Abstract: Bernard Lamy's view of rhetoric in L'Art de Parler may be explained as an attempt to address religious exigencies. Lamy advises about two religious roles: theologian and preacher. Theologians' attempts to overcome ignorance and preachers' attempts to overcome willful blindness and inattentiveness in congregations help to account for why Lamy views truth as a matter of certainty rather than probability, and argument as syllogistic rather than connected to style and audience beliefs. Since Lamy conceives of a traditional sense of rhetoric—copious eloquence—as a source of religious problems, he advocates a modernized view of rhetoric to address them.

Bernard Lamy's view of rhetoric in L'Art de Parler may be explained as an attempt to address religious exigencies. Lamy advises about two religious roles: theologian and preacher. Theologians' attempts to overcome ignorance and preachers' attempts to overcome willful blindness and inattentiveness in congregations help to account for why Lamy views truth as a matter of certainty rather than probability, and argument as syllogistic rather than connected to style and audience beliefs. Since Lamy conceives of a traditional sense of rhetoric-copious eloquence-as a source of religious problems, he advocates a modernized view of rhetoric to address them.

Reading Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric from a rhetorical perspective—as an attempt to address issues relevant to religious rhetoric—I argue that Campbell's aims of preparing future ministers to preach and defending the authority of revealed religion shaped, first, his conception of inventing and presenting emotional appeals and, second, his key assumptions about reason and passion. The article adds a chapter to accounts of the relationship between reason and passion in sacred rhetorics and in rhetorical traditions more generally, and addresses the question of what Campbell's theory of rhetoric may aim to inculcate or cultivate emotionally and why.

Abstract Scholars have seldom explored relationships among Lord Kames's legal career and writings and Elements of Criticism. After considering why Kames did not write a rhetoric of legal advocacy, I argue that Kames's legal career and writings offered precedents for Elements in three areas: fulfilling social aspirations, using principles of human nature for pedagogical purposes, and using a mode of reasoning that involved abstracting principles from particular cases. I provide a more complete understanding of theElements and suggest that aims and methods of Scots law may have penetrated eighteenth-century Scottish rhetorics more broadly.

Scholars have seldom explored relationships among Lord Kames’s legal career and writings and Elements of Criticism. After considering why Kames did not write a rhetoric of legal advocacy, I argue that Kames’s legal career and writings offered precedents for Elements in three areas: fulfilling social aspirations, using principles of human nature for pedagogical purposes, and using a mode of reasoning that involved abstracting principles from particular cases. I provide a more complete understanding of the Elements and suggest that aims and methods of Scots law may have penetrated eighteenth-century Scottish rhetorics more broadly.

The recent neglect of Kames's Elements of Criticism (1762) has been due in part to disciplinary angst that has fostered two incomplete views of Elements: (1) as a work that trains readers in receptive competence and (2) as significant for primarily philosophical reasons. Reading Elements as a rhetoric of criticism, however, suggests first that it is aimed toward production of criticism-not simply reception-although the critical argumentation is oriented toward judgment in terms of universals. Second, it suggests that its significance is practical-that it appeals to readers' anxieties about the burgeoning British economy.

George Mackenzie’s “What Eloquence is fit for the Bar” (1672), perhaps unique in the early modern literature of Scots law, provides access to the state of judicial rhetoric in post-Restoration Scotland. This essay summarizes the contents of the essay and briefly relates it to his career and other writings. It shows that Mackenzie conceived of eloquence as a site of struggle for personal, professional, and international status.

Research Article| January 01 2002 Motives for Practicing Shakespeare Criticism as a “Rational Science” in Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism Beth Innocenti Manolescu Beth Innocenti Manolescu University of Kansas Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Advances in the History of Rhetoric (2002) 5 (1): 11–20. https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2000.10500527 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Beth Innocenti Manolescu; Motives for Practicing Shakespeare Criticism as a “Rational Science” in Lord Kames's Elements of Criticism. Advances in the History of Rhetoric 1 January 2002; 5 (1): 11–20. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2000.10500527 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressJournal for the History of Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC2002Taylor & Francis Group, LLC Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract A mid‐eighteenth‐century debate among three Anglican clerics on the nature and end of eloquence indicates that their views of eloquence share a significant similarity: functionalism. I summarize each participant's position; note relevant aspects of their contexts, including purposes, institutional position, and broader cultural conditions; and explore the social and political implications of their views on the nature and ends of eloquence. By doing so, I show that eloquence serves as a site of struggle for power and prestige; and that when people use the term “eloquence “ they may have significantly different views of what it means.