Rereading the elocutionists: The rhetoric of Thomas Sheridan's A Course of Lectures on Elocution and John Walker's Elements of Elocution

Rhetorica - Journal of the History of Rhetoric

Volumn 19, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 49-91

  Spoel, Philippa M ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 33746914380     PISSN: 07348584     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1525/rh.2001.19.1.49     Document Type: Review

References (137)

1. Wilbur Samuel Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971) p. 713.
2. Review of John Rice's An Introduction to the Art of Reading, Monthly Review 32 (1765) pp. 445-46 (p. 445).
3. In addition to many recent articles on different aspects of eighteenth-century rhetoric too numerous to cite here, recent book-length publications of note in the field include Lynée Lewis Gaillet ed., Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences (Mahwah: Lawrence Erlbaum / Hermagoras, 1998);
4. Thomas p. Miller, The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997);
5. Michael G. Moran, Eighteenth-Century British and American Rhetorics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and Sources (Westport: Greenwood, 1994);
6. H. Lewis Ulman, Things, Thoughts, Words, and Actions: The Problem of Language in Late Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorical Theory (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994);
7. Barbara Warnick, The Sixth Canon: Belletristic Rhetorical Theory and Its French Antecedents (Columbia SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1993).
8. In eighteenth-century Britain, the term "elocution" shifted from its traditional meaning of verbal style to refer to non-verbal style or delivery. In addition to Thomas Sheridan and John Walker, some of the main elocutionary writers were John Mason (An Essay on Elocution or Pronunciation, 1748);
9. James Burgh (The Art of Speaking, 1761);
10. John Rice (An Introduction to the Art of Reading with Energy and Propriety, 1765);
11. John Herries (Elements of Speech, 1773);
12. William Enfield (The Speaker, 1774);
13. William Cockin (The Art of Delivering Written Speech, 1775);
14. Joshua Steele (Prosodia Rationalis, 1775);
15. William Scott (Lessons in Elocution, 1779);
16. Gilbert Austin (Chironomia, or, A Treatise on Rhetorical Delivery, 1806)
17. See, for example, Wallace A. Bacon, "The Elocutionary Career of Thomas Sheridan (1719-1788)", Speech Monographs 31.1 (1964) pp. 1-53;
18. W. Benzie, The Dublin Orator: Thomas Sheridan's Influence on Eighteenth-Century Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (Menston: Scolar, 1972);
19. Douglas Ehninger, "Dominant Trends in English Rhetorical Thought, 1750-1800", Southern Speech Journal 18 (Sept 1952) pp. 3-12;
20. Charles A. Fritz, "From Sheridan to Rush: The Beginnings of English Elocution", Quarterly Journal of Speech 16 (1930) pp. 75-88;
21. Giles Wilkinson Gray "What Was Elocution?" Quarterly Journal of Speech 46.1 (February 1960) pp. 1-7;
22. David H. Grover, "John Walker: The 'Mechanical' Man Revisited", Southern Speech Journal 34 (Summer 1969) pp. 288-97;
23. Warren Guthrie, "The Elocution Movement - England", Speech Monographs 18 (March 1951) pp. 17-30;
24. Frederick W. Haberman, "English Sources of American Elocution", History of Speech Education in America: Background Series, ed. Karl R. Wallace (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1954) pp. 105-25;
25. Donald E. Hargis, "James Burgh and The Art of Speaking", Speech Monographs 24 (November 1957) pp. 275-84;
26. Wilbur Samuel Howell, "Sources of the Elocutionary Movement in England: 1700-1748", Quarterly Journal of Speech 45.1 (1959) pp. 1-18;
27. Jack Hall Lamb, "John Walker and Joshua Steele", Speech Monographs 32 (1965) pp. 411-419;
28. G. P. Mohrmann, "Kames and Elocution", Speech Monographs 32 (June 1965) pp. 198-206;
29. Mohrmann, "The Language of Nature and Elocutionary Theory", Quarterly Journal of Speech 52 (1966) pp. 116-24;
30. W. M. Parrish, "The Concept of 'Naturalness'", Quarterly Journal of Speech 37 (1951) pp. 448-54;
31. Parrish, "Elocution - A Definition and a Challenge", Quarterly Journal of Speech 43.1 (1957) pp. 1-11;
32. Mary Margaret Robb, Oral Interpretation of Literature in American Colleges and Universities: A Historical Study of Teaching Methods, rev. edn. (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation, 1968);
