Abstract

Reviews 207 some women to break the written silence of earlier times"(Travitsky, xviii). How much more accurate would Pender's introduction have been, had she used the modesty trope of conversation instead of the combative figure of the crow. Jane Donawerth University ofMaryland Lois Peters Agnew, Thomas De Quincey: British Rhetoric's Romantic Turn, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012. 165 pp., ISBN: 978-0-8043-3148-2 Although rhetoricians often stress the lack of innovation in early nine­ teenth-century rhetorical theory and practice, Lois Agnew shows through the case of Romantic author Thomas De Quincey that rhetoric was still a ver­ satile resource for literary authors in the period. De Quincey, best known for Confessions of an English Opium-Eater (1822), redefines rhetoric as "a detached investigation of multiple perspectives" (p. 10), and Agnew examines his mul­ tifaceted theory and practice in her monograph. Extending her conclusion from Outward, Visible Propriety (2008), Agnew approaches De Quincey as an example of "rhetoric's transition to the modern era" from a unifying civic discourse to varied arts of style (p. 1). In this monograph, she builds on Jason Camlot's argument that "a previously coherent tradition of prag­ matic rhetoric is ... redistributed into the diverse localized sites of individual [nineteenth-century] periodicals" and traces how De Quincey revises the the­ ory and practice of rhetoric in his career as a magazine contributor? Because De Quincey demonstrates that rhetoric "need not be connected to practical decision making," Agnew argues that he reinvents rhetoric for the modern world as a form of intellectual inquiry and multiperspectival display (p. 15). For Agnew, De Quincey is a rhetorician because he treats writing as social interaction even though he divorces rhetoric from political ends: His "perspective on language and public life is grounded in classical rhetorical traditions, yet radically distinct from those traditions in ways that reflect his attention to the cultural circumstances in which he finds himself" (p. 2). De Quincey, according to Agnew, synthesizes classical rhetoric, eighteenthcentury Scottish rhetorics, and Romantic poetics. Because he combines tradi­ tions to create an art of rhetoric that orchestrates multiple perspectives, Ag­ new compares De Quincey's "dialogic" rhetoric to the theories of twentiethcentury literary critic Mikhail Bakhtin. Like Bakhtin's ideal novelist, De Quincey "produces a vision of rhetoric ... in which the speaker/writer interacts constantly with listeners who hold differing points of view and 1 J- Camlot, Style and the Nineteenth-Century British Critic: Sincere Mannerisms (Aldershot, England: Ashgate, 2008), 14. 208 RHETORICA imaginatively integrates those perspectives" (p. 13). De Quincey anticipates the multivocal techniques of Victorian fiction when he extends rhetoric to the interplay of multiple perspectives in early nineteenth-century Britain. In the first chapter, Agnew introduces De Quincey and the Romantic era to rhetoricians. She makes a convincing case for the ubiquity and utility of rhetoric in this period: Not only was rhetoric an available resource for classically-educated authors, but they also needed rhetoric to respond to new audiences, publishing practices, and political situations. Agnew recounts elements of De Quincey's life that are familiar to Romanticists, like his piecemeal education, opium addiction, and tense relationship with William Wordsworth, and explains that De Quincey responds to a society "embroiled in the conflicting impulses of market-driven production and intellectual play" (p. 41). The instabilities of early nineteenth-century British society demanded a rhetorical approach to authorship and a reconsideration of rhetoric's functions, and De Quincey's life and writing exemplify these changes. In the next three chapters, Agnew examines De Quincey's "dialogic" rhetoric. She "track[s] key themes that emerge through the course of De Quincey's writings," including an embrace of open, philosophical questions over limited, political cases; an emphasis on the "eddying of thoughts" over the communication of facts; and a conversational dynamic that makes readers fellow participants in the discourse (p. 103). Agnew recovers his rhetorical theory from scattered, occasional essays like a review of Whatley's Elements ofRhetoric (1828), "Style" (1840), and "On Language" (1847). While De Quincey performs what he theorizes in these pieces, Agnew applies his theories to famous works such as;Confessions. For example, he "creates a narrative in which the...