may be tuned to the‘highest key of passion’.^14 Likewise, on account of
providing vivid imagery, poetry has a greater impact on moral comportment
than the philosopher’s‘wordish description which doth neither strike, pierce,
nor possess the sight of the soul so much as [poetry] doth’.^15 By imitation the
poet may make his subject‘his own, beautifying it both for further teaching,
and more delighting, as it please him’.^16 And that last phrase is quite import-
ant, foras it please himindicates that the poet has his or her prerogative in
dealing with source material.
As we can see, imitation as a literary practice was a central element in how
Renaissance poets applied thead fontesor‘back to sources’imperatives that
directed their studies within the humanist curriculum. As Erasmus’s and
Bacon’s quotations suggest, we must beware that we do not limit orflatten
notions of imitation to mean mere parroting. We must allow, and perhaps
even expect, that imitation will not preclude genuine poetic invention but will
instead be the perch from which those personalizing, localizing, and updating
imaginative journeys may takeflight. In Erasmus’s case in particular, we
should also note that imitation, as was the case with syncretism, stands in
the service of Christianity. For Erasmus, neither empty imitations of Cicero-
nian mannerisms nor mere doctrinal Christianity were an option. Rather,
education requires the appropriation of ideas through imitation by making
them one’s own in the light of Christianity:
The liberal arts, philosophy, and oratory are learnt to the end that we may know
Christ, that we may celebrate the glory of Christ. This is the whole scope of
learning and eloquence. And we must learn this, viz., that we may imitate what is
essential in Cicero which does not lie in words or at the surface of speech, but in
facts and ideas, in power of mind and judgment. For what advantage is it if the
son reproduced the parent in lines of face, when he is unlike him in mind and
character?^17Thus imitation always included the invention of one’s own style in appropri-
ating ideas for one’s own life and times. Therefore the interdependent notions
of imitation and invention connect to what we may call a cluster of defining
traits of Renaissance poetics: translation, inspiration, emulation, appropri-
ation, adaptation, and so on. While we are complicating our notions of
imitation and multiplying the means by which it may be carried out in later
writing, let us also be aware that within a greater humanistic context imitation
was not only a copying of style, a merely textual practice, but instead a worthy
goal for meaningful living itself, and it could even spur one to an aggressive
sense of competition. Such, at least, is the advice of Baltasar Gracián in
his mid-seventeenth-centuryPocket Oracleof aphorisms. One should‘propose
(^14) Sidney,Apology for Poetry, 110. (^15) Sidney,Apology for Poetry, 107.
(^16) Sidney,Apology for Poetry, 111. (^17) Erasmus,Ciceronianus, 129.
178 Brett Foster