John Lyly Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Arthur F. Kinney

Critical Essay by Arthur F. Kinney

SOURCE: "Rhetoric and Fiction in Elizabethan England," in Renaissance Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Renaissance Rhetoric, edited by James J. Murphy, University of California Press, 1983, pp. 385-93.

In the following essay, Kinney centers on the works of John Lyly and Sir Philip Sidney as he argues the importance of rhetoric to the English novelists of the Elizabethan period.

In a striking portrait that fills the verso of the title page in the Bodleian Library's unique copy of the Sphaera Civitatis by John Case of St. John's College, Oxford (1602), a reasonably good likeness of Elizabeth I embraces a globe of concentric circles, the taxonomy of which discloses Case's own vision of the state: the circles are labeled stellata (and Heroes), Maiestas, Prudentia, Fortitvdo, Religio, Clementia, Fecvndia, and (nearest the center, or Iustitia Immobilis), Vbertas Rervm—Eloquence.¹ This medular positioning of the art of rhetoric signifies not only...
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