erasmus, apes of cicero and conceptual blending - kenneth gouwens

Erasmus, Apes of Cicero,and Conceptual Blending

Kenneth Gouwens

In his Ciceronianus of 1528, Erasmus famously ridiculed as apes thosehumanists whose imitations of Cicero were superficial. But what, exactly,did the label mean? The present essay argues that the dialogues metaphori-cal apes are not just ornamental, but are integral to meaning, undergirdingand amplifying Erasmuss criticisms in ways heretofore unexplored. Meth-ods developed in cognitive literary theory provide a framework for under-standing how simian metaphors help to configure the connections thatErasmus explicitly draws between Ciceronianism and paganism. Throughintertextual reading, one can see how this blending of conceptual meta-phors is further complicated by descriptions of apes in a widely circulatedtext that is less studied todaythe Adagiorum chiliades, in which Erasmusgradually expanded glosses regarding monkeys to direct them against ape-like scholars. The interplay of simian metaphors both within and betweenthese disparate texts is itself the process by which the author creates newmetaphors of thought.

This close reading of Erasmus will exemplify how cognitive theory caninform historical writing. Randolph Starn has called for a genealogicalmethod of doing history, framed in terms of a shifting calculus of recurrenttensions and simultaneous narratives. . . .1 While this discourse figures

For comments on multiple drafts of this essay, the author thanks Chanita Goodblatt,Brendan Kane, Brian Roots, Sarah Ross, the anonymous readers for JHI, and especiallyF. Elizabeth Hart.1 Randolph Starn, Whos Afraid of the Renaissance? in The Past and Future of Medie-

Copyright by Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 71, Number 4 (October 2010)

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noveltysome new family connection and a new set of genesit also repre-sents continuity.2 The present essay suggests a way to take Starns non-teleological approach a step farther by grounding the study of historicalchange not in a genealogical metaphor but instead in semantic (and in thissense cognitive) models of how metaphorical systems themselves evolve.

The cognitive revolution in the human sciences has been underwayfor several decades, but its implications for the study of Renaissance cultureare only beginning to be explored.3 Literary scholars appropriations ofcognitive linguistics began over a quarter-century ago in response to GeorgeLakoff and Mark Johnsons Metaphors We Live By, which presented anaccessible case for rethinking metaphors importance in language andthought.4 Subsequently, Lakoff has argued that [m]etaphor is the mainmechanism through which we comprehend abstract concepts and performabstract reasoning.5 Metaphorical language, then, is not just a whimsicaldiversion from what matters; instead, it is a surface manifestation of con-ceptual metaphor, metaphor of thought, and as such is constitutive ofhuman understanding.6 More recently, the literary critic Mark Turner andhis collaborator, the linguist Gilles Fauconnier, have theorized that allhuman cognition, from the seemingly banal to the flamboyantly innovative,consists in the active (if largely unconscious) construction of new concep-tual blends from already existing ones.7 As Turner summarizes the process,blending consists in the mental operation of combining two mental pack-ets of meaningtwo schematic frames of knowledge or two scenarios, forexampleselectively and under constraints to create a third mental packetof meaning that has new, emergent meaning.8

val Studies, ed. John van Engen (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994),12947, at 137.2 Starn, Whos Afraid of the Renaissance? 138.3 E.g., F. Elizabeth Hart, The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies, Philosophyand Literature 25 (2001): 31434; Mary Thomas Crane, Shakespeares Brain: Readingwith Cognitive Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001), 335; Crane,Roman World, Egyptian Earth: Cognitive Difference and Empire in ShakespearesAntony and Cleopatra, Comparative Drama 43 (2009): 117.4 George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By (Chicago: University of Chi-cago Press, 1980).5 George Lakoff, The Contemporary Theory of Metaphor, in Metaphor and Thought,ed. Andrew Ortony, 2d ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 20251, at244.6 Ibid.7 Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and theMinds Hidden Complexities (New York: Basic Books, 2002).8 Mark Turner, The Cognitive Study of Art, Language, and Literature, Poetics Today

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Gouwens Erasmus and Apes of Cicero

Blends need not be consistent with one another for their invocation tobe meaningful; nor do they need to stay the same, and in fact, their ever-evolving changes are the rule and not the exception. Once created,moreover, these packets of meaning become constituent elements forsubsequent blending and so leave traces of their features across genealogiesof thought and language. Thus, blending theory allows us to map the con-struction and transformation over time of meanings across the manydimensions that ideas inhabit, including not only the history of literarytexts and genres (the realm in which this theory is currently being used inliterary studies), but also the history of ideas (the realm in which it will bedeployed here).

As we shall see, Erasmus draws upon existing metaphor systems tocreate emergent blends in which invocations both of humans who ape, andof apes who imitate humans, take on profoundly new significance. Manyof these blends constituent packets of meaning appear in the ancientsources upon which he draws; others are commonplace in humanists dis-cussions of literary imitation, human nature, or Christian piety; and stillothers he takes from experience. By tracing the evolution of Erasmussaccounts of apes and aping, we can see how particular blends lose relevancewhile others that are gaining in cultural salience become dominant. Impor-tantly, in the Ciceronianus Erasmus articulates a sophisticated new concep-tual blend about aping that helps to refine his views on the relationshipbetween Ciceronian rhetoric and his reform ideal of the philosophia Christi.Already at its moment of fullest articulation, however, that blend was losingsaliencesome of its elements falling into disuse, even as others contributedto newly ascendant blends.

Three key constituent elements in the blending in the Ciceronianus,themselves already integral to humanist thought, are: Humans are theimage and likeness of God; Humans are lords of animals; and Speechis the distinguishing characteristic of humans. To these packets of mean-ing Erasmus adds two more that were well-established in Renaissancedebates about literary imitation: Good imitators are sons of Cicero,and Bad imitators are apes of Cicero. Then, he furthers the blendingprocess by adding yet another packet: Christian, not pagan eloquence isthe true imitation of Cicero in the present age. The resultant, highlycomplex blend in the Ciceronianus becomes more specific in definitionwhen set alongside Erasmuss Adages, where another conceptual blend

23 (2002): 920, at 10. For a more technical formulation, see Fauconnier and Turner,The Way We Think, 3957.

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Apes are good imitators of the folly of pseudo-scholarsreverses thedirection of the Ciceronian-to-simian comparison. As simians badimitations of pseudo-scholars make for good satire, the apes risealmost to the level of humans, but early modern conceptions of humannature did not allow them to transgress that boundary. Controversialfrom its inception, Erasmuss blend indicting the Ciceronians as paganiz-ing apes rapidly lost its immediate meaningits cultural saliencegiving way to other conceptual blends in which simians would figure lessprominently.

