The Rhetoric Of Renaissance Poetry

Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance is a close look at the rhetorical terms used in literary essays about the English Renaissance. Contents: "Introductory The Distinction between Rhetoric and Poetic Classical Poetic Aristotle "Longinus" Plutarch Horace Classical Rhetoric Definitions Subject Matter Content of Classical Rhetoric Rhetoric as Part of Poetic Poetic as Part of Rhetoric Classical Blending of Rhetoric and Poetic The Contact of Rhetoric and Poetic in Style The Florid Style in Rhetoric and Poetic The False Rhetoric of the Declamation Schools The Contamination of Poetic by False Rhetoric."

The Netherlandish rhetoricians of the sixteenth century have, in the course of the last decades, shed their image of third-rate poets who, lacking all sense of true beauty, were capable only of pompous verbosity and a shallow manipulation of form. The new scholarly assessment has also shed light on the role they played in the cultural and literary life of their time, and it now appears that many of their dramas are well worth staging. Once the sixteenth century was freed from the stigma of being the "preparatory phase" for the Golden Age, the way was clear for thorough studies of the literature produced during the most turbulent period in the history of the Low Countries. This volume contains essays which deal with works written not only in Dutch, but also in French and in New Latin, with topics ranging from the effects of poetic principles on literary practice to the use of poetry as a means for improving society and developing the individual. The unifying thread in these studies is the pivotal importance of rhetoric in all forms of literary expression.

Back in print after 17 years, this is a concise history of rhetoric as it relates to structure, genre, and style, with special reference to English literature and literary criticism from Ancient Greece to the end of the 18th century. The core of the book is a quite original argument that the figures of rhetoric were not mere mechanical devices, were not, as many believed, a "nuisance, a quite sterile appendage to rhetoric to which (unaccountably) teachers, pupils, and writers all over the world devoted much labor for over 2,000 years." Rather, Vickers demonstrates, rhetoric was a stylized representation of language and human feelings. Vickers supplements his argument through analyses of the rhetorical and emotional structure of four Renaissance poems. He also defines 16 of the most common figures of rhetoric, citing examples from the classics, the Bible, and major English poets from Chaucer to Pope.

Main description: The volume presents a cultural history of renaissance rhetoric with special emphasis on literary theory with its aspects of imagination (inventio), generictheory (dispositio), style (elocutio), mnemonic architecture (memoria), representation (actio) (with Shakespeare's works as illustrations). Special attention is given to the intermedial rhetoric of painting and music and the rhetorical ideology of culture.

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A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism