Sacred Rhetoric: The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance

Debora K. Shuger

Published by Princeton University Press 1988

Sacred Rhetoric

The Christian Grand Style in the English Renaissance

Debora K. Shuger

Volume 888 in the series Princeton Legacy Library

https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400859269

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Contents

About this book

"There are no studies of a sacred grand style in the English Renaissance," writes Debora Shuger, "because even according to its practitioners it was not supposed to exist." Yet the grand style forms the unacknowledged center of traditional rhetorical theory. In this first history of the grand style, Professor Shuger explores the growth of a Christian aesthetic out of the Classical grand style, showing its development from Isocrates to the sacred rhetorics of the Renaissance. These rhetorics advocate a Christian grand style neither pedantically mimetic nor playfully sophistic, whose models include Tacitus and the Bible, as well as Cicero, and whose theoretical sources embrace not only Cicero and Quintilian, but Hermogenes and Longinus. This style dominates the best and most scholarly rhetorics of the period--texts written in Latin and, while ignored by most recent scholars, extensively used in England throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These works are the first attempts since Augustine's pioneering revision of Ciceronian rhetoric to reground ancient rhetorical theory on Christian epistemology and theology.

According to Professor Shuger, the Christian grand style is passionate, vivid, dramatic, metaphoric--yet this emotional energy and sensuousness is shaped and legitimated by Renaissance religious culture. Thus sacred rhetoric cannot be considered apart from contemporary theories of cognition, emotion, selfhood, and signification. It mediates between word and world. Moreover, these texts suggest the almost forgotten centrality of neo-Latin scholarship during these years and provide a crucial theoretical context for England's great flowering of devotional prose and poetry.

Originally published in 1988.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
CONTENTS Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
INTRODUCTION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
CHAPTER ONE. THE CHARACTERS OF STYLE FROM ANTIQUITY THROUGH THE MIDDLE AGES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	14
CHAPTER TWO. THE HISTORY OF SACRED RHETORIC IN THE RENAISSANCE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	55
CHAPTER THREE. RHETORIC, SOPHISTIC, AND PHILOSOPHY: THE LEGITIMATION OF PASSIONATE DISCOURSE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
CHAPTER FOUR. HELLENISM AND HEBRAISM: THE DEVELOPMENT OF A NON-CICERONIAN GRAND STYLE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	154
CHAPTER FIVE. GOD, SELF, AND PSYCHE: THE THEOLOGICAL BASES OF THE GRAND STYLE Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	193
CONCLUSION Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
APPENDIX. THE SEVEN IDEAS OF HERMOGENES Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	259
GLOSSARY OF RHETORICAL TERMS Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	261
BIBLIOGRAPHY Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
INDEX Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	283
Backmatter Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	290

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