Cognitive literary theory provides a framework for understandingErasmuss creativity and his development as a thinker in a way that avoidsthe pitfalls of approaches that privilege intentionality, deconstruction, orsocial constructionism.9 Unlike traditional idealist approaches, it groundsthe study of intellectual change in current findings about how the mindactually functions. By focusing upon the play of metaphor across genres,one can trace the largely unconscious processes by which a mind createsemergent meaning. Since those processes operate under constraints bothbiological and cultural, they cannot exemplify the unmoored relativismposited by postmodern theorists. Meanwhile, the fact that they operateselectively, in explosively creative ways, belies theories that incline towardsocial or materialist determinism. In short, the case of Erasmuss simianmetaphors will exemplify how cognitive theory provides a compelling newway to appreciate the vital contributions that talented authors have made,and continue to make, to the history of ideas.

I. HUMAN EXCEPTIONALISM

Erasmuss invocations of monkeys, and by extension of humans whosetechniques of imitation resembled those of monkeys, must be understoodin the context of contemporaneous beliefs about the place of simians in theorder of creation. Only around 1700 did Europeans come to recognize thehominoid great apes (e.g., gorillas, chimpanzees, orangutans), but theyhad been acquainted since antiquity with lesser ones, including Egyptianbaboons, tailed monkeys, and Barbary apes.10 Pliny the Elders Natural His-

9 On the relationships among these approaches see Crane, Shakespeares Brain, 335;F. Elizabeth Hart, Matter, System, and Early Modern Studies: Outlines for a MaterialistLinguistics, Configurations 6 (1998): 31143.10 H. W. Janson, Apes and Ape Lore in the Middle Ages and Renaissance (London: TheWarburg Institute, 1952), 15, 33132, and 33536. The present essay follows conventionin using ape and monkey synonymously as renderings of simia in texts writtenbefore 1700.

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tory provided an intriguing grab-bag of ape lore, such as Mucianuss curi-ous claim that the tailed species have even been known to play atdraughts.11 What particularly struck many ancient authorities was thepropensity of apes to imitate humans in an awkward, unskilled way: a prac-tice that could entertain, but could also be taken as an offensive pretense tohuman status.12 Enniuss observation, quoted by Cicero, neatly summarizesthe unease that the comparison could evoke: how similar is the ape, amost-foul beast, to us!13 Apes appeared with some frequency in the MiddleAges both in the visual arts (e.g., marginal illustrations, architectural sculp-ture) and in written accounts (e.g., folk tales, encyclopedias).14 Bestiariesclaimed that the word simia arose from the animals strong likeness (simili-tudo) to humans, an etymology widely accepted despite Isidore of Sevillesexplicit rejection of it.15 Stories and interpretations varied, but on one pointthere was little dissent: simians were inferior to humans not only in appear-ance and abilities, but also in dignity.

The special emphasis on human dignity in the Renaissance meant ever-clearer delineation of humans superiority over the beasts.16 An influentialprecedent was Ciceros attribution to humans both of uniqueness and of acapacity for moral improvementideas congenial to the voluntaristic strainin Christian and especially Augustinian theology that humanists found soattractive.17 Efforts to reconcile the classical and Christian views encoun-tered obstacles, above all with respect to the role of divine grace in humanachievement, but in cases where the cognitive dissonance between the twocould be neither ignored nor adequately resolved, almost always the Chris-tian view took precedence. Humanists differed from one another in howthey defined human exceptionalism and appropriated that tenet for theirown purposes. Whereas many followed Aristotle and Aquinas in seeing thetripartite soul (memory, intellect, and will) as unique to humans, LorenzoValla in his Dialectical Disputations (1439; later revised) drew the bound-ary elsewhere. According to Valla animals, like humans, had memory, intel-

11 Pliny the Elder, Natural History, Books 811, trans. H. Rackham, 2d ed. (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1983), 151 (8.215).12 Ibid.; Strabo 15.699; Aelian 17.25.13 Cicero, De natura deorum 1.97: simia quam similis turpissima bestia nobis.14 Janson, Apes, remains the best survey of this vast subject.15 Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae 2.2.30.16 Charles Trinkaus, From the Twelfth-Century Renaissance to the Italian: Three Ver-sions of the Dignity of Man, in Renaissance Transformations of Late MedievalThought, ed. Trinkaus (Aldershot: Ashgate/ Variorum, 1999), 4: 6380; R. W. Serjeant-son, The Passions and Animal Language, 15401700, JHI 62 (2001): 42544.17 E.g., Cicero, De natura deorum 2.5466.

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lect, and will, and therefore were called animalia (ensouled). But humans,created directly by God in his image and likeness, were distinct in beingimmortal, and for Valla, this is the basis of human dignity.18 Erasmus woulddeploy the assumption of human superiority over the beasts in his contro-versies with Luther. In Hyperaspistes II, published in the year before theCiceronianus, he suggested that a human whose will is enslaved is effec-tively reduced to the level of the beasts: there is little difference betweenthe natural appetite that we have in common with brute animals and a willthat is inborn in everyone but is so wrenched towards evil that it cannotturn in any way towards the good.19 In short, humanists shared tenetsabout human dignity encompassed two key packets of meaning that maybe conveniently described here in a form resembling that of propositionallogic: (i) Humans are [created in] the image and likeness of God; and (ii)Humans are lords of the animals.

A third packet of meaning, deriving from a long tradition emphasizingthe particularity and power of human speech, would combine with thesetwo to form a new, complex blend. For pagans as well as Christians, theinability of beasts either to speak or to understand speech consigned themirrevocably to a level inferior to that of humans. Both Cicero and the earlyChurch Fathers asserted that eloquent speech had the power to make peo-ple better. The quality of ones speaking ability, moreover, was intricatelyinterrelated with internal disposition. It followed that by studying and imi-tating ancient models of eloquence, people could become more civilizedand, in so doing, distance themselves all the more from savages, who lackedthe ability to speak well, let alone from the beasts, who could not speak atall. If the trope of the civilizing power of eloquence dated back at leastto Isocrates, Ciceros formulation of it was particularly influential in theRenaissance. In his De oratore, for example, the interlocutor Crassus statesthat the one point in which we have our very greatest advantage over thebrute creation is that we hold converse one with another, and can reproduceour thought in word. Who therefore would not rightly admire this faculty,and deem it his duty to exert himself to the utmost in this field, that by sodoing he may surpass men themselves in that particular respect whereinchiefly men are superior to animals?20

18 Trinkaus, From the Twelfth-Century Renaissance to the Italian, 7677.19 Collected Works of Erasmus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1974), 77: 720(hereafter cited as CWE). Cf. CWE, 76: 8283 (in De libero arbitrio [1524]) and 76: 190(in Hyperaspistes I [1526]).20 Cicero, De oratore, ed. and trans. E. W. Sutton and H. Rackham, 2 vols. (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967), 1: 25 (1.3233).

