Landmark Essays on Rhetorical Criticism

Volume 5

Thomas W. Benson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000150056
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Filología
• Subtopic: Estudios de comunicación

This book is an anthology of landmark essays in rhetorical criticism. In historical usage, a landmark marks a path or a boundary; as a metaphor in social and intellectual history, landmark signifies some act or event that marks a significant achievement or turning point in the progress or decline of human effort. In the history of an academic discipline, the historically established senses of landmark are mixed together, jostling to set out and protect the turfmarkers of academic specialization; aligning footnotes to signify the beacons that have guided thought and, against these "conservative" tendencies, attempting to contribute fresh insights that tempt others along new trails. The editor has chosen essays for this collection that give some sense of the history of rhetorical criticism in this century, especially as it has been practiced in the discipline of speech communication. He also emphasizes materials that may illustrate where the discipline conceives itself to be going -- how it has marked its boundaries; how it has established beacons to invite safety or warn us from the rocks; and how it has sought to preserve a tradition by subjecting it to constant revision and struggle. In the hope of providing some coherence, the scope of this collection is limited to rhetorical criticism as it has been practiced and understood within the discipline of speech communication in North America in this century.

The Literary Criticism of Oratory

by Herbert A. Wichelns

I

Samuel Johnson once projected a history of criticism “as it relates to judging of authors.” Had the great eighteenth-century critic ever carried out his intention, he would have included some interesting comments on the orators and their judges. Histories of criticism, in whole or in part, we now have, and histories of orators. But that section of the history of criticism which deals with judging of orators is still unwritten. Yet the problem is an interesting one, and one which involves some important conceptions. Oratory—the waning influence of which is often discussed in current periodicals—has definitely lost the established place in literature that it once had. Demosthenes and Cicero, Bossuet and Burke, all hold their places in literary histories. But Webster inspires more than one modern critic to ponder the question whether oratory is literature; and if we may judge by the emphasis of literary historians generally, both in England and in America, oratory is either an outcast or a poor relation. What are the reasons for this change? It is a question not easily answered. Involved in it is some shift in the conception of oratory or of literature, or of both; nor can these conceptions have changed except in response to the life of which oratory, as well as literature, is part.

This essay, it should be said, is merely an attempt to spy out the land, to see what some critics have said of some orators, to discover what their mode of criticism has been. The discussion is limited in the main to Burke and a few nineteenth-century figures—Webster, Lincoln, Gladstone, Bright, Cobden—and to the verdicts on these found in the surveys of literary history, in critical essays, in histories of oratory, and in biographies.

Of course, we are not here concerned with the disparagement of oratory. With that, John Morley once dealt in a phrase: “Yet, after all, to disparage eloquence is to depreciate mankind.”¹ Nor is the praise of eloquence of moment here. What interests us is the method of the critic: his standards, his categories of judgment, what he regards as important. These will show, not so much what he thinks of a great and ancient literary type, as how he thinks in dealing with that type. The chief aim is to know how critics have spoken of orators.

1 Life of William Ewart Gladstone, New York, 1903, II, 593.

We have not much serious criticism of oratory. The reasons are patent. Oratory is intimately associated with statecraft; it is bound up with the things of the moment; its occasion, its terms, its background, can often be understood only by the careful student of history. Again, the publication of orations as pamphlets leaves us free to regard any speech merely as an essay, as a literary effort deposited at the shrine of the muses in hope of being blessed with immortality. This view is encouraged by the difficulty of reconstructing the conditions under which the speech was delivered; by the doubt, often, whether the printed text of the speech represents what was actually said, or what the orator elaborated afterwards. Burke’s corrections are said to have been the despair of his printers.² Some of Chatham’s speeches, by a paradox of fate, have been reported to us by Samuel Johnson, whose style is as remote as possible from that of the Great Commoner, and who wrote without even having heard the speeches pronounced.³ Only in comparatively recent times has parliamentary reporting pretended to give full records of what was actually said; and even now speeches are published for literary or political purposes which justify the corrector’s pencil in changes both great and small. Under such conditions the historical study of speech making is far from easy.

