Information to Users
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
INFORMATION TO USERS This manuscript has been reproduced from the microfilm master. UMI films the text directly from the original or copy submitted. Thus, some thesis and dissertation copies are in typewriter face, while others may be from any type of computer printer. The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. Broken or indistinct print, colored or poor quality illustrations and photographs, print bleedthrough, substandard margins, and improper alignment can adversely, affect reproduction. In the unlikely event that the author did not send UMI a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if unauthorized copyright material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. Oversize materials (e.g., maps, drawings, charts) are reproduced by sectioning the original, beginning at the upper left-hand comer and continuing from left to right in equal sections with small overlaps. Each original is also photographed in one exposure and is included in reduced form at the back of the book. Photographs included in the original manuscript have been reproduced xerographically in this copy. Higher quality 6” x 9” black and white photographic prints are available for any photographs or illustrations appearing in this copy for an additional charge. Contact UMI directly to order. UMI A Bell & Howell Infonnatioii Company 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor MI 48106-1346 USA 313/761-4700 800/521-0600 UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA GRADUATE COLLEGE ON THE USE OF SIGNIFICANT WORDS: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE MODERN RHETORICAL TRADIUON A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE FACULTY in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy By DEBRA L. FRANK DEW Norman, Oklahoma 1999 UMI N um ber: 9930535 UMI Microform 9930535 Copyright 1999, by UMI Company. All rights reserved. This microform edition is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. UMI 300 North Zeeb Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103 © Copyright by DEBRA L. FRANK DEW All Rights Reserved. ON THE USE OF SIGNQTCANT WORDS: MARY WOLLSTONECRAFT’S CONTRIBUTION TO THE MODERN RHETORICAL TRADITION A Dissertation APPROVED FOR THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH BY Acknowledgments This dissertation has greatly benefited from the scholarly guidance of the following faculty at the University of Oklahoma: Catherine Hobbs, Susan Laird, Susan Green and Gwen Davis; David Mair, Michael Flanigan, R. C. Davis and Richard Barney. Other faculty members who have variously supported my studies through fine conversation, excellent instruction or good will include Larry Frank, David Gross and Kathleen Welch. I am grateful for their close readings, helpful suggestions and intellectual support. Several fiiends have been there for me and with me throughout the evolution of this project. I thank Diaime, Staci, Stephen, Christine, Amanda and Judi for their ongoing encouragement, good humor and adventurous spirits. Lorene, Clarissa and Donna work on the margins of our intellectual community, yet they are essential to the academic enterprise. They, too, deserve my heartfelt thanks for their fiiendship and good company while we worked together in the Department of English. I thank my sister, Colleen, for her cheerful willingness to adopt my children during the final months of this project and my mother, Alice, who is the very model of courage, compassion and a healthy work ethic. Finally, I thank Larry, Judd and Katelyn, who have spent many an hour without me, but never questioned the importance o f my work nor doubted my commitment to our family. IV Table of Contents Abstract vi Chapter One The First o f a New Genus: Women Who-Would-Be Rhetors 1 Chapter Two WoUstonecraft’s Revolution in Female Manners: 40 Refiguring a Rhetoric of Sensibility Chapter Three Mary WoUstonecraft’s Theory of Rhetorical Production: The Pisteis 102 Chapter Four Mary Wollstonecrafl’s Theory of Rhetorical Production: The Canons 157 Conclusion On the Use of Significant Words 211 Works Cited 214 On The Use of Significant Words; Mary WoUstonecraft’s Contribution to the Modem Rhetorical Tradition This study addresses the absence o f female rhetors and theorists fi"om the modem rhetorical tradition as a minor tradition within the westem tradition as exemplified within Bizzell and Herzberg’s The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present (1994) and Wioifi-ed Homer’s The Present State o f Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric (1990). Wollstonecraft’s contribution to the modem tradition is extrapolated and conceptualized through an analysis of the principles she formulates and the textual strategies she employs within her primary