The Imperfect Friend: Emotion and Rhetoric in Sidney, Milton and Their ConextsMany writers in early modern England drew on the rhetorical tradition to explore affective experience. In The Imperfect Friend, Wendy Olmsted examines a broad range of Renaissance and Reformation sources, all of which aim to cultivate 'emotional intelligence' through rhetorical means, with a view to understanding how emotion functions in these texts. In the works of Sir Philip Sidney (1554-1586), John Milton (1608-1674), and many others, characters are depicted conversing with one another about their emotions. While counselors appeal to objective reasons for feeling a certain way, their efforts to shape emotion often encounter resistance. This volume demonstrates how, in Renaissance and Reformation literature, failures of persuasion arise from conflicts among competing rhetorical frameworks among characters. Multiple frameworks, Olmsted argues, produce tensions and, consequently, an interiorized conflicted self. By situating emotional discourse within distinct historical and socio-cultural perspectives, The Imperfect Friend sheds new light on how the writings of Sidney, Milton, and others grappled with problems of personal identity. From their innovations, the study concludes, friendship emerges as a favourite site of counseling the afflicted and perturbed. |
From inside the book
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... conversation , in the Mil- tonic sense that includes intimacy and civil life along with discussion and discourse . Without conversation between friends , the worlds of the Arcadias and Paradise Lost fall into faction , revolution , and ...
... Conversation ( 1574 ) advocates accepting the differences of others . Guazzo's text , as we shall see , greatly ... civil servant , and lover or writer . He may be unable to sub- scribe to only one social definition of virtue . So ...
... Conversation serves William Guazzo , a figure of the author's brother . But ... conversation and friendship . Gentle speech is virtuous in the counsellor ... civil- itas ' ( 65 ) .50 Plutarch cautions that a friend must not correct so ...
... Conversation and in the French Protestant humanist Pierre de la Primaudaye's The French Academie ( 1586 ) ... civil conversa- tion ' from Guazzo's dialogue in a social world ' separable from the world of civic responsibility and larger than the ...
... Conversation strongly defends the ideals of the active life , it defends even more strongly a conversation that moves beyond the court to civil life in gen- eral , including people who exhibit changing , varied , and imperfect iden ...
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