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Unsurprisingly, humanists focused upon how eloquent speech couldelevate humans rather than upon what the lack of it meant for animals.Thus Petrarch, in a letter addressed to Tommaso da Messina, blazoned thetransformative power of reading the ancients aloud: I cannot tell you ofwhat worth are to me in solitude certain familiar and famous words notonly grasped in the mind but actually spoken orally. . . . When through thepower of an unusual sweet temptation I am moved to read them again, theygradually take effect and transfigure my insides with hidden powers.21 Herecalled the stories of Orpheus and Amphion, who through outstandingeloquence could inculcate gentleness and patience in all things, and hereferred in passing to Ciceros De inventione, which attributed the originsof human civilization to one great and wise man who, on account of hisreasoned argument and oratorical talent, transformed his listeners frombeing wild and savage to being kind and gentle.22

Humanists found further support in the Christian tradition for theiremphasis on speech as a distinguishing characteristic of humankind. Valla,for example, pointed out that Lactantius had attributed at least some degreeof reason to animals. Valla speculated that they might initially have beencalled aloga not because they lacked reason, but because they lackedspeech.23 And in the Latin text that Erasmus prepared to accompany hisGreek New Testament of 1516, he rendered logos in John 1:1 not as ver-bum (as the Vulgate had it) but instead as sermo: the word communicated,meaning here that Christ is Gods perfect eloquence speaking to humansachange consistent with earlier emphases on beautiful speech communicat-ing wisdom to the hearer.24 For humanists, the imitation of ancient modelswas a creative enterprise, the texts speaking to them and working changewithin them.25 Reflexive copying missed the point, for only by makingancient sententiae ones own could one reap their full benefit. Thus it wasno empty figure of speech when Erasmus derided certain Latinists as apes:by imitating their exemplar indiscriminately or slavishly, they missed outon the civilizing, humanizing encounter with antiquity that Renaissancehumanists championed. This complex blendi.e., Eloquence separatesthe orator from lesser men just as the faculty of speech separates humans

21 Lett. 1.9, in Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, ed. and trans. Aldo S. Bernardo, 3 vols.(Albany: State University of New York Press, 197585), 1: 4950.22 Cic., De inv. 1.2, trans. mine. Cf. the discussion of the prava virtutis imitatrix in 1.3.23 Trinkaus, From the Twelfth-Century Renaissance to the Italian, 77.24 On ordinary human speech in theology, see Hyperaspistes II (CWE, 77: 35355).25 Peter Mack, Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance, Renaissance Studies19 (2005): 121.

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from beastswould itself contribute significantly to the new blends thatemerge in the Ciceronianus.

II. APES AND IMITATIO BEFORE ERASMUS

Erasmus would also draw upon two crucial conceptual blends to whichPetrarch had given voice. Writing to Boccaccio (ca. 1366), Petrarch relatedhis hope that his amanuensis would develop a unique personal style, butexpressed concern that the youth delights in imitation, and at times is soenraptured by another poets sweetness and so entangled, contrary to goodpoetic practice, in the rules of such a work that he becomes incapable offreeing himself without revealing the originals.26 In Petrarchs view, a com-position ought to resemble its exemplar not as a painting does, where thegreater the similarity the greater the praise for the artist, but instead in theway a son resembles his father.27 Thus, he writes, we may appropriateanothers ideas as well as his coloring but we must abstain from his actualwords: for, with the former, resemblance remains hidden, and with the lat-ter it is glaring. The former creates poets; the second, apes.28 Importantly,Petrarch here contrasts two conceptual blends that would be integral toErasmuss emergent blends: (i) good literary imitators are sons of themodel; and (ii) bad literary imitators are apes of the model.

Of course, Petrarch was not the first or only writer to compare humansto apes. The metaphorical use of simia, which can be traced to antiquity,was frequent in the later Middle Ages.29 For example, the twelfth-centurysatirical poet Johannes de Hauvilla called hypocrisy the ape of character;and deep in Dantes Inferno the alchemist Capocchio refers to himself,damningly, as an apt ape of nature.30 Boccaccio devoted a chapter of hisGenealogy of the Pagan Gods to refuting the charge that poets are merelyapes of the philosophers.31 It would have been less annoying, he says, had

26 Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, 3: 300302 (23.19), at 301.27 Ibid. Cf. Seneca, Epistulae morales 84.8.28 Petrarch, Rerum familiarium libri, 3: 302, alt.29 Ernst Robert Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, trans. WillardR. Trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 53840.30 Dante, Inferno 29.13839.31 Giovanni Boccaccio, Genealogiae (Venice, 1494; repr. New York: Garland, 1976),fol. 108v; Boccaccio on Poetry: Being the Preface and the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Booksof Boccaccios Genealogia Deorum Gentilium in an English Version with IntroductoryEssay and Commentary, ed. and trans. Charles G. Osgood (Princeton: Princeton Univer-sity Press, 1930), 7880; notes, 17677 ( bk. 14, chap. 17); at 78.

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poets detractors instead called them apes of nature, since the poet trieswith all his powers to set forth in noble verse the effects, either of Natureherself, or of her eternal and unalterable operation.32 He even concedesthat in their imitation of nature, poets really are apes; but their critics woulddo better to try to make us all become apes of Christ.33 As H. W. Jansonconvincingly demonstrated, Boccaccios positive valuation of ars simianaturaeArt is the ape of nature, an expression immediately recogniz-able in cognitive terms as a conceptual metaphorwould prove widelyinfluential on Renaissance aesthetic theory.34

Yet Boccaccios partial rehabilitation of aping gained little if anypurchase in subsequent humanists debates regarding prose imitation.Granted, around 1400, likening a Ciceronian stylist to a monkey could stillbe imagined a compliment. In his Life of the Florentine chancellor ColuccioSalutati, Filippo Villani praised him for his imitation of Ciceros familiarletters: in the texture of his prose he has been so robust in dignity that hehas rightly been said to be an ape of Cicero.35 But Salutati himself, in thecourse of defending poets from the charge that they are mere actors, pre-sented simians less sympathetically:

Poets do not gesture but, rather, write what is to be conveyed bygesture. Thus they differ as much from actors as men from apes,for while apes frequently copy men and by a certain natural apti-tude imitate many things men do, still they differ from men in sucha way that although man is one of the most beautiful living crea-tures and in the carriage of its body and in many activities themonkey comes very close to having a likeness to man, the monkeyis one of the ugliest.36

Thus, in his discussion of aping, Salutati resembles Petrarch more thanhe does Boccaccio. Above all, it was Petrarchs contrasting of a conceptual

32 Ibid., 79.33 Ibid., 80.34 Janson, Apes, 29093, calls Boccaccio (at 293) the originator of the Renaissance con-cept of ars simia naturae, as against the mediaeval simia veri with its invidious distinctionbetween reality and representational art, the forgery of reality. 35 For the Latin, see Izora Scott, Controversies Over the Imitation of Cicero in the Renais-sance (Davis, Calif.: Hermagoras Press, 1991), 8 n. 39; Martin L. McLaughlin, LiteraryImitation in the Italian Renaissance: The Theory and Practice of Literary Imitation inItaly from Dante to Bembo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 78.36 Salutati, letter to Pellegrino Zambeccari (May 14, 1399), trans. in The Earthly Repub-lic: Italian Humanists on Government and Society, ed. Benjamin G. Kohl and Ronald G.Witt (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1978), 93114, at 94.

