Rhetorical Subversion in Early English Drama

Rhetorical Subversion in Early English Drama
ISBN-10
0820463019
ISBN-13
9780820463018
Category
Drama
Pages
152
Language
English
Published
2004
Publisher
Peter Lang
Author
Douglas W. Hayes

Description

This book centers on the uses and abuses of language in early English drama. It examines a number of plays alongside classical and sixteenth-century rhetorical treatises and focuses on the appearances of one stock character, the Vice figure, to determine how he uses language to dupe, implicate, and control others in the plays. The Vice figure is usually very skilled in the use of rhetoric and, in many cases, seems to be so persuasive and entertaining that the moral aims of the drama appear to be jeopardized. Douglas W. Hayes investigates the moral and rhetorical ambivalence of the Vice figure not only in Medieval morality plays and Tudor interludes, but also in the language of later characters related to the Vice such as Marlowe's Mephastophilis and Shakespeare's Falstaff and Iago.

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