Synopsis
George Puttenham: The Arte Of English Poesie, Issue 15 — George Puttenham The Arte of English Poesie (1589) is a comprehensive late Tudor manual of English poetics, rhetoric, and social comportment by George Puttenham. Structured in three books—Poets and Poesie, Proportion Poeticall, and Ornament—it surveys the origins and forms of poetry, the virtues of the vulgar English tongue, and the craft of verse. Puttenham argues that poetry is an art of making and persuasion, and he models a courtly, public-facing poetry suited for Queen, Court, Ladies, and Gentlemen. He treats prosody: meter, rhyme, cadence, and the balance of long and short lines; topics include pastoral eclogues, lyric odes, epic histories, and dramatic verse. He offers a taxonomy of rhetorical figures (metaphor, allegory, synecdoche, anaphora, etc.) and an examination of decorum—how language should fit the occasion, audience, and social rank. The Arte influenced later English criticism, its portrait of Elizabethan linguistic ambition, and the status of English as a cultivated tongue.
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