The Grammar Rules of Affection: Passion and Pedagogy in Sidney, Shakespeare, and Jonson

by Ross Knecht

Overview

Renaissance writers habitually drew upon the idioms and images of the schoolroom in their depictions of emotional experience. Memorable instances of this tendency include the representation of love as a schoolroom exercise conducted under the disciplinary gaze of the mistress, melancholy as a process of gradual decline like the declension of the noun, and courtship as a practice in which the participants are arranged like the parts of speech in a sentence. The Grammar Rules of Affection explores this synthesis of the affective and the pedagogical in Renaissance literature, analysing examples from major texts by Philip Sidney, William Shakespeare, and Ben Jonson.

Drawing on philosophical approaches to emotion, theories of social practice, and the history of education, this book argues that emotions appear in Renaissance literature as conventional, rule-guided practices rather than internal states. This claim represents a novel intervention in the historical study of emotion, departing from the standard approaches to emotions as either corporeal phenomena or mental states. Combining linguistic philosophy and theory of emotion, The Grammar Rules of Affection works to overcome this dualistic crux by locating emotion in the expressions and practices of everyday life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781487538330
Publisher:	University of Toronto Press
Publication date:	04/07/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	667 KB

About the Author

Ross Knecht is an assistant professor in the Department of English at Emory University.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. “Precept and Practice”: Theories of Grammar from the Medieval to the Early Modern Period

2. “Heart-Ravishing Knowledge”: Love and Learning in Sidney’s Astrophil and Stella

3. The Ablative Heart: Love as Rule-Guided Action in Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost

4. “Shapes of Grief”: The Grammatical and the Ineffable in Shakespeare’s Hamlet

5. “Drunken Custom”: Rules, Embodiment, and Exemplarity in Jonson’s Humors Plays

Conclusion

Notes

Works Cited

What People are Saying About This

Brian Cummings

"The Grammar Rules of Affection examines the humanist tradition in grammar in order to uncover its consequences for and influence on the writing of literature. More than this, it uncovers the broader cultural concept of 'grammar' in the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as a way of reading literature as a form of code for living. Ross Knecht performs both functions with style and wit."

Katharine Craik

"The Grammar Rules of Affection is a thrilling contribution to the thriving field of early modern affect studies. In a series of theoretically alert readings, Ross Knecht reveals emotion and grammar as twinned social practices which together shape our experience of the world. Early modern poetry and drama emerge as replete with the echoes of childhood learning, and as radiantly expressive of life. An unusually sensitive and ingenious reader, Knecht uncovers something surprising wherever he looks."

Editorial Reviews

"This well-researched book illuminates an excellent topic from the history of early modern philology and the relationship of literature and grammar-school education: how classroom teaching and the learning of grammar in the age of Shakespeare frequently connected language to emotions, and how this connection was manifested in different forms of conduct presented in drama and poetry by writers who absorbed the grammar curriculum in school."

—Goran Stanivukovic, Saint Mary’s University, Renaissance and Reformation

" The Grammar Rules of Affection is a thrilling contribution to the thriving field of early modern affect studies. In a series of theoretically alert readings, Ross Knecht reveals emotion and grammar as twinned social practices which together shape our experience of the world. Early modern poetry and drama emerge as replete with the echoes of childhood learning, and as radiantly expressive of life. An unusually sensitive and ingenious reader, Knecht uncovers something surprising wherever he looks."

—Katharine Craik, Research Lead and Reader in Early Modern Literature, Oxford Brookes University

" The Grammar Rules of Affection examines the humanist tradition in grammar in order to uncover its consequences for and influence on the writing of literature. More than this, it uncovers the broader cultural concept of ‘grammar’ in the late work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, as a way of reading literature as a form of code for living. Ross Knecht performs both functions with style and wit."

—Brian Cummings, Professor of English and Related Literature, University of York

From the Publisher

"This well-researched book illuminates an excellent topic from the history of early modern philology and the relationship of literature and grammar-school education: how classroom teaching and the learning of grammar in the age of Shakespeare frequently connected language to emotions, and how this connection was manifested in different forms of conduct presented in drama and poetry by writers who absorbed the grammar curriculum in school."

Renaissance and Reformation - Goran Stanivukovic