The polliticke courtier : Spenser's The faerie queene as a rhetoric of justice / Michael F.N. Dixon.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dixon, Michael F. N.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Spenser, Edmund, 1552?-1599. Faerie queene.

Spenser, Edmund.

Persuasion (Rhetoric).

Justice in literature.

Physical Description:

x, 245 p. ; 24 cm.

Edition:

1st ed.

Other Title:

Spenser's The faerie queene as a rhetoric of justice

Place of Publication:

Montreal ; Buffalo : McGill-Queen's University Press, 1996.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Although pervasive in Spenser's art, the role of rhetoric has not been adequately addressed by critics. This disregard of the importance of rhetoric in The Faerie Queene, Dixon argues, obscures Spenser's larger rhetorical method and the structural dynamic it generates. Dixon identifies Britomart's evolution in Books III-V as the poem's centre and elucidates the rhetorical strategies that invest Spenser's "argument" for justice. Building on Kenneth Burke's conception of courtship in rhetoric as "the use of suasive devices for the transcending of social estrangement," Dixon interprets The Faerie Queene as a narrative of courtship in purpose as well as content, arguing that its tales of questing knights compose an artifact of suasive devices whereby Spenser courts a meeting of minds with his audience on the subject of justice.

Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Rhetorical Structure and Critical Re-construction

Inventio Heroicae

Decorum, Sequence, and Proof: The Problematics of Analogy

Redcrosse as Courtier; Narrative as Argument

luris Comitatus

Britomart Ascendant and Venus Transcendent

Proof by Digressio: A Rhetoric of Marriage

Civilitatis Causa

Ovid’s Cone and the Rhetoric of Law

Radigund, Britomart, and the Rhetoric of Psychomachia

Artegall, Mercilla, and Calidore: The Ethos of Fortune

“(Who Knowes Not Arlo-Hill?)”: A Grammar of Closure

Mount Acidale, Arlo Hill, and the Ethos of Pastoral

Envoy and Peroratio: Spenser on Arlo Hill

Schematic of Classical Rhetoric and Glossary of Terms

Notes

Bibliography

Index

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references (p. [233]-239) and index.

ISBN:

1-282-85403-8

9786612854033

0-7735-6611-2

OCLC:

929121354