texts, including both of her Vindications and Thoughts on the education o f daughters. Chapter one argues for the recovery of her theoretical work through a critical rereading of her primary texts. The study assumes a desegregated stance as it puts Wollstonecraft’s recovered theory into play with classical theories that precede it and with those formulated by George Campbell and Hugh Blair, as modem theorists. As a feminist project, it analyzes Wollstonecraft’s struggle for subjectivity within the gendered westem tradition. Chapter two conceptualizes and critiques a rhetoric of sensibility as constitutive of women’s rhetorical practice in Great Britain during the eighteenth century. A rhetoric of sensibility becomes the target of Wollstonecraft’s revolution in female marmers. Chapter three conceptualizes her rhetorical theory as with a comparative analysis of her understanding of the classical pisteis— ethos, pathos and logos—alongside o f Campbell and Blair’s treatment of the appeals. Chapter four conceptualizes her understanding of the classical canons of invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery in like manner. v i Wollstonecraft’s theory may be understood as a hybrid that is modem, feminist, and revolutionary. As a modem working within the westem tradition, she understands and variously incorporates neoclassical elements. She also refigures these elements according to the epistemological dictates of the New Science. Her theory is feminist in its aims: she secures a subject position for women and inserts women’s knowledge into civic discourse. As a skiUfiil rhetor, she imbibes and dispenses revolutionary values and appeals to effectively address the sociopolitical issues of the late eighteenth century. Her work both extends and dismpts the masculine westem tradition that precedes her and the modem tradition that scaffolds her theoretical enterprise. vu Chapter One The First of a New Genus: Women Who-Would-Be Rhetors —I plead for my sex, not for myself. Mary Wollstoneciafl, A VincS cation o f the Rights o f Woman Chapter one, divided into two parts, sets up a theoretical context for the recovery of Wollstonecraft’s rhetorical theory. P art one admits and accounts for the absence of eighteenth-century female rhetors and theorists fi’om the Enlightenment tradition. WoUstonecraft’s work is offered as representative o f women’s theoretical accomplishments. Part one also articulates criteria for assessing the theoretical merits of her work. This project assumes a desegregated stance wherein WoUstonecraft’s work is examined alongside her male peers in order to locate her within the Modem tradition of Westem rhetoric. WoUstonecraft negotiates between criteria first formulated by the classical tradition; criteria formulated by her contemporaries, the New Rhetoricians, in particular; and criteria that she formulates in order to mark women as legitimate subjects, and women’s knowledge as legitimate for civic discourse. P art two acknowledges the corhplex issues that impact the recovery of her work. WoUstonecraft assumes a particular subject position as a woman writing herself into the rhetorical tradition; the personal, the textual and the cultural intersect at this historical moment and open up a space for her work. Part two contextuaUzes her gendered discursive practice as it examines the cultural forces that both enable and impede her rhetorical efforts. Early assessments of WoUstonecraft’s struggle for subjectivity iUustrate the contested nature of her theoretical and practical achievements. Chapter one thus creates a theoretical context for her critique of a rhetoric of sensibility, the focus of chapter two, and for the conceptualization of her rhetorical theory—the focus of chapters three and four. Part One The Recovery of Women’s Contributions to the Rhetorical Traditions On the Absence of Female Rhetors and Theorists from the Modem Tradition Any attempt to write Mary WoUstonecraft into the modem rhetorical tradition as both theorist and practitioner must recognize that this tradition remains indeed a gendered one. Our current understanding of eighteenth-century rhetorical theory is heavily constmcted around the works of men, including natural philosophers, moral philosophers, language theorists, rhetorical practitioners and theorists, most notably—George Campbell, Hugh Blair, John Ward, Joseph Priestly, Adam Smith, David Hume, David Hartley, John Locke and Thomas Sheridan. Women’s contributions to rhetorical theory and practice during this era, however, remain marginal or unclear. Not one woman is included in Winifred Homer’s bibliography of eighteenth-century works. The Present State o f Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric (1990); furthermore, Homer’s list o f secondary sources reveals that most of the pivotal research on the eighteenth