as today Taylor is much less remembered than his other contemporaries though the fact had been that Taylor had been regularly reprinted in the eighteenth as well as the nineteenth centuries. On the other hand,Eighteenth Century had not been very enthusiastic about Renaissance prose mostly finding it unreadable. Instead of the usual Bacon, Taylor, this century had more readily accepted Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy that went to have its seventh edition in1676 but thereafter it did not feature mainstream till in1800 when Keats, Lamb and others reclaimed it. Coleridge felt it was the flavour of the native land in the writing of the prose writers of Renaissance that gave them a specific texture. Hazlitt in the introduction to his Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth in which he makes comparative study of Bacon, Browne and Taylor too speaks and endorses this common feature of Renaissance prose in general being rooted in the soil. Again, while writing in The Edinburgh Review in 1812, Scot Francis Jeffrey spoke of prose writers of Renaissance citing Taylor, Burton, Hooker, and Bacon as examples of native poetic genius who outdid any verse that had been written in Europe around that time. Largely, the Romantic critics agreed that English Renaissance prose was a distinctive national product, whose progeny would flourish later in restoration and thenelsewhere in Europe too. Of the lot of prose writing in Renaissance, Bible translation expectedly finds a definitive place. De Quincy sums up that the final Bible translation under the umbrella of state authority was a blessing because a translation under the Pope would not have been so acceptable nor would have been the language so smooth. It would not wrong to say that the Coleridge circle of critics devised various projects to demonstrate the supremacy of English Renaissance prose writing. One was the extensive study of English prose style proposed by Coleridge for the Bibliotheca Britannica, which went the same way as many other Coleridgean projects. Another was the anthologizing of especially luminous extracts from the chosen writers of the period.As mentioned earlier Taylor had been much respected as a prose writer. In this light, let us bring to notice what Lamb had written to Robert Lloyd in 1801. Lamb said it was an easy task to disentangle and understand the rich texture of Taylor’s works! Four years later Coleridge’s friend Basil Montagu, whose Selections from the Works of Taylor, Hooker began with a hundred and fifty pages from Taylor and went on to include Latimer in it. Montaigne’s anthology was successful is proved by the fact that it was reprinted in 1807 and again in 1829. A later Coleridgeinfluenced anthology was Robert ArisWillmott’sPrecious Stones (1850), which not only included Montagu but contained extracts from Sidney, Spenser, and Jonson, as well as other religious writings.Willmott too had published a biography of Jeremy Taylor. His anthology began with Latimer and Cranmer and moved onto the eighteenth century but clearly nothing excited him as Renaissance. He said the prose writers between Elizabeth and Charles II ‘wore purple over armour’. ” Interestingly both Willmott and Lamb used a near metaphor conceiving writing as a dress though for Lamb it was more decorative than it had been for Willmont.

Influences in English Renaissance prose

There is no denying that the literary temper of Elizabethan England was distinguished by a splendid vitality and vivacity and covered a wide range of subjects that was reflected both in prose and poetry of the time. The enthusiasm for the Greek and Latin classics, the passion for extending the limits of human knowledge remains central to English Renaissance as it had been in Italy or France. Hellenism or the desire to cultivate beauty both on the physical and moral level can be felt in the textures of literature of the time. Moral sensibility and its exploration was deeply a part of English Renaissance. It is true that to be appreciating Elizabethan literature one has to see it as having stemmed fromEuropean Renaissance. The Elizabethan studied and imitated foreign authors with aptness and gusto.In spite of this free spirit of borrowing and myriad influences, the national spirit was strong enough in Elizabethan England that gave its literature individuality and thus it was able to survive foreign invasion almost on all levels. This becomes a significant achievement when seen in the light that it was in Italy where the intellectual movement of the Renaissance matured earliest and flourished longest well before sixteenth century when England had hardly achieved any literary repute or merit. In the French Renaissance one gets to see coherent literary harvest, something that English literature of the time lacked. If there is a parallel that English Renaissance then this would be Spanish Renaissance.The career of Cervantes (1547-1616) is parallel to Shakespeare in England. In both Spain and England, the favoured literary genre was drama!

