Robert Cockcroft

Putting Aristotle to the Proof: Style, Substance and the EPL Group

Aristotle’s contention that rhetorical proof is effected by character through the persuader (ethos), by emotion through the persuadee (pathos) and through reasoning applied to the subject of persuasion (logos) suggests one way of teaching rhetoric. EPL (Ethos/Pathos/Logos) groups put in practice the three modes of proof as three roles to be enacted by students. This core concept of ‘Old’ (i.e. classical) Rhetoric also invites the application of ‘New’ Rhetorical (i.e. modern linguistic) methods to test its validity and enhance its usefulness. For example, schema theory is a common resource for all three roles: footing in discourse is used as a means of projecting ethos; deixis and functional sentence perspective both reinforce pathos; and meta discourse theory has close links to logos. The integrated use of these new techniques as coded and commented on by the three EPL representatives making up each group is exemplified by six of the joint projects completed in the final year of my experiment. It became easier for students, using this methodology, to think themselves into the position of a persuadee, to make the appropriate choice of linguistic means and to communicate these clearly and concisely with a view to discussion and evaluation.

Who talks whose language? George Herbert and the reader’s world

The poetic rhetoric of George Herbert, an outstanding explorer of the mental and emotional aspects of Anglican spirituality, seems particularly suited to the applications of cognitive theory. By what means does the poet centre his reader in a distinctive kind of mental space (to be termed ‘the heart-space’), reconciling Protestant anxieties about absolute dependence on God’s grace with the sense of a fully functioning, emotionally authentic human presence? Herbert’s use of deixis, metaphor and other space-structuring tropes constructs an implied reader who is both rooted in familiar experience and worldly wisdom and open to stress and surprise.

Old Passions, New Purposes: Rhetoric Rhetoricised

This chapter will explore the use of pathos in modern critical writing — as acute as any to be found in early modern texts — besides anticipating and (later) interacting with Chapter 5, which tries to trace the emotional appeals made by the authors or by their characters (or by the authors through the characters) to the original audiences in their particular contexts. But I do not intend, in that chapter, to supersede the judgements which will be sampled here. I wish, rather, to highlight the way in which today’s critics exploit pathos for their own persuasive purposes, often laudable, always interesting. They tend to put their own emotional ‘spin’ on the pathos of early modern writing, and to develop distinct modes of pathos in relation to the topics treated. My aim ultimately is to distinguish the spin which twists the original meaning, from that which (quite properly) presents it from a different angle.

Sable Clouds and Silver Linings

The title of this chapter points forward to the passage from Milton’s A Masque, to be explored in its final section, as summarised in the lines echoed here (A Masque, 221–5). But it also implies a successful resolution, or exploitation, of the problem which dogs every attempt to locate pathos satisfactorily within rhetoric — or to accommodate rhetoric itself to the conscious and careful use of language as a tool for investigation and decision. How does emotion stand in relation to clear perception, right choice and enacted purpose? The Lady’s vision (perhaps reinforced for Milton’s Ludlow audience by a piece of primitive stage machinery, a visible rhetoric) illustrates a general principle about the use of pathos by Milton and other writers: the progression away from the kind of emotion which darkens and confuses — the perturbatio of the Stoics — to that which enlightens and directs, from sable clouds to silver linings. But to reflect the dynamic of emotion and perception, the movement from outward deception or misconstruction to inward substance, good or bad — a movement figured by Plato, and subsequently by Erasmus, as the opening of a Silenus (see below), and one which makes the pleasure of discovery integral to truth — will involve a constant stress on the connections between pathos and its two associated principles, ethos and logos (whatever period we survey and whatever terms, then current, approximate to these Aristotelean concepts).