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blend about apish imitation with one concerning filiation that prepared theway for subsequent authors to merge the two in the process of formingnew, more complex blends.

Toward the end of the Quattrocento, Angelo Poliziano and Paolo Cor-tesi gave further definition to these Petrarchan blends and their interrelated-ness. Having received from Cortesi a collection of contemporary lettersmodeled on those of Cicero, Poliziano responded with a scathing critiqueof Cortesis stylistic preferences: you generally do not approve of anyone,as I understand it, unless he copies the features of Cicero. To me, the faceof a bull or a lion seems far more honorable than that of an ape, whichnonetheless is more like a man than they are.37 In Polizianos view, slavishimitation of just one author militates against the expression of inner dispo-sition, whereas eclecticism enables originality: You do not write likeCicero, someone says. So what? I am not Cicero. Yet I do express myself,I think.38

In response, Cortesi clarifies that he wishes to be similar to Cicero notas an ape to a man but as a son to a father. For the ape, that ridiculousimitator, mimics only the deformities and faults of the body in a sort ofdepraved likeness. The son, however, reproduces the appearance, walk,posture, motion, form, voice and finally the shape of his fathers body, butstill has something of his own in this likeness, something natural, somethingdifferent.39 Thus, the imitation of even a single author, if properly prac-ticed, allows for individuation. Poliziano ought not to hinder him fromimitating Cicero, but instead should reproach me for my ignorance in thatI am unable to imitate him well, although I prefer to be a hanger-on andape of Cicero than the pupil or son of others.40 Cortesi was not consistentin making this curious concession: in his dialogue Concerning LearnedMen, when criticizing Andrea Contrarios botched efforts at imitation, hestated that Contrario was not Ciceros alumnus but instead his simia.41 Thenegative connotations would continue, for example in Gianfrancesco Picosletter of September 19, 1512 to the exemplary Ciceronian Pietro Bembo. Inadvocating eclecticism, Pico notes that we should not be apes who chooseto imitate inferior qualities.42 Most historically consequential, however, is

37 Ciceronian Controversies, ed. Joann Dellaneva and trans. Brian Duvick (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2007), 3.38 Ibid.39 Ibid., 9.40 Ibid., 11.41 McLaughlin, Literary Imitation in the Italian Renaissance, 22021.42 Ciceronian Controversies, 27.

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the way that the two Petrarchan conceptual blends described above havebeen subsumed into something new and more complex. The frameworkfrom the packet of meaning, Good imitators are sons of Cicero, struc-tures the resultant blend in which, by implication, bad imitators fall outsidethe space that humans occupy.

III. ERASMUS ON IMITATION,PRIMATES, AND FILIATION

The apes thus far described, while amusing in their injudiciousness, looktame when posed alongside the ones that Erasmus pillories in his Ciceronia-nus. It must be emphasized that Erasmuss frequent references to pseudo-scholars as apes of Cicero are not throwaway lines: on the contrary, theyare packets of meaning integral to his construction of innovative, highlysophisticated conceptual blends. Moreover, the Ciceronianus is not just alighthearted roast of infelicitous stylists: it is alsoindeed, arguably pri-marilya grave indictment of the detrimental impact that Erasmus believedflawed literary imitation was having upon the understanding and communi-cation of Christian truth. With the tools of cognitive theory, we can gainsome access to the workings of Erasmuss mind as he thinks about thiscritical issueto the process by which he appropriates conceptual meta-phors, elaborates upon them, and subsumes them into even more sophisti-cated blends. This blending does not merely express new ideas: it actuallyconstitutes the dynamics of creativity itself.

Early in the Ciceronianus, Erasmus recapitulates with minor variationsthe simian metaphors that Petrarch and Poliziano had deployed. Referringto Italian and especially Roman Latinists, he says that the way those con-temptible Ciceronian apes imitate is that they scrape up a few phrases,idioms, figures, and rhythmical patterns from here and there and thenexhibit just a top surface or veneer of Cicero.43 That which is nearer to theoutward appearance of Cicero may not be the best, a point that the interloc-utor Bulephorus illustrates thus: No animal is more like man in all itsphysical features than the ape; if it had the power of speech in addition, itcould be taken for a man. Nothing is less like a man than a peacock or aswan; but you would, I imagine, prefer to be a swan or a peacock rather

43 Erasmus, Ciceronianus, trans. Betty I. Knott, in CWE, 28: 369, alt.; Opera omnia(Amsterdam: North Holland Publishing Co., 1969), I2: 626 (hereafter cited as ASD).

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than an ape.44 Simians err by doing badly what humans do well, ratherthan striving after and displaying an excellence proper to themselves.

Erasmus complements this Petrarchan blend (The bad literary imita-tor is an ape of the model) with the second detailed above (The goodliterary imitator is a son of the model). He notes how fathers scold sonsof whom they are ashamed, and then suggests, This is the way Cicerowould probably feel towards those ridiculous apes, and this is the way weought to feel, we who are eager to be known as his true and worthysons.45 Here, a dissonance enters the blend: at first, Cicero is imaginedto scold apes as fathers scold wayward sons, but then Ciceros worthyoffspring are supposed to have the same feelings about these bad sons.This slippage into sibling rivalry may betray Erasmuss vehemence towardarch-Ciceronian peers, his animosity spurring him toward metaphori-cal incoherence. Whether or not that be so, Erasmus puts these blends toconstructive use by juxtaposing them with another, which is focused onthe failed imitators influence: they not only make fools of themselves andannoy their betters but also cause collateral damage to Ciceros goodname and to the reputations of his faithful heirs:

Imitators of this kind ought to be equally odious to us and toCicero himselfto us, who are genuinely trying to follow Cicerosexample, because thanks to them we are made a laughing-stockand a joke, as people look at their stupidity and judge us to be thesame; and to Cicero, since people receive a bad impression of him. . . from imitators of this sort, just as unsatisfactory pupils spoilthe reputation of a good teacher, bad children of a good man. . . .46

Furthermore, these failed imitators create obstacles for the young in theirstudies and in their moral development. . . .47 Only after the [i]ndecorousuproar of certain apes has been despised can students proceed to imitateCicero in his totality.48 One must have inborn ability.49 But that abilityneeds to be fostered by a responsible intellectual father (teacher) whoseguidance enables that natural talent of the son (pupil) to flourish. Thus,

44 CWE, 28: 398; ASD, I2: 649.45 CWE, 28: 374; ASD, I2: 630.46 CWE, 28: 373; ASD, I2: 629.47 CWE, 28: 386, alt.; ASD, I2: 639.48 Trans. mine; ASD, I2: 631. Cf. Horace, Ep. 1.19.1920.49 ASD, I2: 63233, 656. Cf. Quintilian 10.2.12.

