Miscellany rhetoric(s) of nationalism: postcolonial epideictic and the anglophone Welsh press, 1882-1904

Abstract

My dissertation concentrates on an important but still largely unexplored area of rhetorical and cultural history: the Young Wales nationalist movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. I recover three Welsh miscellany magazines of this era: the Red Dragon (1882-87), Wales (1894-97), and Young Wales (1895-1904). I demonstrate how these magazines construct Welsh identity using editorials, poetry, serial fiction, biographies, folklore, correspondence, and illustrations. My analysis illustrates how these Anglophone periodicals functioned not merely as entertainment but as an available means for Welsh writers and editors to re-imagine their nation's identity in response to English cultural dominance.^My aim in studying the nationalist rhetoric of Welsh magazines is, in part, to enlarge our understanding of how the practice of epideictic rhetoric has evolved from its oral and classical roots to circulation in mass-produced texts such as periodicals.^Among the many other changes brought on by the invention of the printing press, this technology powerfully affected the relationship between rhetor and audience in ways that have not yet been sufficiently studied. This heightened degree of interaction challenges the mere "spectator" function that Aristotle affords to epideictic audiences and indicates that classical theories of epideictic rhetoric need to be reassessed to account for literate modes of communication. Engaging in this reassessment, my dissertation extends the epideictic theories of Kenneth Burke, Chaim Perelman, Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, and others to better account for the community-building functions of periodical texts.^In addition to contributing to our understanding of the epideictic functions of periodicals, my dissertation helps reveal the particular forms of epideictic rhetoric that emerge within contexts of disempowerment, particularly colonization.^Drawing on recent scholarship in women's rhetorics, minority rhetorics, and postcolonial discourse, I illustrate how these magazines use narratives, icons, revivalism, and gender to champion Welsh communal agency. In foregrounding the epideictic tactics of Welsh miscellany magazines, I also connect these texts with a transnational tradition of politicized fiction and verse that repeatedly emerges within postcolonial scenes. As a whole, my dissertation reveals the ways in which cultural disempowerment both shapes and fuels epideictic rhetoric.