Before launching our project of the week (Hugh Blair), I offer a preview of upcoming readings so that you can take these under your consideration as you plan your projects. You’ll read these after your suffrage/women's rights (and maybe temperance) reading binge over spring break. I’ve chosen words by each author that explain methodology, critical perspective, and/or content.
Scroll all the way down for the Blair commenting assignment.
Royster, Traces in a Stream: Literacy and Social Change among African American Women, from the Preface:
Over the course of my work on this project, I have come to a deeper understanding of what it has really been about—acknowledging that it has been about many things. Often it has appeared to be about everything. Most consistently, however, it has been about teaching me how to conduct research, that is, qualitative research, on a particular group of people—African American women. My apprenticeship has been long and enlightening. I have learned to engage in a painstaking process of recovery and reconstruction; to use multidisciplinary sources; to count experience variously, especially when the people whose experience it was are no longer alive and when they did not always leave clear records of themselves. I have learned to cross-reference tidbits of information in making sense of evidence; to recognize an important story when I see it; to develop strategies for retelling it respectfully despite the inevitable missing pieces. What I have learned best, however, is the value of two virtues; the importance of caring about “the subject” and the importance of patience.
Johnson, Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life, 1866-1910, from the Introduction:
I assume in the following essays that a feminist reading of the history of rhetoric necessarily means that the complicated relationship between rhetorical practices and the inscription of cultural power must be addressed as we revisit or uncover rhetorical traditions and practices of the past. . . . I treat rhetorical theories and rhetorical practices as cultural sites where we can observe the interdependence of codes of rhetorical performance and the construction of conventional identities, particularly but not exclusively gender identities. . . . [T]he history of Anglo-American rhetoric can be read as a revealing narrative about how convention, rhetorical expectations, and the lines of cultural power converge.
Enoch, Refiguring Rhetorical Education, from Chapter 1, “The Profession of a Woman”:
In 1829, Catherine Beecher joined educators across the country to establish women’s “true profession” as teacher. Educators such as Beecher recognized that, because of a national shift in educational priorities from classical learning and religious indoctrination to moral education, social etiquette, and basic literacy, women should be seen as the perfect candidates for the profession. Since women had a “natural” capacity to nurture and guide, and since they already were expected to be exemplars of piety morality, good conduct, and correct manners, who would be a better choice to teach the children of the nation. . . . The project of this text is not only to look at the negotiations that Lydia Maria Child, Zitkala-Sa, Idar, Pena, and Villegas made to their own racial and gendered positions in order to teach. This study also interrogates how issues of race, culture, language, power, and access meet when ever discussion so rhetorical education arise. These female teachers taught black, Indian, and Mexican students, and the pedagogical arguments that they composed reveal the critical disconnection between the culture and language of their students and the pedagogical imperatives of the dominant educational discourses of their day. To read and understand the ways these teachers confronted such issues, I draw on two, often overlapping, conversations inside our field today: conversations concerning critical pedagogy and those concerning race and ethnicity.
Gold, Rhetoric at the Margins: Revising the History of Writing Instruction in American Colleges, 1873-1947. From the “Preface: Revisioning History”:
All politics, Tip O’Neill famously declared, is local. The same might be said for history. National trends intersect with and often emerge from local communities and constituencies, whose experiences can complicate and confound received historical narratives. Unfortunately, local histories often get erased in the process of history making. In rhetoric and composition studies, recent historical scholarship has begun to reverse this trend. Yet what John C. Brereton acknowledged over a decade ago in his introduction to The Origins of Composition Studies remains true today; we still know too little about the classroom experiences of students and educators at Southern, religious, women’s working-class, and historical black colleges. More troublingly, our knowledge has often been filtered through a myth of rhetorical decline, an assumption that innovation begins at elite institutions, and a too-strict adherence to an epistemological taxonomy that does not do full justice to the range of pedagogical practice in diverse institutions. . . . This book examines rhetorical education—reading, writing, and speaking instruction—at three institutions neglected by previous historical study: Wiley College in Marshall, Texas (1873), a classical based private black liberal arts college; the public Texas Woman’s University Denton (1901), at one time the nation’s largest residential college for women; and East Texas Normal College in Commerce 1899), an independent teacher training school and at one time home to the state’s largest summer teachers’ program.
Assignment for Saturday Night:
1. Continue to work on your Campbell assignment, if necessary, refining the scope and selecting specific passages from Campbell that you want your hypothetical students to focus on; post revisions.
2. Begin writing a second set of assignments, this time using passages from Blair’s Lectures.
Let’s refine the proposed technique for last week (now that you don’t have a library assignment): That is, post your thoughts and progress on the Blair assignment little by little—so that we can lean on each other’s insights. You can also make other kinds of random remarks about Blair and Campbell. If it helps, imagine yourself as a nineteenth-century teacher building a course in rhetoric for the same audience of students: first a Campbell assignment; then a Blair assignment. If it doesn’t help, don’t imagine it.
Continue to post assignment developments and other thoughts on Campbell and Blair on through Tuesday, when we’ll discuss these new assignments-in-progress and the Bacon/McClish reading.
See the formal assignment link for an introduction to Blair.
22 comments:
I have just places on 1-day reserve the following:
Blair, Lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres with a memoir of the author's life; to which are added copious questions and an analysis of each lecture by Abraham Mills.
Philadelphia : Hayes & Zell, 1856
You can also view an 1838 version (Robinson and Franklin) that is digitized by the google digitizing project. Choose "flip book" to go through it. The Abraham Mills questions are kind of disappointing--but very worth looking at because they quite aptly demonstrate a different kind of pedagogical approach. If you are interested in 19th c. pedagogy, you will put this on your list of musts--even if you have to stretch to come to terms with the unexpected. I have not read all the way through the Mills commentary--maybe there's something neat lurking there.
http://www.archive.org/details/lecturesonrheto24blaigoog
Here's the URL for the digitized Blair.
Major points about Blair (which I'll put up in small messages:
--He expanded the "domain" of rhetoric beyond its longstanding confines as pulpit, bar, and senate eloquence. Under Blair, the study of rhetoric now includes composition (writing, literary writing). Recall Halloran and Clark's claim that the nineteenth century saw a shift from oral culture to written culture. Blair's writing about rhetoric is part of that shift.
I'm wondering what Blair would think of Sojourner Truth-- clearly she is a model of natural genius, but perhaps without the refinement of taste. That said, I want my students to look at her speech through the Blair lens; I think the contrasts of the two views will allow the men to really get a thorough New Rhetoric view of her speech.
Because Blair says that criticism must be based upon experience and not formulated on a set of rules (23), I will first make my students act out the speech they created for the audience of pro-slavery Georgians. The other members of the class will do their best to act the part ofthe audience, not hilding anything back. Then, the students will critique one another and share their criticisms. I think this experience of actually giving a difficult speech like the one Truth gave will allow allow them to have a greater insight as they continue to work with her speech.
(Ironically, I have decided that some of my students are preparing to enter the church.) My students will primarily focus on Blair's "The Eloquence of the Pulpit" for the written critique of Truth's speech.
Critics could argue that Truth's speech imitates the form of a sermon. Does the speech follow this form? Determine whether she demonstrates
• Just cause
• Popular eloquence
• that her Object is always and ultimately persuasion
• Gravity and warmth
• Proper choice of subjects.
