Persuading without Convincing: Mary Wollstonecraft's French Revolution
Abstract
Abstract: Writing amid the overthrow of the French Bourbon monarchy, Mary Wollstonecraft in An Historical and Moral View of the Origin and Progress of the French Revolution (1794) undertakes her own radical rethinking of established hierarchies, specifically those between rational "conviction" and passionate "persuasion" as they pertained to larger debates about how to influence collective opinion and action. Responding to British and French Enlightenment rhetorics and to French political oratory, Wollstonecraft posits the deep integration of reason and passion in the language of influence as much by the performance as by the precepts of her text. She also considers how such language necessitates and engenders deliberation about its compatibility with the public good. If French Revolution resembles the Vindications by its animus against the rhetoric of (often veiled) self-interest, it simultaneously attests to, and consequentially retheorizes, the role of rhetorical persuasion in the service of democratic contestation and change.
- Journal
- Rhetorica
- Published
- 2026-03-01
- DOI
- 10.1353/rht.2026.a990993
- CompPile
- Open Access
- Closed
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