Rhetoric and Political Culture in Nineteenth-century America

Rhetoric and Political Culture in Nineteenth-century America PDF Author: Thomas W. Benson
Publisher: MSU Press
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
The critical study of public address has changed in the twentieth century and will continue to evolve in the twenty-first. As the studies in this volume demonstrate, methodological pluralism is the standard of contemporary work, and active rhetorical critics today are more consciously aware of the theoretical implications and extensions of their work than were their critical forebears. What links the last with the present, however, and what will continue to engage us in the future, is the search for meaning in human rhetorical action. The authors in this collection explore the claim that public discourse--spoken and written--continues to illustrate nineteenth-century American political culture. The book is a series of close textual readings of significant texts in American rhetoric, inquiring into the text, the context, the influence of pervasive rhetorical forms and genres, the intentions of the speaker, the response of the audience, and the role of the critic. These spirited essays are concrete, committed, dialogic explorations of significant moments in American public discourse. That they do not reduce to a single voice or theory will be taken, it is hoped, as part of their virtue. A spirit of eager contestation and respect for intellectual diversity was a marked feature of the collection. Each of the chapters treats, in some detail, issues relating to the theme of "time" in rhetorical practice and studies. Time appears as an issue here especially in considerations of the persistence of themes and forms; in recurrent attempts to transcend and re-shape public memory; in the choice of speakers and critics to celebrate, appropriate, revise, reframe, or reject earlier texts; and of course in the use of public oratory to influence the future.

The Language of Democracy

The Language of Democracy PDF Author: Andrew Whitmore Robertson
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813923444
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
Tracing the history of political rhetoric in nineteenth-century America and Britain, Andrew W. Robertson shows how modern election campaigning was born. Robertson discusses early political cartoons and electioneering speeches as he examines the role of each nation's press in assimilating masses of new voters into the political system. Even a decade after the American Revolution, the authors shows, British and American political culture had much in common. On both sides of the Atlantic, electioneering in the 1790s was confined mostly to male elites, and published speeches shared a characteristically Neoclassical rhetoric. As voting rights were expanded, however, politicians sought a more effective medium and style for communicating with less-educated audiences. Comparing changes in the modes of in the two countries, Robertson reconstructs the transformation of campaign rhetoric into forms that incorporated the oral culture of the stump speech as well as elite print culture. By the end of the nineteenth century, the press had become the primary medium for initiating, persuading, and sustaining loyal partisan audiences. In Britain and America, millions of men participated in a democratic political culture that spoke their language, played to their prejudices, and courted their approval. Today's readers concerned with broadening political discourse to reach a more diverse audience will find rich and intriguing parallels in Robertson's account.

Bodies of Reform

Bodies of Reform PDF Author: James B. Salazar
Publisher: NYU Press
ISBN: 0814741320
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 313

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Book Description
Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series From the patricians of the early republic to post-Reconstruction racial scientists, from fin de siècle progressivist social reformers to post-war sociologists, character, that curiously formable yet equally formidable “stuff,” has had a long and checkered history giving shape to the American national identity. Bodies of Reform reconceives this pivotal category of nineteenth-century literature and culture by charting the development of the concept of “character” in the fictional genres, social reform movements, and political cultures of the United States from the mid-nineteenth to the early-twentieth century. By reading novelists such as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Pauline Hopkins, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman alongside a diverse collection of texts concerned with the mission of building character, including child-rearing guides, muscle-building magazines, libel and naturalization law, Scout handbooks, and success manuals, James B. Salazar uncovers how the cultural practices of representing character operated in tandem with the character-building strategies of social reformers. His innovative reading of this archive offers a radical revision of this defining category in U.S. literature and culture, arguing that character was the keystone of a cultural politics of embodiment, a politics that played a critical role in determining-and contesting-the social mobility, political authority, and cultural meaning of the raced and gendered body.

Sourcebook on Rhetoric

Sourcebook on Rhetoric PDF Author:
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 0761905057
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 681

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Book Description


Sourcebook on Rhetoric

Sourcebook on Rhetoric PDF Author: James Jasinski
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452264384
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 681

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Book Description
This book is designed to introduce readers to the language of contemporary rhetorical studies. The book format is an alphabetized glossary (with appropriate cross listings) of key terms and concepts in contemporary rhetorical studies. An introductory chapter outlines the definitional ambiguities of the central concept of rhetoric itself. The primary emphasis is on the contemporary tradition of rhetorical studies as it has emerged in the discipline of speech communication. Each entry in the glossary ranges in length from a few paragraphs to a short essay of a few pages. Where appropriate, examples are provided to further illustrate the term or concept. Each entry will be accompanied by a list of references and additional readings to direct the reader to other materials of possible interest.

