Occult Invention: the Rebirth of Rhetorical Heuresis
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OCCULT INVENTION: THE REBIRTH OF RHETORICAL HEURESIS IN EARLY MODERN BRITISH LITERATURE FROM CHAPMAN TO SWIFT by MICHAEL CHARLES MCCANN A DISSERTATION Presented to the Comparative Literature Program and the Graduate School of the University of Oregon in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy September 2011 DISSERTATION APPROVAL PAGE Student: Michael Charles McCann Title: Occult Invention: The Rebirth of Rhetorical Heuresis in Early Modern British Literature from Chapman to Swift This dissertation has been accepted and approved in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Doctor of Philosophy degree in the Comparative Literature Program by: Dianne Dugaw Co-Chairperson John T. Gage Co-Chairperson Kenneth Calhoon Member Steven Shankman Member Jeffrey Librett Outside Member and Kimberly Andrews Espy Vice President for Research and Innovation/Dean of the Graduate School Original approval signatures are on file with the University of Oregon Graduate School. Degree awarded September 2011. ii © 2011 Michael Charles McCann iii DISSERTATION ABSTRACT Michael C. McCann Doctor of Philosophy Comparative Literature Program September 2011 Title: Occult Invention: The Rebirth of Rhetorical Heuresis in Early Modern British Literature from Chapman to Swift Approved: _______________________________________________ Dianne Dugaw Approved: _______________________________________________ John T. Gage The twentieth-century project of American rhetorician Kenneth Burke, grounded in a magic-based theory of language, reveals a path to the origins of what I am going to call occult invention. The occult, which I define as a symbol set of natural terms derived from supernatural terms, employs a method of heuresis based on a metaphor-like process I call analogic extension. Traditional invention fell from use shortly after the Liberal Arts reforms of Peter Ramus, around 1550. Occult invention emerged nearly simultaneously, when Early Modern British authors began using occult symbols as tropes in what I refer to as the Occult Mode. I use six of these authors—George Chapman, William Shakespeare, John Donne, Abraham Cowley, John Dryden, and Jonathan Swift—as examples of how occult invention arises. In appropriating occult symbolism, authors in the Occult Mode began using the invention methods of the occult arts of magic, alchemy, astrology, and cabala to derive new meanings, transform language, develop characters and plots, and reorient social perspectives. As we learn in tracking Burke’s project, occult iv invention combines the principles of Aristotle’s rhetoric and metaphysics with the techniques and principles of the occult arts. Occult invention fell from use around the end of the eighteenth century, but its rhetorical influence reemerged through the work of Burke. In this study I seek to contextualize and explicate some of the literary sources and rhetorical implications of occult invention as an emergent field for further research. v CURRICULUM VITAE NAME OF AUTHOR: Michael Charles McCann GRADUATE AND UNDERGRADUATE SCHOOLS ATTENDED: University of Oregon, Eugene Eastern Oregon University, La Grande DEGREES AWARDED: Doctor of Philosophy, Comparative Literature, 2011, University of Oregon Master of Arts, Comparative Literature, 2009, University of Oregon Bachelor of Arts, Philosophy, 2005, University of Oregon AREAS OF SPECIAL INTEREST: History of Rhetoric and Heuresis Early Modern British Literature Iconology and Hermeneutics PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: Graduate Teaching Fellow, Program in Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 2009-2011 Graduate Teaching Fellow, English Department, University of Oregon, 2007- 2009 Graduate Teaching Fellow, Department of German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon, 2005, 2007 Graduate Teaching Fellow, Program in Comparative Literature, University of Oregon, 2006 Teaching Assistant, Department of German and Scandinavian, University of Oregon, 2004 vi GRANTS, AWARDS, AND HONORS: Graduate Teaching Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2005-2011 Beall Doctoral Fellowship, University of Oregon, 2009 Chaim Perelman Graduate Conference Scholarship, University of Oregon, 2008 First Prize, Global Talk German Poetry Contest, University of Oregon, 2005 PUBLICATIONS: McCann, Michael C. “Verliebt zu sein, bedeutet zu wissen,” Global Talk, No. 3 (Eugene, OR: Univ. of Oregon, 2006). McCann, Michael C. “Theory Redouble: Poe's 'The Purloined Letter' as a Precursor to Psychoanalytic Criticism,” Nomad, Vol. 4 (Eugene, OR: University of Oregon Program in Comparative Literature, 2005). vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION: THE DEMISE OF TRADITIONAL HEURESIS AND THE EMERGENCE OF OCCULT INVENTION .......................................................... 