Masters Theses

Date of Award

7-1957

Degree Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts

Major

Theatre

Major Professor

Robert L. Hickey

Committee Members

Paul L. Soper, Alwin Thaler

Abstract

This thesis is a critical analysis of Jeremy Taylor's method of arrangement in his Twenty-five Sermons Preached at Golden Grove: for the Winter Half-year. Its initial purpose is to determine how he organized his material for the best possible effect. Its ultimate aim is to open new avenues for studying the artistic prose of Taylor. The fulfillment of both these ends should contribute to the discovery of an aspect of Taylor's rhetoric that is too often given secondary consideration, or elocutio. An investigation of Taylor's prose usually revolves around the contradiction that exists between the opinions of Morris Croll, who classes Taylor as a writer of the loose Senecan school, and Logan Pearsall Smith and William Fraser Mitchell, who follow Sir William Edmund Gosse in considering him a Ciceronian with a mastery of two styles, the plain and the ornate. However, this investigation is offered in the belief that it can show another aspect in Taylor's rhetoric as artistic as his elocutio, and with the hope that it will stimulate further interest in the study of how Taylor bridled his eloquent expression by functional organizations: "For it is not only of consequence what we say, and how we say it," as Quintilian states, "but also where we say it."

The Winter Sermons are not only a fair representation of the range of subjects, variety of texts, and methods of divisions that are typical of Taylor's work but also of the Golden Grove prose (that is, the works Taylor wrote for the Earl and Countess of Carbery), on which most of the discussions of ornamentation are grounded. Furthermore, since these sermons are a series of compositions of the same kind, they are the best selections to determine what methods of organization individualize his prose.

Preceding the analysis of these sermons is an introductory chapter, which, by showing the rhetorical influences that helped to fashion Taylor's prose and the circumstances under which his works were produced, gives some indication of the importance that dispositio will have in his sermons.

The study is based on the Heber and Eden edition of Taylor's works. For convenience a table of the sermons, with the serial numbers, pages, titles and texts, as they appear in Volume IV of this edition, is placed in Appendix A.

Download
Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."

Share

COinS