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This dissertation has been microfilmed exactly as received 69-4996 WEAVER, John Joseph William, 1935- RHETORIC AND TRAGEDY IN THOMAS SACKVILLE'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES. The Ohio State University, Ph.D., 1968 Language and Literature, m odem University Microfilms, Inc., Ann Arbor, Michigan ® Copyright by John Joseph William Weaver 1969 RHETORIC AND TRAGEDY IN THOMAS SACKVILLE'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE MIRROR FOR MAGISTRATES DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By John Joseph William Weaver, A.B., M.A. ****** The Ohio State University 1968 Approved by Adviser Department of ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Like most students, I am immeasurably indebted to those who have taught me. Although a listing of all of them here would be more tedious than, though not as dreary as, Bucking­ ham's catalogues, I take special pleasure in thanking those who made this dissertation possible: Professor Huntington Brown, of the University of Minnesota, who taught me how to write; Professors John B. Gabel and Robert M. Estrich, of The Ohio State University, who taught me how to re-write. But my most enduring and profound gratitude must go to Professor Ruth W, Hughey, my adviser and friend, who by precept and example has taught me that scholarship and scholars can be and must be humane. ii VITA November 18, 1935 B o m - Pittsfield, Illinois 1958 . ........... A.B., Harvard College, Cambridge, Massachusetts 1958-1960 .... Teacher, Sewickley Academy, Sewickley, Pennsylvania I9 6 0-I96 2 .... Teaching Assistant, Department of English, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 1 9 6 2............. M.A., University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota I9 6 2-I968 .... Teaching Assistant, Department of English, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio ill CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.............................. il VITA ........................................ Ill PROLEGOMENA.................................. 1 CHAPTER I Sadcvillefs Early Life and Education 1^ 11 L o g o s ............................ 36 H I E t h o s ........................ 88 IV P a t h o s .......................... 110 V Conclusion ................ 150 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................ 159 PROLEGOMENA: A DEFENSE OF RHETORIC No one would deny the value of rhetoric as a useful instrument for literary analysis. Studies in rhetoric have enabled us to assess more precisely the quality of a writer’s style^ or to appreciate the use of rhetorical 2 structures within a work or to discern his use of single 3 rhetorical structures in shaping a complete work. Such studies have demonstrated various writers' skill? in appropriating rhetoric to the purposes of poetry, Yet when a critic appropriates rhetoric to the purposes of his poetic— particularly if he suggests radically new formulations— other critics will helpfully point out his error in confusing the "two literatures." A recent ex­ change between Wilbur S. Howell and Kenneth Burke reveals the dangers and complexities in the relationship between rhetoric and poetic. In "Rhetoric and Poetic: A Plea for the Recognition k of the Two Literatures" Howell objects to Burke’s idiosyn­ cratic rhetorical categories. While granting the truth of Burke's observation that all assertions are at base rhetori­ cal, Howell finds Burke's elaboration of this truth dis- 1 2 concerting: Burke develops this law in such a way as to indicate that it makes the poetical utterance and the rhetorical utterance specifically alike, and that their common capacity to produce effects argues their identity in method and structure.^ To build his case against Burke, Howell cites numerous critics who have distinguished between the two literatures, from Aristotle, through F&nelon, William Wordsworth, Thomas De Quincey, John Stuart Mill, Walter Pater, to the con­ temporary scholar-critics Hoyt H. Hudson and Charles Sears Baldwin, This list of critics is impressive, and though their terms for the distinctions vary, the distinctions remain essentially the same/ Baldwin’s Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic presents a common m o d e m critical position: Rhetoric meant to the ancient world the art of instructing and moving men in their affairs* poetic the art of sharpening and expanding their vision.. To borrow a French phrase, the one is composition of ideas; the other, composition of images. The type of the one is a public address, moving us to assent and action; the type of the other is a play, show­ ing us an action moving to an end of character. The one argues and urges; the other represents. Though both appeal to the Imagination, the method of rhetoric is logical; the method of poetic, as well as its detail, is imaginative. To put the contrast with broad simplicity, a speech moves by paragraphs; a play moves by scenes. A paragraph is a logical stage