It is most clear from the above discussions that the first harbingers of a literary revival in Tudor England had been influenced by Italy and France. Needless to say that the early Tudor experiments in poetry did not show complexity but prose on the other hand showed simple directness and vigor though monotony was evident in such writings. This probably explains that the works of Surrey, Wyatt, Lord Berners, and their contemporaries almost lost popularity with the end of their lives. Elizabethan period of English literature did not begin right with Queen Elizabeth coming to the English throne, the reason simple: King Henry’s reign had not been marked by rigorous literary activity. There were glimpses of literary activities but it is with Edmund Spenser’s (1552?-99) Shepherds Calendar in 1579 and thereafter Sir Philip Sidney’s (1554-86) Apologie for Poetriethat began the steady flow of literature in England.Strange as it may sound but in the initial years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, the most notable literary work came in the form of a man called Thomas Sackville (1536-1608), a young barrister at that time.. Sackville made two interesting contributions to English literature: he designed a long poem on the vicissitudes of great personages in English history and the blank verse in the play Gorboducthat he wrote in collaboration.

The works of George Gascoigne (1525?-77) need to be talked about though temperamentally it was different from Sackville’s. His inspiration was Italy and the areas that earlier no one had looked at. He wrote both comedy and tragedy. His comedy The Supposes was inspired by Ariosto’s prose work. So if Sackville and Norton’s tragedy taught the Englishmen that blank verse was indeed the most suitable vehicle for tragedy then Gascoigne’s English representation of Ariosto’s Isuppositiproposed that the suitable vehicle for comedy was prose! At the same time Gascoigne showed his interest in another popular genre of Italy that is the novel. Boccaccio had been the earliest master of Italian prose fiction and was overcome in popularity by his disciples namely Bandello and Cinthio. The latter two were quiet popular in the second half of Queen Elizabeth’s reign. It was Gascoigne who ignited the interest in contemporary Italian novel by translating one of Bandello’s popular stories in English. He also wrote a satire in rhyming verse in emulation of Juvenal and Perseus that can be taken as the forerunner of English poetic and rounded it off with writing with the first critical treatise on poetic workmanship and technique.

Prose and poetry almost hand in hand

In the year Shepherd’s Calendar gave English poetry its boost, John Lyly (1554-1606), who was about the same age as Spenser, published the first volume of his moral romance calledEuphues; the second and concluding volume followed within a year most notably in prose. The moral journey and its subject is not so much of interest as is the author’s style of using direct mannerism in prose. We see in him, the usage of balanced sentences, antitheses couples with a slightly epigrammatic tendency, also with equal ease uses alliteration as well as similes. The styleof Lyly shows affectation of early Spanish prose reminding one of the mannered proses of Guevara. This should not be used as an argument that Lyly was not original because his compositions were marked by self-imposed rules of writing. Nearly all his nine comedies were written and produced between 1581 and 1593. With one exception they are in prose, though all are interspersed with simply worded songs.Naturally, Euphuesgot due recognition and also simulated a desire of taking up prose writing. Euphuesgained such a refined status that the ladies of the Court adored being called Lyly’s scholars and being well parley withEuphuism was a seen as a stamp of culture and civilization. Contemporary prose under the influence of Lyly would be exaggeratingly filled with antitheses and sometimes bizarre allusions. It began with exaggeration in style but it nevertheless tempered English Literatureto move towards epigrammatic style that marked Bacon’s essay. With Bacon’s essay, English prose achieved another level.Lyly’s work opened future English romances being written to various influences ranging from Italy to France but the one quality that seems to have been most assimilated in English prose fiction was his didacticism. Lyly would even go to inspire Sidney’s Arcadia, though Sidney himself had much exposure to many forms of foreign romances. Just not Sidney but even Robert Greene (1560?-92) and his disciple, Thomas Lodge (1558?-1625) unhesitatingly said thattheir works were a sort of continuation of Lyly’s romances. One of Greene’s volumes was namedEuphues, his Censure to Philautus (1587); another was called Menaphon: Camilla’s alarumtoSlumbering Euphues. Lodge’s romance Rosalynde on which Shakespeare based his play of As You likeItcamewith the subsidiary title Euphues’ Golden Legacy.Elizabethan society was undergoing rapid changes in terms of social changes, it saw rise in literacy rates, a growing middle class most importantlythe emergence of literate bourgeois tradesmen. Such changing social structure can be seen in the prose fiction writing but on a much weaker scale of one Thomas Delaney (1543-1600), a silk-weaver by profession. His three tales Jack of Newbwy, The Gentle Craft, and Thomas of Reading (all 1590) show him as a story teller of the bourgeois craftsmen. In the second named, he glorifies the craft of shoemakers. Delaney’s style is quite homely and he found quiet an audience for his works.Thomas Nash (1567-1601) was the most original personality among occasional writers in prose and wrote voraciously on different subjects.Thecontemporary society was satirized by Nash for lacking frankness.Nash was affected by boisterous mode of speech. In his prose romance of Jack Wilton he produced a novel of adventure, the first of its kind in English. Thomas Nashe was influenced by a different source, the picaresque novels of Spain. In these stories the hero, or picaro, is a man of no social standing who is free to travel and engage in adventures. Nashe’s most famous works are The Unfortunate Traveller or the Life of Jack Wilton (1594) and The Terrors of the Night (1594). Thereafter, Dekker subsequently carried on a part of Nash’s work. Dekker is found writing on the darker side of London life but with humourous illuminations.

