EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY RHETORICAL FIGURES IN BRITISH ROMANTIC POETRY: A STUDY OF THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH BYRON, SHELLEY, AND KEATS Presented to the Graduate Council of the North Texas State University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY by Laura B. Kennelly, M.A. Denton, Texas August, 1975 0 1975 LAURA B. KENNELLY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Kennelly, Laura B., Fighteenth-Century Rhetorical Figures in British Romantic Poetry: A Study of the Poetry of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats. Doctor of Philosophy (English), August, 1975, 301 pp., bibliography, 143 titles. Rhetoric, seen either as the art of persuasion or as the art of figurative expression, has been largely neglected as an approach to the poetry of the Romantics. The most important reason for this seems to be the rejection of rhetoric by the Romantics themselves. As a result of negative comments about rhetoric by Coleridge, Wordsworth, Shelley, and Keats, scholars seeking clues about the Romantics' literary principles in their critical writings have agreed that eighteenth-century rhetoric was either abandoned or substantially altered by early nineteenth- century poets. "Rhetoric," however, has many meanings. While the Roman- tics may have rejected some forms of rhetoric, especially those that they felt encouraged artificial sentiments or propaganda, they did not dismiss the whole rhetorical tradition which was their heritage. Some artificial conventions (for example, certain types of personification) were rejected, but others (for example, rhetorical figures, often called the fabric of neo-classic verse) were retained. The eighteenth-century meaning of the term "figure" may be seen in the rhetorical texts and treatises of the period which furnish examples of each figure discussed, Examination of the works of scholastics such as Anthony Blackwall, John 2 Stirling, John Ward, John Holmes, Thomas Gibbons, and others, reveals that the encyclopedic, Renaissance, list of rhetorical figures, typified by John Smith's The Mysterie of Rhetorique Unvail'd, and a simplified list of figures, such as Blackwall's An Introduction to the Classics, enjoyed parallel popularity between 1700 and 1800. The eighteenth-century belief that figures possess a unique power of communicating an author's passions and emotions continued to be transmitted as a viable literary tradition in the nineteenth century. Poetry was thought to have special privilege in the employment of rhetorical devices. In practice, if not in theory, early nineteenth-century poets did not abandon the use of such devices in their creations. An analysis of the role of rhetorical figures in the works of Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Keats demonstrates that it is a mistake to envision the poetry of the Romantic movement as a spontaneous outgrowth of an abrupt shift in poetic taste, a shift which demanded the omission of classical poetic devices. Often the Romantic poets were more nearly in accord with the strictures of rhetoricians such as Blackwall or Ward than many of the Augustan poets had been. Certain figures seem to predominate in the works of the poets discussed and might be considered characteristic of Romantic expression-. These devices fall into two categories: those directed to an audience and hence associated with 3 persuasion and emotional revelation (such as anacoenosis, anastrophe, apophasis, aporia, aposiopesis, ecphonesis, epanorthosis, epiphonema, erotesis, hypotyposis, and proso- pographia) and those designed to achieve stylistic effects (such as anadiplosis, anaphora, antanaclasis, antimetabole, asyndeton, climax, epanalepsis, epanaphora, epistrophe, epizeuxis, parison, paronomasia, ploce, polyptoton, polysyndeton, and zeugma). Rhetorical devices provided Romantic poets with channels of expression which could be shaped and adapted to express individual concepts. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. RHETORICAL FIGURES AND ROMANTIC ART 1 II. FIGURES IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY TEXTS 16 III. FIGURES IN PHILOSOPHICAL RHETORICS 57 IV. RHETORICAL FIGURES AND POETRY IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 83 V. RHETORICAL FIGURES.IN THE POETRY OF COLERIDGE 121 VI. RHETORICAL FIGURES IN THE POETRY OF WORDSWORTH 171 VII. RHETORICAL FIGURES IN THE POETRY OF BYRON 192 VIII. RHETORICAL FIGURES IN THE POETRY OF SHELLEY 226 IX. RHETORICAL FIGURES IN THE POETRY OF KEATS 259 X. CONCLUSION 292 APPENDIX 300 BIBLIOGRAPHY 302 iii CHAPTER I RHETORICAL FIGURES AND ROMANTIC ART One of the results of the New Criticism of the last twenty years, according to Frank Jordan, is that the "concept of a Pre-Romantic Movement is still very much in disrepute.' Such a reaction