John Skelton, rhetorical, education, decorum, invective, raillery, satirist, civil conversation
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attacking Garnish’s lack of literary talent in the fourth and attributes this primarily to his wanting the sort of rhetorical education needed for invective proficiency:
Ye, syr, rayle all in deformite:
Ye haue nat red the properte
Of naturys workys, how they be
Myxte with sum incommodite,
As prouithe well, in hys Rethorikys olde,
Cicero with hys tong of golde. (IV. ll.7-12)
Skelton also claims that his adversary is ignorant of the classical satirists and that this is why Garnish has claimed that his exuberant invectives lack decorum. In response to Garnish he argues that he is simply using the register appropriate to his addressee and that the precedent for this has been set by classical avatars who would do no less to taunt Garnish were they alive:
Thow demyst my raylyng ouyrthwarthe;
I rayle to thee soche as thow art.
If thow war aquentyd with alle
The famous poettes saturicall,
As Percius and Iuuynall,
If they wer lyueyng thys day,
Of thee wote I what they wolde say;
They wolde thee wryght, all with one steuyn,
The follest slouen ondyr heuen. (IV. ll.136-45)
There is an obvious discrepancy in these two passages between the attributes Skelton suggests are necessary for raillery. The mellifluous eloquence of the rhetorician rests uneasily with the sharp, venomous tongue of the satirist. Moreover, the typical satirist claims to enjoy freedom of speech, and has utmost confidence in the power of unrestrained vituperation to achieve his objectives. The rhetorician, in contrast, is aware that he is confined by the context of his speech environment and is at liberty to say only what is appropriate to circumstance and with a mind to convincing his audience of the veracity of his argument.
Unbridled raillery is ostensibly out of keeping with controlled Ciceronian eloquence, but, as argued in the introduction to this section, antisocial dialogism might be understood as a counter-culture to civil conversation and its mastery demands no lesser degree of
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