Additionally, if the above analysis leads you to conclude that the speech could feasibly be termed a sermon, though it didn't take place in a religious context, does it demonstrate the following qualities that constitute an effective sermon according to Blair?
• Unity
• Precise and particular subject
• Not saying all that can be said upon the subject
• Rendering the subject interesting to the hearers
• Not preaching from a popular style in vogue
What effect does this possible sermon quality have on Truth's speech and overall message?
As for the second part of my assignment, I am going to rely on Lecture X, "Style." In this instance I am again trying to critique what I see as a flaw in Blair's theory, which I also want my students to see. Actually, this chapter kind of enraged me. So, I want my students to see the faulty, rather snobbish princilpes at work in the New Rhetoric.
Blair asserts that purity and perspicuity (114, 116) are crucial to a rhetor's style. He defines them as follows:
Purity is the use of such words and constructions as belong to the idiom of the language in which we speak; in opposition to words and phrases that are imported from other languages, or that are obsolete, new-coined, or used without proper authority (114). (He later ammends this assertion to say that these derivations from the idiom can be used VERY sparingly, and only when absolutely necessary.)
Propriety is the selection of such words in the language as the best and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express by them (116).
The students must construct a (very) short letter to a family member requesting a favor. They must, however, utilize perspicuity (no derivations from the idion of our language) and purity (i.e. look up all descriptive words and verbs in order to ensure their use in this situation is appropriate.)
What I'm hoping the students wil learn is that's it's essentially impossible to follow Blair's prescription of style, and that they as rheotros will have to use Taste (!) in order to determine whether the word is appropriate for the situation.
I think this is a super-hard assignment and that my students (even if they are fictional) will hate me a whole lot. :)
Here's my revision of the Campbell assignment addressed to the students:
Audience:
A class of female African American students at Tuskegee Normal and Industrial Institute in the 1890s (assuming that female students were receiving an education there during this time).
Assignment #1:
In his The Philosophy of Rhetoric George Campbell writes, “Moral evidence is founded on the principles we have from consciousness and common sense, improved by experience” (43). He further breaks down moral reasoning into the three “tribes” of experience, analogy, and testimony, elements essential to your ability to construct persuasive oratory and writing to plead your case to the nation. Before you try your own hand at such activities, your task in this assignment is to analyze two foundational speeches, one from the abolitionist period and the other from our day. Specifically, you will consider Sojourner Truth’s 1851 speech delivered at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio and Ida B. Wells’ “Lynch Law in all its Phases” given in 1893. These are powerful examples of testimony, and according to Campbell, this is one of the most persuasive elements of moral reasoning that can make even the most fantastical experience bear weight.
As you examine these two speeches you should keep the following Cambellian ideas regarding testimony in mind:
• “Testimony is more adequate evidence than any conclusions from experience. The immediate conclusions from experience are general . . . the direct conclusion from testimony is particular.”
•Testimony is “dignified with the name of knowledge, whereas [experience] is regarded as matter of conjecture only.”
•“Testimony is capable of giving us absolute certainty even of the most miraculous fact, or of what is contrary to uniform experience.”
•“Testimony is a serious intimation from another, of any fact or observation, as being what he remembers to have seen or heard or experienced. To this, when we have no positive reasons of mistrust or doubt, we are . . . led to give an unlimited assent.”
Campbell then provides important criteria by which to evaluate the testimony:
•The reputation of the attester
•His manner of address
•The nature of the fact attested
•The occasion of giving the testimony
•The possible or probable design in giving it
•The disposition of the hearers to whom it was given
Your analysis of these speeches should consider how Campbell’s notion of testimony makes these speeches so powerful. Is there any reason, based on the testimonies these women give, that an audience should doubt them? It seems that if the rhetors’ testimonies conform to Campbell’s criteria for testimony, then there is little to deny the truthfulness of their claims. At what points in the speech do these rhetors employ testimony? What is there about the rhetorical situation that makes testimony necessary? How can you play down doubt and mistrust in your audience so that they can only accord you “unlimited assent?” Even when white newspapers challenge Wells’ claims of lynching in the South, does an analysis of her speech according to Campbell’s ideas assert the soundness of her moral reasoning, thereby discrediting her enemies?
Assignment #2:
Now that you have completed an analysis of two influential speeches, it is your turn to draft a speech to be delivered to the Tennessee State Legislature. Having studied Wells’ speech which includes excerpts from Memphis’ The Daily Commercial, which ran inflammatory and mendacious responses to the reports of lynchings throughout the South in the Free Speech, you will prepare comments to urge the state’s representatives that such atrocities are in direct violation of the rights of man and the constitution of this nation. As Campbell instructs us:
in order to persuade, there are two things which must be carefully studied by the orator. The first is, to excite some desire or passion in the hearers; the second is to satisfy their judgment that there is a connexion between the action to which he would persuade them, and the gratification of the desire or passion which he excites. (77-78)
Thus, to persuade your readers, you must adeptly connect passion with reason. For the purposes of this assignment, I am asking you to develop your understanding of the passions.
First, read The Philosophy of Rhetoric pages 77-81. Pay particular attention to how Campbell responds to these questions he poses:
•“How is a passion or disposition that is favorable to the design of the orator, to be excited in the hearers?”
•“How is an unfavorable passion or disposition to be calmed?”
You certainly will be entering unfriendly territory both physically and philosophically with your speech. Therefore, you need to understand how to appeal to such emotions as pride, morality, sense of duty, justice, and pity to make your case. Remember that “A passion is most strongly excited by sensation” (81) so do not hesitate to reinforce the brutality and cruelty of the lynchings.
Once you have some grounding on this principle, you will need to read Campbell’s brief discussion on the “connexion of place” (88). This is one of the elements used to evoke the passions. As you are entering a foreign territory for your speech, you must have an understanding of the events surrounding the lynchings occurring in this area. You will need to read other reports of local violence against your brothers and sisters further north to underscore the barbarity taking place in the midst of a supposed “civilized” state.
Activity #1:
I will ask my male students to work with Blair’s Lecture XXVII on “Eloquence of Popular Assemblies,” pages 342-360. The speech they will work with is President Polk’s May 11, 1846 address to the United States’ Congress calling for the declaration of war with Mexico.
In his lecture Blair suggests that the “object” of eloquence one finds in popular assemblies “is, or ought always to be, persuasion” (344). He continues: “There must be some end proposed; some point, most commonly of public utility or good, in favour of which we seek to determine the hearers” (344). With this clear objective in mind for deliberative speech, Blair then provides a number of criteria a novice orator must employ to bring about the desired ends. He first warns against mimicry of the classicist orators like Demosthenes whose words are “fraught . . . with argument” (344). On page 344 through 347 he provides a number of other elements an orator must consider. Some of the most important include:
•Become “masters of the business on which they are to speak”
•“Be well provided with matter and argument” which will receive the greatest attention
•“Always give to their discourse an air of manliness and strength”
•Employ “ornament”
•“Be ourselves persuaded of whatever we recommend to others”
My assignment will ask the students to examine Polk’s speech in light of each of these criteria and decide whether his ends—convincing Congress that war is justified with Mexico—are achieved. In their consideration of Polk’s logos, they should also come to a conclusion as to whether Polk’s ethos represents the necessary “manliness and strength” for persuasive public discourse. This is where they can rely on their previous coursework in classical rhetoric (Aristotle and Quintillian in particular) to determine whether the president fits these qualities, and also whether he is a noble orator whose reasons are for the betterment of American society.
