The rudiments of eloquence: Pedagogy and literary practices in the English Renaissance.

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This dissertation studies a group of exercises at the center of Renaissance literary practice, from the elementary study of Latin and Greek to the higher achievements of vernacular imitation. By documenting the influence of an extraordinary chapter of Quintilian's Institutio oratoria, partly through the humanist reception of Aphthonius' Progymnasmata, I show that a series of grammar school exercises called the "rudiments of eloquence" was foundational in sixteenth-century literary education. The rudiments furthermore demonstrate a vital interdependence of pedagogy and poetry, and several poems of the late sixteenth century show how central the school was in the way English poets imagined their literary work. At the core of these exercises were three genres that greatly illuminate Renaissance methods of imitation: animal fable, verse maxim, and poetic narrative. In the exercise of "reading aloud," the animal fable was a basic means of developing purity of style and introducing character-based decorum. In the more advanced exercise of "paraphrase," describing the characters of animal fables was a means of creating pleasure and vividness, that all-important element of persuasion. Sharing the moral content of fables, verse maxims likewise played a crucial role in perfecting literary style and exerted particular influence because of humanist methods of teaching Greek by "translation." As I argue in a final chapter on "refutation," the exercises in reading aloud, paraphrase, and translation developed skills that were requisite for advanced forms of academic controversy. Because of their technical situation on the threshold between the grammar school and the school of rhetoric, and between childhood and young adulthood, the rudiments had an important social as well as theoretical dimension in Renaissance literature. Spenser's "Februarie" eclogue from The Shepheardes Calender and Virgils Gnat, his translation of the Virgilian Culex, Marlowe's Hero and Leander, and Shakespeare's Lucrece show a common interest in the school exercises as means of both literary and social development. The rudiments of eloquence are key to understanding sixteenth-century literary practice, from developing skills in the grammar school to advertising those same skills to a potential employer or patron.