ABSTRACT
Aristotle's terminology in relation to scope shifted, but the target stayed the same: effective argumentation, achieved by means of perspicuous words, decorously and economically deployed. Beyond the contributions of Eden, Mack, and Meerhoff, plan to demonstrate that such reading assumptions are crucial to comprehending the development of an early modern poetics in England that stood apart conspicuously and self-consciously from the allegorical tradition. Aristotle's treatment of figurative language is especially revealing about his stylistic principles. As Kathy Eden has shown, the grammarians and rhetoricians of classical Rome elaborated a complex and coherent program for reading and writing, based importantly on the interpretation scripti, the interpretation of legal writings associated with laws, wills, contracts and other judicial matters. Skopos remains, then, a key term of art among the Antiochenes, and it does so as one sign of the traditional rhetorical character of their hermeneutic practice, and as one indicator of their alliance with Hellenistic readers beyond the walls of Antioch.
