For Saturday, March 4 and Tuesday, March 10
We move on to Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres—considered quite a bit more influential in the nineteenth century than Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric but nonetheless sharing epistemological foundations (New Rhetoric, faculty psychology).
Golden and Corbett write in their introduction to The Rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whately that the Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres “had a phenomenal sale in Europe and in the United States during the first century after publication . . . . twenty-six editions in Great Britain, thirty-seven editions in the United States, and fifty-two abridged editions of the Lectures. Besides these, there were two editions published in English on the continent and thirteen translations into French, Italian, Russian, and Spanish.”
An 1837 edition of the Lectures (London: Sills) includes a preface evidently citing Blair’s own preface in the initial 1783 publication:
“The following Lectures were read in the University of Edinburgh, for twenty-four years. The publication of them, at present, was not altogether a matter of choice. Imperfect copies of them in manuscript, from notes taken by students who heard them read, were first privately handed about; and afterwards frequently exposed to public sale. When the author saw them circulate so currently, as even to be quoted in print, and found himself often threatened with surreptitious publications of them, he judged it to be high time that they should proceed from his own hand, rather than come into public view under some very defective and erroneous form. They were originally designed for the initiation of youth into the study of Belle Lettres and of composition. . . . .” Here you can witness an instance in the conceptual history of “authorship” and intellectual property.
Contemporary critic Stephen L. Carr makes the following notation in “The Circulation of Blair’s Lectures”—RSQ 32.4 (2002):
“Ehninger and Golden note that ‘Few books have been more generally damned by the critics, and longer read or more widely influential than Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1955:12). Despite their efforts to explain reasons for interest in Blair, they share the general critical assessment, calling the Lectures ‘a wholly mediocre and pedestrian work’ (1956:16).” Carr’s article complicates Golden and Corbett’s assessment above.
Reading: Excerpts from Blair:
Lecture 1 Introduction
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Blair%20ToC%20&%20Lecture%20I%20Introduction.pdf
Lecture II Taste
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Blair%20Lecture%20II%20Taste.pdf
Lecture III Criticism
Lecture V Beauty
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Blair%20Lecture%20V%20Beauty%20Pleasures%20of%20Taste.pdf
Lecture X Style
Lecture XX Criticial Examination of Dr. Addison
Lecture XXVII Eloquence Popular Assemblies
Lecture XXIX Pulpit Eloquence
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Blair%20Lecture%20XXIX%20Pulpit%20Eloquence.pdf
Lecture XXXIII and XXXIV
Bacon and McClish, “Reinventing the Master’s Tools: Nineteenth-Century African-American Literary Societies of Philadelphia and Rhetorical Education.”
http://www.unm.edu/~sromano/english540/Bacon%20Reinventing%20Master%27s%20Tools.pdf
Writing:
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.
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.