Performing Arguments

Maura Giles-Watson (ALB-Classical Studies, Harvard; PhD-English, U of Nebraska) teaches early drama and performance studies at the University of San Diego. Her articles have appeared in Early Theatre, Harvard Studies in Classical Philology, and essay collections. She directs the Tudor Plays Project, a digital humanities research program.

“The volume's arguments are clear, well organized, and thoroughly documented and supported by a significant number of primary sources. Of particular value for those in the performing arts is the final chapter, which concerns formal rhetorical argumentation and declamation in Shakespeare's dramas, with a particular focus on the so-called problem plays. An insightful epilogue reframes the volume as an exploration of the encounter between rhetoric and theatre. Summing Up: *** Highly recommended. Graduate students through faculty; professionals.” — K. J. Wetmore Jr., Loyola Marymount University , in: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries 62/3 (2024), p. 246.

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresIntroduction1 Toward a Performance-Centred Perspective on Rhetoric1 Guiding Principles2 Rhetorical Aesthetics and Epistemics3 Ethos and Ethopoeia4 Ludic Agonistics2 The Argument Is the Action Rhetoric, Poetry, and Premodern Performance Culture1 Introduction2 The Aesthetics of Disputatio3 Varieties of Rhetorico-Poetic Performance4 ‘When Is a Text a Play?’3 Rhetorical Theatre Middle English Debate Poetry in Performative Perspective1 Introduction2 Rhetoric, Poetics, and Performance3 Recovering Rhetorical Theatre4 Reconstructing Rhetorico-Poetic Performance5 The Performability of The Owl and the Nightingale6 Representation and Ethopoeia in Wynnere and Wastoure7 Unsettled Questions: Lydgate’s Disguising at Hertford4 Chamber Theatre Tudor Humanist Debate Interludes and the Participatory Audience1 Introduction2 The Thomas More Circle and Rhetorico-Theatrical Aesthetics3 “An Interlude!”4 Chamber Theatre and the Activated Audience5 Reconstructing Tudor Performance Spaces and Audience Experience6 The Foure pp and Religious Satire7 The Play of the Wether: Improvisation and Satire at Court8 A Play of Love and Mock Legal Argumentation9 Conclusion5 “Who Shall Be Most Right?” Ethos, Eloquence, and Argumentation in Shakespeare’s Rhetorical Problem Plays1 Introduction2 Shakespeare’s Rhetorical Culture3 Fields of Argumentation in the Dramatic Frame4 Debate in the ‘Rhetorical Problem Plays’5 The Moral Argument in Measure for Measure6 Pseudo-legal Debate in The Merchant of Venice7 Political Debate and Sexual Politics in Troilus and Cressida8 The “Sweet Smoke of Rhetoric” in Love’s Labour’s Lost9 ConclusionEpilogueBibliographyIndex