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the rhetoric of the conscience in donne herbert and vaughan
there is a kind of conscience some men keepe br is like a member thats benumbd with sleepe ; br which as it gathers blood and wakes agen br it shoots and pricks and feeles as bigg as ten br donne herbert and vaughan see the conscience as only partly theirs only partly under their control . of course as theologians said it ought to be a simple syllogism comparing actions to gods law and giving judgment in a joint procedure of the soul and its maker . inevitably though there are problems . hearts refuse to confess or forget the rules or jumble them up or refuse to come to the point when delivering a verdict . the three poets are beady eyed experts on failure . after all where subjects can only discover their authentic nature in relation to the divine it matters whether the conversation works . remarkably each poet despite their very different devotional backgrounds uses similar sets of tropes to investigate problems enigma aposiopesis breaking off chiasmus subjectio asking then answering a question and antanaclasis repetition with a difference . structured like a language the conscience is tortured rewritten read and broken up to engineer a proper response . considering the faculty as an uncomfortable extrusion of the divine into the everyday the rhetoric of the conscience transforms protestant into prosthetic poetics . it moves between early modern theology rhetoric and aesthetic theory to give original scholarly and committed readings of the great metaphysical poets . topics covered include boredom torture graffiti tattoos anthologizing resentment tears dust casuistry and opportunism .
hardcover oxford university press usa 2008 isbn13 9780199547845 isbn10 019954784x
abridged n isbn 13 9780199547845 number in series 1 number of pages 275 publisher oxford univ pr release date 62135769600000