The Performance of Conviction: Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English RenaissanceCornell University Press, 1994 - 232 sider Belief or skepticism, obedience or resistance to authority, theatricality or stoic self-possession - Kenneth J.E. Graham explores these alternatives in the culture of early modern England. Focusing on plainness - a stylistic feature of much Renaissance writing - he surveys texts including Wyatt's anti-courtly verse, the Puritan Admonition to Parliament, Ascham's Scholemaster, Greville's non-dramatic writings, and works of Shakespearean tragedy, revenge tragedy, and verse satire. Graham shows how plainness functions not only as a literary style, but also as a mode of political and religious rhetoric that reflects powerful historical currents. Plainness is a result of the claim to possess the plain truth - a self-evident, absolute truth. In the absence of rhetorical criteria for truth, however, plainness registers a conviction that is plain to those who share it but opaque to those who don't. The plain truth can denote either the truth proclaimed and enforced by a public authority, whether liberal or conservative, or the truth of private conviction, which may oppose public authority. According to Graham, the pervasiveness of plainness in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is evidence of a failure of consensus, as authorities made conflicting, irresolvable claims to certainty. The rhetoric of plainness, he asserts, reveals a profound opposition between the attitude of persuasion, a moderately skeptical, pragmatic, and inclusive outlook characteristic of Erasmian humanism, and a stance of conviction, an absolutist, essentialist, and exclusive attitude more typical of Neostoicism and political and moral conservatism. |
Innhold
Privilege and | 25 |
Educational Authority and the Plain Truth in | 50 |
Fulke Greville and | 93 |
The Search | 125 |
Desire Truth and Power | 168 |
Plainness and | 190 |
Vanlige uttrykk og setninger
action Admonition anger angry antirhetorical Antonio Antonio and Mellida Antonio's Revenge argues Ascham attempt authority believe Caelica Cambridge University Press Cartwright chap Christian church claim common confusion conscience Cordelia Coriolanus critics desire discipline doctrine doth Drama Elizabethan English ethical example faith Fool forms Fulke Greville Further references Greville's hath Hieronimo historical human humanist ideal John John Marston judge judgment justice Kent King Lear knowledge language Lear's learning Lute Luther Marston means ment moral Neostoic obedience Oxford peace plain style plain truth plainspeaking play poem poetry political preaching Princeton private plainness privilege public plainness Puritan Ralegh Reformation Religion Renaissance revenge tragedy rhetorical Roger Ascham satire Scholemaster Scripture seeks Seneca sense Shakespeare skeptical Spanish Tragedy speak speech stanza stoic Thomas Thomas Cartwright thou Timon and Coriolanus Timon of Athens tion true voice withdrawal words writes Wyatt's
Referanser til denne boken
Imaginary Betrayals: Subjectivity and the Discourses of Treason in Early ... Karen Cunningham Ingen forhåndsvisning tilgjengelig - 2002 |