Activity #2:
These same students have just completed their analysis of Polk’s speech. It just so happens that these students have also read Thoreau’s “Resistance to Civil Government” ("Civil Disobedience") and a number of students feel that the Mexican War was an unjustified and imperialist attack on Mexico. Thus, this second assignment requires students to craft a speech for an audience of their own choosing, allowing them to make arguments regarding the war. As in the last task, they are to draw from Blair to shape their speeches.
It is important for them to remember that Blair argues that an orator operating within public discourse be convinced of the ideas that are being shared with others. Therefore, students will divide up based on their convictions regarding the Mexican-American War. Added to what they learned through the analysis, another important idea addresses arrangement. Blair states, “Nothing is of greater consequence than a proper and clear method” (347). This is important for two reasons, one being that it allows the memory to recall the main ideas to be presented. Memory’s role in the process of invention as coupled with method is paramount in the eloquence of popular assemblies. Blair urges orators not to have memorized their speeches word for word but be able to “be suited to the course which the debate takes” (346). Therefore, the speaker must have thoughts organized so that memory can recall them, especially in the event that the debate goes a different direction that expected. If “every thing [is] found in its proper order,” the orator can adapt to varying situations and still get his points across in a clear, organized manner. The second reason is that proper method helps the audience follow along, ensuring that the listeners “feel the full effect of every argument” (347). Able to follow the orator’s train of thought, they can focus on the argument itself rather than trying to follow a confusing train of thought.
Blair doesn’t stop his suggestions with arrangement. He includes five points concerning style and expression. These conditions come from pages 348-350.
1. The emotion should be appropriate to the situation
2. We should never falsify our emotions
3. The orator must always keep emotions in check, never to be carried away by them even if the subject suggests otherwise
4. Always be aware of the conventions and tastes of the audience so as to not exceed their limits in these areas
5. Always understand one’s audience or as Blair says, be aware of “decorums of time, place, and character”
With these principles in mind, the assignment will allow students to not only argue the position they support, but will challenge them to understand the audience’s needs so as to not offend nor come off as something that they are not.
As an academic, I have not spent much time studying the nineteenth century, so throughout this semester I have been trying to get myself into that mindset. I actually have never read anything about taste, and as I read Blair's description of the refinement of taste, the movement from general reaction ("I like/I don't like") to more refined appreciation was the parallel to contemporary literature classrooms. At least in my experience, early on in college it seems like my classmates and I would have general reactions to the authors/texts, that of liking or not liking the style/content/message. Through continued study and our professors' input, we learned to view literature differently and to provide support when we did have reactions to texts. When we began, we would also make speculations and offer interpretations that were based little on the text. Through classroom experience and a change in perspective, we learned to base our interpretations on the text and to provide support to back up our ideas. It seems like Blair is suggesting taste is refined similarly. I'm not sure how this would apply to an assignment, as modification of perspective is such a long-standing process, but it is interesting to think about...
Here is my final version of the Campbell assignment:
My students are young white women who wish to become involved with womens rights. Perhaps before now they have been unaware of/isolated from Wells and other African American suffragists who have been working very hard on lynch laws.
While studying Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric, I will assign the following to them:
Part 1:
Read the text of Ida B. Wells’ “Lynch Law in all its Phases”. Please note in particular which portions of the speech you find particularly moving and why.
Now go directly to Campbell. I want you to read chapter 7, which addresses consideration to the hearers. Campbell argues that it is necessary to engage the passions of the audience if the rhetor’s goal is to persuade. On page 77-78 Campbell tells us that the goal should be to excite the passions, and then ensure that the action you are asking them to take are connected to the passions that have been excited. [21st century note: I’m paraphrasing because I don’t have the whole quote at hand--- page 78 wasn’t included in our pdf, but this was how I understood the unfinished sentence at the bottom of 77]
Go back to Wells and your notes from your initial reading of the text. The portions of the speech that you found particularly moving—how did they arouse your passions? Which of the seven circumstances that Campbell gives as arousing passions are at work in your reading of the text? Is Wells making the necessary connection between passion and action?
Part 2:
A. Choose one of the following topics: Lynching, Suffrage, or Labor rights (or if you have another in mind, please consult with me) and draft an editorial for the school paper about it. As you plan your piece, please make sure you think about the following:
1. Your goal will be persuasion. What action are you specifically asking your audience to take?
2. Choose at least two of the circumstances that Campbell gives for arousing passions and use them in your editorial. Can you link these to the action you’d like your audience to take?
B. Trade drafts with a partner, and do not let them know which of these circumstances you were addressing in your paper. See if you can find a link between passion and action in your partner’s paper, and see if you can correctly identify what your partner was trying to use to arouse passion.
Kate Alexander
19th Century Rhetoric
The First Assignment
The Campbell Assignment
America of the 1840s will provide the timeframe for an assignment in rhetoric to be completed by university students. Historical events and philosophy of the time include the overreaching concept of “manifest destiny,” an idea originally espoused by Jacksonian followers, but embraced by William Henry Harrison and his successor, John Tyler. Americans believe that the God of Christianity supports their movement westward. This colonialist movement, unfortunately, has no consideration for the Native American’s already occupying the land. The annexation of Texas sparks the Mexican American war. Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton organize the first American women’s rights convention in Seneca Falls, New York. Harriet Tubman escapes to the North and begins working with Underground Railroad. In the meantime, Ralph Waldo Emerson publishes his essays including “Self-Reliance,” Frederick Douglas begins publishing, and Henry David Thoreau publishes his “Resistance to Civil Government.” The 40s are thus a time of vibrant philosophical thoughts, many of which are at odds with each other. Anticipation of the future and a new hope for rights of all are in the air. At the antislavery convention in London, William Henry Harrison and others walk out when women abolitionists are not allowed to be seated as delegates. The Amistad mutineers are allowed to return to Africa.
The students who are to complete the assignment will be situated at Oberlin College in Ohio. This college is significant because of its early acceptance of African American students and its support of the abolitionist movement. This college is also significant because it produced the first four women in the nation to receive the four-year degree. Among these graduates were Lucy Stone (1847), one of the first women to keep her own name after marriage, and Antoinette Brown Blackwell (1847). Of note is the enrollment of Margru, known as Sarah Kinson, former Amistad captive, who returns to the United States to take classes at Oberlin (1846-1848) (http://www.oberlinheritage.org/timeline2.html). Although many African American women attend Oberlin, Mary Jane Patterson is the first to receive the A.B. degree in 1862 (http://www.oberlin.edu/archive/holdings/finding/RG5’SG4/S3/catalogue).
