Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Longaker, Mark Garrett

Titel

Idealism and Early-American Rhetoric

Ist Teil von

• Rhetoric Society quarterly, 2006-09, Vol.36 (3), p.281-308

Ort / Verlag

Raleigh: Taylor & Francis Group

Erscheinungsjahr

2006

Quelle

Taylor & Francis Journals Auto-Holdings Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• 17th- and 18th-century philosophical separation of the reflecting mind from reality often resulted in a hostility towards rhetoric. However, this article demonstrates that American idealism yielded a rich conversation about rhetoric's place in the search for divine knowledge. Using Kenneth Burke's theory of attitudes' linguistic dialectical constitution, this article closely analyzes two 18th-century idealist philosophies (those of Jonathan Edwards and Samuel Johnson of Connecticut) and their related rhetorical theories. Seeing the interaction between the American idealist philosophical and rhetorical traditions leads us to reconsider the impact of idealist philosophy on the entire tradition of American rhetorical practice and theory.