Introduction: Reconsidered Passions

One important test for writing, drama, and all other art-forms, is the degree of connection between what we see in something, what we sense behind it, how strange or familiar it is, what it prompts us to — and our emotional engagement with it. Anybody committed to the long-term study of language and literature is likely to recall several different ways in which new texts have struck them, or in which well-known ones have suddenly come back to life or revealed new qualities, new issues, or new aspects deepening or contradicting our earlier understanding; but almost always these will involve an inextricable blend of perception, participation and emotion. Some of these moments are all the more rewarding through being unanticipated, whether they start from a chance encounter or a programmed meeting. Some are sparked off while we are working alone, trying to anticipate the testing of our arguments by those best qualified to judge them. Some arise quite awkwardly as, seeking to persuade others of the importance of a text, or the value of our approach to it, we are finishing some writing or delivering a scripted lecture or paper.

Going to Extremes

In this shorter chapter I want to indicate the range of pathos to be found in early modern writing. Focusing, initially, on extreme expressions of emotion, and specifically on the crucial opposition of love and hate, should provide co-ordinates for the investigation of intermediate degrees. As a further system of reference, and an additional pointer to the possible combinations of feeling (for example, of personal and political emotion), I have chosen to look at expressions of love or hate on four different ‘levels’ — religion, politics, family, sexuality — within contexts which are either literary in their use of pathos, or addressed functionally to specific topics, audiences and occasions. A further purpose is to foster precision in the reading of such texts, without the additional complication of reference to the critical texts studied in the last chapter, or to the texts to which they refer, which we will look at in the next chapter. It will also be helpful, in a second section, to represent the widely different purposes and occasions to which emotive persuasion was applied, in this case instancing the relationship of preacher and congregation, subject and prince, feminine and masculine. Here extremes of feeling may be combined in a single text to serve its manifest persuasive design.

Adjusting the Mirrors

In the two preceding chapters, we have sampled the persuasiveness of modern criticism in its learning, its intuitiveness, its theoretical agendas and its pathos, and we have also looked at the extremes of feeling in some early modern texts without reference to any critical comment. In Chapter 3 we considered Greenblatt’s persuasive presentation of Tamburlaine as a killing machine, and Lisa Jardine’s emotive account of `raw emotions’ as unleashed in Lear. We saw pathos being aroused to challenge conservative readings of Shakespeare, and to bring home the oddity of Margaret Cavendish — and, by contrast, we saw it being evoked in more muted but subtly engaging ways by Ringler and Flachmann, Baldwin’s editors, and by David Norbrook in his appraisal of Lucy Hutchinson. We looked, too, at Milton’s creativity in Paradise Lost as expounded by Harold Bloom; and at God’s shortcomings as Creator, viewed from Catherine Belsey’s feminist perspective.

Reason: Choice and Judgement

We now come to the moment of truth in our study of the sources of persuasive language. How will the audience (or indeed the persuader) judge the persuasion? Judgement will certainly be exercised at both ends of our familiar diagram (Sender > Message > Receiver). The persuader as Sender will judge stance, emotional engagement and choice of argument before beginning the persuasion, having assessed the audience. In spoken persuasion it will be possible to monitor the audience response and adapt techniques accordingly. In written persuasion, however, final judgements have to be made before the book is published, the essay handed in, or the advertisement printed.

Reason: the Resources of Argument

We have now come to the third structural principle of persuasion, logos; as always, we must emphasise its integral relationship with ethos and pathos in the persuasive interaction. It is still important to remember that our tripartite division of the sources of persuasion should be seen not as a linear sequence, but as a simultaneous process. Our earlier ‘freeze frame’ analogy is worth recalling here; the speaker, caught momentarily as an attitude is being conveyed, may simultaneously be projecting an emotion, and/or framing an argument. The persuader’s personality or stance, together with his or her emotional engagement with the audience, determine the choice of persuasive arguments. This choice (as the persuasive interaction develops), also works in reverse, as argument in its turn will modify emotional orientation and stance.

Afterword: The Interface — Further Roles for Rhetoric

We can now examine the options available for the attentive and patient reader who has followed us thus far, having acquired a variety of rhetorical skills together with an understanding of rhetoric, its theoretical basis and its terminology. As we have seen, these skills can be of practical use in social, business and political contexts; they can provide an instinctively heightened awareness of language; and they can be deployed and developed academically in a variety of theoretical modes.