Rhetoric: Quiz Guide

• What sort of things contributed to the English becoming a language of nuance and sophistication?
• What kind of things made early modern writers like Shakespeare's language so "remarkable"?
• What was one of the chief sources of competition for audiences?
• Which three Italian writers "sparked a revolution in poetry" by writing in the vernacular? What does vernacular mean?
• What other forces (besides Italian writers) "promoted the vernacular as a literary language"?
• Which powerful institution did Erasmus unintentionally undermine?
• What was the difference between rhetoric in the medieval curriculum and rhetoric in the Renaissance (or early modern) curriculum?
• What did Cicero and Quintilian say about eloquence and its origin?
• What was involved in utramque partem?
• What book was a "school classic," and why?
• What was ethopoeia, and what does it have to do with "negative capability"?

Rhetorical Strategies in Much Ado About Nothing

• What are examples of the play's "clever symmetries" between the main plot, the evil counter-plot, and the comic suplot?
• Give an example of a writer who used the querelle des femmes as an exercise in style and, perhaps, to allude to the "emsculated position of courtiers in princely states." Explain.
• How does Benedick takes both positions in the querelle des femmes?
• What are some of the "rules" regarding prose vs. verse, and how often are they broken?
• What school of writing influenced Shakespeare's early prose, and what "ornament" and "equilibrium of clauses" did it use?
• What is paratactic syntax?
• The text says Shakespeare's ability to mobilize "a multitude of details to produce a vivid impression," in this case of assault, is called "amplification," which is his favorite trope. Give an example.

Prose and Verse

• The text describes how the gulling (tricking) scenes move from prose to verse. Why? What does the verse form in which Beatrice speaks say about the impact of the trick upon Beatrice?
• To what bird does Hero compare Beatrice? Why that bird and not another?
• What is cuckoldry? How might it be informed by the men's unwillingness to "sacrifice ...intimate friendsips with members of their own sex"?
• In battles of the sexes, what "contradictory forces" might jesting express?
• How are verse and prose used to control mood and tone in later parts of the play?