This dissertation examines the ways three medieval English poets used the ancient art of rhetoric to shape their poetic compositions and to make their messages more persuasive to reading and listening audiences. Although these poets employed all three of the traditional modes of persuasion—appeals to logos (reasoning), ethos (character) and pathos (emotion)—this examination focuses primarily on the ways these poets sought to elicit and control emotional responses in their audiences, thereby exposing an emotional dimension in these texts that is not commonly contemplated by critics of these poems. And while the ability of poets to affect audiences emotionally in the pursuit of persuasive agendas was often considered the sine qua non of rhetorical artistry in the Middle Ages, not enough attention has been given to the ways those efforts may shed light on common modern critical approaches to these poems, as well as on their overall interpretation.
The first chapter examines how Chaucer, in The Franklin’s Tale, uses rhetorical doctrines of style, and in particular the “colors of rhetoric,” to develop an emotional dimension in his retelling of an old story from Boccaccio. I then show how the Franklin attempts to use the emotional responses of his audience to move them toward accepting a sophisticated notion of empathy as a remedy for the socio-cultural disruptions that troubled late fourteenth-century English society.
In the second chapter, I examine how the anonymous twelfth- or thirteenth century author of The Owl and the Nightingale uses rhetorical invention and style to evoke powerful emotional responses in his audience in order to vivify the debate engaged in by the poem’s two avian adversaries. In part, it is the emotional vehemence of their antagonism that shows why the contest they are engaged should be regarded as a specifically rhetorical form of activity, and I argue that the poet’s uncommon display of rhetorical talent is meant as a plea for his professional preferment.
The third chapter examines the way the Anglo-Saxon poet Cynewulf uses the art of rhetoric—conceived of in the period as an art of eloquence—to heighten and intensify his audience’s emotional engagement with his Old English retelling of an antique Latin narrative of the martyrdom of Saint Juliana. Specifically, I argue that the poet’s use of a highly stylized ornatus and his rhetorically grounded modifications to the story both serve to move his Anglo-Saxon audience to a more passionate embrace of the saint’s holiness and a fiercer rejection of the evils that threaten their Christian values.