Drama influences prose

It is largely accepted that the English Renaissance was dominated by drama. Though drama was hugely popularly but there was a section of the public who thought drama was a moral nuisance.The puritans added fuel by suggesting that theatres are part of pagan culture and hence should not find place in a Christian society. Naturally bitter attacks flew. One such came from the pen of Stephen Gosson in 1579 who not only attacked drama in his work but without seeking permission dedicatedit to Sir Philip Sidney who was quiet a name in the literary circle at that time. Sidney reacted as we all know through his Apologie for Poetry. Sidney not only supported drama and poetry but initiated a more liberal outlook in literature. And, need we remind ourselves that all these were being said in prose?

The close of the Queen’s reign saw the flourish of prose like never before. The literary flow that reached its zenith in poetry was now to be seen in prose. The subject matter in prose was wide: form travel to religion, to society to politics. The Elizabethan translation of the Bible was long drawn project of the Renaissance prose.The Bishops’ Bible was published in 1568 and was then constantly reprinted until it found culmination in theAuthorized Version of 1611 under the reign of James I.However, the most dignified contribution to prose literature of the age was made by the theologian Richard Hooker (1554-1600) whose style was largely based on Latin models, cumbrous at times but reaching heights of poetic eloquence.Hooker’s masterly work Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Policy is the greatest of the non-fictional prose works of the Elizabethan age. It began appearing volume by volume from 1594 and continued till his death. It was the first book in England which used English for a serious philosophic discussion. Hooker was a Protestant and the purpose in writing the book was to defend the Church of England and to support certain principles of the Church government.Hooker modelled his style on Cicero and his syntax was extremely Latinized.

Francis Bacon

No discussion on Elizabethan prose can be complete without mentioning Francis Bacon (1561-1626) whose career started when Hooker ended his. Bacon was unlike Hooker because he was not adopting the Cicerian model.Bacon borrowed the term and the conception of the essay from the French writer Montaigne whoseEssays first appeared in 1580.Incidentally Bacon’s great philosophical work was mostly in Latin prose but when writing in English, Bacon showed equal capability. Like the flavour of the time, Bacon’s English writing was embedded with native taste. In his Advancement of Learning, his chief philosophical work in English, his vocabulary is exceptionally large. Bacon proved his versatility by making an experiment in aphoristic style that virtually came to be identified with him. There is no denying that it is the brevity of his language that gave Bacon his due place in the canon of English Literature.Even though his essays differ from the kind which was later established in England, he is a worthy predecessor of the line of essayists who were to come up in English Literature.

Pamphlet writing: a form of prose writing

Another form of prose that ispamphlet writings also abounded in the era. With the printing press and the Universities providing an ambience of some amount of free expression on various topics, pamphlet writing can be seen as a natural outcome. It was thought that pamphlet writing was not exactly the work to be indulged in by a gentleman scholar, so when Henry Howard, Earl of Northampton, got involved in the prose controversy in the 1580, he was of course an exception. It was a general belief that writers who did not seek remuneration for their work wrote in prestigious genres. Print for a long time continued to be stigmatized and was not seen as respectable. A gentleman did not wish to make his writing public or common. But by 1580s, this disrepute associated with printing was losing its base and it was prestige of different kind to get printed. A little later in the age, Milton was writing some very powerful pamphlets on topics such as divorce, religion etc. Some of the pamphleteers of the time are Thomas Nash, Robert Greene and Thomas Lodge who wrote on varied topics.

