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Author ORCID Identifier
N/A
AccessType
Open Access Dissertation
Document Type
dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Program
English
Year Degree Awarded
2018
Month Degree Awarded
September
First Advisor
Arthur F. Kinney
Second Advisor
Jane Degenhardt
Third Advisor
Elizabeth Keitel
Subject Categories
Literature in English, British Isles
Abstract
To Weigh the World Anew examines moments of rhetorical exchange in romances written by Philip Sidney, Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, and Mary Wroth, arguing that these texts portray formal oratory as either unethical or inefficacious, while simultaneously depicting poetic or theatrical discourses as productively intervening between interlocutors of diverse social statuses. These exemplary episodes show fiction successfully mediating between different classes and genders, creating a demarcation between poetry and competing forms of eloquence and participating in the emergence of the poetical from the rhetorical. Ultimately, the repeated depiction of poesis as an efficacious form of mediation in self-reflexive romance shows that modern conceptions of poetics partially emerge as a response to a set of rapidly changing social formations.
DOI
https://doi.org/10.7275/12357054
Recommended Citation
Katz, David, "“TO WEIGH THE WORLD ANEW”: POETICS, RHETORIC, AND SOCIAL STRUGGLE, FROM SIDNEY’S ARCADIA TO SHAKESPEARE’S THEATER" (2018). Doctoral Dissertations. 1360.
https://doi.org/10.7275/12357054
https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_2/1360