Chaucer, More, and English Humanism

Chaucer, More, and English Humanism i The term 'humanism' has always been notoriously loose in its application: on one hand it has been used in a general sense to describe the substitution of a secular world view for an other-worldly, theocentric philosophy,1 on the other in a strictly historical sense to refer to the revival of the litterae humaniores in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.2 In m y invocation of the term, I am using it in its precise historical sense; and in m y allusion to the first generation of English humanists, I refer to the distinctive intellectual circle, consisting of such figures as John Colet, William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre, William Lily, Thomas More, and (by adoption) Erasmus. These m e n were committed to a revival of the study of classical Greek and Latin writers, including the church fathers, as the foundation of educational reform. One striking aspect of this English humanist movement as so defined is its apparently complete repudiation of the vernacular literary tradition. The pupils at Colet's St. Paul's school, for example, were to encounter only 'goode auctors suych as haue the veray Romayne eliquence joyned withe wisdome' such as Tully and Sallust, Virgil and Terence, Jerome and Augustine, and Erasmus: certainly none of 'that ffylthynesse and . . . abusyon which the later blynde worlde brought in' that Colet denounced as 'blotterature'.3 This statute probably reflects the opinion of Erasmus, who, in one of the manuals he contributed for the edification of Colet's schoolmasters, confidently declared that 'all the knowledge which w e recognize as of vital importance to mankind' is contained within the two literatures of Greek and Latin.4 Similarly, vernacular literature finds no place in either Richard Pace's praise of the benefits of a liberal education De fruclu qui ex doctrina percipitur, or in Thomas Elyot's advice on how to educate the prince The Boke Named the Governour. Thomas More's fictional humanist exemplar, Raphael Hythlodaeus in Utopia, reveals himself as even more reductively exclusive than Erasmus, when he confesses that he instructed the ! As by A.F. Leach, The Schools of Medieval England, New York, 1915, 248-9. 2 See P.O. Kristeller, The Classics and Renaissance Thought, Cambridge, Mass, 1955, 5-13; and Alistair Fox, Interpreting English Humanism, in Reassessing the Henrician Age: Humanism, Politics and Reform 1500-1550, ed. Alistair Fox and John Guy, Oxford, 1986. 3 J.J. Lupton, A Life of John Colet, D.D., London, 1887; reprinted New York, 1974, Appendix A, 279-80. 4 'His duabus linguis omnia ferme sunt prodita quae digna cognitu videantur': De ratione studee, ed. Jean-Claude Margolin, in Opera omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, Amsterdam, 1969- , I, Pt. 2, 114. 64 A. Fox Utopians only in Greek, 'for in Latin there was nothing, apart from history and poetry, which seemed likely to gain their great approval.'5 In some of these cases neglect of vernacular literature might be explained as merely the by-product of propaganda for the N e w Learning, but there are signs that it derived from deeper prejudices. There is not, for example, a single vernacular work in the extant inventory of William Grocyn's library,6 implying, perhaps, the low estimation for native writings, and even for the language itself, that one finds in the works of Grocyn's younger colleague, Elyot. In The Governour Elyot denies any merit to the training in eloquence received by lawyers at the Inns of Court simply on the grounds that the very 'tonge wherein it is spoken is barbarouse'7 - a disparagement uttered by others so frequently as to become a commonplace.8 The same sentiment extends into Elyot's view of English fiction. For instance, on the one occasion he alludes to a work by Chaucer, in Pasquil the Playne, the reference is derogatory; Pasquil on meeting Gnato the flatterer and observing that he has the N e w Testament in his hand, but Troilus and Criseyde secreted in his bosom, exclaims, 'Lord what discord is bitwene these two bookes. . . . As god helpe me, as moche as betwene trouth & lesing'9 - a typical humanist sentiment. The outward lineaments of humanism, then...