Pedantry and far-fetched allusions

Autor del texto editado: Hallam, Henry
Título de la obra: Introduction to the Literature of Europe, in the Fifteenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth centuries, vol. 3
Autor de la obra: Hallam, Henry
Edición: London: John Murray, 1837
Paginación: pp. 469-470

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Transcripción realizada sobre el ejemplar de la Biblioteca Pública de Nueva York Hallam NAB. Digitalización disponible en (texto completo)

Información técnica

Encoding: Carmen Calzada Borrallo
Transcriptor: Clara Piedad Ramírez Pérez
Revisor: Mercedes Comellas Aguirrezábal

Edición preparada para el Proyecto I+D "BIOGRAFÍAS Y POLÉMICAS: HACIA LA INSTITUCIONALIZACIÓN DE LA LITERATURA Y EL AUTOR" (SILEM II) RTI2018-095664-B-C21 y C22 http://www.uco.es/investigacion/proyectos/silem/index.php

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Sevilla, 4 febrero 2021

Pedantry and far-fetched allusions

Nothing can be more opposite to what is strictly called a classical style, or one formed upon the best models of Greece and Rome, than pedantry. This was nevertheless the weed that overspread the face of literature in those ages when Greece and Rome were the chief objects of veneration. Without an intimate discernment of their beauty it was easy to copy allusions that were no longer intelligible, to counterfeit trains of thought that belonged to past times, to force reluctant idioms into modern form, as some are said to dress after a lady for whom nature has done more than for themselves. From the revival of letters downwards this has been more or less observable in the learned men of Europe, and after that class grew more extensive, in the current literature of modern languages. Pedantry which consisted in unnecessary, and perhaps unintelligible, references to ancient learning, was afterwards combined with other artifices to obtain the same end, far-fetched metaphors and extravagant conceits. The French versifies of the latter end of the sixteenth century were eminent in both, as the works of Ronsard and Du Bartas attest. We might, indeed, take the Creation of Du Bartas more properly than the Euphues of our English Lilly, which though very affected and unpleasing does hardly such violence to common speech and common sense, for the type of the style which, in the early part of the seventeenth century, became popular in several countries, but especially in Spain, through the misplaced labours of Gongora.

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