The Ghost of Rhetoric: Milton's Logic and the Renaissance Trivium
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
8-14-2015
Department
English
School
Humanities
Abstract
Although English Renaissance poet John Milton (1608-1674) wrote both a grammar and a logic, he did not write a rhetoric. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric made up the trivium, the verbal portion of the seven liberal arts, the ideal curriculum since antiquity. Milton's failure to write a rhetoric is partly due to the popularity of the disciplinary simplifications of Peter Ramus, which reduced rhetoric at the time to little more than a finding list of tropes and figures, and also partly due to Milton's own temperament. Milton scholars are now beginning to understand how much the ideas expressed in Milton's Logic can help interpret his other works, such as Paradise Lost.
Publication Title
A Concise Companion to the Study of Manuscripts, Printed Books, and the Production of Early Modern Texts: A Festschrift for Gordon Campbell
First Page
188
Last Page
205
Recommended Citation
Lares, J.
(2015). The Ghost of Rhetoric: Milton's Logic and the Renaissance Trivium. A Concise Companion to the Study of Manuscripts, Printed Books, and the Production of Early Modern Texts: A Festschrift for Gordon Campbell, 188-205.
Available at: https://aquila.usm.edu/fac_pubs/18545