BookRags.com Literature Guides Literature Guides Criticism/Essays Criticism/Essays Biographies Biographies My Bibliography Periodic Table U.S. Presidents Shakespeare Sonnet Shake-Up
Research Anything:        
History | Encyclopedias | Films | News | Create a Bibliography | More... Login | Register | Help
Not What You Meant?  There are 36 definitions for Saint Thomas.

Search "Sir Thomas More"

Biographies Navigation
 

Sir Thomas More Biography

Print-Friendly  Order the PDF version  Order the RTF version
About 13 pages (3,778 words)
Thomas More Summary

Bookmark and Share

Dictionary of Literary Biography on Sir Thomas More (page 2)

Like the great Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus, More was excited by the ancient fusion of literary modes and civic purposes: a city, a nation, a civilization could be moved toward the good and useful by the inducements of fiction or any literary form that, through its color, movement, and verisimilitude, seized the reader's imagination and intellect.

The humanist revolution viewed the medieval academy as an obstacle to its interests. In pursuing the trivium--grammar, logic, and rhetoric--medieval scholars gave disproportionate attention to logic, more specifically to determinations of meaning, a field that would today be described as linguistics. For humanists such as More, these scholars' abstruse delvings into the conditions of intelligibility meant a neglect of the ancient virtue of rhetoric. The orator or writer trained in rhetoric could juxtapose alternatives in debate and then, after full consideration of the alternatives, proceed to their resolution. Further, the orator-writer could narrate or dramatize moral, social, or political truths and thus delight the reader's senses and understanding. In short, rhetoric as persuasion could address a learned audience as opposed to a strictly academic one. More's advocacy of the liberalizing of knowledge on behalf of a wider audience gave rise to the wide range of his own writing--from theological argument, educational advocacy, and translations of Greek and Latin authors to the imaginative projections of literary art, the most famous of which, Libellus vere aureus nec minus salutaris quam festivus de optimo reip.

This is a free page. This page contains 200 words. This biography contains 3,778 words (approx. 13 pages at 300 words per page).

Read the rest of this Biography with our Sir Thomas More Access Pass.

More Information
  • View Sir Thomas More Study Pack
  • 36 Alternative Definitions
  • Search Results for "Sir Thomas More"
  • Add This to Your Bibliography
  • More Products on This Subject
    Thomas More, Sir
    The life of the English humanist and statesman Sir Thomas More (1478-1535) exemplifies the politica... more

    Sir Thomas More
    Sir Thomas More is--in the phrase associated with him since the early sixteenth century--a man for ... more


     
    Copyrights
    Daniel Bender, Pace University.. Sir Thomas More from Dictionary of Literary Biography. ©2005-2006 Thomson Gale, a part of the Thomson Corporation. All rights reserved.

    Join BookRagslearn moreJoin BookRags


    About BookRags | Customer Service | Report an Error | Terms of Use | Privacy Policy