A Critical Edition of George Whetstone’s 1582 An Heptameron of Civil Discourses

George Whetstone, Diana Shklanka

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN:
  9780367197582
• eBook ISBN:
  9780429516252
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Published in 1987: This edition seeks to make available, for the scholar and the student of Elizabethan literature, an accurate text of an Heptameron of Civill Discourses.

EXPLANATORY NOTES

Works Frequently Cited

Full bibliographic citations are given below, or in the Explanatory Notes, only for works that are not listed in the bibliography. Classical references in the Notes are to texts in the Loeb Classical Library; Biblical references are to the Geneva Bible (1560; facsimile rpt. Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Press, 1969).

Whetstone’s Works:

Bacon	A Remembraunce of Sir Nicholas Bacon (1579)
CLS	The Censure of a Loyall Subject (1587)
Dier	A Remembraunce of Sir James Dier (1582)
EM	The English Myrror (1586)
HRS	The Honorable Reputation of a Souldier (1585)
MMC	A Mirour for Magestrates of Cyties (1584)
PC	Promos and Cassandra (1578)
RR	The Rocke of Regard (1576)
TT	A Touchstone for the Time (1584)

The Bestiary	T. H. White, trans., The Bestiary; A Book of Beasts, 12th Cent. (New York: Putnams, 1954).
Cartari	Vincenzo Cartari, The Fountaine of Ancient Fiction, trans. Richard Linche (London, 1599).
Castiglione	Baldassare Castiglione, The Book of the Courtier, trans. Sir Thomas Hoby, 1561 (London: Dent, 1928).
Cooper	Thomas Cooper, “Dictionarium Historicum et Poeticum” in Thesaurus Linguae Romanae et Britannicae (1565; facsimile rpt. Menston, Eng.: Scolar Press, 1969).
Du Verdier’s Mexia	Pedro Mexia, Les Piverses Leçons d’Antoine du Verdier … suivans celles de Pierre Messie (Lyon, 1592), as quoted in Izard (see below).
Gascoigne,	The Adventures of Master F.J In A Hundreth Sundrie Flowres, ed. C. T. Prouty (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri, 1942).
Gruget’s Mexia	Pedro Mexia, Les Diverse Leçons de Pierre Messie, trans. Claude Gruget (Lyon, 1592).
Harl.M	A True Description and Direction of What is Most Worthy to be Seen in All Italy, c. 1600, Harleian Miscellany (1810; rpt. New York: AMS, 1965), V, 1-41.
Izard	Thomas C. Izard, George Whetstone, Mid–Elizabethan Gentleman of Letters (1942; rpt. New York: AMS, 1966).
Lyly	John Lyly, Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit; Euphues and His England, ed. M. W. Croll and H. Clemons (1916; rpt. New York: Russell, 1964).
Montaigne	Michel de Montaigne, The Diary of Montaigne’s Journey to Italy in 1580 and 1581, trans. E. J. Trechmann (New York: Harcourt, 1927).
ODEP	The Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, 3rd ed., rev. F. P. Wilson (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970).
OED	The Oxford English Dictionary, ed. Sir J. A. H. Murray et al., 12v. and Suppl. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933, 1972).
Ovid Met.	Metamorphoses, trans. F. J. Miller, 2v. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1921).
Painter	William Painter, The Palace of Pleasure, 1566-67, ed. Joseph Jacobs, 3v. (1890; New York: Dover, 1966).
Pliny	Natural History, trans. H. Rackham, 10v. (London: Heinemann, 1938-62).
Tilley	Morris Palmer Tilley, A Dictionary of the Proverbs in England in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (Ann Arbor: Univ. of Michigan Press, 1950).
Topsell	Edward Topsell, The Historie of Foure-footed Beastes (London, 1607), STC 24123.
Topsell, Serpents.	The Historie of Serpents (London, 1608), STC 24124.

Title Page

1.1 An Heptameron] A work divided into seven days. From Greek ἐπτά (hepta) = seven, and ἠμέρα (haemera) = day. Whetstone is undoubtedly echoing the title of Marguerite de Navarre’s framed collection of tales published in 1559, L’Heptaméron, which in turn is modelled on Boccaccio’s Decameron. In both the Heptaméron and the Decameron, a group of people entertain themselves, in times of flood and of plague respectively, by narrating a series of novellas or tales on successive days. The OED suggests that Boccaccio may have entitled his work on the analogy of the Hexameron, an account by Ambrose of the six days of creation -- a work which inspired many imitations in the Renaissance. The fact that the word “hexameron” became current in English after 1573 testifies to the popularity of this type of writing in Whetstone’s time. For a discussion of other framed novellas, see Introduction, p. lxxvi.

1.2 Civill Discourses] Entertaining discussions appropriate to a refined society; also, discussions on social questions. As T. F. Crane has pointed out in his Italian Social Customs of the Sixteenth Century, such discussions were a popular social game imported from Italy into England in the late sixteenth century. The word “civill” includes the connotations of “educated,” “well-bred,” “polite,” and “polished,” and is derived from the Renaissance ideal of civility, of the civil life (see Introduction, p. xxxix). it might also suggest a type of exposition, civil narration, which deals with “facts in controversy.” (Richarde Rainolde, A Booke Called the Foundacion of Rhetorike, 1563, as quoted by W. G. Crane in Wit and Rhetoric in the Renaissance, (p. 66). Crane also mentions (p. 124) that “discourse” was “a word much in vogue at that time” -- that is, in 1577.)

Both “Civill” and “Discourses” are words that appear frequently in the titles of Renaissance books. Examples that Whetstone may have known are Fenton’s Certaine Tragicall Discourses (1567), Lodowick Bryskett’s A Discourse of Civill Life (written about 1582 but published 1606), Pettie’s translation of Guazzo’s Civile Conversation (1581), and the anonymous Cyvile and Uncyvile Life (1579).

Thus, Whetstone’s title sets up definite expectations: a Renaissance reader would expect his book to be a pleasant series of debates on some topic or topics (in this case, marriage) appropriate to, and of interest to, a polite social gathering, set within a framework of seven days, and including some novellas.

1.4 well Courted] Well behaved in a courtly manner. The phrase originally meant “of the court,” but Whetstone uses it to refer to gentlemen rather than to courtiers.

1.6-8 the better sort … the Inferiour] Superior or inferior in rank or station, in social standing. These phrases are not to be interpreted in an absolute moral sense; however, since social rank and proper conduct were often linked in the Renaissance, Whetstone is probably suggesting some moral judgment.

1.8-9 Civil Government] Well-bred, polite behaviour.

1.16 Civyll Pleasure] Pleasure appropriate to well–bred, cultured persons.

1.17 Morall Noates] Observations of a moral, as opposed to a ribald, nature that are worthy of notice. Whetstone makes the common Renaissance claim that his work combines pleasure and profit -- a claim derived ultimately from Horace, Ars Poetica, 343: Omne tulit punctum, qui miscuit utile dulce (so quoted on the title page of Pettie’s Petite Pallace of Pettie His Pleasure, 1576, and in Timothy Kendall’s Flowers of Epigrammes, 1577, sig. a4^v).

1.20 Formae, nulla fides.] Latin, “Beauty is not to be trusted.” Whetstone also used this motto at the end of his poem in The Paradise of Dainty Devices (1578) and on the title pages of The Rocke of Regard (1576), A Remembraunce of George Gaskoign...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Prefatory Note
• CRITICAL INTRODUCTION
• TEXTUAL INTRODUCTION
• AN HEPTAMERON OF CIVILL DISCOURSES
• EXPLANATORY NOTES
• LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED