Dido American Style: Teaching Rhetorical Tropes for Fun and Profit

Abstract

Through this paper I aim to help show students, from whatever background they bring to class, how to read Marlowe through his use of particular figures and mannerisms of speech, and, equally as important, I want to foreground the thesis that learning the complexities of the gilded language of the Early Moderns can help students understand the rhetorical challenges they face today in the realms of politics, advertising, and daily concourse. I want to reintroduce to the discipline and introduce to the students at hand Marlowe’s brilliant rhetoric and the rich and complex figures of speech he uses. For students, having a grasp on Marlowe’s language facilitates their development as sharper decoders of our own linguistic productions here in America and beyond.