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Rhetoric and the Familiar in Francis Bacon and John Donne

Daniel Derrin

Rhetoric and the Familiar examines the writing and oratory of Francis Bacon and John Donne from the perspective of the faculty psychology they both inherited. Both writers inherited the resources of the classical rhetorical tradition through their university education. The book traces, from within that tradition, the sources of Bacon and Donne’s ideas about the processes of mental image making, reasoning, and passionate feeling. It analyzes how knowledge about those mental processes underlies the rhetorical planning of texts by Bacon, such as New Atlantis, Essayes or Counsels, Novum Organum, and the parliamentary speeches, and of texts by Donne such as the Verse Letters, Essayes in Divinity, Holy Sonnets, and the sermons.

The book argues that their rhetorical practices reflect a common appropriation of ideas about mental process from faculty psychology, and that they deploy it in divergent ways depending on their rhetorical contexts. It demonstrates the vital importance, in early modern thinking about rhetoric, of considering what familiar remembered material will occur to a given audience, how that differs according to context, and the problems the familiar entails.

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 210 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61147-603-3 • Hardback • March 2013 • $102.00 • (£78.00)

978-1-61147-808-2 • Paperback • February 2015 • $54.99 • (£42.00)

978-1-61147-604-0 • eBook • March 2013 • $52.00 • (£40.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Philosophy / Methodology, Psychology / Movements / Humanistic

Rhetoric and the Familiar in Francis Bacon and John Donne

Hardback

Paperback

eBook

Summary

Rhetoric and the Familiar examines the writing and oratory of Francis Bacon and John Donne from the perspective of the faculty psychology they both inherited. Both writers inherited the resources of the classical rhetorical tradition through their university education. The book traces, from within that tradition, the sources of Bacon and Donne’s ideas about the processes of mental image making, reasoning, and passionate feeling. It analyzes how knowledge about those mental processes underlies the rhetorical planning of texts by Bacon, such as New Atlantis, Essayes or Counsels, Novum Organum, and the parliamentary speeches, and of texts by Donne such as the Verse Letters, Essayes in Divinity, Holy Sonnets, and the sermons.

The book argues that their rhetorical practices reflect a common appropriation of ideas about mental process from faculty psychology, and that they deploy it in divergent ways depending on their rhetorical contexts. It demonstrates the vital importance, in early modern thinking about rhetoric, of considering what familiar remembered material will occur to a given audience, how that differs according to context, and the problems the familiar entails.

Details

University Press Copublishing Division / Fairleigh Dickinson University Press

Pages: 210 • Trim: 6 x 9

978-1-61147-603-3 • Hardback • March 2013 • $102.00 • (£78.00)

978-1-61147-808-2 • Paperback • February 2015 • $54.99 • (£42.00)

978-1-61147-604-0 • eBook • March 2013 • $52.00 • (£40.00)

Subjects: Literary Criticism / European / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh, Philosophy / Methodology, Psychology / Movements / Humanistic

Author

Daniel Derrin holds a Ph.D in English literature and teaches literature and media communication courses at Macquarie University, Sydney.

Table of Contents

Table of Contents

Abbreviations
1. Introduction
2. Making mental images: an enargetic rhetoric
3. Reasoning from place to place: a thetical rhetoric
4. Passion and perception: a tropical rhetoric
5. Project-Bacon: gaining properly quiet entry
6. Project-Donne: getting properly included
7. Conclusion: rhetorical style and the familiar

Bibliography
Index

Reviews

This is an ambitious and wide-randing first book. In it, Daniel Derrin examines the rhetorical practices of Francis Bacon and John Donne. ... Any student of Bacon, Donne, or Renaissance rhetoric could turn to this book with profit.
— Renaissance Quarterly

Rhetoric and the Familiar in Francis Bacon and John Donne

Daniel Derrin

Rhetoric and the Familiar in Francis Bacon and John Donne

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