Rhetorical Analysis of Humor in William Wycherley’s The Country Wife

Abstract

Restoration authors intentionally embellished their works (particularly, those concerned with humor and comedy) with the use of rhetorical tools to expose their standpoints and opinions and to convey reasonable and rational predisposition to their cultivated audiences and readers. Furthermore, dramatists employed certain rhetorical devices in order to for achieve the prerequisite consequence. William Wycherley (in his The Country Wife) was one of those Restoration dramatists who laid more emphasis on the exploitation of rhetorical devices to achieve many literary dramatic functions, among which is providing audience with persuasive arguments ( Bruegge, 2014:1).