The Performance of Conviction : Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance / Kenneth J. E. Graham.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Graham, Kenneth J. E., Author.

Series:

Rhetoric and Society Series

Rhetoric and Society

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource (240 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2019]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

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. According to Graham, the pervasive ness of plainness in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries is evidence of a failure of consensus. The rhetoric of plainness, he asserts, reveals a profound opposition between the attitude of persuasion, a moderately skeptical and inclusive outlook characteristic of Erasmian humanism, and a stance of conviction, an absolutist and exclusive attitude more typical of Neostoicism and political and moral conservatism.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Introduction. Captive to Truth: Rethinking Renaissance Plainness

1. Wyatt's Antirhetorical Verse: Privilege and the Performance of Conviction

2. Educational Authority and the Plain Truth in the Admonition Controversy and The Scholemaster

3. Peace, Order, and Confusion: Fulke Greville and the Inner and Outer Forms of Reform

4. The Mysterious Plainness of Anger: The Search for Justice in Satire and Revenge Tragedy

5. The Performance of Pride: Desire, Truth, and Power in Coholanus and Timon of Athens

6. "Without the form of justice": Plainness and the Performance of Love in King Lear

Epilogue: A Precious Jewel?

Index

Notes:

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 23. Jul 2020)

ISBN:

1-5017-3861-5

OCLC:

1178768919