scholarly journals Stylistic Devices in The Schoole of Vertue, an Early Modern Manual of Good Conduct for Children

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 95-124
Author(s):  
Hanna Rutkowska
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Emotional Closeness ◽  
Rhetorical Device ◽  
Rhetorical Devices ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Good Behaviour

Abstract This paper is a case study examining the choice and interaction of stylistic devices employed in The Schoole of Vertue, Francis Segar and Robert Crowley’s manual of good manners for children issued between 1582 and 1687. It was designed to convince its readers that particular patterns of behaviour were socially beneficial and worth following. In order to enhance the attractiveness, persuasiveness, and mnemonic qualities of the text, several stylistic devices are employed in the manual, including, for example, rhymes, acronyms, as well as binomials. It is generally agreed that repetitive patterns (especially binomials) are typical of formal registers, and particularly plentiful in legal and literary texts in Early Modern English, but the present study shows that similar rhetorical devices were also readily employed in the less formal and elevated style of manuals of good behaviour. Another rhetorical device frequently used in the manual under consideration consists in addressing the reader directly with the second person singular pronoun, especially in imperative constructions, thus creating an ambiance of emotional closeness, characterising the relationship between the master and the pupil.

Stancetaking in seventeenth-century prefaces on obstetrics

2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-35 ◽  
Author(s):  
Francisco Alonso Almeida ◽  
Margarita Mele-Marrero
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Epistemic Stance ◽  
Authorial Identity ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Relationship

This paper deals with authorial stance in prefatory material of Early Modern English manuals on women’s diseases. Publications on this field from between 1612 and 1699 constitute our corpus of study. Original digitalised texts have been analysed manually to identify and detect structures concerning authorial identity and stance, according to the model developed by Marín-Arrese (2009). This model for the identification of effective and epistemic stance strategies enables us to describe both the relationship between the authors and their texts and, more specifically, the power relationship between the writers and their audience. One of the most important conclusions of this study concerns the strategic use of stance markers to enhance the quality of these books and make them appropriate for a wide variety of readers.

Ekphrasis

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Altman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Usual Sense ◽  
Early Modern Theatre ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Word Painting ◽  
English Stage ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Flexible Capacity

This chapter examines the use of ekphrasis in early modern theatre, with particular emphasis on its effect on the stage and the relationship of ekphrastic speech to the ongoing action in which it is enunciated. It maps the parameters of ekphrasis on the early modern English stage by considering a few examples of the ways in which ekphrasis instantiates early modern theatricality. It also discusses the expressive potential of ekphrastic speech and its transmission to the listener as well as the ironic uses of ekphrasis as a mode of persuasion, whether directed to oneself, an on-stage auditor, off-stage auditors, or all three. It argues that ekphrasis creates nothing less than what it calls ‘the psyche of the play’ and explains how the unusually flexible capacity of the staged word allows it to be used for a wide range of theatrical techniques, including the usual sense of ‘word-painting’. Finally, it looks at William Shakespeare’s deployment of ekphrasis in his work such asHamlet.

Whose Saint Crispins Day Is It?: Shoemaking, Holiday Making, and the Politics of Memory in Early Modern England

2001 ◽  
Vol 54 (4-Part2) ◽  
pp. 1467-1494 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison A. Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Julius Caesar ◽  
Henry V ◽  
Politics Of Memory ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
English Politics

This article demonstrates an early modern association between the trade of shoemaking and the act of altering the festal calendar. It traces this link through a series of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century English literary texts including Thomas Deloney's Gentle Craft, Thomas Dekker's Shoemaker's Holiday, and Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and — most notably — Henry V. The article argues that the depictions of cobblers making holidays resonated with the early modern English politics of ritual observance, and its concluding discussion of the Saint Crispin's Day speech in Henry V shows how the play imagines king and cobblers vying for control of England's commemorative practice.

The Humours in Humour

2018 ◽  
pp. 219-235
Author(s):  
Matthew Steggle
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Humoral Theory ◽  
A Midsummer Night's Dream ◽  
Mind And Body ◽  
The Relationship

Did Shakespeare believe in the four humours? And did he write ‘humours comedy’? To address these questions, this chapter suggests that humoral theory is intimately bound up with early modern ideas of selfhood, not merely as a metaphor, but as a literal understanding of the processes at work in cognition, emotion, and selfhood. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, in particular, is taken as a case study for how Shakespearean comedy understands the relationship between mind and body. Next, it re-examines the idea of ‘humours comedy’, arguing that we should see the true Shakespearean ‘comedy of humours’ in plays that celebrate not the fixity of identity, but its fluidity within a sentient body conceived of in terms of humours theory. The chapter takes as its closing case study The Comedy of Errors, suggesting that it, and Shakespearean comedy more generally, engages through the humours ideas of selfhood as mutable, communicable, and liquid.

