The Performance of Conviction : : Plainness and Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance / / Kenneth J. E. Graham.
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 an...
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Superior document: | Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Cornell University Press Archive Pre-2000 |
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Place / Publishing House: | Ithaca, NY : : Cornell University Press, , [2019] ©1994 |
Year of Publication: | 2019 |
Language: | English |
Series: | Rhetoric and Society
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Online Access: | |
Physical Description: | 1 online resource (240 p.) |
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Other title: | 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 |
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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. |
Format: | Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web. |
ISBN: | 9781501738616 9783110536171 |
DOI: | 10.7591/9781501738616 |
Access: | restricted access |
Hierarchical level: | Monograph |
Statement of Responsibility: | Kenneth J. E. Graham. |