SOURCE: "John Lyly and Elizabethan Rhetoric," in Studies in Philology, Vol. 52, No. 1, 1955, pp. 149-61.

In the following essay, King examines the formal attributes of Lyly's arguments in Euphues.

Study of Elizabethan rhetoric often seems to balance upon two "indispensables": some sort of consideration of euphuism, based upon analysis of isolated passages in Euphues, and pejorative comment upon John Lyly. Lyly has in fact become a major whipping boy in English literature. Whipping boys are a convenience, of course. Easily distinctive examples of the stylistically poor or over-developed help us to speak with confidence about the better aspects of Elizabethan rhetorical practice. But surely it is time to wonder if Lyly has not been over-whipped. In our zeal to put him in his place, may we not be overlooking features of his rhetoric (and indeed of the rhetoric that flourished between 1570 and 1600), attention to which will get us beyond...