A search of the Oberlin Archives produced a catalogue listing trustees, faculty, students, and curriculum of the time. The junior class curriculum includes Olmsted’s Natural Philosophy, Herschel’s Astronomy, Chemistry, Physiology and Anatomy resume and extended, Cicero’s De officiis, Greek Testament, Epistles reviewed, Plato’s Phaedo, Hebrew Bible, Isaiah and other prophets, Milton’s poems, lectures on law, political economy, Erskine’s Internal Evidences, and Leslie on Deism, Stewart’s Elements of Intellectual Philosophy, Demosthenes’ Oration on the Crown, and, of particular important to this assignment, Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric. The sophomore curriculum includes the study of Whately’s Logic and Rhetoric. Although the female students have a female principal, Mrs. Alice W. Cowles, they study rhetoric with James Dascomb, M.D. who teaches chemistry, mathematics and natural philosophy, law, sacred music, and rhetoric. The size of the junior female class is about 36 students. The ratio of men to women at Oberlin in 1836 is 92 to 310. The male students need to present evidence of good moral character, and those studying theology need to bring certificates of good standing in an evangelical church. The female students have to present evidence of character and usefulness and their ability to perform domestic labor, along their intention to pursue a program of study for at least two years. Men and women are separated in classes except in cases where course availability is limited. In this case, classes are coeducational.
The Assignment
This assignment will span a month’s time with different assignments due each week.
Weeks One and Two: Students will read Book I of Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric and will be prepared to recite primary ideas expressed by Campbell during the first week. During the second week, students will be examined on the ideas gleaned from the readings and recitations of the first week. In summary, this is what the young ladies will be expected to know:
• Campbell calls upon the treatise of his fellow Scotsman, David Hume (A Treatise of Human Nature), to formulate his own philosophy of rhetoric. Both Hume and Campbell are phenomenologists or empiricists, that is to say, they rely upon experience for their view of reality. This is contra Immanuel Kant who, in very simple terms, proposed that phenomena received through the senses provide means to the noumena, a state attainable by reason.
• Definition of Rhetoric
o That talent by which the discourse if adapted to its end
o The grand art of communication, not of ideas only, but of sentiments, passions, dispositions, and purposes
o The art of speaking, in the extensive sense in which Campbell employs the term (this will be answered in the reading)
• Stages of Rhetoric as follows:
o First and primitive stage consists of what an individual derives from an awareness of what operates on his own mind, aided by sympathetic feelings derived from experience.
o Second stage distinguishes between types of discourse and arguments. The idea of logic and the syllogism enter the rhetorical picture.
o Third stage involves the perfection of this “science” by scientific investigation of the experiential element.
o Philosophy of rhetoric becomes the fourth stage.
• Theory of Human Nature:
o Mental contents: These are entities that we cannot question because they are immediately present to the mind.
The first of these are sensations because they reveal internal sensations such as pleasures and pains or qualities such as color and figure derived from external objects. All perceptions, Campbell posits, originate in sensations, thus again classifying him as a phenomenologist or empiricist.
Ideas of memory derive also from sensations as they are prints left by sensible impressions
The third component of Campbell’s “mental contents” is imagination which derives from memory and thus from sensation. Included here are ideas of golden cities and centaurs, unreal things never observed
o Vivacity—Campbell believes that mind distinguishes between kinds of perception by relative degrees of vivacity, a concept which includes liveliness, force, energy brightness, brilliancy, steadiness and luster.
o Association of Ideas—The most important associations are resemblance, contiguity, and causation. The mind associates ideas which are similar, contiguous in space and time, and ideas related as to causes and effects.
o Experience and Method—Causation is the most important since this is the basis of everything we know by inference about real existence. Campbell believes that the purpose of the syllogism (Barbara, particularly) is to clarify language and to be applied to mathematics and geometry. He also finds fault with the rationalist method of strict demonstration. In accordance with the teachings of Hume, Campbell then makes experience and the form of moral reasoning based upon it as the fundamental method of inquiry and proof.
o Other elements in the Campbell’s philosophy include sympathy because it is the method by which passion is transferred from one person to another. It attaches us to the concerns of others.
In summary, students should know:
• The vivacity or liveliness of ideas-the quality primarily responsible for attention and belief
• Of the kinds of perceptions, sensations are typically the most vivid, ideas of memory are less vivid, and ideas of the imagination are the least vivid.
• There is an attraction or association among the ideas of the mind
Week Three: The male professor of rhetoric will ask the female students to consider the 1832 Lecture at Franklin Hall of Maria Stewart with particular consideration of the following passages:
“Why sit ye here and die? If we say we will go to a foreign land, the famine and the pestilence are there, and there we shall die. If we sit here, we shall die. Come let us plead our cause before the whites: if they save us alive, we shall live—and if they kill us, we shall but die.
Methinks I heard a spiritual interrogation—'Who shall go forward, and take off the reproach that is cast upon the people of color? Shall it be a woman? And my heart made this reply —'If it is thy will, be it even so, Lord Jesus!'
I have heard much respecting the horrors of slavery; but may Heaven forbid that the generality of my color throughout these United States should experience any more of its horrors than to be a servant of servants, or hewers of wood and drawers of water! Tell us no more of southern slavery; for with few exceptions, although I may be very erroneous in my opinion, yet I consider our condition but little better than that. Yet, after all, methinks there are no chains so galling as the chains of ignorance—no fetters so binding as those that bind the soul, and exclude it from the vast field of useful and scientific knowledge. O, had I received the advantages of early education, my ideas would, ere now, have expanded far and wide; but, alas! I possess nothing but moral capability—no teachings but the teachings of the Holy spirit (sic).
I have asked several individuals of my sex, who transact business for themselves, if providing our girls were to give them the most satisfactory references, they would not be willing to grant them an equal opportunity with others? Their reply has been—for their own part, they had no objection; but as it was not the custom, were they to take them into their employ, they would be in danger of losing the public patronage. And such is the powerful force of prejudice. Let our girls possess what amiable qualities of soul they may; let their characters be fair and spotless as innocence itself; let their natural taste and ingenuity be what they may; it is impossible for scarce an individual of them to rise above the condition of servants. Ah! why is this cruel and unfeeling distinction? Is it merely because God has made our complexion to vary? If it be, O shame to soft, relenting humanity! "Tell it not in Gath! publish it not in the streets of Askelon!" Yet, after all, methinks were the American free people of color to turn their attention more assiduously to moral worth and intellectual improvement, this would be the result: prejudice would gradually diminish, and the whites would be compelled to say, unloose those fetters!
Though black their skins as shades of night, Their hearts are pure, their souls are white.”
--In With Pen and Voice. Ed. Shirley Wilson Logan,
Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois U. Press, 1995.
Students will apply Campbell’s rhetorical terms and philosophy to the speech. They will begin by identifying passages of vivacity or liveliness of ideas. For example:
o Maria Stewart juxtaposes life and death against the ideas of action and inaction as she employs the rhetorical device of antithesis in a Ciceronian sense as found in his Tusculan Disputations. In other words, we can look life in the eye and confront the issues or we can simply die. Stewart thus challenges her audience to become active.
o She next invokes God’s selection of her as a woman to carry the torch under the protection of the Holy Spirit
Students will be required to identify two additional examples of vivacity in the passages from Maria Stewart’s speech.
Each student will then recite the speech before the class.
Next, students will consider perception in terms of sensations they are experiencing while reading and delivering the speech. These might include thoughts about death, thoughts about God, and thoughts about injustices done to those in slavery. Then, students will consider impressions left following initial reading of the Stewart passages. In an invocation of memory, students will be asked if the speech brought up any impressions previous to their reading it? The next part involves imagination for those students not directly involved in the ravages of slavery who have only read about it. This group will be asked to write about these impressions. Those from the African American population will write as well. However, their writing will most surely be based on direct experience. I want all students to look particularly at the last line of the passage which presents today as very controversial, but not terribly unusual at the time. William Blake has a similar statement in his poem, “The Little Black Boy” (Songs of Innocence): “Though black their skins as shades of night, Their hearts are pure, their souls are white.”
