Abstract
The main purpose of this thesis is to analyze certain principles of classical rhetoric which exist in Milton’s early English poetry. More recent examples of this type of study occur in Sister Miriam Joseph’s Shakespeare’s Use of the Art of Language (Columbia University Press, 1947), Herbert David Rix’s Rhetoric In Spenser’s Poetry (The Pennsylvania State College Studies, No. 7, 1940), Michael Hilger’s Rhetorical Analysis of Milton’s "Areopagitica." (unpublished M.A. dissertation, Creighton University, 1960, and Edward P.J. Corbett’s analysis of several prose pieces in his Classical Rhetoric for the Modem Student (Oxford University Press, 1965). These studies point out convincingly the Importance of studying the formal rhetoric underlying the composition of literature in order to bring its full artistic accomplishment to the reader. In my examination of Milton’s early English poems, I shall show how Milton, especially in his maturing English poetry, used and applied profitably the rhetoric of his day.