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A tasteful collaboration: Belletristic rhetoric and women's rhetorical arts in nineteenth-century British literature
McCulley, Mary
McCulley, Mary
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2016
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"A Tasteful Collaboration: Belletristic Rhetoric and Women's Rhetorical Arts in Nineteenth-Century British Literature" reclaims the prominent nineteenth-century literary women Anna Jameson, Christina Rossetti, and Vernon Lee as key contributors to rhetorical theory. This dissertation examines how eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, specifically belletristic rhetoric as defined by Hugh Blair, provides a paradigm for advancing women's rhetorical goals, modes, and strategies. While belletristic rhetoric has been denigrated as a departure from effective, civic rhetoric, this project extends the work of scholars such as Lois Agnew, Linda Ferreira-Buckley, and S. Michael Halloran by positioning Blair's work as a continuation of classical rhetoric as seen in its goals to improve the individual and influence social morality. Working within the assumption that active critical reception (or taste) is equally as important as composition in the rhetorical process, these women writers legitimize their roles as rhetorical theorists and critics by demonstrating their authority on taste. Jameson, Rossetti, and Lee enrich the rhetorical tradition by highlighting the value of women's rhetorical modes that scholars Jane Donawerth, Cheryl Glenn, and Krista Radcliff have identified as conversation, collaboration, listening, and silence. This work also examines these women's adept rhetorical strategies in translating, "poaching," and revising men's aesthetic philosophies as well as repurposing the traditional visual imagery of arts and botanical imagery to illustrate women's rhetorical capabilities. This dissertation contributes to an interdisciplinary study of literature and rhetoric, suggesting innovative approaches to studying nineteenth-century women's literature while enhancing the still emerging field of women's rhetoric. Furthermore, the project advances the field of visual rhetoric as it analyzes how literary women produced visual art as part of the rhetorical function of the text, developed theories regarding a rhetorical aesthetic, and employed rhetorical uses of ekphrasis and visual metaphors as part of their arguments about women in society. Overall, my dissertation concludes that these nineteenth-century literary women revitalize the historical reputation of belletristic rhetoric and establish themselves as female rhetors in their own right within the larger rhetorical tradition.
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English