From ‘Listen, Lordings’ to ‘Dear Reader’

WILLIAM NELSON From 'Listen, Lordings' to 'Dear Reader' The great stories of the Renaissance, Orlando Furioso, Gerusalemme Liberala, Gargantua, The Faerie Queene, Don Quixote, were composed, not orally as we suppose the Homeric poems were, but with pen and ink, no doubt in book-lined studies, In this respect, if in few others, their authors were like novelists of our time, The novelist, however, not only produces his work in his study but expects that it will normally be consumed in similar privacy, each melnber of his audience in single communion with the whole book before him, Was that the kind of reading envisaged by the storytellers of the Renaissance? Or did they suppose that their tales would be read aloud to audiences large or small, canto by canto, chapter by chapter, perhaps on Tuesdays or Thursdays after dinner? The alternatives, to be sure, are not mutually exclusive, The Renaissance author may have hoped for a reading viva voce at court, in a salon, or by a member of the household to his familiars, and also for private scrutiny by individuals, perhaps by scholars who would recognize his erudite allusions and discover hidden meanings, Yet, especially in a period so conscious of rhetorical principles as the Renaissance, literary works must have been calculated for the occasion and manner of their primary publication and for their effect upon an intended audience. One or the other kind of presentation must therefore have seemed of first importance, as theatrical performance is to the modem playwright and private reading to the writer of fiction, though the play may also be read privately and the novel aloud in company. Some attention has been given to this question with regard to classical and medieval practice. Except for the valuable work of Walter Ong, which is tangential to it, [ am not aware of any serious attempt to deal with the matter for the Renaissance, Yet it concerns not merely our attempt to recapture the spirit in which the great narratives of that age were received but the very nature and structure of the works themselves. That this is so is directly suggested by a passage in Torquato Tasso's Apologia ill diresa della 'Gerusalemme Liberata.' 1 Tasso is defending his father's Amadigi against critical strictures, When Bernardo Tasso was at the Spanish court, Tasso says, he was asked by eminent gentlemen of the court to compose a poem on the subject of UTQ, Voillme XLVl , Number 2 , Wit/ter 1976/7 'LISTEN, LORDINGS' 111 Amadis of Gaul. Following the precepts of the art of poetry and particularly those of Aristotle he decided to make a poem with a single hero and a single action and so designed his plot. The result was disastrous. 'He read a number of cantos to the prince his patron. When he began to read, the room was full of the courtly audience. But at the end all had disappeared .' Bernardo therefore reluctantly abandoned Aristotelian direction and, against his better judgment, rewrote his poem in order to please his audience. How and why the practice of public presentation might have affected the composition and reception of the Amadigi and works like it are questions I shall consider later. It is first necessary to find out whether such reading was in fact customary. The failure of the Renaissance to conduct statistical surveys by questionnaire makes a scientifically reliable conclusion unattainable. But I find such evidence as there is persuasive . Reading aloud to an audience, not only of narrative but of all kinds of composition, whether verse or prose, was certainly customary in classical times. Moses Hadas writes: 'Among the Greeks the regular method of publication was by public recitation, at first, significantly, by the author himself, and then by professional readers or actors, and public recitation continued to be the regular method of publication even after books and the art of reading had become common." Homer's poems were read at the Panathenaic festival by relays of reciters, each of whom was required to mark where he had left off for the next in line. Herodotus, says Lucian, seized the occasion of the Olympic games to recite his histories to an audience from...