A Taste of My Final Project

For no better reason than "because I was working on it today," I figured I would take a second to copy and paste the first paragraph of my final paper.  I suspect it won't be the case, but given the chance that I am moving the absolutely wrong direction, I suspect that this will give me time to regroup.  If that is not the case, I hope you enjoy. 

Shakespearian Rhetoric

            “Then rhetoric does not treat of all kinds of discourse?” (Plato 122).  The question seems simple enough; and when Gorgias responds with “no,” I think that most readers (especially rhetoricians) give a slight cringe.  In fact, it seems clear that rhetoric does cover all forms of discourse including literature.  I must, therefore, admit at finding myself quite at a loss when I first thought about the connection between literature and rhetoric.  This thought first occurred to me as I was reading through Harold Bloom’s The Anatomy of Influence: Literature as a Way of Life wherein he says, “Wit is too besieged in the [Shakespearian] Sonnets by a strict restraint of ethos and pathos; logos reigns almost unchallenged” (85).  While this statement contains only some of the most basic rhetorical terms, I found myself caught off-guard.  Thus inspired, I was determined to delve into the topic of rhetoric and literature using the Shakespearian Sonnets as my starting point.  Therefore, I must admit, that I am writing this paper as much for my own benefit as a type of journey during which I hope to discover as much as my reader the relationship between rhetoric and Shakespeare as well as the connection between rhetoric and literature.  In the research, I came across several points that drove me to consider the sonnets as forms of epideictic rhetoric, and expanding on that principle, I will explore several of the sonnets and their epideictic properties.  Within this analysis, I hope to explore what components of the sonnets most (if not all) readers connect to which helps to make these verses so timeless.  After this rhetorical analysis, I would like to look at these components of rhetoric in light of Ted Hughes’s phrase, “The sonnets is where we really hear Shakespeare’s own voice” (??).  By applying this concept with the rhetorical discussion, hopefully we can catch a glimpse, however brief, of the mysterious character known as William Shakespeare.