2 Select Works, ed. E. J. Payne, Oxford, 1892, 1, xxxviii.

3 Basil Williams, Life of William Pitt, New York, 1913, II, 335–337.

Yet the conditions of democracy necessitate both the making of speeches and the study of the art. It is true that other ways of influencing opinion have long been practised, that oratory is no longer the chief means of communicating ideas to the masses. And the change is emphasized by the fact that the newer methods are now beginning to be investigated, sometimes from the point of view of the political student, sometimes from that of the “publicity expert.” But, human nature being what it is, there is no likelihood that face to face persuasion will cease to be a principal mode of exerting influence, whether in courts, in senate-houses, or on the platform. It follows that the critical study of oratorical method is the study, not of a mode outworn, but of a permanent and important human activity.

Upon the great figures of the past who have used the art of public address, countless judgments have been given. These judgments have varied with the bias and preoccupation of the critics, who have been historians, biographers, or literary men, and have written accordingly. The context in which we find criticism of speeches, we must, for the purposes of this essay at least, both note and set aside. For though the aim of the critic conditions his approach to our more limited problem—the method of dealing with oratory—still we find that an historian may view an orator in the same light as does a biographer or an essayist. The literary form in which criticism of oratory is set does not afford a classification of the critics.

“There are,” says a critic of literary critics, “three definite points, on one of which, or all of which, criticism must base itself. There is the date, and the author, and the work.”⁴ The points on which writers base their judgments of orators do afford a classification. The man, his work, his times, are the necessary common topics of criticism; no one of them can be wholly disregarded by any critic. But mere difference in emphasis on one or another of them is important enough to suggest a rough grouping. The writers with whom this essay deals give but a subordinate position to the date; they are interested chiefly in the man or in his works. Accordingly, we have as the first type of criticism that which is predominantly personal or biographical, is occupied with the character and the mind of the orator, goes behind the work to the man. The second type attempts to hold the scales even between the biographical and the literary interest. The third is occupied with the work and tends to ignore the man. These three classes, then, seem to represent the practice of modern writers in dealing with orators. Each merits a more detailed examination.

4 D. Nichol Smith, Functions of Criticism, Oxford, 1909, p. 15.

II

We may begin with that type of critic whose interest is in personality, who seeks the man behind the work. Critics of this type furnish forth the appreciative essays and the occasional addresses on the orators. They are as the sands of the sea. Lord Rosebery’s two speeches on Burke, Whitelaw Reid’s on Lincoln and on Burke, may stand as examples of the character sketch.⁵ The second part of Birrell’s essay on Burke will serve for the mental character sketch (the first half of the essay is biographical); other examples are Sir Walter Raleigh’s essay on Burke and that by Robert Lynd.⁶ All these emphasize the concrete nature of Burke’s thought, the realism of his imagination, his peculiar combination of breadth of vision with intensity; they pass to the guiding principles of his thought: his hatred of abstraction, his love of order and of settled ways. But they do not occupy themselves with Burke as a speaker, nor even with him as a writer; their first and their last concern is with the man rather than with his works; and their method is to fuse into a single impression whatever of knowledge or opinion they may have of the orator’s life and works. These critics, in dealing with the public speaker, think of him as something other than a speaker. Since this type of writing makes but an indirect contribution to our judgment of the orator, there is no need of a more extended account of the method, except as we find it combined with a discussion of the orator’s works.

5 See Rosebery, Appreciations and Addresses, London, 1899, and Whitelaw Reid, American and English Studies, New York, 1913, II.

6 See Augustine Birrell, Obiter Dicta, New York, 1887, II; Walter Raleigh, Some Authors, Oxford, 1923; Robert Lynd, Books and Authors, London, 1922.

III

Embedded in biographies and histories of literature, we find another type of criticism, that which combines the sketch of mind and character with some discussion of style. Of the general interest of such essays there can be no doubt. Nine tenths of so-called literary criticism deals with the lives and personalities of authors, and for the obvious reason, that every one is interested in them, whereas few will follow a technical study, however broadly based. At its best, the type of study that starts with the orator’s mind and character is justified by the fact that nothing can better illuminate his work as a persuader of men. But when not at its best, the description of a man’s general cast of mind stands utterly unrelated to his art: the critic fails to fuse his comment on the individual with his comment on the artist; and as a result we get some statements about the man, and some statements about the orator, but neither casts light on the other. Almost any of the literary histories will supply examples of the gulf that may yawn between a stylistic study and a study of personality.