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Erasmus has added into the blending yet another conceptual metaphor:Bad teachers are obstructors of the legacy of Cicero.

In sum, Erasmus has drawn upon previous formulations involving sim-ians, imitation, and filiation so as to create a highly complex blend withemergent meaning. Significantly, the course of innovation here described isnot one of unilinear progression. Instead, new conceptual systems havearisen from Erasmuss ad hoc elaboration of existing blends: by juxtaposingone with another and integrating elements from them, he has created aninnovative blend that increases the coherence and persuasive force of thepositions he takes in learned debates.

IV. PRIMATES, PATERNITY, AND PAGANISM

By adding still another packet of meaning, taken from his religious ideal ofthe Philosophy of Christ, Erasmus renders this already complex blendexplosive. In the Ciceronianus he castigates those who use pagan vocabu-lary inappropriately to describe Christian rites and beliefs. Thus the inter-locutor Bulephorus recounts a Good Friday sermon that he claims to haveheard in Rome. Replete with classical references, the sermon included noth-ing about Gods salvation of the world through the death of his only son;not unlike the soporific apes whom Poliziano described, this preachersaid not a thing that was appropriate, and stirred no feelings.50 Fittingly,this anecdote leads Bulephorus to inveigh against the Ciceronians, whomhe calls contemptible apes.51 In effect, the apish orator is by implicationa bad son not only of Cicero but of God, whose only begotten son allChristians should seek to imitate. The stakes of failure could not be higher.

Erasmus is attentive to the lost opportunity resulting from this kind ofinappropriateness. Thus he laments the energies that the Flemish humanistChristophe de Longueil put into imitating Cicero, not only because Lon-gueils conception of imitation was flawed, but also because his implemen-tation of it rendered him a less effective advocate of the faith.52 Thisshortcoming is crucial for Erasmus, whose philosophia Christi emphasizedthe persuasive power of Christian truth eloquently expressed. In the firstdedicatory letter to the Ciceronianus, he writes that our prime object is toensure that good letters proclaim the glory of Christ our Lord and God,

50 CWE, 28: 38586; ASD, I2: 63839.51 ASD, I2: 639.52 ASD, I2: 69697.

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with all the richness, brilliance, and magnificence that Cicero displayed inspeaking of things pagan.53 Yet in this very dedication Erasmus expressesreligious concerns regarding the Ciceronians: There is . . . a suspicion ofsomething else afoot under cover of this name, and that is to make uspagans instead of Christians. . . .54 He even portrays Christianity as neces-sary for eloquence: All Christian speech should have the savour of Christ,without whom nothing is pleasing or impressive, useful or creditable, styl-ish or eloquent or learned.55 This savor is evident in epistolary valedictionsthat highlight Gods love for those he has taken unto him as his children:these valedictions perforce surpass even Ciceros both in words and inmeaning.56 Hyper-classicizing, on the other hand, evidences a grave flaw:from what I hear, he writes late in the dialogue, there is at Rome a sortof club of people with more culture than religion.57

The antitype of these apes is Jacopo Sadoleto, a Ciceronian Latinistwho had served as secretary to two popes. Erasmus praises Sadoleto for hisattentiveness to decorum. When addressing matters of the faith, he speaksas Cicero probably would speak on such subjects if he were alive now,that is, in a Christian manner on Christian topics. I can bear this kind ofCiceronian. . . .58 Sadoleto thus exemplifies Erasmuss ideal orator whoseeloquence can persuade people toward what matters most of all: The mys-teries of Christ should be handled not only with learning but with religiousfeeling. . . . one must arouse emotions worthy of God, and that can onlyhappen if you have an intimate grasp of the subject you are treating.59 Acentral goal of the dialogue, as Erasmus wrote in the first dedicatory letter,is to show how we can genuinely represent Cicero, and combine hissupreme powers of expression with the faith of Christ.60

To sum up: the failed imitator is not only (i) an ape, and (ii) an unwor-thy heir or failed student, but also (iii) a proselyte for paganism rather thanfor the philosophia Christi. These topoi occur repeatedly in the dialogue,often in proximity to one another. The first two appear together in thediscussion of the doctrine of the fitting and appropriate that takes placeapproximately a third of the way into the dialogue, soon after the first

53 CWE, 28: 337; ASD, I2: 600 (lett. of February 14, 1528, to Johann von Vlatten).54 Ibid.55 CWE, 28: 439; ASD, I2: 702.56 CWE, 28: 37273; ASD, I2: 628.57 CWE, 28: 432; ASD, I2: 694.58 CWE, 28: 436: ASD, I2: 698.59 CWE, 28: 438; ASD, I2: 701.60 CWE, 28: 338; ASD, I2: 600. In his Life of Jerome, Erasmus similarly placed thesaints Ciceronian eloquence above that of Cicero himself. See Eugene F. Rice, Jr., SaintJerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 134.

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mention of apes.61 The first and third topoi, regarding simian status andpaganism, are combined approximately two-fifths of the way through, inthe section beginning with the account of the Ciceronian sermon.62 Later,they are deployed in reference to Longueil, in whose writings (according toErasmus) persuasio replaces fides, and the word Christian appears onlyby an oversight.63

Toward the end of the dialogue, the three packets of meaning recurclose to one another.64 Apes make an encore appearance, alongside unwor-thy heirs, when Erasmus recounts the exchange between Cortesi and Polizi-ano. But in the closing summation, simian metaphors have yielded the stageto blends comprising genealogy and paganism. Proper filiation from Cicerois an internal matter, depending upon both innate ability and right judg-ment: What is the good of a son being like his father in physical feature ifhe is unlike him in mind and character?65 Cicero was the supreme masterof the art of speaking and, for a pagan, a good man.66 But the purposeof studying the basic disciplines, of studying philosophy, of studying elo-quence, is to know Christ, to celebrate the glory of Christ.67 One mustbeware above all that the current age not be led astray by the outwardshow of the title Ciceronian and turn out not Ciceronian but pagan.68

By the conclusion of the Ciceronianus, the blending of the filial andreligious themes has taken on a life of its own: The failed imitator ofCicero is a pagan. The discourse on apishness, which provided the concep-tual glue that enabled the emergence of this new blend, is no longerimperative for coherence in the ascendant conceptual framework. Thus atprecisely the moment that Erasmuss discourse on apish imitators receivesits most sophisticated articulation, it is already being supplanted by otherblends.