Variety in prose writing

Some random names and the kind of subjects they chose to write will acquaint us with variety in prose of Renaissance. William Baldwin (1547–53) wroteBeware the Cat (1553) which is often considered the first novel in English. Then there had been Geoffrey Fenton (1539?–1608), atranslator of stories from French and Italian which were collected as in Certain Tragical Discourses (1567). And it is not possible to forgetGeorge Chapman (1559?-1634) the poet and dramatist who translated classics like Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey. Roger Ascham, a great educationistis known to have written The School of Shooting. His second work, The School Master contains intellectual instructions for the young. Ascham’s prose style is conspicuous for its economy and precision and it was not wrong to call him the first English stylist as far as language is concerned. Thomas More’s Utopia occupies its unique place in the territory of prose writings. One also has to mention Sir Thomas Elyot and Sir John Cheke Elyot’s The Governorwhich is a treatise on moral philosophy and education. Cheke had been a teacher of Greek art at Cambridge. He wrote TheHeart of Sedition which shows the influence of classicism and antiquity. His prose is vigorous, argumentative, eloquent and humorous. Needless to say, the icing on the cake came in the form of Ben Jonson who wrote aphoristic essays that were compiled in The Timber of Discoveries published posthumously in 1641. His essays are moral and critical in nature. John Selden’s Table Talkis sharp and full of aphorisms. As a practitioner of aphoristic essay he stands next only to Bacon and Ben Jonson. He also wrote The Titles of Honour and The History of Titles.John Donne, the metaphysical poet also has quiet a bulk of prose writings to his credit. Ignatius His Conclave (1611) was a satire upon Ignatius Loyola and the Jesuits. Nevertheless, Devotions(1614) oft considered Donne’s best prose work is on his spirituals struggles during illness. He also wrote sermons that number to around 160.

Character writing: a type of essay

The seventeenth century initiated another type of essay writing known as character writing. The character writers could trace their influence to Theophrastus, Seneca and other classical dramatists and amongst the immediate predecessors to Bacon. Amongst those who practiced character essay writing was Thomas Dekker, the author ofThe Bellman of London and A Strange Horse Racewhich is full of vivid character portrayals. Joseph Hall, another character essay writer wroteThe Good Magistrate and Virtues and Vices – a presentation of satirical characters. Next we can mention Thomas Overbury’sCharacterswhich is full of well portrayed characters. He usually packs the characters to some trade or occupationthus creating a sense of contact with such characters. Earle, the author of Microcosmography is superior to both Hall and Overbury as a character writer as his style is more confident and vigorous. Another metaphysical George Herbert wrote A Priest in the Temple or A Country Parsonwhich is actually a short treatise in thirty seven chapters. Each of the characters delineates a phase of the parson’s life, thus giving reality to the character. The aim this work had been to preach of saintly and pious life. Thomas Fuller’sHoly War and Profane States sees him mixing his character sketches with interesting stories. He also imparts personal touch to his essays. Character writings thus cover variety of aspects.

Religious Prose

The age also saw religious controversies. It is thus but natural that prose works that dealt with religious subjects would abound. Some of the religious prose works of the time are: Sir John Tyndale remembered most famously for the Translation of the Bible and the Book of CommonPrayer. This translation formed the basis for Authorized Bible (1611). It is written in traditional prose. His style is simple and direct. The reason was simple: Tyndale wanted the Bible to read by the commonest of the common. Latimer wroteSermon on the Ploughers. There were other sermon writers who wrote in simple and direct manner. At the beginning of the 17th Century, sermon rose to the level of literary importance. Apart from Donne, mention of James Ussher (1581-1656) and Joseph Hall as sermon writers can be made. Ussher a protestant wrote in easy argumentative style. For a long time, his Chronologia Sacra was considered to be the standard work on Biblical Chronology. Hall, on the other hand was the Bishop of Exeter had written a series of satires called Virgidemiarum(1597) that made him run into trouble with the church. A London preacher at that time wielded considerable power.

Prose Romance

Another remarkable development of the time was prose romances. They anticipated novel which came into being during the eighteenth century. The prose romances of this period mostly consisted of tales of adventure as well as of romance, dealing with contemporary life and events of the past, the life at the court and city life. It was by turns humorous and didactic, realistic and again fanciful. In short, it represented the first rough drafts of the English novel. The prose romances of varied forms and shapes were written by many writers. George Gascoigne wrote the Adventures of Master E.J.that gave a lively sketch of English country house life. John Lyly is considered to be the pioneer of the English novel, the first stylist in prose, and the most popular writer of the age as already mentioned in our discussion earlier. It kind of foretells the rise of the novel of manners.It moves away from the fanciful idealism of medieval romance and suggests an interest in contemporary life. Can we ever avoid mentioning Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia (1590) that upholds the restless spirit of adventure of the age? Robert Greene is remembered for his prose romancesPandosta, Mamitiaand Menaphone. His romances are in moral tone and what is interesting is that he sketched very well defined women characters.

Translators

It is well augmented that this discussion on the prose of the age is ended with the topic: translators. No doubt the age showed a zeal for learning and this is prominently apparent when we look at the body of translation work done during the period. Phaer translated Virgil (1558) while Plutarch’s Liveswas translated by North (1579). Senecan plays had been translated by 1581 but Machiavelli’s The Prince had not been translated before 1640. Castiglione’s The Coutyer was translated by Hoby in 1561. There were needless to say many more that only endorses the presence of a vibrant prose culture at that time.

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