1 A. Early Modern Pedagogy and Rhetorical Invention .......................................... 1 B. Magic, the Occult, and Analogic Extension ..................................................... 2 1. Magic and the Occult as Used in this Study ............................................... 2 2. Analogic Extension ..................................................................................... 7 C. Traditional Invention ........................................................................................ 10 1. Aristotle’s Theory of Argumentation .......................................................... 12 2. Aristotle’s Heuristic Forms: Paradigm, Enthymeme, Maxim, and Fallacy ......................................................................................................... 13 D. Occult Invention................................................................................................ 17 1. Burke’s Magical Charting ........................................................................... 17 2. The Elemental Basis of Occult Invention ................................................... 23 3. The Pentad, Elemental Symbolism, and Occult Invention ......................... 26 E. The Demise of Traditional Heuresis ................................................................. 34 1. Reforms of Ramus ...................................................................................... 34 2. Plain Language Movement ......................................................................... 35 3. Conflation of Magic and Rhetoric .............................................................. 39 F. Occult Invention and the Occult Mode of English Literature .......................... 42 II. DARKNESS, KNOWLEDGE, AND SCIENTIFIC MAGIC IN CHAPMAN AND SHAKESPEARE........................................................................................... 46 A. Chapman, Melancholy, and the Beginnings of Occult Invention..................... 46 viii Chapter Page 1. Dürer’s Iconographic Fusion of the Natural and Supernatural ............. 48 2. Artificial Perspective and Lifeless Space ............................................. 55 3. The Visual Rhetoric of Dürer’s Melencholia I ..................................... 58 B. Chapman’s Human Shipwreck: Learning, Darkness, and Obscure Figuration.................................................................................................... 60 1. Autodidactic Learning and Chapman’s Affinity for Melancholy.......... 60 2. Elemental Symbolisms as Allegories of the Body, Soul, and Mind...... 61 3. Obscure Figuration: Illumination through Saturation............................ 66 4. Transformed Perspectives: The Merging of Visual and Psychological Frames ............................................................................ 69 C. Shakespeare’s The Tempest: Scientific Magic and the Shipwreck of the World ............................................................................................... 72 1. Magic vs. Science in The Tempest ........................................................ 74 2. Speculative Etymology: Prospero’s Island as an Extended Linguistic Symbol Set ........................................................................... 76 III. ALCHEMY, THE OCCULT MODE, AND TEXTUAL TRANSFORMATION IN DONNE AND COWLEY .......................................... 89 A. The Rhetoric of Alchemy ................................................................................. 89 1. Metallurgic vs. Symbolic Alchemy ............................................................ 89 B. Metaphysical Poetry ......................................................................................... 94 1. The Metaphysical Mode, Alchemical Wit, and the Occult Mode .............. 94 2. Alchemical Transformation and the Occult Mode ...................................... 100 3. Occult Invention in John Donne’s “The Flea” ............................................ 103 C. Information, Suspense, and Symbolic Inference .............................................. 105 ix Chapter Page 1. Information and the Transformation of Taste ............................................. 105 2. Suspense, Delay, and Appetite .................................................................... 107 3. Symbolic Inference, Productive Texts, and Hermeneutic Codes ............... 110 D. Cowley, Mix’t Wit, and Discursion ................................................................. 112 1. Attempt to Bridge Between Natural Philosophy and Literature ................. 112 2. Cowley’s Mix’t Wit and Hobbes’ Discursion ............................................ 114 IV. ASTROLOGICAL REASONING, SYMBOLIC DUALITIES, AND DRYDEN’S METHOD OF COMPOSITION ...................................................... 124