33. Daniel Vandraegen, "Thomas Sheridan and the Natural School", Speech Monographs 20 (March 1953) pp. 58-64.
34. This scholarship includes Ulman, Things, Thoughts, Words, and Actions, cit. in n. 3 above, pp. 147-75;
35. Miller, "English Studies Outside the University: Sheridan and the Elocutionists", in The Formation of College English, cit. in n. 3 above, pp. 136-41;
36. Michael Shortland, "Moving Speeches: Language and Elocution in Eighteenth-Century Britain", History of European Ideas 8.6 (1987) pp. 639-53;
37. Merete Ongsberg, "The Poem Embodied: Gilbert Austin's Notation System", Presentation to the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam: July 1999);
38. Philippa M. Spoel, "The Science of Bodily Rhetoric in Gilbert Austin's Chironomia", Rhetoric Society Quarterly 28.4 (Fall 1998) pp. 5-28;
39. Nan Johnson, "The Popularization of Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: Elocution and the Private Learner", in Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran eds, Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America (Carbon-dale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993) pp. 139-57;
40. Tania Smith, "Rhetorical Delivery as Everyday Conduct: The Persuasive Use of the Body in Samuel Richardson's Sir Charles Grandison", Presentation to the Canadian Society for the Study of Rhetoric (University of Alberta, Edmonton: May 2000).
41. Ulman, Things, Thoughts, Words, and Actions, p. 148.
42. Miller, The Formation of College English, p. 18.
43. Miller, The Formation, p. 6.
44. David Goodwin, "Imitatio and Eighteenth-Century Rhetorics of Reaffirmation", Rhetorica 10.1 (1992) p. 26.
45. Michael Cahn, "The Rhetoric of Rhetoric: Six Tropes of Disciplinary Discourse", in R. H. Roberts and J. M. M. Good eds, The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1993) p. 62.
46. Although Sheridan was by no means the earliest writer on elocution in eighteenth-century Britain, he was by all accounts the most vocal and popular promoter of the field. For information about elocutionary texts published prior to Sheridan's Lectures, see Winifred Bryant Horner and Kerri Morris Barton, "The Eighteenth Century", Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, cit. in n. 6 above;
47. Guthrie, cited in n. 5 above, pp. 114-50; Haberman, cited in n. 5 above; Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric, cit. in n. 1 above
48. and Howell, "Sources of the Elocutionary Movement in England", cit. in n. 5 above.
49. John Lawson, Lectures Concerning Oratory (Dublin, 1758), ed. E. Neal Claussen and Karl R. Wallace (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1972) pp. 409-31.
50. John Ward, A System of Oratory (London, 1759; Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 1969) II, pp. 313-77.
51. Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (London: 1783), II, ed. Harold F. Harding (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965) pp. 203-05.
52. Vincent Bevilacqua and Richard Murphy, "Editors' Introduction", in Joseph Priestley, A Course of Lectures on Oratory and Criticism (London, 1777; Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1965) pp. xlix, li.
53. Lawson in particular argues against a prescriptive approach to teaching and learning delivery, advocating instead that the speaker follow the guidance of "Nature" (Lectures Concerning Oratory, p. 415). However, although he considers precepts to be of little value, he acknowledges that models, practice, and the advice of a teacher can all help improve delivery. Interestingly, Lawson argues that "Precepts may perfect the Judgment, but help little the performing Power; make Criticks, not Speakers" (p. 411).