V. APES AND APING IN THE ADAGIA

In his Adages Erasmus glosses classical sayings about monkeys in ways thatoffer a counterpoint to the apes in the Ciceronianus. From 1500 to 1536,

61 ASD, I2: 62831; CWE, 28: 37377. Ciceronis simii first appears on ASD, I2:626; CWE, 28: 369.62 ASD, I2: 63750; CWE, 28: 384400.63 ASD, I2: 69298, at 697; CWE, 28: 43036, at 435.64 ASD, I2, 7059; CWE, 28: 44348.65 ASD, I2: 709; CWE, 28: 448.66 ASD, I2: 707; CWE, 28: 445.67 ASD, I2: 709; CWE, 28: 447.68 ASD, I2: 709; CWE, 28: 447.

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the compendium grew from 818 entries with brief glosses, to 4,251 entries,many with extensive commentaries. The collection as a whole, as MargaretMann Phillips wrote, serves to recapture, in this handy portmanteau form,the outlook and way of life of the classical world, through its customs,legends, and social institutions, and to put within reach of a modern publicthe accumulated wisdom of the past.69 Moreover, as Peter Mack recentlyargued, its survey of usage has the effect of juxtaposing different philo-sophical and literary attitudes to life, and its rhetorical elaborations ofreceived ethical principles could . . . lead to new ways of answering ques-tions of individual and public morality.70

To date, however, the adages about animals have received little seriousscrutiny. For Phillips, they show the Adages at its most frivolous and leastmodern. They form a kind of Bestiary. . . .71 When viewed through thelens of cognitive literary theory, however, Erasmuss changing uses of ani-mal lore to describe human behavior may tell us quite a lotand this isespecially the case for the adages about monkeys, given the tightly policedborder between the simian and the human in Renaissance Europe.72 In tenadages about monkeys that appear in the Adagiorum chiliades of 1508,Erasmus firmly established the blend, Apes are good imitators of humanfolly. By analyzing addenda to these simian glosses in revised editionsfrom 1515 to 1533, we can trace how the changes render their meaningsboth darker and more pointed in application, giving rise to blends as unset-tling as they are complex.

To be sure, the portrayals of apes even in the Adages of 1508 couldhave done little positive for the animals image. In explaining the proverbAn ape is an ape, though clad in gold, Erasmus retells Lucians storyabout an Egyptian king who taught some monkeys to dance, masked andattired in scarlet. Initially compelling, the performance fell apart when aspectator scattered nuts before the apes, who ceased dancing and foughtover them. Thus they instantly became monkeys again.73 Another adage,Hercules and an ape, highlights a more insidious aspect of simian nature,the capacity to hoodwink: whereas Hercules excels in strength, theapes power lies in sneaky tricks.74 But if monkeys are ridiculous and

69 Margaret Mann Phillips, The Adages of Erasmus: A Study with Translations (Cam-bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1964), 8.70 Mack, Rhetoric, Ethics, and Reading in the Renaissance, 10 and 1.71 Phillips, The Adages of Erasmus, 18.72 Kenneth Gouwens, Human Exceptionalism, in The Renaissance World, ed. JohnJeffries Martin (London: Routledge, 2007), 41534.73 Adagia I.vii.11; CWE, 32: 72; ASD, II2: 134. Cf. Lucian, Piscator 36.74 Adagia III.v.9; CWE, 35: 71, alt.; ASD, II5: 300.

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tricky in and of themselves, in the 1508 edition they more often serve thepurpose of holding the mirror up to human folly. Thus the proverb Adonkey among apes is taken to describe how someone dull-witted falls inamong satirical and insolent people who mock their hapless victim withimpunity.75 More seriously, as one sees in the adage An ape in purple,the deception may consist in a veneer of cultured elegance that camouflages,albeit incompletely, a foulness beneath. The phrase can be applied, saysErasmus, to those whose true nature, though they may be wearing veryfine clothes, is obvious from their expression and character, as well asto those who have some inappropriate dignity thrust upon them, or whensomething nasty in itself is unsuitably decked out with ornament from someunconnected or external source.76

Already in 1508, Erasmus occasionally likens apes to pseudo-intellectuals. Thus the adage No [aged] monkey was ever caught in a trapis [o]ften applied to clever and slippery talkers who cannot be caughtout.77 Similarly, A painted monkey, which refers directly to an ugly oldwoman made up like a prostitute, can also illustrate an idea: for example,if someone dresses up an immoral argument with rhetorical trappings sothat it seems honest.78 The two remaining images from 1508 point to thesimian as unable even to approach the boundary that separates it from thehuman. Erasmus glosses The prettiest ape is hideous as referring tothings which are intrinsically defective, and by no means to be comparedwith even the lowest specimens of the class of things that possess anymerit. . . .79 And The tragical ape appears to be practically a simulacrumof the human: Ape, like manikin, is the word for what is scarcely a manand more like a pale copy of one. . . .80

In subsequent expansions, Erasmus adds further shading to some ofthese adages, directing their thrust at scholars of the type lampooned in theCiceronianus. Whereas in 1508 the gloss of An ape in purple ended withthe observation What could be more ridiculous? the 1515 edition contin-ues: And yet this is a thing we quite often see in a household where theykeep monkeys as pets: they dress them up with plenty of finery to look asmuch like human beings as possible, sometimes even in purple, so as to

75 Adagia I.v.41; CWE, 31: 421; ASD, II1: 11718.76 Adagia I.vii.10; CWE, 32: 71, alt.; ASD, II2: 134.77 Adagia I.x.31; CWE, 32: 247; ASD, II2: 931. Cf. CWE, 32: 375n: This adage shouldsurely run No aged monkey . . .; it is a doublet of I x 17.78 Adagia III.vii.62; CWE, 35: 25354; ASD, II6: 45758.79 Adagia II.v.54; CWE, 33: 26566; ASD, II3: 442.80 Adagia II.viii.95; CWE, 34: 87; ASD, II4: 210.

