Recent Studies of Rhetorical Poetics

The study of rhetoric in the English Renaissance has been an important area of investigation since the 1920s. Literary scholars, however, did not fully recover the centrality of eloquence to the literature of the period until the mid-twentieth century. While remaining a locus for discussions of form and content, Renaissance rhetorical theory has also since the late 1970s become central to the study of race and gender, the formation of religious and national identities, and the relationship between literature and early modern colonialism. Charting this history, this bibliographic essay focuses on recent scholarship on the subject, attempting to be reasonably comprehensive with work published after 1971. As this essay shows, rhetorical theory has become increasingly important for contemporary understandings both of reader reception and theories of interpretation. In more recent years, Renaissance rhetorical poetics have become a touchstone for literary scholars wishing to consider the place of the humanities in the twenty-first century. [D.K.]