All students will then read their essays in class.
Week Four: Students will read the following passages from a speech delivered by Frederick Douglas at the Plymouth County Anti-Slavery Society, November 4, 1841):
THE CHURCH AND PREJUDICE : “At the South I was a member of the Methodist Church. When I came north, I thought one Sunday I would attend communion, at one of the churches of my denomination, in the town I was staying. The white people gathered round the altar, the blacks clustered by the door. After the good minister had served out the bread and wine to one portion of those near him, he said, "These may withdraw, and others come forward;" thus he proceeded till all the white members had been served. Then he took a long breath, and looking out towards the door, exclaimed, "Come up, colored friends, come up! for you know God is no respecter of persons!" I haven't been there to see the sacraments taken since.”
“The slaveholding ministers preach up the divine right of the slaveholders to property in their fellow- men. The southern preachers say to the poor slave, "Oh! if you wish to be happy in time, happy in eternity, you must be obedient to your masters; their interest is yours. God made one portion of men to do the working, and another to do the thinking; how good God is! Now, you have no trouble or anxiety; but ah! you can't imagine how perplexing it is to your masters and mistresses to have so much thinking to do in your behalf! You cannot appreciate your blessings; you know not how happy a thing it is for you, that you were born of that portion of the human family which has the working, instead of the thinking to do! Oh! how grateful and obedient you ought to be to your masters! How beautiful are the arrangements of Providence! Look at your hard, horny hands--see how nicely they are adapted to the labor you have to perform! Look at our delicate fingers, so exactly fitted for our station, and see how manifest it is that God designed us to be His thinkers, and you the workers--Oh! the wisdom of God!"--I used to attend a Methodist church, in which my master was a class leader; he would talk most sanctimoniously about the dear Redeemer, who was sent "to preach deliverance to the captives, and set at liberty them that are bruised"--he could pray at morning, pray at noon, and pray at night; yet he could lash up my poor cousin by his two thumbs, and inflict stripes and blows upon his bare back, till the blood streamed to the ground! all the time quoting scripture, for his authority, and appealing to that passage of the Holy Bible which says, "He that knoweth his master's will, and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes!" Such was the amount of this good Methodist's piety.
Students will consider this speech with special emphasis on Campbell’s categories of cause and effect as well as sympathy and write a two-page essay delineating their responses. They may also call upon any material used in their analysis of the Stewart speech. They will read their essays before the class.
The Campbell Assignment:
Background:
My research last semester focused on a Canadian missionary, Isabel Crawford, who completed a two-year course of study for women at the Missionary Training School in Chicago. Crawford started school in 1891, following “a rigorous program of instruction” that included theology and Bible study, “rules of order, physical and vocal culture, kindergarten methods, and temperance” (Mondello 327). During school, Crawford was expected to “go out into the world,” which meant trips to the Chicago slums. In her diary, Crawford discusses the obstacles she faced bringing Jesus’ message to “the Black Hole,” a neighborhood replete with saloons, brothels, and poverty.
Also during her stay in Chicago, Crawford had the opportunity to attend the 1892 Chicago World’s Fair and the “Women’s Congress” in 1893. She wrote that Susan B. Anthony was “’clever and shrewd with lots of wit’ Crawford found the remarks “’commonplace.’” Crawford enjoyed Lucy Stone “’a dear old lady’” and Ellen Foster. Her highest praise was reserved for Julia Ward Howe: “’she spoke nicely and in a refined manner but when she recited The Battle Hymn of the Republic I could scarcely keep my seat. It was grand and she did it with so much feeling.’”
After completing her course of study, Crawford was sent to the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache territory in Oklahoma as a missionary to the Kiowa. The writings in her diary indicate that she adopted many Kiowa expressions in her “Jesus talks,” often imagining what Jesus would say to the Kiowas.
During her service, Crawford wrote hundreds of letters to financial supporters affiliated with the Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society. These letters included “news” and “updates” primarily in the service of validating her work; she was arguing for the continued financial support of her mission.
Crawford later became a speaker, employed by the Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society, who traveled around North America, calling on her (promiscuous) Christian audiences to “help the Indians.”
Genres:
Through my summary, I hope it is clear that Crawford received a rhetorical education.
• She “witnessed”/ gave her testimony to a wide range of people: alcoholics, prostitutes, and other “unmarketables” in the slums of Chicago
• She preached to and lived among the Kiowa as a “professional spinster” and missionary
• She wrote hundreds of letters to individual sponsors and/or financial supporters through Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society and the American Home Baptist Mission Society
• She traveled the country on speaking engagements as was called, in at least one newspaper account, an accomplished orator
• Additionally, she taught Sunday school, sewing/quilting, published her diary (Kiowa: Story of a Blanket Indian Mission) and an autobiography, Joyful Journey
Undoubtedly, Crawford and those like her would have picked up a great deal about rhetoric “on the fly.” In her case, we have evidence that she saw many influential women speak publicly; she learned from watching. What was her formal training like? How might she have been prepared for these opportunities and challenges?
Assignments:
We’ll pretend, for a moment, that “vocal culture,” a course in the Missionary Training School, is a course in rhetoric.
As the instructor of this course, I wish to prepare Miss Crawford and my other young ladies for the myriad rhetorical tasks and challenges awaiting them. And, as a Campbellian, I assume that moral reasoning must appeal to what is human in the audience. Because human beings depend upon their senses to know and understand the world, my pedagogy seeks to ground students in utilizing energetic, descriptive language to describe their observations, perceptions, and experiences: “[S]he must find ways to make [her] ideas as lively and vivid as sensations or ideas of memory because ideas of imagination, when give the power (vivacity) of sensible impressions or ideas of memory, will tend to compel attention, induce belief, and arouse passion” (81).
• A Testimony (Speech)
A first and important assignment would be to deliver a testimony: a short speech about how each woman came to become a Christian. Each student would have to deliver this testimony aloud to her classmates (in preparation for her work in the Chicago slums and future missionary employment). The women would first have to remember that pivotal moment, that transformation, for without such a memory, they could not advance in their endeavors: “It must be solely by the aid of memory, that they are capable of producing conviction in the mind” (58). The memory of the transformation must be recorded step by step; the students must pay attention to every accompanying remembered sensation, perception, and detail. The sensory perceptions and details will bring “vivacity” to their testimony. In cases of moral reasoning, it is from the particular to the general that the argument moves; therefore, by particularizing their conversion experience and recounting it, they may incite their audiences’ imagination and move the sympathy and the passions.
• A Reading
As Campbell states in Section IV, “Men considered as endowed with Passions,” you must keep in mind that it is “specious nonsense” to believe that an audience can be persuaded without being passionately moved. You will not earn your financial support unless you can convince your audience (your home mission society) that those you are helping are worthy and in need. How do you engender sympathy, pity, and action? Campbell answers this question for us: “It is evident, that though the mind receives a considerable pleasure from the discovery of a resemblance, no pleasure is received when the resemblance is of such a nature as familiar to everybody. Such are those resemblances which result from the specific and generic qualities of ordinary objects” (74).
