Shakespeare and Social Dialogue
Dramatic Language and Elizabethan Letters

An alternative approach to Shakespeare's language and the rhetoric of Elizabethan letters.

Lynne Magnusson (Author)

9780521641913, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 March 1999

232 pages
23.6 x 15.9 x 1.8 cm, 0.45 kg

"...splendid book that offers both a compelling method of close reading and a number of careful, discriminating analyses of Renaissance English texts." Joutnal of English and Germanic Philology

Shakespeare and Social Dialogue deals with Shakespeare's language and the rhetoric of Elizabethan letters. Moving beyond claims about the language of individual Shakespearean characters, Magnusson analyses dialogue, conversation, sonnets and particularly letters of the period, which are normally read as historical documents, as the verbal negotiation of specific social and power relations. Thus, the rhetoric of service or friendship is explored in texts as diverse as Sidney family letters, Shakespearean sonnets and Burghley's state letters. The book draws on ideas from discourse analysis and linguistic pragmatics, especially 'politeness theory', relating these to key ideas in epistolary handbooks of the period, including those by Erasmus and Angel Day and demonstrates that Shakespeare's language is rooted in the everyday language of Elizabethan culture. Magnusson creates a way of reading both literary texts and historical documents which bridges the gap between the methods of new historicism and linguistic criticism.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
Part I. The Rhetoric of Politeness: 1. Politeness and dramatic character in Henry VIII
2. 'Power to hurt': language and service in Sidney household letters and Shakespeare's sonnets
Part II. Eloquent Relations in Letters: 3. Scripting social relations in Erasmus and Day
4. Reading courtly and administrative letters
5. Linguistic stratification, merchant discourse, and social change
Part III. A Prosaics of Conversation: 6. The pragmatics of repair in King Lear and Much Ado About Nothing
7. 'Voice potential': language and symbolic capital in Othello
Notes
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Shakespeare studies & criticism [DSGS]