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deceive people who do not look carefully or have seen nothing like itbefore. . . .81 Erasmus now ends the gloss by turning around the compari-son: How many apes of this kind one can see in princes courts, whomyou will find, if you strip them of their purple, their collars and their jewels,to be no better than any cobbler!82 Importantly, in this addendum Erasmusrefers to apelike courtiers with the rare masculine form (simios), which hewould use consistently when ridiculing apes of Cicero in the Ciceronia-nus. In so doing, he may well be following Horace, who used the masculinesimius to refer to an imitator lacking in creative imagination.83

The 1526 edition of the Adagia incorporated further significantaddenda. The entry Pretty monkey had initially appropriated Pindarsimage of children petting and praising an ape, applying the image to casesin which someone is praised falsely through flattery.84 Now, Erasmusadds further lore drawn from Pliny, whose Natural History he had recentlyedited for Froben (Basel, 1525): these animals have a particular self-love,so that they are sensitive to praise, and take pleasure in mirrors, and enjoyallowing their young to be touched, and themselves deprive their youngof life by means of embraces.85 Thus self-indulgence turns fatal, bringinggenealogy to an abrupt end. Also in 1526, Erasmus enhances the descrip-tion, in No [aged] monkey was ever caught in a trap, of the slick-talkerwho has misattributed a quotation. Being confronted with the textualsource, the blunderer further equivocates: It might happen by chance hesaid that the same line should occur in different poets. 86 Finally, whereasin 1515 (when glossing An ape in purple) Erasmus had described as sim-ios those courtiers whose apparent elegance thinly concealed inadequacy,here he adds the word simius in reference to the scholar who is as slipperyas he is sloppy.87

Erasmus made further noteworthy additions in the 1528 edition. ToAn aged ape needs time, already applied to a deceiver eventually getting

81 CWE, 32: 71, alt.; ASD, II2: 134.82 Ibid.83 Horace, Sermones 1.10.1619; see Michael C. J. Putnam, Poetic Interplay: Catullusand Horace (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 1. Cf. Seneca the Elder, Con-troversiae 9.3.1213, where simius occurs amidst a dispute over filiation. Erasmus hadincluded the Controversiae in an edition of the younger Senecas works (1515; rev. ed.,1529). Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages, 53839, cites two otherinstances of simius, in Claudian and Johannes de Hauvilla, respectively.84 Adagia III.v.89; CWE, 35: 119; ASD, II5: 340.85 CWE, 35: 119, alt. On self-love, cf. Adagia I.iii.92.86 CWE, 32: 247; ASD, II2: 438.87 CWE, 32: 71; ASD, II2: 134.

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his comeuppance, Erasmus appended a cautionary note: sooner or latersome accident brings hidden villainy [dissimulatam malitiam] into theopen.88 A second addendum extends the application of An ape in purplebeyond superficial courtiers to those who aim at a venerable appearancewith a long beard and a flowing gown. Augustine somewhere calls suchmen rather neatly cloak-deep philosophers. 89

In sum, the apes of the Adages initially provide a ridiculous sideshowor, more seriously, mock human folly by imitating it well. Increasingly,however, Erasmus augments the prominence of the intention to deceive:in particular, he likens to apes those would-be scholars who pretend to alearnedness beyond their abilities. From the outset, he ridicules this impos-ture, but later he warns the pretenders that they will be caught out. Thus,over time, the portrayals of diverting, mocking apes recede into the back-ground, making way for apish pseudo-scholars whose imitation of theirbetters, intended to mislead, is deeply dishonest. Since Erasmus revised theAdages over the years in accordance with his current reading and with hischanging perception of a serious cultural crisis, he may not have been awareof the shifting meanings of his appropriations of apesshifts heretoforeunnoted, in fact, by scholars of Erasmus. Yet through the lens of cognitivetheory, we can see how over the course of expansion the initial, fairly innoc-uous metaphors about apes imitating human folly sit increasingly uneasilyalongside emergent blends to which they have themselves become constit-uent packets of meaning: in particular, the complex blends Apes are goodimitators of the folly of pseudo-scholars, and, from a reversed perspective,Pseudo-scholars are apes whose imposture will be discovered. Theseblends juxtapose poignantly with the ones in the Ciceronianus. When apesamuse through their awkward imitation of humans, they may evoke sympa-thy, inasmuch as their aspirations to rise above their station are doomed tofailure. By contrast, when apish humans use badly the superior nature withwhich they have been gifted, they sink almost to a sub-human levela fail-ing far more pernicious than anything of which simians are capable.

Toward the end of his life, Erasmus came to see both his reform idealand his reputation as being besieged from all sides. In Phillipss felicitousturn of phrase, Never did a man have so many enemies, or so he felt.90

Spurned by those Catholics who thought his humanistic reform ideal mis-guided and viewed him as crypto-Protestant, he was rejected by Luther and

88 Adagia II.v.14; CWE, 33: 248; ASD, II3: 414.89 CWE, 32: 71; ASD, II2: 134. Cf. Augustine, Epist. 1.1; Lucian, Piscator 37.90 Phillips, The Adages of Erasmus, 143. (emphasis added)

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his followers as a man who lacked the courage of his convictionsor, farworse, one whose faith was only superficial. In a letter of early 1529, Eras-mus forcefully asserted his Christian filiation: when tempted to vengeful-ness (he writes) he rejects thoughts that would lead him to place impioushands on Mother Church, who has fed him with the word of God and hasnurtured and invigorated him with the sacraments.91 Being a faithful son ofthe Churchwhich is, theologically, the bride of Christdoes not precludehis likening himself to Hercules; but whereas Hercules had to sustain theattack of only one animal at a time, Erasmus sees himself as assailed simul-taneously by creatures great and small, ranging from lions and hydras tognats and fleas.92

Material added to the 1533 edition of the Adagia suggests a new inten-sity in his war on pseudo-scholars. He further glosses Hercules and anape with the well-known story about the brothers Perperi [sic, for Cer-copians], whom Hercules tied together and hung up from his club. It issaid they were turned into apes [simios].93 Thus the masculine, used forpretenders to learnedness, here reduces people to non-human status. Stillmore hostile is the 1533 addition to A monkey with a beard, or with atail: Regulus called Rusticus the Stoics monkey [simium] as an insult,as Pliny relates in his Letters, I think because it was supposed that he actedthe Stoic more with his beard and his cloak than in his morals.94 Theviolence in this passage is only evident to one who knows that L. JuniusArulenus Rusticus was executed under the emperor Domitianironically,on the grounds of his adherence to Stoicism. By implication, then, scholarlyimposture is punished with death.