On interaction in herbals from Middle English to Early Modern English

2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 229-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martti Mäkinen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Middle English ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Person ◽  
Second Person ◽  
Intended Audience ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
The Middle Ages

The focus of this article is on interaction in Middle English and Early Modern English herbals. In the Middle Ages, herbals were mainly instructive aids for producing medicines of the plants described in the text. Later, in the Early Modern English period, the herbal genre split into two, retaining the genre called herbals and giving birth to systematic botanical texts. The interaction established in texts can be studied through the use of pronouns (involvement markers) and the use of imperatives. This study shows that the strategies employed in the Middle English period are very different from the strategies in the Early Modern English period: the use of second-person pronouns and imperatives prevails in the Middle English period, whereas the use of first-person pronouns was preferred in the Early Modern English period. In addition to this, another division, irrespective of the time of writing, is observed in the material: the first group includes handbooks and practical herbals, and the other group learned and empirical herbals. Factors which explain these differences in interaction strategies are the purposes for writing and the education of the intended audience.

Thou and you in Late Middle Scottish and Early Modern Northern English witness depositions

2013 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 100-129 ◽  
Author(s):  
Magdalena Leitner
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Rapid Decline ◽  
Criminal Trials ◽  
Historical Sociolinguistics ◽  
South Eastern ◽  
Early Modern English

In contrast to Early Modern English, little is known about address pronouns in Scotland during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This paper investigates early Scottish pronoun usage in more detail by presenting a case study on singular pronominal address in Late Middle Scottish and Early Modern Northern English witness depositions from the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The source texts drawn from the Criminal Trials in Scotland 1488–1624, the Helsinki Corpus of Older Scots 1450–1700 and A Corpus of English Dialogues 1560–1760 are examined with a quantitative and qualitative approach based on historical pragmatics and historical sociolinguistics. Thou is found to be relatively frequent in the Scottish and Northern English data in comparison with the rapid decline in thou recently found in South-Eastern English depositions. However, there are significant differences in the distributions of pronouns, which are explained by an overrepresentation of upper social ranks in the Scottish sub-corpus.

scholarly journals “Nature’s Bastards”: Grafted Generation in Early Modern England

2015 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-148
Author(s):  
Claire Duncan
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
The Winter's Tale ◽  
Scientific Texts ◽  
Winter's Tale ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Reproduction Humaine

This paper examines the shared rhetoric between human and horticultural generation in early modern England, particularly focusing on grafting. Early modern English gardening manuals imagine grafting as a method of controlling generation in the natural world, and early modern English obstetrical treatises imagine the female generative body in horticultural language. Alongside these scientific texts, this article uses Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale as a literary case study of grafting rhetoric. Ultimately, while grafting treatises imagine man’s power over generation in the natural world and obstetrical treatises imagine controlling human generation using horticultural metaphor, The Winter’s Tale complicates this fantasy by depicting Leontes’s efforts at genealogical control as unnecessary and fruitless: not only do Perdita and Hermione survive and flourish after his attempts to kill them, but Perdita is the legitimate and non-grafted offspring of Hermione and Leontes. Cet article examine la rhétorique que partagent la reproduction humaine et l’horticulture en Angleterre au début de l’époque moderne. Les ouvrages portant sur les jardins, à l’époque, représentent la greffe comme une méthode pour contrôler la reproduction dans le monde naturel, tandis que les ouvrages d’obstétrique de la même époque représentent la capacité reproductrice du corps féminin en termes d’horticulture. A côté de ces textes scientifiques, on se sert dans cet article de la pièce de Shakespeare The Winter’s Tale comme exemple de la rhétorique de la greffe. En dernière analyse, tandis que les ouvrages décrivant la greffe représentent la puissance humaine sur la reproduction dans le monde naturel et que les ouvrages d’obstétrique représentent la reproduction humaine avec des métaphores tirées de l’horticulture, The Winter’s Tale vient compliquer cet imaginaire en présentant comme futiles les tentatives de contrôle généalogique de Leontes : non seulement Perdita et Hermione survivent et fleurissent après les tentatives de meurtre, mais encore Perdita est le fruit légitime non-greffé des amours d’Hermione et Leontes.

Introduction: Representing “Ovids” on the Early Modern English Stage

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lisa S. Starks
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Reception Studies ◽  
Classical Concept ◽  
Adaptation Theory ◽  
Early Modern English ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
English Stage ◽  
The Relationship

This introduction explains the overall critical framework of the collection and provides a brief overview of the book’s topics and goals. In so doing, it explores Ovid on the early modern stage; the interconnections between Ovid, the classical concept of imitatio, and contemporary adaptation theory; the relationship between classical reception studies and adaptation theory; the interplay between Ovid and Shakespeare adaptation/appropriation studies. Following this discussion, the introduction describes the organizational structure and rationale of the book and previews the chapters, noting how sections and chapters relate to each other.

Introduction

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kit Heyam
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern England ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Historical Narratives ◽  
Medieval History ◽  
Edward Ii ◽  
Sexual Transgression ◽  
History Of ◽  
Insight Into

This introduction discusses the reputation of King Edward II (1307–1327) in medieval and early modern England, and the implications of this reputation beyond its immediate relevance to scholars of Edward II’s reign and afterlife: as a case study for the history of sex and the changing vocabulary of sexual transgression; as a source of positive depictions of love between men; as a paradigmatic exemplum for discussions of favouritism and deposition, and thereby a case study providing insight into the early modern use of medieval history; as a means of developing our understanding of literary texts such as Marlowe’s Edward II; and as a process that illuminates the literary nature of medieval and early modern historical narratives.

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