Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance

Another scholar in classical rhetoric was Roger Ascham, whose Scholemaster (1570) contains the first reference in England to Aristotle’s Poetics. But except as a teacher of language and of literature Ascham does not treat of poetry. Following Quintilian, he classifies literature into genres of poetry, history, philosophy, and oratory, each with its appropriate subdivisions. Both Ascham and Quintilian are interested in literature as professors who must organize a field for presentation to students; and as is frequently the case, the result is apt to become arid, schematic, and lifeless.