This is a continuation of my focus on Renaissance Teaching Methods. In this post I will specifically detail the type of understanding that I hope to gain from learning these methods. I will then spend some time reviewing what I have learned about the motivations that fueled Renaissance learning.
The type of Understanding I am seeking:
I am continuing to analyze Shakespeare’s plays for the rhetorical strategies that he employed when writing them. These last few weeks I have been reading from Dr. Burton’s rhetoric webpage. The site is replete with methods of analysis and very detailed definitions of the various rhetorical strategies. It is a great tool and has served as a fantastic hub for my analysis of rhetorical device; however, it can also be a bit overwhelming because of the breadth of the database. I have found that going in with an idea of what i am looking for has helped me to get to my specific study more effectively. I am still finding myself struggling to make full use of the terminology that I am learning through this tool and have a hard time simply reviewing a text and picking out these aspects of it. I understand how to do an analysis of a text, but what I am focusing on goes beyond the superficial thematic banter or the somewhat more in-depth systematic deconstruction of the text, and instead delves into a texts’ specific elements. What I am focusing on are the fundamental building blocks of the methods that constructed the texts. I want to keep my focus here so that I can move beyond simply recognizing the trends and saying that “x” phrases are enhancing “y” phrases through their pacing, form, etc. I want to say “x” process of rhetorical creation is linked to “y” process of analysis and therefore in order to create the sensation of “z” Shakespeare is using “x” because it mimics the formula described by “y.”
This type of analysis is what I hope to achieve, but in order to reach that I think it is necessary to first understand what aspects of renaissance teaching motivated the drive to develop this type of literature in the first place.
Teaching Motivations in the Renaissance:
Thus far I have learned a lot about the motivations behind Renaissance learning. I found a lot of my information for this research from The Broadview Anthology of British Literature. It is a textbook I had from a previous class, and I especially like it because it contains a plethora of primary source documents (which helps me to better connect to the period). We have briefly touched on the Renaissance teaching motivations in class, point and case: sprezzatura. Each class session we enter the room knowing that we will need to display a level of comfort with the intellectual debates that we are having, or in other words, we practice the art of good conversation rhetoric, sprezzatura, daily. The Renaissance teaching model was designed with this same focal point. Teachers from that period in England were focused on producing great orators. Their focus is developed from two main ideas. One focus is that the ancient cultures of Greece, and Rome produced great orators; therefore, in order to create great orators a study of the ancient cultures of the past is essential (Hence the teaching of Latin). Another focus is the need to create a powerful English language. Since English was a developing language at the time, there was an additional emphasis on the need to improve the power of the language. I love how deeply you can dig into this subject and see the roots of philosophy that underlay the creation of some of the best English rhetoric (I mean who hasn’t studied Shakespeare?)
