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Elena Spinelli, Ullyot, Michael. The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Early Modern England, Forum for Modern Language Studies, Volume 59, Issue 1, January 2023, Pages 163–164, https://doi.org/10.1093/fmls/cqad005
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Extract
This study contributes significantly to our understanding of how exemplary rhetoric worked – and, more importantly, of how and when it did not – within the historical context of late sixteenth and early seventeenth-century England. Michael Ullyot’s fundamental argument that only cautionary exemplars fulfil their purpose, while positive ones are ultimately unreachable, is explored through historical figures as objects and subjects of exemplary rhetoric. The book focuses on occasional genres, including elegies, complaints and dedications that reflect on the deaths of Sir Philip Sidney, Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex and Henry, Prince of Wales. In this book, exemplary narratives surrounding their actions and their deaths are arranged to show ‘the exemplary cycle’ (p. 5), by which Ullyot means a circular motion of rhetoric inspiring actions inspiring rhetoric. Focusing on this cycle highlights the different agents at play within exemplarity, both the writers and the dedicatees of exemplary stories, and it shows that exemplary rhetoric only works if there is a correspondence between the two.
