Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England

Abstract

Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-Century England. By Ryan J. Stark. Washington, DC: Catholic University America Press, 2009. Pp. vii, 234. $65. This extremely well-written, thoughtful book sets out to defend new scientific writers (members Royal Society, inaugurated in 1662 to discuss and foster study physical sciences) from charge that who attack rhetoric [members Society] continued to use (citing Brian Vickers, 50). Stark responds by redefining plainness in as philosophical idea, a syntactical [which] counteracted arcane worlds wonderment and incantation (2) . Thus plainness in is a matter attitude rather than structures. The problem with this assertion is that a) it depends on divining intention writer, always a slippery process, as W. K. Wimsatt explained many decades ago; and b) phrase simply'did carry this meaning in seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It was impossible, in seventeenth and eighteenth-century English, to use term style outside use rhetorical figures and syntactical structures. It was also impossible, during that period, to use term without meanings unadorned, and obvious. Going back to fourteenth century (and excluding meanings flatness and a physical plain) term means open, clear, . . . manifest, obvious, easily distinguishable or recognizable, open, manifest, direct, unmistakable, of which meaning is evident, not intricate or complicated, simple ( OED, 2nd ed. s.v.). From 1577 onwards, term style is used only in a structural sense, as referring to features literary composition which belong to form and expression rather than to substance thought or matter expressed. A form words, phrase, or formula, by which a particular idea or thought is expressed (OED, 2nd ed. s.v.). Thus in terms seventeenth and eighteenth-century usage, Stark's claims that plainness is philosophical idea, a syntactical one, and that is movement away from charmed conceptions and toward merely decorative conceptions tropes (11 ) are simply untenable, or at least undemonstrable. To say, for example, that the change in [Joseph] Glainvill's involves a movement away from an occult rhetoric and toward an experimental conception (39) is simply to approve Glanvill's ideas, but to address his style. In a second attempt to signify a shift in use rhetorical figures from occult to plain, Stark, speaking in support John Dryden's allegedly innovative use rhetorical figures and tropes, asserts that Dryden champions plain (182). But according to OED there is no other kind: ekphrasis is plain declaration a thing (2nd ed. s.v.). Moreover, term did enter language until 1715. Of course if Stark were to adopt a synchronie (ahistorical) as opposed to a diachronic (historical) position, he would then be free to adopt twenty-first century terminology to describe seventeenth and eighteenth-century phenomena. Thus a twenty-first century critic could speak or identify a although that particular was never defined in those terms in historical period referred to. Stark seems to bridge synchronic and diachronic methods by giving impression that term was used by writers in question, although he never makes a direct attribution that phrase to any them. Apparently there is no logical relationship between poetic quality and advanced scientific thinking, for such as John Donne, Richard Crashaw, Henry Vaughan, and Andrew Marvel] appear increasingly superstitious against background new language reforms (64), while lesser poets like Abraham Cowley and Samuel Butler play important roles in promulgating new plain sensibility. …

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 45 citations exist upstream.