54. See Richard Whately Elements of Rhetoric, ed. Douglas Ehninger and David Potter (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963) pp. 339-90;
55. see also Robb, Fritz, Ehninger, Grover, Parrish, Vandraegen, cit. in n. 5 above; Miller, cit. in n. 3 above; Shortland, cit. in n. 6 above.
56. To my knowledge, a thorough bibliographic listing of eighteenth-century elocutionary texts has yet to be undertaken. However, I think we can safely estimate that at least twenty-five to thirty, and very likely more, manuals on the subject were published during the century. This figure rises if we include publications by elocutionists that also could be counted as grammars and dictionaries, such as Sheridan's and Walker's dictionaries of pronunciation. As well, we should keep in mind that many of the elocutionary texts went through several editions. For listings and information about listings of eighteenth-century elocutionary texts, see Guthrie Haberman and Howell, cit. in n. 5 above;
57. Horner and Barton, "The Eighteenth Century", Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America, cit. in n. 12 above, pp. 114-50; Shortland, cit. in n. 6 above.
58. In 1712, Jonathan Swift had published "A Proposal for Correcting, Improving, and Ascertaining the English Tongue."
59. Of all the elocutionary writers, Sheridan's life and works have been most fully documented and discussed. In particular, Benzie's The Dublin Orator and Bacon's "The Elocutionary Career of Thomas Sheridan", cit. in n. 5 above, provide detailed treatments of his activities as an elocutionist.
60. R. B. McDowell, Ireland in the Age of Imperialism and Revolution: 1760-1801 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979) p. 146.
61. Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric, p. 158.
62. An Oration Pronounced Before a Numerous Body of the Nobility and Gentry (Dublin, 1757) p. 23.
63. The Rev. Dr. Thomas Leland was chosen as the new president, but the academy remained open for only a few years (Benzie, The Dublin Orator, pp. 17-18).
64. This address was published as A Discourse: Being Introductory to his Course of Lectures on Elocution and the English Language (1759; edited by G. P. Mohrmann (Los Angeles: William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, 1969)).
65. Ironically, at the time Oxford and Cambridge were the two British universities least involved in the teaching and study of the English language, continuing to emphasize instead a curriculum based on classical studies and languages. (See Miller, The Formation, cit. in n. 3 above, pp. 62-70).
66. Monthly Review 21 (1759) p. 167.
67. In addition to those already cited, Sheridan's main publications include British Education: Or, the Source of the Disorders of Great Britain (London, 1756);
68. Complete Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1780);
69. Lectures on the Art of Reading (London, 1775);
70. A Plan of Education for the Young Nobility and Gentry of Great Britain (Dublin, 1769);
71. and A Rhetorical Grammar of the English Language (London, 1781).
72. See Benzie, The Dublin Orator, for more on Sheridan's financial situation.
73. Most notably, in 1761 and again in 1764, Sheridan lectured in Edinburgh at the invitation of the Scottish Select Society. These lectures, according to David McElroy directly influenced the creation in 1761 of a subsidiary "Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in Scotland" (McElroy, Scotland's Age of Improvement (Washington: Washington State University Press, 1969) p. 55).
74. The members of the Select Society included Allan Ramsay David Hume, Adam Smith, Alexander Wedderburn, James Burnett, Alexander Carlyle, William Robertson, Hugh Blair, and Lord Kames, among many others. For more on the Society, see McElroy's chapter "Achievement (1745-1770)".
75. In Edinburgh as well, Sheridan delivered a set of lectures designed specially for "Ladies": his advertisement for these lectures promises to omit all passages that call for an appreciation of "the learned languages" as well as those sections directed towards "such only whose professions call on them to speak in public" (Scots Magazine 23 (1761) p. 390).
76. and Scots Magazine 24 (1762) p. 481.
77. See "Walker, John (1732-1807)", Dictionary of National Biography, 1960 edn, pp. 531-32
78. and his obituary in Gentleman's Magazine (1807) p. 786.
