Rhetoric and Early Modern Skepticism and Pragmatism

Author / Editor
Ronquist, Eyvind C.

Title
Rhetoric and Early Modern Skepticism and Pragmatism

Published
Canadian Journal of Rhetorical Studies 5 (1995): 49-75.

Description
Assesses brief passages from Langland and Chaucer as indications of late-fourteenth-century proto-pragmatism--or reliance on experience and rhetorical argument as epistemological modes. The variegated opinions, unstable exempla, and inconclusive proverbs offered by the two authors connect them with Cicero in the past and Montaigne in the future.

Chaucer Subjects
Background and General Criticism.