Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gvvz8 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T18:50:05.656Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

“A pattern, precedent, and lively warrant”: Emulation, Rhetoric, and Cruel Propriety in Titus Andronicus

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Vernon Guy Dickson
Vernon Guy Dickson*
Affiliation:
Florida International University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus critically engages and enacts teachings and patterns of emulation, including those of Quintilian, Roger Ascham, and other contemporary humanists and playwrights, pressing emulation's uses to extremes that suggest that imitative self-fashioning potentially results in monstrous or fragmented characters, decisions, and texts. The professed aim of the grammar-school education, the ability to judge well, is conflicted by Titus's exposure of judgment as itself a contested concept, locked within a circularity of intertextual precedents. Titus's excessive, even parodic, repetition of emulative strategies acts as a rebuttal of seemingly straightforward humanist models of character, judgment, self, and decorum.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , Summer 2009 , pp. 376 - 409
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abbot, George. An exposition upon the prophet Jonah contained in certaine sermons, preached in S. Maries church in Oxford. London, 1600.Google Scholar
Abbott, Don Paul. “Rhetoric and Writing in the Renaissance.” In A Short History of Writing Instruction (2001), 145–72.Google Scholar
Altman, Joel B. The Tudor Play of Mind: Rhetorical Inquiry and the Development of Elizabethan Drama. Berkeley, 1978.Google Scholar
Altman, Joel B. “‘Vile Participation’: The Amplification of Violence in the Theater of Henry V.” Shakespeare Quarterly 42, no. 1 (1991): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Anderson, Thomas P. “‘What is Written Shall Be Executed’: ‘Nude Contracts’ and ‘Lively Warrants’ in Titus Andronicus.” Criticism 45, no. 3 (2003): 301–21.10.1353/crt.2004.0006CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aristotle, . The “Art” of Rhetoric. Trans. , Freese, John Henry. Cambridge, 1926.Google Scholar
Ascham, Roger. The Schoolmaster. Ed. , Ryan, Lawrence V.. Ithaca, 1967.Google Scholar
Bach, Rebecca Ann. “Titus Andronicus, Transcendence and Succession.” Journal of Narrative Theory 29, no. 1 (1999): 1–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Baldwin, T. W. William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke. 2 vols. Urbana, 1944.Google Scholar
Bate, Jonathan. Shakespeare and Ovid. Oxford, 1993.Google Scholar
Bate, Jonathan. “‘Lucius, the Severely Flawed Redeemer of Titus Andronicus’: A Reply.” Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate 6, no. 3 (1996–97): 330–33.Google Scholar
Baynes, Thomas Spencer. Shakespeare Studies and Other Essays. London, 1894.Google Scholar
Bott, Robin L. “‘O, Keep Me From Their Worse Than Killing Lust’: Ideologies of Rape and Mutilation in Chaucer's Physician's Tale and Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus.” In Representing Rape (2001), 189–211.Google Scholar
Brinsley, John. Ludus Literarius. London, 1612.Google Scholar
Bruster, Douglas. Quoting Shakespeare: Form and Culture in Early Modern Drama. Lincoln, 2000.Google Scholar
Bruster, Douglas. Shakespeare and the Question of Culture: Early Modern Literature and the Cultural Turn. New York, 2003.10.1007/978-1-137-05156-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burton, Gideon. “Imitation in Renaissance Culture and Humanist Pedagogy.” PhD diss., University of Southern California, 1994.Google Scholar
Bushnell, Rebecca. A Culture of Teaching: Early Modern Humanism in Theory and Practice. Ithaca, 1996.Google Scholar
Christensen, Ann. “‘Playing the Cook’: Nurturing Men in Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare Yearbook 6 (1996): 327–54.Google Scholar
Christiansen, Nancy L. “Synecdoche, Tropic Violence, and Shakespeare's Imitatio in Titus Andronicus.” Style 34 (2000): 350–79.Google Scholar
Cicero, . Orator. Trans. , Hubbell, H. M.. Cambridge, MA, 1952.Google Scholar
Clark, Donald Lemen. John Milton at St. Paul's School: A Study of Ancient Rhetoric in English Renaissance Education. New York, 1948.10.7312/clar91700CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Donald Lemen. Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education. New York, 1957.10.7312/clar92654CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Stephen, ed. Shakespeare and Historical Formalism. Burlington, 2007.Google Scholar
Davis, Todd F., and , Kenneth, Womack, eds. Mapping the Ethical Turn: A Reader in Ethics, Culture, and Literary Theory. Charlottesville, 2001.Google Scholar
Dugan, John. Making a New Man: Ciceronian Self-Fashioning in the Rhetorical Works. Oxford, 2005.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199267804.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Literary and Educational Writings 2: De copia/De ratione studii . Trans. , Knott, Betty I. and , McGregor, Brian. Vol. 24, The Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto, 1978.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Colloquies . Trans. , Thompson, Craig R.. Vol. 40, The Collected Works of Erasmus. Toronto, 1997.Google Scholar
Garber, Marjorie, , Hanssen, Beatrice, and , Walkowitz, Rebecca L, eds. The Turn to Ethics. New York, 2000.Google Scholar
