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Book Reviews257 THOMAS O. SLOANE. Donne, Milton, and the End of Humanist Rhetoric. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985. 332 p. This is a densely argued and immensely rewarding study. Sloane's thesis is that "the writings of both Donne and Milton reveal characteristics of humanistic rhetoric in the period of its disintegration" (315n) and that of the two, "Donne was more the humanist than Milton" (xi). In arguing these assertions, Sloane affords the reader precisely what one looks for in a work such as this: a carefully presented theoretical framework, generous historical backgrounds, close reasoning, and, most important of all, illuminating discussions of Donne's and Milton's works, the kind that makes us better and more appreciative readers. To epitomize Sloan's argument, so richly and inexorably developed, is to risk oversimplification and perhaps mislead the reader concerning Sloane's intentions. For Sloane to argue, for instance, that "Donne was more the humanist than Milton" must not be understood to mean that Sloan argues that Donne is therefore a better poet than Milton, defining better in any way we wish to conceive the term. What Sloane does mean is that we will fail to read either Donne or Milton in the most rewarding manner if we do not see them in their relation to Renaissance humanism, which Sloane defines in rhetorical terms as an essentially rhetorical movement. The humanists — and for Sloane Erasmus is the quintessential humanist — sought to expand man's ideas "not so much by reformation as by acknowledging diversity within given forms" (85), and the instrument they found most useful toward this end was classical rhetoric and literary culture, Ciceronian rhetoric grounded in controversy, skepticism, probable truths, coupled with a literary culture which viewed language as ambiguous, vital, and as rich as life itself. The study of rhetoric was absolutely basic to humanism, so much so that one way of defining humanism is in terms of the revival of classical rhetoric as well as the revival of classical literature. Humanist rhetoric, "predicated on the idea that truth is probable" (143), carries with it certain philosophical implications and rhetorical strategies, habits of thoughts and movements of mind, which consistently inform Donne's prose and poetry. Donne "never abandons controversia," which lies at the very core of rhetorical discourse, for to do so "would be to forsake the real for the ideal, to abandon our limited means for admittedly limited certainty — or, worse, ... to admit that what is 'immediate' for us, whether in modes of thought or present emotion, has no part of the truth" (200). When Milton, on the other hand, employs controversia, he does so to show its limitations, for in Milton, "there is firm belief, seldom encountered in Donne, of a 'right reason' that is beyond the discursive" (263). In Paradise Regained it is Satan who employs the discursive techniques of the humanist rhetorician. Jesus embodies wisdom by standing above "adversariness, contention, rhetoric" (267). A rhetorician himself, though by no means a doctrinaire one, Sloane is very much aware of his audience, and readers find themselves climbing in and out of the scaffolding supporting Sloane's principal thesis, which offers a rhetorical Donne and a formalist Milton. What a fascinating climb it is! Each major section of this work contributes to the whole, yet each is richly rewarding in its own right. Sloane's analytic manner, he tells us, is "partly rhetorical and partly formalist," his method "neither aesthetically pure nor historically innocent" (xiv). The Roman Janus, with his spatial, temporal, and moral contrarieties, provides Sloane with the emblem of humanist methods of interpretation and composition and is, as well, a fitting emblem for his own Janiform hermeneutic. Anyone interested in the history of ideas, or literary theory, or practical criticism — and surely here is a net wide enough to catch us all — should read this work. The reader will rise from the encounter with a fresh insight into the arcana of contemporary critical theory and, what is even better, 258Rocky Mountain Review a new appreciation of its significance; with an intensified understanding of the rhetorical bases of Renaissance humanism; and, most important of all, with a deeper appreciation of the poetic genius of...

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