in a progress of ideas; a scene is an emotional stage in a progress controlled by imagination.' This distinction, however, does some injustice to the classical conception of poetry as an instrument for improving men. In explaining man's natural “delight in works of imitation," Aristotle states that ...to he learning something is the greatest of pleasures not only to the philosopher hut also to the rest of mankind, however small their capacity for it; the reason of the delight in seeing the picture is that one is at the same time learning— gathering the meaning of things, e.g. that the man there is so-and-so; for if one has not seen the thing before, one's pleasure will not he in the picture as an imitation of it, hut will he due to the execution or colouring or some similar cause.® Although the "assent1' gained hy such an imitation is not exactly that gained hy the orator, the pleasures of learn­ ing are ultimately the same, however arrived at. Horace's advice to poets that they should hoth please and instruct^ is more truly characteristic of views of poetry in antiquity, for there the critics* poetics were often "contaminated" with purposes (and therefore techniques) which would hlur the distinction between rhetoric and poetry. Also, as Burke points out in his answer to Howell, "Baldwin's equating of Rhetoric with idea and Poetic with image.. .|”is] troublesome, since hy this alignment such effective rhetorical images as Churchill's 'iron curtain' or 'power vacuum' would belong in the realm of Poetics." 11 Yet in some of their comments Burke and Howell seem not very far apart. For example, Burke: In sum, where a rhetorician might conceivably 4 argue the cause of Love rather than Duty, or the other way round, in Poetics a pro­ found dramatizing of the conflict itself would be enough; for in this field the imitation of great practical or moral prob­ lems is itself a source of gratification.-1-^ Howell: Drama may be said to pass Judgment upon some aspect of human life by providing an occasion in which that Judgment works itself out in terms of a fictitious drama­ tic action presented to spectators in the theatre. On the other hand, oratory may be said to pass upon some aspect of human life by speaking directly of that aspect in the presence of listeners. In more traditional terms, drama allows Its comment to remain latent and prospective in a fic­ titious plot, in character, in thought, in diction, in melody, and in spectacle, whereas oratory makes its comment overt by uttering a statement formulated through the process of rhetorical Inquiry into the available means of persuasion, through the process of rhe­ torical arrangement that may and often does create and satisfy the desires of the audience by means of syllogistic progression, and through the process of rhetorical style, where words are used, not to deal with reality in terms of the analogous situations created by the poet, but to deal with reality as directly as may be possible in terms of the signs of speech. These rhetorical processes, to which we should add delivery or oral utterance, are of course the chief heads of the theories of rhetoric, according to the Aristotelian and Ciceronian view; and plot, character, thought, diction, melody, and spectacle will be remembered as the chief heads of the theory of poetry In Aristotle's celebrated analysis of Greek tragedy.-*-3 I have quoted from these critics at some length, for their own rhetorical strategies are important in this re­ fusal to meet on common ground. A number of points are immediately obvious. First, though Burke speaks of the 5 rhetorician in terms compatible with Howell's description of oratory, by shifting terms in the second half of his antithesis he avoids speaking of "the poet" and avoids drawing a distinction between "the rhetorician" and "the poet." Thus while the rhetorician "might" produce ora­ tory, the poet is in no way prohibited from using "rhetoric" in his "dramatizing." Secondly, Howell avoids mentioning the creators— poet and rhetorician (orator?)— and by speak­ ing instead about what the kinds of discourse do, he can avoid the question of the inevitable "contamination" which occurs when the actual poet or actual rhetorician borrows techniques of the other's discipline for whatever effects are appropriate to their ends. Thirdly, Howell resorts to Aristotle's categories and distinctions, thus emphasizing that the weight of tradition is on his side; yet Aristotle, himself the most exalted authority for those who stress the distinction between the rhetoric and poetic, allows a certain amount of contamination in the third element of tragedy, Thought, the power of saying whatever can be said, or what is appropriate to the occasion. This is what, in the speeches of Tragedy, falls under the arts of Politics and Rhetoric; for the older poets make their personages dis­ course like statesmen, and the moderns like rhetoricians.1^ And Diction, too, has its place in both rhetoric and poetic.

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