Lyly, John - Walter N. King (essay date 1955)
Walter N. King (essay date 1955)
SOURCE: "John Lyly and Elizabethan Rhetoric," in Studies in Philology, Vol. 52, No. 1, 1955, pp. 149-61.
[In the following essay, King examines the formal attributes of Lyly's arguments in Euphues.]
Study of Elizabethan rhetoric often seems to balance upon two "indispensables": some sort of consideration of euphuism, based upon analysis of isolated passages in Euphues, and pejorative comment upon John Lyly. Lyly has in fact become a major whipping boy in English literature. Whipping boys are a convenience, of course. Easily distinctive examples of the stylistically poor or over-developed help us to speak with confidence about the better aspects of Elizabethan rhetorical practice. But surely it is time to wonder if Lyly has not been over-whipped. In our zeal to put him in his place, may we not be overlooking features of his rhetoric (and indeed of the rhetoric that flourished between 1570 and 1600),...
[The entire page is 5877 words long]
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