Use Of Rhetorical Devices Research Articles

Jonson's Sick Society

Because Ben Jonson was a Renaissance man trained in the eloquent manipulation of language and thoroughly attuned to his times, he spoke to his audiences in a language which communicated not only through the ideas expressed but through the particular phrasing of those ideas. He consciously made use of rhetorical devices to achieve specific ends because he lived among and wrote for men schooled in a complex system of rhetoric. And perhaps none of the devices which he used was more tellingly handled than that dealing with man's physical and mental well-being; for through a complex method of equating social and cultural diseases with physiological ills, Jonson created a medical imagery which is inextricably a part of the development of character, the working out of plot, and the maintenance of an underlying theme which is basically the theme of all of his comediesthe deviation of man from the accepted norm. Renaissance man, as Jonson saw him, was often a hypocrite and a fraud; he engaged in chicanery and deceit; he cheated and lied and dissembled. And he was many times a prejudiced and unreasonable fool. Because he fell far short of the reasonable well-balanced creature that his place in the hierarchical scheme of the universe demanded that he be, he was sick; an attempt to cure him was necessary. Jonson's efforts to return him to health took the traditional satiric form of ridicule. The dramatist would hold a mirror up to his deviate and by allowing him to see how he appeared to others, laugh him out of his sickness. That mirror was subsequently to reflect unhealthy practices and attitudes in the individual, the family, the coterie, the economic group, even society as a whole. Jonson's major comedies are, therefore, permeated with medical and health imagery showing the analogy of man's moral and spiritual deviations to physical ills, and the cures to be used for such sufferings. That Jonson was in complete command of his satiric tool is clearly evidenced in his delineation of every segment of each of the little worlds that he created in his comedies; however, perhaps in no circumstance was the dramatist's use of medical and health terminology more significant than in the instances in which it related to the impact of the spiritual and moral biases of one member of a family upon the other members of that group. For example, in Every Man in his Humour, Kitely's humor is his jealousy, He sees the different members of his household and the various characters who visit his family as diseased and carriers of disease. His brother-in-law, Well-bred, makes ... [Kitely's] house here common as a mart/A Theater, a publike receptacle/For giddie humour, and diseased riot. . . .1 But

On the speaking of John L. Lewis

One of the most important criteria in rhetorical judgment is generally recognized to relate to effect, both immediate and long range. Another important criterion concerns the orator's use of rhetorical devices, and their results. When the same rhetorical devices often produce favorable results with one set of audiences, and prove not to be so favorably received when used with other audiences, the critic does well to examine a) the personal background of the orator he is studying and b) the history of the movement or system of ideas the orator represents. It is proposed in this paper first to illustrate the kind of ethical appeal or attack so often used by John L. Lewis, then to trace the historical and personal background which helped produce this approach, and finally to examine its results in a typical speech dealing primarily with labor, and in typical speeches of political as well as labor orientation.