Ascham, Roger

Abstract

This entry treats Roger Ascham (1514/15, Kirkby Wiske–1568, London) as a philosopher of literature, a modern phrase, to be sure, but a broad one meant to cover its large and mobile subject, whose literary philosophy lay conceptualized, as typical from the Middle Ages to the Italian Renaissance, within all intellectual pursuits, within, as it were, philosophy. Poetic, of course, was the invention of Aristotle, given a new lease on life with the recovery of Greek. The analysis centers on the section “*Imitatio” in Ascham’s posthumous The Scholemaster (1570). Chronology belies the ages-old habit of classing Ascham among early Tudor humanists. And if Ascham clearly has more affinities with such humanists as the great Henri Estienne (II) in France and Fulvio Orsini in Italy than with Sir Thomas Elyot, he was a fortunate Hellenist to have been formed, by his own proud testimony, at Saint John’s College, Cambridge. To say humanist or humanism, could Ascham have pronounced those words, is to express Ascham’s implacable desire to build and improve upon in theory and practice a Continental and English tradition of classical learning and to return to the Greek and Latin fontes et origines for English poetry and poetics, the whole thrust and direction of these efforts, however, being in motion. The eye Ascham casts upon poetry and poetics, ancient and modern, is critical, taking as little as possible for granted, looking instead to bring back the intention, meaning, feeling, and effect of the author and work, word by word, place by place.