Abstract Martin Luther's early writings and sermons contain the frequent use of a stylistic feature I call doublets. While there are several variations possible, doublets usually connect two words of the same grammatical form— finite verbs, adjectives or adverbs, and substantives—with a coordinate conjunction. Rather than necessarily diffusing audience attention, as one contemporary scholar suggests, or typically sacrificing vivacity, as is the concern of an eighteenth‐century theorist, Luther's doublets—when we examine them in context—are an effective tool for consolidating mental focus and strengthening adherence to a thesis. The medieval practice of enarratio, his familiarity with the parallelism and doubling in scripture, and his work with bible translation all probably contributed to Luther's tendency to use doublets.

(1998). The Rhetor's perceived situation: Luther's Invocavit sermons. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 28, No. 1, pp. 49-80.

Abstract: While accounts of Renaissance rhetoric have recently begun to consider the work of Martin Luther, understanding of Luther's preaching strategies depends on detailed scrutiny of his sermons. A careful investigation of the language of a Luther sermon, in consideration of the rhetorical intent and context in which the work was developed, reveals a speaker striving to engage an audience. As a critical concept more pervasive than traditional notions of elocutio,the paradigmatic concept of "style" offered here draws from Burke and Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca to show how rhetorical devices ("figures") advance the argument and how the audience is intended to apprehend the meaning and action ("form") of the discourse. Coherent analysis of contextual, thematic, and structural features of Luther's sermon text shows style a primary rather than derivative feature of rhetorical criticism.

Rhetorical criticism, as it has developed over the past five decades or so, has taken on many agendas-for example, neo-Aristotelian criticism, movement studies, dramatistic criticism, genre criticism-all of which have been attempts to apply, reconstruct, or improve on a long tradition. What is striking about this body of critical literature is that none of it takes very seriously one of the paramount concerns of that tradition-namely, style. Indeed, a survey of the periodical literature shows that there persists a fundamental neglect of in both the theory and the practice of rhetorical criticism.1 Various theoretical and critical practices represented in this body of literature suggest that is a frustratingly elusive and amorphous creature, stubbornly resisting description. Most of the material does not venture much beyond theory and is, for the critic, consequently inadequate, for it falls short of a level of analysis that would reveal how rhetoric works. As a result, rhetorical criticism does not provide a useful critical approach to reading a discursive text. In one respect, this shows that some incisive remarks about the importance of in criticism and the neglect thereof which Donald Bryant made over thirty years ago have been either disregarded or forgotten. Moreover, I argue that both the interpretation of discourse (criticism) and the production of discourse (composition) can profit from careful attention to rhetorical style. For if, as Bryant2 has suggested, style is the final elaboration of meaning, then surely is the initial encounter through which auditors apprehend meaning. Does it not seem reasonable that ought play a major role in the critical act of the analysis of discourse? However, granting that has been neglected, I now must explain what I mean by style. To begin, Bryant has urged us to regard it not as the mere department of elocutio but that in dispositio and even inventio participate. Bryant argues: It is difficult at best to consider the functioning language of discourse without becoming involved at once with the ordering of the discourse. Furthermore, if we go beyond the static idea of disposition as arrangement, to the potentially dynamic idea of disposition as disposing, as Wagner thought necessary, we may conclude that for the critic the two names signify the two lenses for a stereopticon view of a