Upstart Talents: Rhetoric and the Career of Reason in English Romantic Discourse, 1790-1820This study examines the use and abuse of rhetoric in English public life from 1790 to the end of the Regency. It begins from the premise that the period's rhetoric can employ reasoned arguments while also exhibiting regressive tendencies not so much supplanting rational discourse as using it in unexpected ways. Its underlying premise is that, however distinct were the positions taken by various political constituencies at this time, these positions could be advocated by means of rhetorical techniques common to all. The materialist emphasis of current cultural studies provides a useful corrective to the grand schemas of intellectual history but overcompensates by employing only the most nominal generalizations. While revisionist treatments of the public sphere have succeeded in breaking the concept down into divers political constituencies, this study examines assumptions about public discourse shared by these constituencies. |
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Page 17
... radical agitator and playwright Thomas Holcroft could insist that " Surely , this age has more general information , and there- fore more virtue , more wisdom , than the past , " Sir Robert Peel dismissed public opinion as a " great ...
... radical agitator and playwright Thomas Holcroft could insist that " Surely , this age has more general information , and there- fore more virtue , more wisdom , than the past , " Sir Robert Peel dismissed public opinion as a " great ...
Page 18
... radical / reactionary axis implicit in scholarly discussions of the period . While recent scholarship has reduced a tradition- ally overdrawn binary of rational reform and reactionary obscu- rantism to its constituent elements , this ...
... radical / reactionary axis implicit in scholarly discussions of the period . While recent scholarship has reduced a tradition- ally overdrawn binary of rational reform and reactionary obscu- rantism to its constituent elements , this ...
Page 20
... the regressive issue of rhetori- cally conditioned arguments is the same for either side of a ques- tion , liberal or conservative , radical or reactionary . 1 Designing Eloquence : The Rhetorical Context After the young 20 PREFACE.
... the regressive issue of rhetori- cally conditioned arguments is the same for either side of a ques- tion , liberal or conservative , radical or reactionary . 1 Designing Eloquence : The Rhetorical Context After the young 20 PREFACE.
Page 27
... radical rethinking of tradition . These changes resulted not in a recovery of classical rhetoric but in the assimilation of the very intellectual and social pressures distorting rhetorical practice . The status of rhetoric had been in ...
... radical rethinking of tradition . These changes resulted not in a recovery of classical rhetoric but in the assimilation of the very intellectual and social pressures distorting rhetorical practice . The status of rhetoric had been in ...
Page 37
... radical principles of that art , whose object it is , by the use of lan- guage , to operate on the soul of the hearer , in the way of inform- ing , convincing , pleasing , moving , or persuading " ( PR xliii ) . While he hopes to ...
... radical principles of that art , whose object it is , by the use of lan- guage , to operate on the soul of the hearer , in the way of inform- ing , convincing , pleasing , moving , or persuading " ( PR xliii ) . While he hopes to ...
Contents
21 | |
Whiggish Energies The Ethos of Technical Mastery | 64 |
Critical Stratagems AntiJacobin Imposture and Periodical Reviewing | 118 |
Systematic Opposition The Case of William Cobbett | 161 |
Reason in Extremis Narratives of Regressive Rationality | 207 |
Afterword | 258 |
Notes | 263 |
Bibliography | 277 |
Index | 285 |
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Common terms and phrases
abuse alike anti-Jacobin criticism Anti-Jacobin Review argues argument asserts Bentham Black Dwarf Burke Burke's Caleb Williams Campbell Canning's Caroline Caroline Affair charges Coleridge contingency conviction critique cultural Edmund Burke effect eloquence employed England English Enlightenment error essay ethos fact fallacy France French Hazlitt inference instance J. G. A. Pocock Jacobin language letter literary London Marmaduke means ment method mind modern moral narrative nature opinion opposition Oswald Parliamentary Logic party passage passion Peacock philosophy Pitt Pitt's Pittite Pocock Political Justice practice premise Priestley principles Queen question radical rational reason Reflections reform regressive Republican Revolution revolutionary rhetoric rhetorical imposture rhetorical theory Romantic satire sense Sheridan speaker speaking speech subversive sure talent thing Thomas Love Peacock tion toric Tory traditional truth University Press Urizen virtù virtue Whig Whig history Whiggism William Cobbett William Gerard Hamilton William Hazlitt words writer
Popular passages
Page 28 - But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment, and so indeed are perfect cheats...
Page 190 - Advertisements are now so numerous that they are very negligently perused, and it is therefore become necessary to gain attention by magnificence of promises, and by eloquence sometimes sublime and sometimes pathetick.
Page 269 - There was a mighty ferment in the heads of statesmen and poets, kings and people. According to the prevailing notions, all was to be natural and new.
Page 25 - It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort : the habit of receiving pleasure\ without any exertion of thought, by the mere \ excitement of curiosity and sensibility, may be,/ justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel reading.
Page 254 - The error of those who reason by precedents drawn from antiquity, respecting the rights of man, is that they do not go far enough into antiquity. They do not go the whole way.
Page 136 - We have not arrived (to our shame perhaps we avow it) at that wild and unshackled freedom of thought which rejects all habit, all wisdom of former times, all restraints of ancient usage, and of local attachment, and which...
Page 170 - It is not so. We are not in arms against the opinions of the closet, nor the speculations of the school. We are at war with armed opinions...
Page 207 - I shall not live to behold the unravelling of the intricate plot, which saddens and perplexes the awful drama of Providence, now acting on the moral theatre of the world.