To prove the veracity of this point, my students will read the speech of Maria W. Stewart delivered at The Franklin Hall (1832) and will underline every concrete detail that evokes, in the mind of the audience, a clear picture of an ordinary object:
“Do you ask, why are you wretched and miserable? I reply, look at many of the most worthy and most interesting of us doomed to spend our lives in gentlemen’s kitchens. Look at our young men, smart, active and energetic, with souls filled with ambitious fire; if they look forward, alas! What are their prospects? They can be nothing but the humblest labors, on account of their dark complexions; hence many of them lose their ambition, and become worthless. Look at our middle-aged men, clad in their rusty plaids and coats; in winter, every cent they earn goes to buy their wood and pay their rents; the poor wives also toil beyond their strength, to help support their families. Look at our aged sires, whose heads are whitened with the frosts of seventy winters, with their old wood-saws on their backs!” (Logan 9).
• A Writing
After carefully noticing the way Maria Stewart uses generic qualities of ordinary objects to such great effects, students will be asked to write a letter to the Women’s Baptist Home Mission Society asking for additional bread, medicines, and pamphlets to distribute to the “Black Hole” neighborhood. In the course of the request letter, the women will recount a single, remembered visit to a brothel, pub, or home in that neighborhood. In their letter, the women will describe the experience, using, of course, particular, “ordinary” details, so as to move the passions - excite the sympathy and the pity - of the audience.
Kate Alexander
19th Century Rhetoric
The Second Assignment
This assignment is in its initial stages. More to follow.
The Blair Assignment
The venue again will be Oberlin College of the 1836 to late forties. Although Blair’s was apparently not taught there during these years, I intend to construct an assignment for the young ladies there. This time they will be sophomores who are already studying Whately along with Euclid, Day’s Trigonometry, Bridge’s Conic Sections, Buchanan’s Psalms, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia finished, Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Greek Testament, Epistles finished, Hebrew Bible, Psalms and Selections from the Historial Parts, Paley’s Evidences, Robbins’ Universal History finished, Cowper’s Poems continued, and Botany.
The male rhetoric teacher, James Dascomb, M.D., will again teach. This time, students will read Cowper’s antislavery poems as well as the Blair material to fulfill their assignment. One poem in particular will be used:
William Cowper
'The Negro’s Complaint' (1788)
FORCED from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task ?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.
Why did all-creating nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there One who reigns on high?
Has He bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use?
Hark! He answers!--Wild tornadoes
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric's sons should undergo,
Fixed their tyrants' habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer--"No."
By our blood in Afric wasted
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
Crossing in your barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart,
All sustained by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart;
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours!
Both Campbell and Blair are appealing to works of Scottish philosopher, David Hume. However, Campbell aligns his empiricist philosophy with Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding while Blair seems to be aligning himself with Hume’s Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion, a treatise dealing with issues of taste and sensibility as well as ideas of the beautiful and the sublime (see Edmund Burke’s Treatise on the Origins of the Sublime and the Beautiful).
Blair’s Lecture II deals with taste which he says is not resolvable into any such operation of reason. He states that it is not through the understanding, or deduction or argument, that the mind receives pleasure from a beautiful object or a poem. These strike the intuition. Thus, we see Blair leaning toward the Kantian notion of idealism versus our knowing only from experience or sensation while he invokes the taste and passion ideas of Hume.
Blair’s Lecture V deals with beauty and the other pleasures of taste which provide pleasure to the imagination. While Campbell places imagination last in his listing of mental contents, Blair appeals to imagination. Thus, these rhetoricians appear to be on opposite ends of the spectrum. Whately, whom the students are currently studying, is a logician. Thus, we seem to have three rhetoricians following different trajectories. The introduction of Blair into their curriculum might confuse the young ladies, but also may serve to provide a lens on their study of Cowper.
Assignment: Read Lectures II, V, and VI.
More to follow.
Here's my final version of the Campbell assignment. In an effort to "clamp down" a little more, instead of giving my students the option of writing about Williams's speech in terms of imagination, passions, or memory, I'm only giving them the option of focusing on passions. I was inspired by Beth's post about Ida B. Wells's speech last week, and the question of how one could write a speech on suffrage imbued with the same passions and force as a speech on the horrors of lynching.
OK, here it is:
My students are African American women who are about to graduate from a trade school. They will have learned typing, shorthand, dictation, and other skills that will have well-qualified them for a secretarial/office job at a (presumably, at this time period) white-male owned and operated company. I’m envisioning NYC or another Northern urban area, where white men would have been accustomed to interacting with black women on a daily basis, whether as their housekeepers or their children’s nannies. They are comfortable with them, but would have trouble envisioning them in more non-traditional roles.
Reading:
Read carefully Section IV of Chapter VII in George Campbell’s The Philosophy of Rhetoric. Then, complete the following:
1)In your own words, describe how Campbell defines “passion” and its relationship to the speaker’s planning.
2)Put Fannie Barrier Williams’s “The Intellectual Progress of the Colored Women
of the United States since the Emancipation Proclamation” under scrutiny through the lens of Campbell’s discussion of “passion.” Take note of where she appeals to the audience’s passions well, where she falls short, and how her appeal to the Cult of True Womanhood helps or hinders Williams’s ability to appeal to passion.
Writing:
Write a letter of application for employment in the office of your choice. Using Campbell’s description of “passions,” and your work from the reading assignment with Section IV of Chapter VII, attempt to appeal to the “passions” of your potential employer, while also including the evidence that speaks to your suitability for the job. Do some research into the company; find out what your potential employer’s interests are, and what might be at stake in his decision to hire you. Here is the catch, however: you are NOT allowed to use ANY appeals to the “True Womanhood” standard.
As this is a job application where you want to convey your qualification and desire for employment as quickly as possible, this letter should be no more than 500 words, so choose your phrases carefully and make them say the most in a short amount of space.
Here are some of my thoughts while reading Blair:
Introduction, top of page 4:
Blair states it “remains still an undecided point whether nature or art confer most towards excelling in writing and discourse.” What about African American women, and the often great gaps in education? (I’m thinking especially of Truth.) Maybe they can write on the nature v. art question…
Intro, top of page 5:
Blair states, “The study of arranging and expressing our thoughts with propriety, teaches us to think, as well as to speak, accurately.”
About “propriety”: What about subjects like lynching, where “propriety” is practically impossible if you want to describe these incidents accurately?
And again, on the top of page 8, Blair lauds the study of “polite literature” as key to the cultivation of taste in a good rhetor. Thinking of Ida B. Wells’s speech, how does this fit in when an accurate description of the subject matter calls for impoliteness?
More thoughts...
Eloquence, page 344, Lecture XXVII
What exactly does eloquence mean, according to Blair? I think it’s one of those words that we take for granted, but don’t really think about. I personally associate eloquence with archaic symbols of the upper class (tea parties, fine china…) but Blair’s idea of it as a rhetorical tool is more complicated than that…
Now for Blair:
My students are African American women, who, like Wells, must speak upon a taboo subject. Possibly, I’m thinking that this might involve asking for something like reparations for their children/grandchildren whose fathers/grandfathers were white masters with black mistresses. I’m not sure how realistic this would be given the time period, though…
Here's a reading assignment:
Read Hugh Blair's Lecture XXVII (Eloquence of Public Assembles). Pay careful attention to page 350, where Blair discusses the importance of the speaker being able to “attend to all the decorums of time, place, and character.”
