| Popis: |
This chapter shows that Ben Jonson’s practice in imitating classical poetry was far more deeply indebted to the kinds of ‘formal’ imitation described in Chapter 6 than Jonson himself would have wished to admit. The epigrams of Martial in particular were not in a simple sense ‘sources’ of material for Jonson’s poetry: rather he sought to imitate the rhetorical figurations and manner of Martial and other authors. The chapter argues Jonson’s own (highly derivative) remarks on imitation in the Discoveries should not be simply taken as guides to his practice. It argues for strong affinities between Jonson’s work as a translator and his practice as an imitator. As both an imitator and as a translator Jonson responded not just to the vocabulary and sense of his originals but also to what Cicero in De Optimo Genere Oratorum had termed their ‘figura’, or rhetorical shape. The chapter concludes by showing how Jonson’s mode of ‘formal’ imitation enabled him to create a style which subsequent imitators—both of his works and of classical poetry—could imitate, and how Thomas Randolph, Robert Herrick, and others imitated Jonson’s style and practice. |
