The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume

274 Pages·1994·17.193 MB·English

by  Adam Potkay

The Fate of Eloquence
in the Age of Hume
Rhetoric and Society
General Editor: Wayne A. Rebhorn
Rhetoric and the Origins of Medieval Drama
by Jody Enders
The Performance of Conviction: Plainness and
Rhetoric in the Early English Renaissance
by Kenneth J. E. Graham
The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume
by Adam Potkay
The Fate of
Eloquence in
the Age of Hume
ADAM POTKAY
CORNELL UNIVERSITY PRESS
ITHACA AND LONDON
Copyright © 1994 by Cornell University
All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts
thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing
from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage
House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.
First published 1994 by Cornell University Press.
Printed in the United States of America
© The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements
of the American National Standard for Information Sciences—
Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials. ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Potkay, Adam, b. 1961
The fate of eloquence in the age of Hume / Adam Potkay.
p. cm.
Based on the author's thesis (Rutgers University).
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
ISBN 0-8014-3014-3
1. English literature—18th century—History and criticism. 2. Rhetoric—
1500-1800. 3. Literature and society—Great Britain—History—18th century.
4. Great Britain—Social life and customs—18th century. 5. Hume, David,
1711-1776—Contributions in rhetoric. 6. English language—18th century—
Rhetoric. 7. Manners and customs in literature. 8. Courtesy in literature.
9. Virtue in literature. 10. Eloquence. I. Title.
PR448.R54P68 1994
820.9'oo5—dc20 94-19001
Contents
Foreword, by Wayne A. Rebhorn vii
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction i
1. Ancient Eloquence and the Revival of Virtue 24
2. Eloquence versus Polite Style 59
3. Regretting Eloquence in Polite Letters: Pope, Gray,
and Sterne 104
4. Religious Eloquence: Hume on the Passions That
Unite Us 159
5. Eloquence and Manners in Macpherson's Poems of
Ossian 189
Epilogue 226
Bibliography 229
Index 247

Foreword
Stated simply, the purpose of this series is to study rhetoric in
all the varied forms it has taken in human civilizations by situ¬
ating it in the social and political contexts to which it is inex¬
tricably bound. The series Rhetoric and Society rests on the as¬
sumption that rhetoric is both an important intellectual disci¬
pline and a necessary cultural practice and that it is profoundly
implicated in a large array of other disciplines and practices,
from politics to literature to religion. Interdisciplinary by defini¬
tion and unrestricted in range either historically or geograph¬
ically, the series investigates a wide variety of questions; among
them, how rhetoric constitutes a response to historical develop¬
ments in a given society, how it crystallizes cultural tensions
and conflicts and defines key concepts, and how it affects and
shapes the social order in its turn. The series includes books that
approach rhetoric as a form of signification, as a discipline that
makes meaning out of other cultural practices, and as a central
and defining intellectual and social activity deeply rooted in
its milieu. In essence, the books in the series seek to demon¬
strate just how important rhetoric really is to human beings in
society.
By investigating the ambivalent response of the middling
classes in Enlightenment Britain to classical eloquence, Adam
Potkay's Fate of Eloquence in the Age of Hume offers an incisive
Foreword
Vlll
analysis of one of the central tensions, perhaps the central ten¬
sion, of the age. Potkay demonstrates how, on the one hand,
those classes looked back nostalgically to the oratorical culture
of Demosthenes and Cicero, admiring their eloquence because of
its implication in the public domain, its direct association with
republicanism, and its "masculine" force, a force thought to be
the product of its characteristic figures of speech. On the other
hand, the middling classes of Enlightenment Britain simultane¬
ously distrusted classical eloquence: because it was associated
with the lower orders and with the primitive and the vulgar, on
whom figures of speech were supposed to be able to make partic¬
ularly vivid impressions; because it was opposed to their stan¬
dards of politeness and good manners, standards they identified
as "feminine" in opposition to "masculine" political activity;
and because it violated their behavioral norms of reserve and
ironic detachment. After presenting this thesis in detail in the
first two chapters, which focus on Hume as an exemplary or rep¬
resentative figure for the period, Potkay goes on in his third
chapter to show how the tensions and contradictions he has
mapped out inform some of the most important works of mid-
eighteenth-century English literature, specifically Pope's Dun-
ciad, Gray's Elegy.; and Sterne's Tristram Shandy and A Senti¬
mental Journey. Chapter 4 then turns to the question of religion
and again focuses on Hume. Hume criticized religion as a form
of rhetoric insofar as it used figures such as personification,
apostrophe, and allegory to attribute powers—gods—to various
aspects of the natural world, but he also sought to replace the
community once produced by religion with a community of
people brought together by their passions in a modern, internal¬
ized version of the classical polis once created by eloquence. Fi¬
nally, in the last chapter of his wide-ranging and provocative
study, Potkay examines Macpherson's Ossianic forgeries and
shows how, in the imaginary realm of primitive Celtic society,
those poems attempt to integrate the opposing tendencies of the
Enlightenment. They do so through their heroes, who combine
the force of classical eloquence with good manners and a refined
sensibility, and who, though engaging in epic battles, simultane-
Foreword
IX
ously manifest the haunted consciousness characteristic of the
modern world, a consciousness that may dismiss the supersti¬
tions of the ancients but still sees "ghosts," if only in the form
of psychic projections.
Wayne A. Rebhorn