The best example of the successful combination of the two strains is Grierson’s essay on Burke in the Cambridge History of English Literature. In this, Burke’s style, though in largest outline only, is seen to emerge from the essential nature of the man. Yet of this essay, too, it must be said that the analysis of the orator is incomplete, being overshadowed by the treatment of Burke as a writer, though, as we shall see, the passages on style have the rare virtue of keeping to the high road of criticism. The majority of critics who use the mixed method, however, do not make their study of personality fruitful for a study of style, do not separate literary style from oratorical style even to the extent that Grierson does, and do conceive of literary style as a matter of details. In fact, most of the critics of this group tend to supply a discussion of style by jotting down what has occurred to them about the author’s management of words; and in the main, they notice the lesser strokes of literary art, but not its broader aspects. They have an eye for tactics, but not for strategy. This is the more strange, as these same writers habitually take large views of the orator himself, considered as a personality, and because they often remark the speaker’s great themes and his leading ideas. The management of ideas—what the Romans called invention and disposition—the critics do not observe; their practice is the salto mortale from the largest to the smallest considerations. And it needs no mention that a critic who does not observe the management of ideas even from the point of view of structure and arrangement can have nothing to say of the adaptation of ideas to the orator’s audience.

It is thus with Professor McLaughlin in his chapter in the Cambridge History of American Literature on Clay and Calhoun and some lesser lights. The pages are covered with such expressions as diffuse, florid, diction restrained and strong, neatly phrased, power of attack, invective, gracious persuasiveness. Of the structure of the speeches by which Clay and Calhoun exercised their influence—nothing. The drive of ideas is not represented. The background of habitual feeling which the orators at times appealed to and at times modified, is hinted at in a passage about Clay’s awakening the spirit of nationalism, and in another passage contrasting the full-blooded oratory of Benton with the more polished speech of Quincy and Everett; but these are the merest hints. In the main, style for McLaughlin is neither the expression of personality nor the order and movement given to thought, but a thing of shreds and patches. It is thus, too, with Morley’s pages on Burke’s style in his life of the orator, and with Lodge’s treatment of Webster in his life of the great American. A rather better analysis, though on the same plane of detail, may be used as an example. Oliver Elton says of Burke:

He embodies, more powerfully than any one, the mental tendencies and changes that are seen gathering force through the eighteenth century. A volume of positive knowledge, critically sifted and ascertained: a constructive vision of the past and its institutions; the imagination, under this guidance, everywhere at play; all these elements unite in Burke. His main field is political philosophy. … His favorite form is oratory, uttered or written. His medium is prose, and the work of his later years, alone, outweighs all contemporary prose in power. … His whole body of production has the unity of some large cathedral, whose successive accretions reveal the natural growth of a single mind, without any change or essential break. …

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgements
• About the Editor
• Table of Contents
• Introduction Beacons and Boundary-Markers: Landmarks in Rhetorical Criticism (1993)
• 1. The Literary Criticism of Oratory (1925)
• 2. The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle (1939)
• 3. Lincoln’s First Inaugural (1954)
• 4. Lord Thomas Erskine: Modern Advocate (1958)
• 5. “War Message,” December 8, 1941: An Approach to Language (1966)
• 6. A Rhetoric of Facts: Arthur Larson’s Stance as a Persuader (1968)
• 7. Darwin and The Origin of Species: The Rhetorical Ancestry of an Idea (1970)
• 8. The Second Persona (1970)
• 9. Lincoln at Cooper Union: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Text (1974)
• 10. Stanton’s “Solitude of Self”: A Rationale for Feminism (1980)
• 11. Genre Criticism and Historical Context: The Case of George Washington’s First Inaugural Address (1986)
• 12. Constitutive Rhetoric: The Case of the Peuple Québécois (1987)
• Bibliography
• Index