79. As an actor, he performed at Drury Lane theatre in London, under the management of David Garrick, and in the Crow Street theatre in Dublin, a new rival to the Smock Alley Theatre which Sheridan had recently managed. Walker began performing at Crow Street at virtually the same time Sheridan left the Dublin theatre scene.
80. Roy Porter, English Society in the Eighteenth Century, rev edn (London: Penguin, 1990) p. 160.
81. Walker converted to Catholicism in mid-life.
82. Anon., Letter, Gentleman's Magazine (1807) p. 1122.
83. Porter, English Society, p. 91.
84. John Walker, Elements of Elocution, 2 vols (London, 1781; rpr. Menston: Scolar, 1969) I, p. xiv. All subsequent references are to this facsimile edition.
85. Alvin Kernan, Samuel Johnson and the Impact of Print (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1987) pp. 16-23.
86. John Feather, The Provincial Book Trade in Eighteenth-Century England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985) p. 33.
87. Terry Belanger, "Publishers and Writers in Eighteenth-Century England", in Isabel Rivers ed., Books and their Readers in Eighteenth-Century England (New York: Leicester University Press, 1982) p. 19;
88. and Feather, The Provincial Book Trade, p. 34.
89. See also John Valdimir Price, "The Reading of Philosophical Lectures", and see G. S. Rousseau, "Science Books and their Readers in the Eighteenth Century", both in Rivers, Books and their Readers, pp. 165-96, 197-255;
90. Martin Kemp, "The Mark of Truth: Looking and Learning in Some Anatomical Illustrations from the Renaissance and Eighteenth Century", in W. F. Bynum and Roy Porter eds, Medicine and the Five Senses (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
91. and David Knight, "Illustrating Chemistry", Brian S. Baigrie ed., Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996) pp. 135-63.
92. On history, biography, and belles lettres, see Jan Fergus, "Eighteenth-Century Readers in Provincial England: The Customers of Samuel Clay's Circulating Library and Bookshop in Warwick, 1770-72", Proceedings of the Bibliographic Society of America 78.2 (1984) pp. 155-213 (p. 189)
93. and Paul Kaufman, Borrowings from the Bristol Library 1773-1784: A Unique Record of Reading Vogues (Charlottesville: Bibliographical Society of the University of Virginia, 1960) p. 121.
94. Ulman, Things, Thoughts, Words, p. 32, Ulman's emphasis.
95. For example, the numerous titles of "Mr" and "Rev" indicate members of the middle orders, while members of the landed gentry - fewer in number but still considerable, are revealed by the titles "Esq", and "Sir". The titles of "Countess", "Lady" and "Hon. Lord", which figure infrequently but noticeably, suggest the status either of full peerage or, at least, membership in the family of a peer. Names such as "Mr Campbell", "Dr Fordyce", "Hon. Lord Kaims", and "Dr Smith" probably indicate the presence at Sheridan's lectures of an impressive component of the eighteenth-century scholarly and literary community; the names "Mr Burgh" and "Mr Mason" suggest the importance of Sheridan's views for other eighteenth-century elocutionists - Burgh wrote The Art of Speaking and Mason wrote An Essay on Elocution and Pronunciation, cit. in n. 4 above.
96. Quoted in E. P. Thompson, Customs in Common (London: Merlin, 1991) p. 90.
97. An Oration, cit. in n. 25 above, p. 24.
98. Along with their elocutionary treatises, Walker and Sheridan produced successful "pronouncing" dictionaries: Sheridan's Complete Dictionary of the English Language (London, 1780)
99. and Walker's A Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (London, 1791).
100. Quoted in Miriam Brody Manly Writing: Gender, Rhetoric and the Rise of Composition (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993) p. 55.
101. Thomas Sheridan, A Course of Lectures on Elocution (London: 1762; Menston: Scolar, 1968) p. 30. All subsequent references are to this edition.
102. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 4.1.1.
103. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 4.1.5.
