Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature

ISBN-13: 9780521824705 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 220 str.

Jennifer Richards

Opis

The art of conversation was widely believed to have been inspired by the republican philosopher Cicero. Recognizing his influence on courtesy literature (the main source for "civil conversation"), Jennifer Richards reveals new ways of thinking about humanism as a project of linguistic and social reform. Richards explores the interest in civil conversation among mid-Tudor humanists, John Cheke, Thomas Smith and Roger Ascham, as well as their self-styled successors, Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spencer.

Recenzje

'The argument of Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern Literature is an elegant if complex one. …[this book] is a discriminating and careful work of literary and cultural history.' Criticism

Spis treści

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. Types of honesty: civil and domestical conversation; 2. From rhetoric to conversation: reading for Cicero in The Book of the Courtier; 3. Honest rivalries: Tudor humanism and linguistic and social reform; 4. Honest speakers: sociable commerce and civil conversation; 5. A commonwealth of letters: Harvey and Spenser in dialogue; 6. A new poet, a new social economy: homosociality and The Shepheardes Calender; Conclusion; Notes; Bibliography; Index.