Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare's England
- ISBN-10
- 0801464579
- ISBN-13
- 9780801464577
- Category
- Literary Criticism
- Pages
- 264
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2012-02-15
- Publisher
- Cornell University Press
- Author
- Jenny C. Mann
Description
A central feature of English Renaissance humanism was its reverence for classical Latin as the one true form of eloquent expression. Yet sixteenth-century writers increasingly came to believe that England needed an equally distinguished vernacular language to serve its burgeoning national community. Thus, one of the main cultural projects of Renaissance rhetoricians was that of producing a "common" vernacular eloquence, mindful of its classical origins yet self-consciously English in character. The process of vernacularization began during Henry VIII’s reign and continued, with fits and starts, late into the seventeenth century. In Outlaw Rhetoric, Jenny C. Mann examines the substantial and largely unexplored archive of vernacular rhetorical guides produced in England between 1500 and 1700. Writers of these guides drew upon classical training as they translated Greek and Latin figures of speech into an everyday English that could serve the ends of literary and national invention. In the process, however, they confronted aspects of rhetoric that run counter to its civilizing impulse. For instance, Mann finds repeated references to Robin Hood, indicating an ongoing concern that vernacular rhetoric is "outlaw" to the classical tradition because it is common, popular, and ephemeral. As this book shows, however, such allusions hint at a growing acceptance of the nonclassical along with a new esteem for literary production that can be identified as native to England. Working across a range of genres, Mann demonstrates the effects of this tension between classical rhetoric and English outlawry in works by Spenser, Shakespeare, Sidney, Jonson, and Cavendish. In so doing she reveals the political stakes of the vernacular rhetorical project in the age of Shakespeare.
Get the book
Similar books
-
Virginia Woolf and the Great War
By Karen L. LevenbackI owe special thanks to Bruce Martin and Evelyn Timberlake ( at the Library of Congress ) ; Philip Milato and Steve Crook ( at the Berg Collection ) ...
-
In Search of Elena Ferrante: The Novels and the Question of Authorship
By Karen Bojar... Alice: “In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens” 157 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation 38 Wertenbaker, Timberlake 21 Wilson, Emily (trans.
-
Native American Verbal Art: Texts and Contexts
By William M. ClementsHENRY TIMBERLAKE'S CHEROKEE WAR SONG 1. That Timberlake's memoir contains the first English translation of the words of a Native American song seems to have ...
-
Playing in the Shadows: Fictions of Race and Blackness in Postwar Japanese Literature
By William H Bridges“Justin Timberlake, 'The 20/20 Experience': Is There a Visual Preference for Whiteness?” Interview with Marc Lamont Hill. HuffPost Live, 27 March 2013.
-
Shakespeare's Edward III
By William ShakespeareThompson , E . in Pollard 1923 . Thompson , J . Shakespeare and the Classics , 1952 . Tillyard , E . Shakespeare ' s History Plays , 1944 . Timberlake , P ...
-
The Problem with Pleasure: Modernism and Its Discontents
By Laura FrostIn The Problem with Pleasure, Frost draws upon a wide variety of materials, linking interwar amusements, such as the talkies, romance novels, the Parisian fragrance Chanel no. 5, and the exotic confection Turkish Delight, to the artistic ...
-
The Alice Books and the Contested Ground of the Natural World
By Laura WhiteSimilarly, he deplored the picturestories of A. B. Frost in his Stuff and Nonsense ... When he'd eaten eighteen, He turned perfectly green, Upon which he ...
-
Fables of Modernity: Literature and Culture in the English Eighteenth Century
By Laura BrownRenew'd by ordure's sympathetic force, As oil'd with magic juices for the course, ... William Frost (1953; reprint, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, ...
-
Questions of Authority: Italian and Australian Travel Narratives of the Long Nineteenth Century
By Laura OlcelliD'Albertis, Luigi. New Guinea: What I Did and What I Saw. 2 vols. London: S. Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington, 1881. First published 1880.
-
A Concordance to Conrad's The Arrow of Gold
By Paul L. Gaston, Todd K. Bender... i ge 3 let S deal ing ge a lings ge at t Joe a f J & at n ce at h-ced ge at hly ue to 3 sec ge is a te debit de cap it a t e u ge c e it ful ge c e i ve ...