THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March 20, 2012

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION “Before the end of the eighteenth century, the Industrial Revolution had begun to transform work, living conditions, population patterns, and economic standards in many parts of Europe and the United States” (983).

THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION “Given all these events, rhetoric in the nineteenth century clearly had to respond to the changing nature of public education as much as to the internal economies of the discipline and related intellectual movements” (983).

RICHARD WHATELY  His version of rhetoric “focuses on argument to provide a defense for religion against the skepticism fired by science and rationalism”  returns to classical invention as a way to generate arguments about absolute truth; not concerned with probable truths  Emphasis on audience

RICHARD WHATELY  “Rhetoric must prove the truth since it “does not convey itself” (984)  Rhetoric requires a theory of argument, invention concerned with ways of convincing uneducated congregations  Makes a distinction between conviction (reason) and persuasion (emotion), thus the way reasoning produces conviction is not always “logical or consistent” (985)

WOMEN’S RHETORIC  As women’s education improved throughout the nineteenth century (through great trial, political battles and daily hardship), “women increasingly began to speak in public and to reflect on rhetorical practices” (987)

WOMEN’S RHETORIC  Women’s rhetoric was challenging: it was “based not on culturally dominant values and well-established occasions for oratory but on strategies ‘to subvert popular belief’”(987)  Faced challenges from cultural prohibitions from speaking, hostile audiences, and stereotypes that rejected women as authoritative (ethos)

WOMEN’S RHETORIC  Women rhetors drew upon the ethos and collective strength of the churches: Protestant Christianity, Quakerism and Methodists church  Argued passionately against slavery, racism; argued for temperance, women’s civil rights and right to suffrage

WOMEN’S RHETORIC Sojourner Truth  One of the most famous African-American woman orator of the time  Born a slave, but freed when slavery abolished in NY  Became a travelling prophet who focused on denouncing slavery and the oppression of all women

WOMEN’S RHETORIC She said that "the spirit of the Lord had told her to avail herself of the opportunity of speaking to so many children assembled together, of the great sin of prejudice against color. Children, who made your skin white? Was it not God? Who made mine black? Was it not the same God? Am I to blame, therefore, because my skin is black? Does it not cast a reproach on our Maker to despise a part of His children, because He has been pleased to give them a black skin? Indeed, children, it does; and your teachers ought to tell you so, and root up, if possible, the great sin of prejudice against color from your minds. While Sabbath School Teachers know of this great sin, and not only do not teach their pupils that it is a sin, but too often indulge in it themselves, can they expect God to bless them or the children? Does not God love colored children as well as white children? And did not the same Savior die to save the one as well as the other? If so, white children must know that if they go to Heaven, they must go there without their prejudice against color, for in Heaven black and white are one in the love of Jesus. Now children, remember what Sojourner Truth has told you, and thus get rid of your prejudice, and learn to love colored children that you may be all the children of your Father who is in Heaven."

RHETORIC OF MEN OF COLOR  Like women, non-white rhetors “had to develop rhetorical strategies for heterogeneous and hostile audiences, to claim a hearing that their very appearance would often seem to deny them” (991)

RHETORIC OF MEN OF COLOR Frederick Douglass  A powerful and forceful agitator and orator against slavery and African-American civil rights as well as women’s rights  Published the famous abolitionist paper The North Star

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE  For Nietzsche, all language is rhetorical  Draws from the philosophy of the Sophists “...the traditional philosophical search for truth that lies beyond language and convention is a hopeless delusion...”(997)

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE “What then is truth? A moveable host of metaphors, metonymies and anthropomorphisms...Truths Are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions; they are metaphors that have become worn our and have been drained of sensuous force, coins which have lost their embossing and are now considered as metal and no longer as coins.” --On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense

THE NINETEENTH CENTURY March 20, 2012