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XVI.—Ideas on Rhetoric in the Sixteenth Century.

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Extract

To distinguish between the course of rhetorical ideas, and the growth of style on the one hand, and of systematic rhetoric on the other, is perhaps to endeavor after too nice a distinction. Yet when we read sixteenth-century English, we may see, between the general effort to use prose with effect and the rather arid sequence of treatises on formal rhetoric, certain definite ideas on prose expression, certain views as to the best vocabulary, certain views on sentence-structure or figures of speech. The frank, vigorous prose of Latimer has style of a sort, the slight treatise of Cox has system. Neither the one thing nor the other is the opinion pro and con as to inkhorn words, for example. The following paper notes in the direction of the vocabulary only, a conscious effort to determine some fundamental principles which should obtain in the use of English as a means of literary expression.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1903

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References

1 Dedication to Blanche and Eglantyne.

2 Prologue to Charles the Great.

3 Maurice Hewlett: New Canterbury Tales, p. 12.

1 The First Boke of the Introduction of Knowledge, E. E. T. S., p. x.

2 Toxophilus; Ed. Arber, p. 18.

3 Boke of the Governour; ed. Croft, i, 129.

1 Prologue to Eneydos.

1 Boke of the Governour, i, lxvi.

1 Published for the Parker Society.

1 Life of Sir John Cheke, p. 161.

1 Henry Peacham. The Garden of Eloquence. London, 1577.

1 Ed. Arber, p. 157.

1 Works, Ed. Grosart, i, 266.

2 Works, iii, 6.

3 Works, Ed. Grosart, ii, 191.

1 Cf. Gascoigne, The Steele Glass (Ed. Arber), p. 35: “The most ancient English words are of one sillable so that the more monasyllables that you use the truer Englishman you shall seem, and the lesse you shall smell of the Inkehorne.”