Next, read Ida B. Wells's "Lynch Law in all its Phases" in light of Blair's advice to read the crowd and environment well. Since Wells is discussing a taboo subject among her white audience, this sensitivity to her audience is all the more difficult. How does she manage to be attentive to the crowd and environment’s needs while still broaching this crucial yet impolite topic?
For a writing assignment:
Write a letter to the white man who fathered your grandchild, making a request that he contribute to his/her education since he/she has been admitted to one of the most prestigious and most expensive universities in the nation. Keeping the section of Blair you’ve just studied in mind, write in a way that is wary of your reader’s needs and concerns, yet addresses this subject enough to move him to action.
The Blair assignments everyone is concocting are so interesting-- I love the idea behind yours, Calinda.
Right now I'm looking again at lecture 33 on pronunciation and delivery and imagining myself asking my students to practice articulation and pitch of their voice as part of the assignment....which seems very cruel and unusual!
Although....it's not that unreasonable considering how much importance Blair places on it and I'm supposed to be teaching Blair. So maybe I'll make them take the text of a speech and try reading it aloud to practice some of these details brought up in delivery-- and critique each other mercilessly.
Maybe building on the Campbell assignment, I can ask my students to return to the papers they wrote and prepare them for oral delivery.
I really like Calinda's assignment utilizing perspicuity and purity. Let's pretend we are 19th century colleagues, and having observed her class I've "borrowed" this part of her assignment. As my students rewrite their paper as a speech, I might ask them to pay close attention to their words in light of Blair's lecture on style. (I'd maybe ask for a separate assignment reflecting on the difficulty of this task)
I'd love next to see them try to practice their delivery-- paying close attention to pitch, pronunciation, pauses, and gestures.
I'm still mulling this over. I think I might give this assignment right before whatever the 19th century equivalent to "last day to drop without a grade" would be, if my classroom were getting too crowded.
The Blair Assignments
Rhetorical Situation for the Critique Assignment:
The instructor of vocal culture for women at the Baptist Missionary Training School in Chicago (1892) wishes to teach her students about the importance and art of critique, as explained by Hugh Blair.
The young women are familiar with the speeches of many prominent abolitionists. Primary texts studied thus far include speeches and letters presented by the Grimke sisters (Epistle to the Clergy of the Southern States, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South), and the Correspondence Between Lydia Maria Child and Governor Wise and Mrs. Mason. Likewise, the women have read Catharine Beecher’s Essay on Slavery and Abolitionism, with Reference to the Duty of American Females (1837).
Because the young women are primarily from northern states, most implicitly sympathize with the abolitionist cause and believe the emancipation of African Americans to be the just cause of the Civil War. Few of the women, however, are familiar with the African American abolitionists’ rhetoric and contributions to the anti-slavery cause. Some have heard the name “Sojourner Truth,” but none have read any transcription of her speech: “Aren’t I A Woman?”
Critique Assignment - Reading/Writing/ Synthesis
I will ask my students to read the record of the Sojourner Truth speech delivered to the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio (1851) as remembered by Frances Gage, which appeared, according to Logan, in the 1870s. Then, I will ask my students to read Blair’s “Lecture XX: Critical Examination of the Style of Mr. Addison,” where after praising Addison’s manner as “natural and unaffected, easy and polite,” argues that his not without “defects” (256) -- defects which Blair exposes and rewrites.
My students will read Blair’s critique, first, as a model, and then embark on a rewriting of Truth’s speech with an eye toward certain stylistic “faults.” Since Truth’s speech is, even by Blair’s standard’s a success (“for the public is the supreme judge” (25)), he would likely argue that Truth - because she did not have access to the most approved models, could not study the best authors, lacked in taste. Her speech, therefore, could be refined.
(Interestingly, Blair, were he to have seen Truth’s speech or been familiar with a transcript of her speech, might have argued that she is a genius, and perhaps achieved some moments of sublimity; still, even geniuses are not experts in judging-- that is a job for the critics to perform after the execution.)
Before my students begin the line by line rewriting of Truth’s speech under Blair’s rubric, I will remind them of Blair’s thoughts about the status and purpose of critique:
• “True criticism is a liberal and humane art. It is the offspring of good sense and refined taste” (6).
• “True criticism is the application of taste and of good sense to the several fine arts. The object which it proposes is, to distinguish what is beautiful and what is faulty in every performance…” (23).
• “Precisely in the same manner, with respect to the beauty of composition and discourse, attention to the most approved models, study of the best authors, comparisons of lower and higher degrees of the same beauties, operate toward the refinement of taste” (13).
Finally, I will direct my students to Blair’s “Lecture X: Precision in Style” and ask them to critique Truth’s speech with an eye to purity and propriety of language, for Blair advises:
• “Purity is the use of such words, and such constructions, as belong to the idiom of the language which we speak; in opposition to words and phrases that are imported from other languages, or that are obsolete, or new-coined, or used without proper authority. Propriety, is the selection of such words in the language, as the best and most established usage has appropriated to those ideas which we intend to express by them. It implies the correct and happy application of them, according to that usage, in opposition to vulgarisms, or low expressions” (118).
• “Whereas, style cannot be proper without also being pure; and where both purity and propriety meet, besides making style perspicuous, they also render it graceful. There is no standard, either of purity or of propriety, but the practice of the best writers and speakers in the country” (118).
Pedagogy/ Thoughts
Undoubtedly, part of Blair’s project in going through a systematic critique of Addison’s work in Lecture XX is to express his admiration for Addison’s genius, and use the piece’s strengths as a model for his students. The line by line combing through of the text works to slow student readers so that Blair can draw their attention to the sentence-level details and show them, at least in his view, where Addison’s piece succeeds and where it fails.
Blair is unprepared to praise the work without reservation; he elevates the writer’s position (and genius) as superior to the critic’s position in general, but argues that the critique is the better judge of the two. While Addison may be the more gifted overall, Blair is the superior critic. This creates an interesting power dynamic between genius and critic.
Given the controversy surrounding Gage’s transcription and Campbell’s later revision (as well as other, competing versions) of the speech, I thought it would be interesting (and in that late 19c context acceptable) to have students “rewrite” Truth’s speech in a way that attempted to keep the moments of sublimity and beauty (“genius”) while correcting/improving upon the “impure, improper” stylistic features. And, I ask: is a version of this exercise akin to the project that Campbell herself inadvertently took on when she published a 20c version of the speech which “removes all dialectical indicators and ungrammatical constructions” (Logan 20)? It seems Campbell concedes this to be the case.
The students in this imaginary class have read several Anglo women abolitionists, as well as other examples of texts that reflect the taste of the day (taste as conceptualized as learned, Christian, northern, and Anglo). It is likely that the women would have internalized many of the stylistic conventions of their class, gender, social position such that they could “refine” the speech, rather wholly reimagine the speaker and speech, in Anglo, middle-class terms.
The power relationship Blair explains between the genius and the critic is activated in this context as well: the students are “below” the speaker Truth in their ability to compose and execute such a speech, but they are placed “above” the speaker Truth as judges and critics, likely reinforcing their already-held beliefs about the respective position of the races in society (after all, they get the proverbial “last word”).