Girard, René. A Theater of Envy: William Shakespeare. Oxford, 1991.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen. Renaissance Self-Fashioning: From More to Shakespeare. Chicago, 1980.Google Scholar
Greene, Thomas M. The Light in Troy: Imitation and Discovery in Renaissance Poetry. New Haven, 1982.Google Scholar
Grossman, Marshall, ed. Reading Renaissance Ethics. New York, 2007.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hadfield, Andrew. Shakespeare and Republicanism. Cambridge, 2005.10.1017/CBO9780511483608CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampton, Timothy. Writing from History: The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Renaissance Literature. Ithaca, 1990.Google Scholar
Hancock, Brecken Rose. “Roman or Revenger? The Definition and Distortion of Masculine Identity in Titus Andronicus.” Early Modern Literary Studies 10, no. 1 (2004): 7.1–25, http://purl.oclc/org/emls/10-1/hancroma.htm (accessed 5 August 2008).Google Scholar
Hawhee, Debra. “Kairos and the Rhetorical Situation.” In Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, ed. , Crowley, Sharon and , Hawhee, Debra, 30–43. Boston, 1999.Google Scholar
Hillman, David. “Puttenham, Shakespeare, and the Abuse of Rhetoric.” Studies in English Literature 36 (1996): 73–90.10.2307/450928CrossRefGoogle Scholar
James, Heather. Shakespeare's Troy: Drama, Politics, and the Translation of Empire. Cambridge, 1997.10.1017/CBO9780511581960CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jones, Emrys. The Origins of Shakespeare. Oxford, 1977.Google Scholar
Kahn, Coppelia. Roman Shakespeare: Warriors, Wounds, and Women. London, 1997.Google Scholar
Kendall, Gillian Murray. “‘Lend me thy hand’: Metaphor and Mayhem in Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare Quarterly 40, no. 3 (1989): 299–316.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mallin, Eric S., “Emulous Factions and the Collapse of Chivalry: Troilus and Cressida.” Representations 29 (1990): 145–79.10.1525/rep.1990.29.1.99p0338sCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marlowe, Christopher. Tamburlaine . Vol. 1, The Complete Works of Christopher Marlowe. Ed. , Bowers, Fredson. 2nd ed., Cambridge, 1981.Google Scholar
Miola, Robert S. Shakespeare's Reading. Oxford, 2002.Google Scholar
Murphy, James J. “Key Role of Habit in Roman Writing Instruction.” In A Short History of Writing Instruction (2001), 35–78.Google Scholar
Norgaard, Holger. “Never wrong but with just cause.” English Studies 45 (1964): 137–41.10.1080/0013838X.1964.9709561CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ovid, . Metamorphoses: The Arthur Golding Translation (1567). Ed. , Frederick Nims, John. Philadelphia, 2000.Google Scholar
Perry, Curtis. “Senecan Belatedness in Titus Andronicus.”Lecture presented at the Annual Meeting of the Shakespeare Association of America, San Diego, CA, 5–7 April 2007.Google Scholar
Puttenham, George. The Arte of English Poesie. Ed. , Willcock, G.D. and , Walker, A.. Cambridge, 1936.Google Scholar
Quint, David, , Ferguson, Margaret W, , Pigman, G.W., and , Rebhorn, Wayne, eds. Creative Imitation: New Essays on Renaissance Literature In Honor of Thomas M. Greene. Binghamton, 1992.Google Scholar
Quintilian, . Institutio Oratoria. Trans. , Russell, Donald A.. 5 vols. Cambridge, MA, 2001.Google Scholar
Rasmussen, Mark David, ed. Renaissance Literature and Its Formal Engagements. New York, 2002.10.1007/978-1-137-07177-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rebhorn, Wayne A. “The Crisis of Aristocracy in Julius Caesar.” Renaissance Quarterly 43, no. 1 (1990): 75–111.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rebhorn, Wayne A. The Emperor of Men's Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric. Ithaca, 1995.Google Scholar
Representing Rape in Medieval and Early Modern Literature. Ed. Elizabeth Robertson and Christine M. Rose. New York, 2001.Google Scholar
Robertson, Karen. “Rape and the Appropriation of Progne's Revenge in Shakespeare's Titus Andronicus, or ‘Who Cooks the Thyestian Banquet?’” In Representing Rape (2001), 213–37.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. The Norton Facsimile: The First Folio of Shakespeare. Ed. , Hinman, Charlton. London, 1968.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. Hamlet. Ed. , Jenkins, Harold. London, 1982.Google Scholar
Shakespeare, William. Titus Andronicus. Ed. , Bate, Jonathan. London, 1995.Google Scholar
A Short History of Writing Instruction from Ancient Greece to Modern America. Ed. James J. Murphy. 2nd ed., Davis, 2001.Google Scholar
Smith, Molly Easo. “Spectacles of Torment in Titus Andronicus.” Studies in English Literature 36, no. 2(1996): 315–31.10.2307/450951CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Anthony Brian. “Lucius, the Severely Flawed Redeemer of Titus Andronicus.” Connotations: A Journal for Critical Debate 6, no. 2 (1996–97), 138–57.Google Scholar
Tricomi, Albert. “The Aesthetics of Mutilation in Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare Survey 27 (1974): 11–19.10.1017/CCOL0521204682.002CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Vives, Juan Luis. Vives: On Education, A Translation of the De Tradendis Disciplinis of Juan Luis Vives . Trans. , Watson, Foster. Totowa, 1971.Google Scholar
Waith, Eugene M. “The Metamorphosis of Violence in Titus Andronicus.” Shakespeare Survey 10 (1957): 39–49.Google Scholar
White, Jeanette S. “‘Is Black so Base a Hue?’: Shakespeare's Aaron and the Politics and Poetics of Race.” CLA Journal 40, no. 3 (1997): 336–66.Google Scholar
Wilson, Thomas. The Arte of Rhetorique. London, 1553.Google Scholar