Rhetoric, Science, and Magic in Seventeenth-century England

4. Demonic Eloquence

115 Chapter 4 Demonic Eloquence )( Intellectuals in late Renaissance England were particularly devoted to the examination of witchcraft and other demonic practices. at no other time in the history of the West did the study of bewitchment play such a central role in mainstream thought, and this includes the rhetorical tradition. as already noted, the push for the new plain style was a push against various types of enchanted rhetoric, but demonic conceptions were by far the most typical. If we are to grasp the scope and gravity of the plain language reforms , we would be well served to understand how writers of the period figured this most emblematic antithesis of plainness: witchery. Demonic Inversion the idea of witchcraft loomed large in the minds of seventeenth-century language reformers. that demonic eloquence existed was assumed by almost all of the new philosophers, and that it took particular forms was also assumed. the nature of those shapes varied according to the rhetorical circumstances at 116 DemoniC eloqUenCe hand, unsurprisingly, but we can note a couple of key tropological elements that were almost always identified with it. In its most basic manifestation, witchcraft functions upon the principle of inversion . this brings to mind two primary kinds of tropes: antithesis (and variations upon it such as chiasmus and antimetabole) and irony (and variations upon it such as antiphrasis, liotes, hyperbole , and dissimulation). It was a matter of common sense to most seventeenth-century intellectuals that these tropes, when figured together , potentially signaled demonic activity. More than any other form of figuration, irony lends itself to demonry , because the ironist is so good at undercutting edifying structures and mocking the world. as John Smith rightly observes in the Mysterie of Rhetorique Unveil’d (1657), “irony” is “the mocking trope,” which is well suited for derision and inversion.1 It is not irony alone, however, that concerned most theologians and rhetorical theorists in the period. Like every other trope, irony can be used for positive or negative purposes. Rather, it is a very specific kind of irony, what we should call perverse irony, which separates the rhetoric of good from that of evil. this brings to the forefront the second key trope involved in early modern conceptions of diabolical rhetoric: antithesis . the Devil’s language is antithetical to God’s language, to state the obvious. Or, as George Downame suggests, “the Devill will have a word for evill, for every word that God shall have for good.”2 the Devil uses antithetical rhetoric against every aspect of God’s creation , producing tainted eloquence that undercuts uplifting rhetorical practices, a point that king James illustrates in a rhetorically effective passage in the Daemonologie: “as God spake by his Oracles, spake [the Devil] not so by his? as GOD had as well bloudie Sacrifices , as others without bloud, had not he the like? as God has Churches sanctified to his service, with alters, Priests Sacrifices, Ceremonies and Prayers; had he not the like polluted his service?”3 antithesis alone, however, like irony alone, did not necessarily signal witchery. Philosophers were not wary of antithesis in and of 1. John Smith, The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unveil’d (London, 1657), 38. 2. George Downame, Apostolicall Injunction for Unity and Peace (London, 1639), 26. 3. James I, Daemonologie, 36. DemoniC eloqUenCe 117 itself, as is evidenced by the fact that the trope governed a vast majority of writing in the late Renaissance. as Morris Croll observes, the language art of antitheta “in the seventeenth century ..... arrived at absolute perfection.”4 Rather, what worried many philosophers of rhetoric was the nefarious use of antithesis combined with irony. Wickedly applied, this combination most often marked the idiom of witchcraft and other related forms of demonic communication. Put differently and more generally, the Devil mimics God in language, but the Devil always has in mind a contrary purpose. Structurally, this demonic activity usually manifests itself in amalgamations of irony and antithesis, as seventeenth-century philosophers of rhetoric theorized the Devil’s eloquence. Satan appropriates and inverts healthy forms of rhetoric in profane ways and toward profane ends. the result is depravation and despair, though often carried out under the disguises of edification, exhilaration, and ecstasy. and indeed the witchcraft literature of the period is packed full of descriptions of such irony. nicholas Remy, for instance, describes in great detail the “preposterous inversion[s]” of witches, using the midnight Sabbath as an...