A Political Nation

A Political Nation PDF Author: Gary W. Gallagher
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813932823
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 443

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Book Description
This impressive collection joins the recent outpouring of exciting new work on American politics and political actors in the mid-nineteenth century. For several generations, much of the scholarship on the political history of the period from 1840 to 1877 has carried a theme of failure; after all, politicians in the antebellum years failed to prevent war, and those of the Civil War and Reconstruction failed to take advantage of opportunities to remake the nation. Moving beyond these older debates, the essays in this volume ask new questions about mid-nineteenth-century American politics and politicians. In A Political Nation, the contributors address the dynamics of political parties and factions, illuminate the presence of consensus and conflict in American political life, and analyze elections, voters, and issues. In addition to examining the structures of the United States Congress, state and local governments, and other political organizations, this collection emphasizes political leaders--those who made policy, ran for office, influenced elections, and helped to shape American life from the early years of the Second Party System to the turbulent period of Reconstruction. The book moves chronologically, beginning with an antebellum focus on how political actors behaved within their cultural surroundings. The authors then use the critical role of language, rhetoric, and ideology in mid-nineteenth-century political culture as a lens through which to reevaluate the secession crisis. The collection closes with an examination of cultural and institutional influences on politicians in the Civil War and Reconstruction years. Stressing the role of federalism in understanding American political behavior, A Political Nation underscores the vitality of scholarship on mid-nineteenth-century American politics. Contributors: Erik B. Alexander, University of Tennessee, Knoxville - Jean Harvey Baker, Goucher College - William J. Cooper, Louisiana State University - Daniel W. Crofts, The College of New Jersey - William W. Freehling, Virginia Foundation for the Humanities - Gary W. Gallagher, University of Virginia - Sean Nalty, University of Virginia - Mark E. Neely Jr., Pennsylvania State University - Rachel A. Shelden, Georgia College and State University - Brooks D. Simpson, Arizona State University - J. Mills Thornton, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Rhetoric’s Pragmatism

Rhetoric’s Pragmatism PDF Author: Steven Mailloux
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271080019
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 247

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Book Description
For over thirty years, Steven Mailloux has championed and advanced the field of rhetorical hermeneutics, a historically and theoretically informed approach to textual interpretation. This volume collects fourteen of his most recent influential essays on the methodology, plus an interview. Following from the proposition that rhetorical hermeneutics uses rhetoric to practice theory by doing history, this book examines a diverse range of texts from literature, history, law, religion, and cultural studies. Through four sections, Mailloux explores the theoretical writings of Heidegger, Burke, and Rorty, among others; Jesuit educational treatises; and products of popular culture such as Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In doing so, he shows how rhetorical perspectives and pragmatist traditions work together as two mutually supportive modes of understanding, and he demonstrates how the combination of rhetoric and interpretation works both in theory and in practice. Theoretically, rhetorical hermeneutics can be understood as a form of neopragmatism. Practically, it focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of written and performed communication. A thought-provoking collection from a preeminent literary critic and rhetorician, Rhetoric’s Pragmatism assesses the practice and value of rhetorical hermeneutics today and the directions in which it might head. Scholars and students of rhetoric and communication studies, critical theory, literature, law, religion, and American studies will find Mailloux’s arguments enlightening and essential.

The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address

The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address PDF Author: Shawn J. Parry-Giles
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 9781444324112
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 496

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Book Description
The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address is a state-of-the-art companion to the field that showcases both the historical traditions and the future possibilities for public address scholarship in the twenty-first century. Focuses on public address as both a subject matter and a critical perspective Mindful of the connections between the study of public address and the history of ideas Provides an historical overview of public address research and pedagogy, as well as a reassessment of contemporary public address scholarship by those most engaged in its practice Includes in-depth discussions of basic issues and controversies public address scholarship Explores the relationship between the study of public address and contemporary issues of civic engagement and democratic citizenship Reflects the diversity of views among public address scholars, advancing on-going discussions and debates over the goals and character of rhetorical scholarship

Rhetorics of Display

Rhetorics of Display PDF Author: Lawrence J. Prelli
Publisher: Univ of South Carolina Press
ISBN: 1643362798
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 478

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Book Description
Groundbreaking case studies mapping the rhetoric inherent in acts of presentation and concealment Rhetorics of Display is a pathbreaking volume that brings together a distinguished group of scholars to assess an increasingly pervasive form of rhetorical activity. Editor Lawrence J. Prelli notes in his introduction that twenty-first century citizens continually confront displays of information and images, from the verbal images of speeches and literature to visual images of film and photography to exhibits in museums to the arrangement of our homes to the merchandising of consumer goods. The volume provides an integrated, comprehensive study of the processes of selecting what to reveal and what to conceal that together constitute the rhetorics of display. Surveying major historical transformations in the relationship between rhetoric and display, this book also identifies the leading themes in relevant scholarship of the past three decades. Seventeen case studies canvass a representative and diverse range of displays—from body piercing to a civil rights memorial to a Titanic exhibition to imagery found in gambling casinos—and examine the ways that phenomena, persons, places, events, identities, communities, and cultures are exhibited before audiences. Collectively the contributors shed light on rhetorics that are nearly ubiquitous in contemporary communication and culture.

Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July

Frederick Douglass and the Fourth of July PDF Author: James A. Colaiaco
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 9781403980724
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
An important look at Frederick Douglass' pivotal July 4th, 1852, speech in which he identified the grand American Dilemma--the critical contradiction between slavery and our nation's ideals--and set the stage for his life's work