Abstract:This article is a study of early literary theory and practice in Renaissance England, which focuses specifically on Shakespeare's language use. The end of the sixteenth century in England experienced a linguistic revolution as Latin was gradually replaced by vernacular English. Renaissance rhetoricians such as George Puttenham and Thomas Wilson patriotically argued that English was capable of employing figures of speech to express complex ideas. Yet in this period the vernacular was in a process of formation, … Show more
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