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Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition By Raphael Lyne Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011
Reviewer: Jenny C. Mann
Raphael Lyne's Shakespeare, Rhetoric and Cognition argues that Renaissance rhetoric can be considered a kind of cognitive science, and that Shakespeare's language particularly exemplifies the inti- mate connection between rhetoric and cognition. To put it another way, Lyne argues that Shakespeare's plays feature characters that think through tropes. Lyne's book thus pursues the connection between rhetoric and cognition primarily through an examination of Shakespeare's dramatic language, particularly the speeches of Bottom, Imogen, and Othello (among others), characters whose lan- guage exhibits an affinity between ''cognitive crisis and rhetorical extravagance'' (9). Lyne mobilizes a series of careful close readings in order to claim that dramatic rhetoric does not simply express thought, but also, at times, does the work of thinking itself. This interpretation of Shakespeare's language constitutes the primary focus of the study; however, through these readings Lyne aims to integrate the distinct fields of rhetoric, literary criticism, and cogni- tive science. All told, the former succeeds more than the latter.
The idea that ''rhetoric might be thought of as a kind of cognitive science, an attempt, often unwitting, to map the workings of the thinking brain'' is an intriguing point of departure for a new study of Shakespeare's language (9). As the art of persuasion, rhetoric has always had a practical orientation, aimed at helping would-be rhe- tors find the best available means of persuasion in any particular case, but this pragmatism inevitably intertwines with theoretical speculation about the operations of language and thought. As an educational program, rhetoric provides a means of disciplining lan- guage and thought, training its students to locate and shape the materials of discourse according to the dictates of art. The vast and complicated ars rhetorica, in its classical and Renaissance itera- tions, thus offers scholars a tantalizing means of reconstructing how thinking happened amongst the literate in the pre-modern world (or, at least, how pedagogues wanted thinking to happen). One might, for example, turn to inventio, the first of the five canons of rhetoric, which guides rhetors towards the discovery of the con- tent of their discourse. Or one might turn to memoria, the fourth part of the art of rhetoric, which provides...