Implicit Aesthetics

Abstract

The rhetorical identities and variety of both the 1643 and 1644 editions of Milton's Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and Of Education (1644) can be recovered by examining them against the pervasive, vastly influential rhetorical-poetic tradition in which he was educated. Using the rhetorical-poetic tradition as a hermeneutic allows for the location of what is formulaic in the rhetorical structures and styles of both tracts, what is adaptive and distinctive, and what can be described as rudimentary patterns of aesthetic development. Not only did Milton theorize a “fitted style of lofty, mean, or lowly,” he actually practiced it, shaping his rhetoric according to oratorical theory readily available to him. Rather than the uniformity which postmodern scholarship has assigned to Doctrine and Discipline of Divorce and Of Education, one can argue for considerable diversity of rhetorical modes and styles. This essay will demonstrate Milton's deployment of not only oratorical structures, but also the oratorical high, middle, and low styles, in addition to the creative extension of rhetorical constructions into mimetic devises, primarily sententiae, fictive scenarios, and the prose character.