Rhetorical traditions and British romantic literature

Bialostosky, Don H. (Added Author). Needham, Lawrence D. (Added Author).

Summary: So successful were the appeals to "genius" by the romantic poets that few critics since have paid much attention to the influence of rhetorical traditions on romantic expression. As the essays in this collection demonstrate, though the status of classical rhetoric declined during the nineteenth century, romantic genius did not sweep away rhetoric. Romantic writers drew upon a number of rhetorical traditions - sophistic, classical, biblical, and enlightenment - in the creation of their art, and interest in various aspects of the art of discourse remained strong. These essays - half of them commissioned for this volume - document the importance of these traditions in shaping the poetry, novels, and criticism of Coleridge, De Quincey, Wordsworth, Shelley, Blake, Austen, and Scott. The contributors are Stephen C. Behrendt, Don H. Bialostosky, Jerome Christensen, Richard W. Clancey, Klaus Dockhorn, James Engell, David Ginsberg, Bruce E. Graver, Scott Harshbarger, Theresa M. Kelley, J. Douglas Kneale, John R. Nabholtz, Lawrence D. Needham, Marie Secor, Nancy S. Struever, Leslie Tannenbaum, and Susan J. Wolfson.

Record details

ISBN: 0253311802 (alk. paper) :
Physical Description: print
vii, 312 p. ; 24 cm.
Publisher: Bloomington : Indiana University Press, c1995.

Content descriptions

Bibliography, etc. Note:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Formatted Contents Note:

I. The Method of The Friend / Jerome Christensen -- II. "Comparing Power" Coleridge and Simile / Susan J. Wolfson -- III. De Quincey's Rhetoric of Display and Confessions of an English Opium-Eater / Lawrence D. Needham -- IV. Romantic Prose and Classical Rhetoric / John R. Nabholtz -- V. Wordsworth's Cintra Tract: Politics, the Classics, and the Duty of the Poet / Richard W. Clancey -- VI. The Oratorical Pedlar / Bruce E. Graver -- VII. Wordsworth's Poems, in Two Volumes (1807) and the Epideictic Tradition / David Ginsberg -- VIII. The Case for William Wordsworth: Romantic Invention versus Romantic Genius / Theresa M. Kelley -- IX. The Invention/Disposition of The Prelude, Book I / Don H. Bialostosky -- X. Romantic Aversions: Apostrophe Reconsidered / J. Douglas Kneale -- XI. Shelley and the Ciceronian Orator / Stephen C. Behrendt -- XII. Prophetic Form: The "Still Better Order" of Blake's Rhetoric / Leslie Tannenbaum -- XIII. Robert Lowth's Sacred Hebrew Poetry and the Oral Dimension of Romantic Rhetoric / Scott Harshbarger -- XIV. The New Rhetoric and Romantic Poetics / James Engell -- XV. The Conversable World: Eighteenth-Century Transformations of the Relation of Rhetoric and Truth / Nancy S. Struever -- XVI. Jeanie Deans and the Nature of True Eloquence / Marie Secor -- Appendix: Wordsworth and the Rhetorical Tradition in England (1944) / Klaus Dockhorn.