ABSTRACT
The practitioners of the seventeenth-century character had a fairly clear idea of the nature and method of the genre they were engaged in. The most important function of the rhetorical textbooks was to insure success in the principal form of rhetoric - panegyrical or epideictic oratory. Facility in this formal praise and blame was secured by the devising of preparatory exercises, or Progymnasmata. The effect of traditional rhetoric was powerful and lasting. In spite of the shift in fashion from Ciceronian to Ramistic and Systematic techniques, there appeared in 1659 a stylistic rhetoric such as John Prideaux's Sacred Eloquence. Of obvious importance for the seventeenth-century character is that included in these storehouses of rhetorical knowledge were exercises and illustrations for the construction of characters. The ultimate explanation for the character's subject matter can probably be found in the idea that men have a limited capability for understanding the role of historical process in human culture.
