Elizabethan Rhetoric: Theory and Practice

by Peter Mack

Overview

In this important contribution to the cultural and educational history of Elizabethan England, Peter Mack examines the impact of humanist training in the use of language on English prose writing. Study of the rhetorical codes and conventions in terms of which the debates of the period were conducted is currently a major area of historical and literary inquiry. Peter Mack provides a wealth of new information, showing how this humanist training was deployed in literary genres and in more practical legal and political settings.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521812924
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2002
Series:	Ideas in Context , #63
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.30(w) x 9.29(h) x 1.18(d)
Lexile:	1690L (what's this?)

About the Author

PETER MACK is Professor of English at the University of Warwick.

Table of Contents

1. Introduction; 2. Rhetoric in the grammar school; 3. Rhetoric and dialectic in the universities; 4. English language manuals of rhetoric and dialectic; 5. Everyday writing: notebooks, letters, narratives; 6. Histories, conduct manuals, romances; 7. Political argument; 8. Elizabethan parliamentary oratory; 9. Religious discourse; 10. Conclusion: rhetoric, ethics and politics.

Editorial Reviews

"Peter Mack's achievement in Elizabethan Rhetoric is twofold; he has both produced the single book to which those who wish to begin to consider Elizabethan rhetoric should be directed and he has offered a challenge to much recent critical writing to think again about some of its conclusions." John Lee, University of Bristol, Sixteenth Century Journal

"A splendid contribution to the Cambridge series Ideas in Context, whic hconsiders the develpoment of intellectual traditions amid concurrently evolving institutions." Renaissance Quarterly

"Mack provides an expert yet accessible study of the training in rhetoric and logic provided to Renaissance schoolboys in grammar school and university.... Recommended." Choice

"[Mack] knows whereof he writes. I unreservedly urge you to read Elizabethan Rhetoric." Bibliotheque d'humanisme

From the Publisher