Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition

by Raphael Lyne

Raphael Lyne addresses a crucial Shakespearean why do characters in the grip of emotional crises deliver such extraordinarily beautiful and ambitious speeches? How do they manage to be so inventive when they are perplexed? Their dense, complex, articulate speeches at intensely dramatic moments are often seen as psychological – they uncover and investigate inwardness, character and motivation – and as rhetorical – they involve heightened language, deploying recognizable techniques. Focusing on A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Cymbeline and the Sonnets, Lyne explores both the psychological and rhetorical elements of Shakespeare's language. In the light of cognitive linguistics and cognitive literary theory he shows how Renaissance rhetoric could be considered a kind of cognitive science, an attempt to map out the patterns of thinking. His study reveals how Shakespeare's metaphors and similes work to think, interpret and resolve, and how their struggle to do so results in extraordinary poetry.

276 pages, Paperback

First published August 31, 2011

Reviews

[J. W. Thompson · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not exactly what I expected from the title! Not much cognitive science in there (I'm not complaining, it seems to me a dubious science), and not a great attention to rhetorical technique outside of the tropes of metaphor, synecdoche and metonomy. It seems more an introduction to the whole topic than a treatment of any depth.

[Kelly Stewart]

Thoroughly interesting, was very helpful for my dissertation!

[David Loveland · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting argument and very relevant reading for my dissertation.