Gentry rhetoric : literacies, letters, and writing in an Elizabethan community / Daniel Ellis.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ellis, Daniel, 1972- author.

Series:

Early modern cultural studies (Lincoln, Neb.)

Early modern cultural studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

English language--Early modern, 1500-1700--Rhetoric.

English language.

Letter writing--England--History--16th century.

Letter writing.

Letter writing--England--History--17th century.

Gentry--Language.

Gentry.

Gentry--England--Norfolk--Social life and customs.

English language--Early modern--Rhetoric.

Gentry--Social life and customs.

Manners and customs.

Norfolk (England)--Social life and customs--16th century.

Norfolk (England).

Norfolk (England)--Social life and customs--17th century.

England.

England--Norfolk.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

x, 213 pages: illustrations, maps ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Lincoln : University of Nebraska Press, [2022]

Summary:

"Gentry Rhetoric examines the full range of influences on the Elizabethan and Jacobean genteel classes' practice of English rhetoric in daily life. Daniel Ellis surveys how the gentry of late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century Norfolk wrote to and negotiated with each other by employing Renaissance humanist rhetoric, both to solidify their identity and authority in resisting absolutism and authoritarianism, and to transform the political and social state. The rhetorical training that formed the basis of their formal education was one obvious influence. Yet to focus on this training exclusively allows only a limited understanding of the way this class developed the strategies that enabled them to negotiate, argue, and conciliate with one another to such an extent that they could both form themselves as a coherent entity and become the primary shapers of written English's style, arrangement, and invention. Gentry Rhetoric deeply and inductively examines archival materials in which members of the gentry discuss, debate, and negotiate matters relating to their class interests and political aspirations. Humanist rhetoric provided the bedrock of address, argumentation, and negotiation that allowed the gentry to instigate a political and educational revolution in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century England"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Gentry learning

Gentry literacy

Letters and presence

Places of argument

Gentry style.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781496221186

1496221184

OCLC:

1301901916

Publisher Number:

90104154769