Disentangling logic was an important skill in humanist education, another
challenge we might take up from the humanists. Renaissance rhetoricians
would not call tjis paragraph "gargantuan." They might refer to "copia" or
"dilation," a category many of them valued. I take no credit for unfolding
the sexual stakes of this category in Renaissance rhetoric. Patricia Parker
has done so very well many years ago. But these sexual stakes being what
they are, I invite the poster to consider the psychological stakes of his
privileging of brevitas, and take pride in my use of copia, as in my
entangling and difficult logic. As I said, I do not believe that any
intellectual work which is not difficult is worth our while.
Before I questioned anyone's knowledge of Renaissance rhetoric, I would
check not the OED nor any modern electronic media, but Renaissance rhetoric
books, which have of course escaped the notice of the OED as of most
Renaissance scholars. Before I questioned a colleague's knowledge and the
tuning of her mind, I would certainly read a colleague's, and other
colleagues, publications on Renaissance theorizations of anapodoton and
their sexual and erotic stakes. I would certainly do so if I very much
liked to see evidence of what I disavow in advance.
I do not believe in the postmodern any more than I do in the imaginary, in
particular because, especially in its late Foucauldian vein, unlike
Renaissance rhetoric and poetry, it encourages us to privilege semantic
surfaces which inevitably cannot lead us beyond dead relics, and because I
find the early modern thinking of the erotic and sexual and/as the
rhetorical more refined and nuanced than even the very few contemporary
attempts at precise theoretical thinking I do respect and value.
Shirley Sharon-Zisser
>It's absurd to argue that unless we retune out mind to the
>"categories of classical education undergone by the humanists" we
>have slim chance of extracting anything but dead relics from the
>treasury of Renaissance poetry. One does not have to assume the
>mental set of Propertius' audience to understand and enjoy his
>elegy. One does, of course, need to know the language along with
>the relevant historioraphy, influences and sources. If one were to
>apply this sort of nostrum to the study of all older literatures, the
>retunings of the mind would produce cacophony. The sort of
>arguments advanced in this and other posts do not suggest the
>author has in fact tuned her mind to the Classical education of
>Renaissance poets. The tenor of the arguments suggests to me, in
>fact, that various postmodern instruments of excavation, as she
>terms it, have been used to manipulate rhetoric in ways that produce
>falacious readings in direct contradiction to the poems.
>
>
>==============================================
>Steven J. Willett
>University of Shizuoka, Hamamatsu Campus
>2-3 Nunohashi 3-chome, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan 432-8012
>Voice and Fax: (053) 457-4514
>Japan email: [log in to unmask]
>US email: [log in to unmask]
>
>
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