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Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry

1969; Iter Press; Volume: 9; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.33137/rr.v9i2.13832

2293-7374

Brian Vickers, Russell Morton Brown,

Rhetoric and Communication Studies

One's first reaction to this book is to wonder why it was needed.Surely we have enough books now on rhetorical backgrounds, especially in regard to the English Renaissance, which, despite its title, is where almost all of this book's emphasis lies.But one's first reaction is not infrequently wrong, and this turns out to be a pleasing case in point.Brian Vickers has provided what has been missing all along, a just, evenhanded, and comprehensive treatment of this subject.One reason such a book has been so long lacking is that until comparatively recently most criticism has hesitated to acknowledge the importance of rhetoric for the Renaissance, fear- ful (sometimes justifiably so) of a simplistic application of rhetorical concepts that would reduce Renaissance poetry to a dry-as-dust subject for pedantry from which critics who could not tell antimetabole from epizeuxis would be barred.The most significant treatments of rhetoric have until now lain chiefly either in those writers who discuss the topic while on their way to other pursuits -as does Madeleine Doran in her admirable Endeavors of Art - or in tendentious treatments such as that which characterizes Rosemond Tuve's Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery.Vickers manages neither to despise rhetoric nor to claim too much for it as an aid to our understanding.He is admirably aware of the twofold dangers in a mechanistic, too-technical approach to the interrelationship of rhetoric and poetry: that of losing sight of the poem and that of losing the interest of a large proportion of his readers.When he does bring his book to its natural climax in the final chapter, with rhetorical analyses of poetry by Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, and Herbert, he is gentle to both poem and reader, even to the point of warning us that these "are samples and demonstrations, and suffer from the usual fault of demonstration pieces, that the points have probably been too myopically and laboriously spelled out.For a sustained piece of rhetorical criticism one would not need to point to every figure, and in order to absorb rhetorical analyses into the body of critical method we have to balance it against other approaches (the study of imagery, rhythm, structure, argu- ment), which will sometimes be of more value in interpreting a particular pOem, sometimes of less" (p.166).Caveats similar to this one abound throughout the book concerning the potential misuses and abuses of rhetorical approaches to literature: "... although more work needs to be done on the influence of the large-scale rhetorical processes on literature, it must not be prosecuted in a narrow-minded way or on the assumption that it alone holds the key to the problem of literary structure.Especially in the mimetic narrative forms of the novel and the drama, writers were working increasmgly with nonrhetorical methods, and the farther we get away from the specific processes of rhetoric the harder it is to establish any connection" (p. 80).However, while stressing the moderate nature of his claims, Vickers does believe that understanding rhetoric is worthwhile and important for English poetry, especially Renais- sance English poetry.It would never be thought of as a dull and fruitless occupation, he suggests, if we fully recognized the function that rhetoric had for the poets; if there is one central idea, and one fresh perspective which Vickers wishes to offer his reader, it is this: "... that rhetorical figures are the conventional representation of verbal patterns expressed in states of extreme emotion" (p.94).His argument in support of this contention is both persuasive and attractive.The most seemingly awkward or stiff rhetorical figures thus have