| Invention was for Ben Jonson the pre-eminent criterion of merit: a poet's worth rested on originality of invention. Many of Jonson's own poetic inventions, however, draw so heavily on Roman models that they easily fit the category of imitation. His practice thus stands opposed to the theory scattered through his works. I assemble these disparate comments primarily from the margins of Jonson's canon, occasionally from great works, contextualizing them in relation to history and rhetoric.; Jonson's interest in the Romans exceeded his imitative practice: he re-interpreted the classical past to create a model for the literature he demanded from his peers, thereby inventing an antecedent for meritorious English literature. He himself showed the way by imitating nearly every major poetic and dramatic form practiced in antiquity. He used the weight of Roman precedent to authenticate his own stage innovations, and he advocated the imitation of the Romans as a cure for the ills, by his standards, of English poetry.; Jonson's powers of invention make him one of the most original voices of his era; his devotion to the imitation of ancient models and to the values they express makes him the first neoclassicist and the progenitor of English neoclassicism. But since he was writing in an era when literary criticism and theory were rare, he relied extensively on the marginal accoutrements of published writing to get his message to its audience. These margins are the sources of the materials I study to understand Jonson. In notes taken from his reading, Timber, he assembled supporters to argue his case for him; in the dedications to his plays, he proclaims that he is raising the standards of poetic achievement in England; in the inductions and prologues that frequently introduce his plays and sometimes continue as a running commentary, he sets forth models of behavior for others to follow; and, in his poems he distributes praise and blame according to his classical criteria of quality. Augmented by his forceful personality, these arguments allowed Jonson to rule English literature from the margins during his lifetime and for nearly a hundred years afterward. |
