Rhetoric

Abstract

Women's theoretical exclusion from the political sphere generated not silence but highly developed linguistic and figurative responses in seventeenth century England. This chapter analyses women's involvement in politics by examining the use of the example in seventeenth century texts. It concentrates on exemplarity because of its pervasive presence in early modern writing, because of the tensions it sometimes generated for readers, and because of the way it shows gender at work in the interpretative acts of readers and writers. Although the seventeenth century is often characterised as a time when exemplarity became synonymous with mere authority, it might be more accurate to say that the seventeenth century had its own debates on exemplarity. Rather than being ‘merely’ ornament, the examples in an early modern text gave the reader a route, but one which, by the seventeenth century at least, not only was uncertain but might be experienced as such.

The Gallic Ransom and the Sack of Rome

“…64 To be sure, commenting on Camillus' feat of crossing the enemy lines and arriving safely in the captured city, Wiseman has rightly stressed that the practicalities of fourth century BC warfare are not what is at stake here; rather, the researcher's focus must be on the 'type of narrative [that] could present such stories with any appearance of credibility'. 65 So Wiseman asks and answers: 66 How did Camillus arrive at the Capitol [...]? Livy refers to the gods' involvement, and then blandly goes on: 'For by some chance the Dictator arrived'.…”