104. James S. Baumlin, "Introduction: Positioning Ethos in Historical and Contemporary Theory", in James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin eds, Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 1994) pp. xi-xxxi (p. xv).
105. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 2.1356a.
106. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 3.1415b.
107. Cahn, "The Rhetoric of Rhetoric", cit. in n. 11 above, p. 64.
108. Lectures, cit. in n. 55 above, p. xiv.
109. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 4.1.7.
110. Monthly Review 27 (1762) pp. 201-08 (pp. 203-04).
111. Critical Review 14 (1762) pp. 161-70 (p. 170).
112. Elements of Elocution, cit. in n. 39 above, vol. I, pp. vii-viii.
113. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 4.1.55.
114. Richard Leo Enos and Karen Rossi Schnakenberg, "Cicero Latinizes Hellenic Ethos", in Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory, cit. in n. 59 above, pp. 191-210, (p. 201). The other traits are ingenium and prudentia.
115. See n. 27 above.
116. Monthly Review 65 (1781) pp. 81-89 (p. 81).
117. George E. Yoos, "Logos", in Theresa Enos ed., Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition (New York: Garland, 1996) pp. 410-14 (pp. 410-11).
118. See n. 19.
119. Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, trans. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1971) p. 191.
120. In this context, the regulation of the art of written language is an existing structure of reality in the sense that it is perceived as a reality; this does not mean that written language "really is", in a foundational or absolute sense, fully regulated.
121. Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric, p. 297.
122. Elements, I, pp. 47-48.
123. Ulman, Things, Thoughts, Words, cit. in n. 3 above, p. 55.
124. According to Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, quasi-logical argumentation takes advantage of "the prestige of rigorous thought" by resembling "the formal reasoning of logic or mathematics" (The New Rhetoric, pp. 193-94).
125. Walker also discusses vocal modulation, tones, and gestures but these aspects of elocution - in particular gesture - do not fit coherently with his system based on the principle of inflections. That is, he does not bind and relate them logically with the other elements, instead treating each one as a separate aspect.
126. Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 3rd edn (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990) p. 307.
127. Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 11.2-3;
128. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 3.1403b.
129. Ulman explains that "Sheridan analyses language as a system of articulate sounds signifying ideas primarily in order to delineate its use in concert with a constellation of signs - including expressions, gestures, and tonal inflections that signify emotions - which together with articulate sounds constitute communicative performance", Things, Thoughts, Words, p. 174.
130. For more on the relationship between Sheridan's theoretical views on the "language of nature" and eighteenth-century common sense philosophy, see Mohrmann, "The Language of Nature and Elocutionary Theory", cit. in n. 5 above.
131. Kenneth Burke, On Symbols and Society, ed. Joseph R. Gusfield (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) pp. 197-98.
132. Kenneth Burke, On Symbols and Society, p. 281.
133. Elements, cit. in n. 39 above, II, p. 260.
134. Cahn, "The Rhetoric of Rhetoric", p. 68.
135. Of the three classical appeals of ethos, logos, and pathos, the latter has occupied the most problematic status within the rhetorical tradition. While classical rhetoricians such as Cicero and Quintilian strongly endorse the importance of pathos to persuasion, the Aristotelian tradition has helped to foster a deep suspicion of non-rational, emotional appeals, a suspicion that continues today, as we see in Corbett's comment that "there is something undignified about a rational creature being precipitated into action through the stimulus of aroused passions" (Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, cit. in n. 96 above, p. 86).
136. Joseph Colavito argues that, even though the place of pathos in the rhetorical tradition is significant, it continues to have "a negative cast" and to be viewed with "suspicion" ("Pathos", Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, cit. in n. 78 above, pp. 493-94). The traditional association of delivery with the suspect appeal of pathos suggests one reason why this canon has received less attention and less validation than the other parts of oratory.
137. Carole Blair, "Contested Histories of Rhetoric: The Politics of Preservation", Quarterly Journal of Speech 78 (1992) pp. 403-28, (p. 421).