to the multitude of studies purporting to find the roots of Romanticism firmly set in the practice and theories of the eighteenth century is both understandable and inevitable in a world where scholars and critics, no less than creative artists, are driven to find something new and origi- nal to add to a rapidly multiplying body of critical comment. Today the old idea of a continuity between eighteenth-century poetics and nineteenth-century creations has been rejected by many critics, with the notable exception of Walter Jackson Bate, 2 in favor of the idea that the Romantic Movement is characterized by a "break with tradition . at seemingly every point.,3 Many scholars have 'examined poetic techniques of the Romantic period with the intent of demonstrating that a distinct break exists between Augustan and Romantic poetry. Josephine Miles sees a distinction in diction between the two periods.4 Earl Wasserman believes that the Romantics created a new cosmic syntax. In a similar vein, Edward E. 1 2 Bostetter argues that the eighteenth-century syntax and dic- 6 tion failed the Romantics. Paul Suffell, Jr., theorizes that the period from the Restoration to the nineteenth century was one characterized by a "decline of syllabism, artificial scansion, and poetic contraction," with a "concurrent rise of accentualism and sense scansion."7 Finally, Albert S. G6rard feels that the Romantics, in an attempt to return to "genuine classicism," threw out "conventions of pseudo- classical poetic diction with its mythological allegories, its beribboned pastorals, and its pathetic fallacies. Such devices, and many others in the fields of prosody, imagery, and dramatic structure, were uncompromisingly condemned as belonging to mechanic form." 8 Rhetoric, seen either as the art of persuasion or as the art of figurative expression, has been largely neglected as an approach to the poetry of the Romantics. The most im- portant reason for this neglect seems to be the rejection of rhetoric by the Romantics themselves, Certain statements by leading Romantics have become critical commonplaces, giving the impression that these artists resisted all association between poetic creation and artistic devices. Keats wrote, "The Genius of Poetry must work out its own salvation in a man: It cannot be matured by law and precept, but by sensa- tion & watchfulness in itself--"9 His is also the proclama- tion that if poetry can not come "as naturally as the Leaves to a tree it had better not come at all." 1 0 3 Coleridge, who, as M. H. Abrams has noted, sometimes supported traditional approaches to poetic practice, also denounced "cold technical artifices of ornament or connection" and asserted that "Could a rule be given from without, poetry would cease to be poetry, and sink into a mechanical art." 1 2 One of the three cardinal sins of bad poetry, stated Coleridge, is "the indiscriminate use of elaborate and swelling language and imagery."13 Wordsworth, who in many ways expressed the most radical rejection of previous poetic tradition, criti- cized the figures of rhetoric as degenerate forms of once- effective practice: "In succeeding times, Poets, and Men ambitious of the fame of Poets, perceiving the influence of such language, and desirous of producing the same effect without being animated by the same passion, set themselves to a mechanical adoption of these figures of speech, and made use of them, sometimes with propriety, but much more frequently applied them to feelings and thoughts with which they had no real connection whatsoever." 1 4 Shelley, with his emphasis on the spontaneous nature of good poetry--"I appeal to the greatest poets of the present day, whether it be not an error to assert that the finest passages of poetry are produced by labor and study"15--implies that rhetorical considerations are only impediments to true artists: "Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. A man cannot say, 'I will compose poetry.'"1 6 4 As a result of statements such as these, scholars seeking clues about the Romantics' literary principles in their critical writings have agreed that eighteenth-century rhetoric was either abandoned or substantially altered by these early nineteenth-century artists. Brian Vickers, who argues for the necessity of a consideration of rhetorical theory in any analysis of poetry written before 1800, believes that the "Romantics completely disengaged rhetoric from poetry, and their hostility to the concept of poetry as art led to the dismissal of all the rhetorical processes and their offshoots." 1 7 He cites Wordsworth's Preface to the Lyrical Ballads and notes that it "dismisses such rhetorical concepts as 'presentation' or 'effectiveness,' and with them the whole Renaissance and Neoclassic structure of literary creation and literary criti- cism."18 P. W. K. Stone sees the