Ultimately, Erasmus would portray the arch-Ciceronians not as mereproselytes for paganism, but instead as diabolically inspired combatantsagainst him. Shortly before his death in 1536, he wrote to Philipp Melanch-thon:

There is a new faction which is creeping snakelike more exten-sively every day. I do not doubt that behind these instruments isSatan, who would prefer all to be Ciceronian rather than Chris-tian. Many thank me because they have imbibed from my writings,

91 Opus epistolarum Des. Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen et al., 11 vols. (Oxford:Clarendon Press, 190658), 8: 11622 (lett. 2136, to Louis Ber, 30 March 1529), at11920, lines 15559; trans. mine (hereafter cited as EE).92 EE, 8: 117, lines 4650.93 CWE, 35: 71; ASD, II5: 300.94 Adagia III.v.79; CWE, 35: 11213, alt.; ASD, II5: 336. Cf. Pliny, Epist. 1.5.2.

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of whatever kind, some spark of piety. Satan, envying Christ thisslight gain, is goading on those contemptible ones.95

Yet Erasmuss sophisticated blend regarding Christian eloquence wasalready losing salience, as too was Ciceronianismand for related reasons.

VI. THE DECLINE FROM RELEVANCEOF CICERONIAN APES

Already in the 1520s, at the point of its highest elaboration, Erasmuss idealof filiation from both classical and Christian antiquity was coming undersiege from the Reformation. For Luther, pagan philosophy and Christiantheology were fundamentally incompatible, and the doctrine of justificationby faith alone raised troubling questions about whether eloquence couldpersuade people to the good. He urged the reading of Scripture not becauseit could morally elevate but instead because it served to alert people to theirfallen condition and their need for God. For Luther, aping could stillmean flawed imitation, but the error had nothing to do with literary style:people become apes of their fathers by imitating only their outwardworks and not their faith, a fatal mistake that is the origin of all forms ofidolatry.96 Proper filiation from Christ there was, but a democratized filia-tion that extended (or was imputed) to all believers. Meanwhile, as doc-trinal orthodoxy became paramount, Catholic theologians condemnedErasmuss efforts to Christianize virtuous pagansor at least the virtuouswritings of pagans.

The conceptual blends of the Ciceronianus also soon lost salience inliterary method and theory, largely thanks to Petrus Ramus, who separatedthe practice of oratory from the moral principles that Renaissance human-ists had believed to inhere in that practice.97 His frontal assault upon Quin-tilians assertion that the perfect orator must be a good man, a claimintegral to Erasmuss philosophia Christi, meant that subsequent scholars

95 EE, 11: 334 (lett. 3127, 6 June 1536): Est nova factio, quae in dies serpit latius. Necdubium est, quin haec organa moveat Satanas, qui mallet omnes esse Ciceronianos quamChristianos. Multi mihi gratias agunt quod e scriptis meis, qualiacunque sunt, aliquampietatis scintillam hauserint. Hoc lucelli Satanas Christo invidens instigat istos.96 Martin Luther, Works, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan et al., 55 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Pub-lishing House, 195586), 4: 328. See Gouwens, Human Exceptionalism, 42122.97 Anthony Grafton and Lisa Jardine, From Humanism to the Humanities: Education andthe Liberal Arts in Fifteenth- and Sixteenth-Century Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1986), 161200.

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could not simply take it as a given. Gabriel Harveys Ciceronianus (1577),which advocated eclectic imitation along Ramist lines, labeled Romanhumanists apes or shadows or even bastard offspring of Cicero, thusinvoking Erasmuss simian and filial blends.98 But even Harvey, not alwaysthe most astute cultural critic, recognized that the debate had become asideshow: those little crows and apes of Cicero were long ago driven fromthe stage by the hissing and laughter of the learned. . . .99

A third, related factor was the growing discomfort of moderns regard-ing their scholarly forebears. As Europeans moved beyond the idealizationof antiquity to challenge its authority in fields ranging from literary excel-lence and philology to the means of gaining knowledge about the naturalworld, the question of being either apes of Cicero or his direct and legiti-mate heirs lost salience: the supersession of the ancients perforce entailed adecline in the impulse to trace ones lineage to them. That transformationwas already underway, to be sure, in the works of numerous humanists,including Petrarch and Erasmus, who sought to counterbalance explicitmodeling on antiquity with assertions of creativity. Still, these eclectic imi-tators idealized literary imitation in which ones composition resembles itsmodel as a son does a father: a conceptual metaphor that betrays an ata-vism that would become highly suspect by the time of Montaigne. In short,the contrasting of apish imitation with the more faithful and successfulfilial kind could only become less meaningful as scholars became suspi-cious and perhaps anxious about acknowledging, let alone advertising,their indebtedness to the ancients.

VII. CONCLUSION

Methods drawn from cognitive literary theory make possible a freshapproach to understanding Erasmuss creativity and its historical signifi-cance. As he engaged current debates about imitation, classicism, humannature, and religion, his interpretation of their interrelatedness both tookshape and found expression in the blending of conceptual metaphors. Tobe sure, in formulating new syntheses, he could and did self-consciouslyexploit his prodigious knowledge of classical and Christian literature. But

98 Gabriel Harvey, Ciceronianus, ed. Harold S. Wilson and trans. Clarence A. Forbes(Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1945), 82.99 Gabriel Harvey, Rhetor, ed. and trans. Mark Reynolds (http://comp.uark.edu/mreynold/rheteng.html; accessed May 21, 2009), 56.

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the dynamics by which he created emergent meaning from those elementsand others may best be understood not as the purposive construction of asystem, but instead as an ad hoc, largely unconscious process that couldhave led to a vast range of outcomes. Delighting in language, Erasmussmind articulated extraordinarily rich conceptual metaphors and blendedthem with one another in explosively creative ways. Focusing closely uponthe simian blends in his writings, the present essay explores that mind atwork and at playfunctions by no means clearly distinct from each other.When the humanists mind picks up and blends conceptual metaphors,unpredictable things happen. Significantly, in the Ciceronianus, complexmetaphors regarding simians help to enable the unexpected creation of arobust blend in which apes need no longer be invoked: The failed imitatorof Cicero is a pagan.

The approach modeled in this case-study may contribute to currentdiscussions regarding how intellectual history is conceived and written. Thephilosophia Christi of Erasmus, in which Christian belief is necessary forthat true eloquence which in turn elevates human character, has been criti-cized since its inception as lacking either philosophical or theological rigor.Yet when viewed in cognitive terms, it may be seen to have an integrityquite aside from its truth claims: that is, its articulation of metaphoricalcoherence quite literally makes sense. On a grand scale, might not ournarratives of the construction and transformation of learned discourse beusefully grounded in what is now known about human cognition and cre-ativity? Insofar as a given authors writings influence how learned discourseevolves, attention to conceptual blending will both enrich and sharpen ourunderstanding of the roles of individual, creative minds in shaping thecourse of the history of ideas.

University of Connecticut.

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