Decorum in the English Renaissance, 1590--1630 (Thomas Nashe, Ben Jonson, George Herbert)

Decorum is a key element of the rhetorical theories that hold sway in pedagogical, political, and religious practices of the Renaissance. It is adaptable to almost any situation and yet extremely difficult to define precisely for any single instance. This project explores how English writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries understand decorum as a theoretical and practical imperative. This treatment of decorum builds on the work of Wayne Rebhom, Lawrence Manley, and Debora Shuger, and their attention to Renaissance adaptations of Classical rhetoric. The study begins with an examination of Renaissance rhetorical and poetic manuals, showing how period rhetoricians adjust to it as a standard both universal and necessarily particular in its embodiment. In Manley's terms, decorum is best understood as an "intersubjective" notion, inextricably tied to contingency and circumstance.; The specific literary works examined are all invested in the same problem; as rhetorical acts, they are all straining to find decorous, or appropriate, words. Thomas Nashe's famously extravagant prose in The Unfortunate Traveller or Lenten Stuffe is a dramatic case in point. Much of his writing is taken up with overt examinations of the true nature of decorum, which he understands under the rubric of wit and performance. Nashe argues that even at his most scurrilous and overblown, he truly observes decorum if he can elicit a response in keeping with his purposes. Ben Jonson's own attention to decorum leads him to offer praise in his poetry and masques mitigated by his desire to avoid flattery. In doing so, he interrogates the basis and nature of praise even as he takes stock of the best way to voice it. Unlike Nashe, who embraces the performative logic of decorum, Jonson resists it. Seen in the light of these explicitly rhetorical concerns, George Herbert's The Temple can be read as an extended examination of how one can properly, fittingly perform praise for God. In each of these cases, the writer does not struggle with whether or not he should observe decorum, but rather what it means to do so successfully given his time, place, and purposes.