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Overview
This study builds on previous scholarship on the relationship of Shakespeare to the rhetorical tradition. Its claims rest on two central, closely related premises, both of which are in one sense quite conventional, but in another much more radical. The first premise is that "rhetoric," in the primary sense of that term, "the art of using language so as to persuade or influence others," in the words of the OED, is the integrating principle behind the Renaissance revolution both in Italy and England, the essential element that holds tenuously together a universe threatening to lapse into incoherence and chaos. The second premise, dependent on the first, is that the heart and soul of the art of rhetoric lies in the principle of persuasion, that it is in persuasion rather than in precept that rhetoric has its essential being.Book Details
Published
February 28, 2004
Publisher
Bethlehem [Pa.] : Lehigh University Press ; c2004.
Pages
376
Format
Hardcover
ISBN
9780934223744