Rhetoric And Courtliness In Early Modern Literature

This page intentionally left blank R H E TO R I C A N D C O U RT L I N E S S I N E A R LY M O D E R N L I T E R AT U R E Rhetoric and Courtliness in Early Modern England explores the early modern interest in conversation as a newly identified art. Conversation was widely accepted to have been inspired by the republican philosopher Cicero. Recognising his influence on courtesy literature – the main source for ‘civil conversation’ – Jennifer Richards uncovers new ways of thinking about humanism as a project of linguistic and social reform. She argues that humanists explored styles of conversation to reform the manner of association between male associates; teachers and students, buyers and sellers, and settlers and colonial others. They reconsidered the meaning of ‘honesty’ in social interchange in an attempt to represent the tension between self-interest and social duty. Richards explores the interest in civil conversation among mid-Tudor humanists, John Cheke, Thomas Smith and Roger Ascham, as well as their self-styled successors, Gabriel Harvey and Edmund Spenser. j e n ni f e r ric ha rd s is Lecturer in English at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. She is the editor, with James Knowles of Shakespeare’s Late Plays: New Readings (1999) and the author of articles in Renaissance Quarterly and Criticism. R H E TO R I C A N D C O U RT L I N E S S I N E A R LY M O D E R N L I T E R AT U R E JENNIFER RICHARDS University of Newcastle upon Tyne Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge , United Kingdom Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521824705 © Jennifer Richards 2003 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2003 - isbn-13 978-0-511-07079-2 eBook (EBL) - isbn-10 0-511-07079-9 eBook (EBL) - isbn-13 978-0-521-82470-5 hardback - isbn-10 0-521-82470-2 hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of s for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Contents Acknowledgements page vi Introduction 1 1. Types of honesty: civil and domestical conversation 20 2. From rhetoric to conversation: reading for Cicero in The Book of the Courtier 43 3. Honest rivalries: Tudor humanism and linguistic and social reform 65 4. Honest speakers: sociable commerce and civil conversation 87 5. A commonwealth of letters: Harvey and Spenser in dialogue 113 6. A new poet, a new social economy: homosociality in The Shepheardes Calender 139 Conclusion 168 Notes 171 Bibliography 195 Index 208 v Acknowledgements Many