Kate Alexander
19th Century Rhetoric
The Second Assignment
The Blair Assignment (Complete)
The venue again will be Oberlin College of the 1836 to late forties. Although Blair’s work was apparently not taught there during these years, I intend to construct an assignment for the young ladies there using Blair. This time they will be sophomores who are already studying Whately along with Euclid, Day’s Trigonometry, Bridge’s Conic Sections, Buchanan’s Psalms, Cicero’s Tusculan Disputations, Xenophon’s Cyropaedia finished, Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Greek Testament, Epistles finished, Hebrew Bible, Psalms and Selections from the Historical Parts, Paley’s Evidences, Robbins’ Universal History finished, Cowper’s Poems continued, and Botany.
The male rhetoric teacher, James Dascomb, M.D., will again teach. This time, students will read Cowper’s antislavery poems as well as the Blair material to fulfill their assignment. One poem in particular will be used:
William Cowper
'The Negro’s Complaint' (1788)
FORCED from home and all its pleasures
Afric's coast I left forlorn,
To increase a stranger's treasures
O'er the raging billows borne.
Men from England bought and sold me,
Paid my price in paltry gold;
But, though slave they have enrolled me,
Minds are never to be sold.
Still in thought as free as ever,
What are England's rights, I ask,
Me from my delights to sever,
Me to torture, me to task ?
Fleecy locks and black complexion
Cannot forfeit nature's claim;
Skins may differ, but affection
Dwells in white and black the same.
Why did all-creating nature
Make the plant for which we toil?
Sighs must fan it, tears must water,
Sweat of ours must dress the soil.
Think, ye masters iron-hearted,
Lolling at your jovial boards,
Think how many backs have smarted
For the sweets your cane affords.
Is there, as ye sometimes tell us,
Is there One who reigns on high?
Has He bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Matches, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means that duty urges
Agents of his will to use?
Hark! He answers!--Wild tornadoes
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric's sons should undergo,
Fixed their tyrants' habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer--"No."
By our blood in Afric wasted
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries that we tasted,
Crossing in your barks the main;
By our sufferings, since ye brought us
To the man-degrading mart,
All sustained by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart;
Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason ye shall find
Worthier of regard and stronger
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold, whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours!
Both Campbell and Blair are appealing to works of Scottish philosopher, David Hume. However, Campbell aligns his empiricist philosophy with Hume’s Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding while Blair seems to be aligning himself with Hume’s Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion, a treatise dealing with issues of taste and sensibility as well as ideas of the beautiful and the sublime (also see Edmund Burke’s Treatise on the Origins of the Sublime and the Beautiful).
The Blair unit will be completed over a month’s time. Students will be expected to read Blair lectures I, II, and III during the first week with attention to being prepared for Dr. Dascomb’s lectures on the subject matter. Lectures V and X will be the subject of the next week’s lectures. The remaining weeks will deal with Lectures XX, XXVII. Time will not permit finishing all of the Blair material in this unit. A second unit offering the remainder of the Blair material will be offered to students the following semester.
A synopsis of Dr. Dascomb’s lectures follows:
Lecture I is Blair’s introduction to the work to follow. He begins by indentifying one of the most distinguished privileges conferred upon mankind by Providence is the power of communicating our thoughts to each other. Without speech, reason would be solitary. Thus, Blair says, discourse and writing become deserving of the highest attention we can give them.
Blair’s Lecture II deals with taste which he says is not resolvable into any such operation of reason. He states that it is not through the understanding, or deduction or argument, that the mind receives pleasure from a beautiful object or a poem. These strike the intuition. Thus, we see Blair leaning toward the Kantian notion of transcendence versus our knowing only from experience or sensation while he invokes the taste and passion ideas of Hume.
In his lecture III, Blair addresses notions of criticism which he connects to experience as he calls it an art founded on experience. Blair believes that the “genius” will compose his work in accordance with the rules of criticism. These rules are, of course, founded in nature in her beauty and sublimity or grandeur. With respect to grandeur, Blair alludes to the ideas of Burke’s treatise on the beautiful and the sublime.
Blair’s Lecture V deals with beauty and the other pleasures of taste which provide pleasure to the imagination. While Campbell places imagination last in his listing of mental contents, Blair appeals to imagination. Thus, these rhetoricians appear to be on opposite ends of the spectrum. Whately, whom the students are currently studying, is a logician. Thus, we seem to have three rhetoricians following different trajectories. The introduction of Blair into their curriculum might confuse the young ladies, but also may serve to provide a lens on their study of Cowper.
By the end of the first week, students will be expected to answer in recitation form the contents of Blair material delivered by Dr. Dascomb. They will begin to look at the Cowper poem later.
The Lecture material of the second week deals with the following:
Blair’s Lecture X concerns style which he defines as the manner in which a man expresses his ideas by means of language. Blair deals with the concept of perspicuity which, he says, requires purity, propriety and precision. Thus, the language used must not only be pure, but also selective and using just the appropriate number of words. Here natural genius comes into play; it must, however, be accompanied by labor and attention.
Lectures XX deals with an examination of Joseph Addison’s work in The Spectator. Blair believes Addison to be one of the most beautiful writers in the English language.
Lecture XXVII deals with the classifications in public speaking as defined by the ancients. The three categories still identified to this day are the demonstrative (to praise or blame), the deliberative (to advise or dissuade), and the judicial (to accuse or defend). Blair addresses the notion of passion which arises by mutual sympathy between the orator and the audience. This relationship occurs only when the orator feels the emotion himself.
As in the first week, students will answer questions about the material in recitation form. They will prepare for an examination on the material at the beginning of the following week. At this time, they will begin to examine the Cowper poem with the following ideas in mind:
1. The poem uses language of the beautiful and the sublime in a manner employing perspicuity while alluding to at least the first two ancient categories of the demonstrative and the deliberative. In the context of these two categories, one can certainly identify elements of the third (probably more commonly used in legal situations).
2. Students will prepare a chart listing elements of the beautiful, the sublime, and their succinct expressions (in keeping with perspicuity). For example:
Beautiful: Fleecy locks and black complexion/Cannot forfeit nature’s claim/Skins may differ, but affection/Dwells in white and black the same.
Sublime: O’er the raging billows borne
Hark! He answers!—Wild tornadoes/Strewing yonder sea with wrecks.
The instructor anticipates that students will find many examples of the sublime, while few of the beautiful. This demonstrates the unsettling subject of the poem expressed in a style that is unsettling.
Students will discuss their findings in class and then be given a short writing exercise in which they convert a few passages of their choice from the poem into prose. They will then talk about perspicuity in terms of the poem itself.
By the fourth week, students should be intensely involved in the poem with respect to the Blair material. After recitation of their favorite stanzas of the poem, they will begin to deal with the poem as it demonstrates elements of ancient rhetorical arguments. They will again make a chart identifying examples of the three elements. For example:
Demonstrative (to praise or blame):
Men from England bought and sold me
What are England’s rights, I ask…/Me to torture, me to task?
Deliberative (to advise or dissuade):
Skins may differ, but affection/Dwells in white and black the same
Deem our nation brute no longer/Till some reason ye shall find/Worthier of regard and stronger/Than the colour of our kind
Judicial (to accuse or defend):
Prove that you have human feelings,/Ere you proudly question ours!
The instructor anticipates that students will find many examples in all categories with some overlapping. He also anticipates that their discussion of the material will be intense and provocative.
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