Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance by Catherine Nicholson (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance by Catherine Nicholson Samuel Baudinette Nicholson, Catherine, Uncommon Tongues: Eloquence and Eccentricity in the English Renaissance, Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2013; cloth; pp. 224; 3 b/w illustrations; R.R.P. US$55.00, £36.00; ISBN 9780812245585. In Uncommon Tongues, Catherine Nicholson situates ‘strangeness’ at the centre of the development of English vernacular eloquence during the Renaissance. Through an in-depth analysis and reading of notable English literary works from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Nicholson places eccentricity in its pedagogical, rhetorical, and literary context. The study is highly engaging, written with conscious eloquence, and provides a unique approach to well-studied and little known texts that builds upon existing research in the field of English rhetoric, such as Carla Mazzio’s The Inarticulate Renaissance (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). Nicholson’s concern is the hyper-embellished prose of John Lyly’s Euphues, Edmund Spenser’s The Shepheardes Calendar, and Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine. She argues that the wilful eccentricity displayed by their writing elevated the rhetorical eloquence of the English language during a time when rhetoricians and pedagogues were realising the unique difficulty of applying Latin and Greek theories of eloquence to a supposedly barbarous tongue. Nicholson does so through a series of elegant metaphors, such as the rhetorical exile of the English language from Latin eloquence, with its attendant colonial concerns about an England perceived to be on the periphery of Europe and the old Roman Empire. The first two chapters of the book ground these concerns in a thorough analysis of the development of English rhetoric. This section flows exceedingly well and Nicholson’s reading of texts such as Thomas Elyot’s The Boke named the Governor and Roger Ascham’s The Scholemaster is engaging. The second half of the study, which provides three interesting chapter-length case studies of strangeness in Lyly, Spenser, and Marlowe, feels less cohesive; the analysis in these chapters is, nevertheless, still coherent and impressive. The final coda to the book, which briefly reads Shakespeare against the other studies, is less convincing than other sections of the book, perhaps because of its brevity. The strength of the study ultimately lies in Nicholson’s in-depth engagement and reading of her literary sources. In her own eloquent prose, Nicholson emerges as deeply aware of the connection between these texts and their immediate contexts, although the disconnected structure of the second half of the book sometimes makes this difficult to appreciate. Uncommon Tongues will appeal to historians of the English vernacular culture of the Renaissance, and English literary historians more generally. Those attracted to the development of theories of rhetoric will also find much of interest in this book. [End Page 303] Samuel Baudinette Monash University Copyright © 2015 Samuel Baudinette