Abstract

In sixteenth-century male writers’ descriptions of the English grammar school program, mothers were imagined as impediments to boys’ learning. Yet these same writers paradoxically turned to a “mother” figure, prosopopoeia, as the rhetorical device through which they imagined and brought into being a humanist-inspired education. By embedding maternal narratives, bodies, and language in their explanations of grammar school and its “mat(t)er,” the writers of rhetorical manuals, grammar school textbooks, and pedagogical handbooks position the mother at the center of early modern thought, which has implications and consequences for actual mothers and their participation in early modern rhetorical education.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2014-07-03
DOI
10.1080/07350198.2014.917509
Open Access
Closed

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (1)

  1. Philosophy & Rhetoric

Cites in this index (0)

No references match articles in this index.

Also cites 9 works outside this index ↓
  1. 10.1017/CBO9780511988806.013
  2. Shakespeare’s Schoolroom: Rhetoric, Discipline, Emotion
  3. 10.7208/chicago/9780226243184.001.0001
  4. Vernacular Bodies: The Politics of Reproduction in Early Modern England
  5. Outlaw Rhetoric: Figuring Vernacular Eloquence in Shakespeare’s England
  6. The Body Embarrassed: Drama and the Disciplines of Shame in Early Modern England
  7. 10.1057/9781137008015
  8. The Emperor of Men’s Minds: Literature and the Renaissance Discourse of Rhetoric
  9. Malevolent Nurture: Witch Hunting and Maternal Power in Early Modern England
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