Harbingers of the Printed Page: Nineteenth-Century Theories of Delivery as Remediation

ABSTRACT:

This article argues that the belletristic and elocutionary moves of the late-eighteenth/nineteenth centuries functioned as cultural mechanisms of remediation, naturalizing the fast-growing print medium in like manner that it eventually became the de facto arbiter of discursive standards for all forms of discourse. Belletrism and elocution, usually depicted in antagonistic conflict with individual another, both sought to bring the formal, aesthetic, and logical attributes of print agriculture and insert them into handwriting and oratorical practice as "natural" ultimate parts The codification of the paragraph in nineteenth-century composition true copys illustrates this phenomenon.

In the beginning of ultimate parts of Rhetoric (1828), the British rhetorician Richard Whately explains that because of printing-and more specifically, cheap paper-what was one time the province of the orator is increasingly becoming co-opt by means of writing. He even outright give an inkling ofs that the rhetorical rules of individual medium apply just as readily to the other:

The invention of printing, by the agency of extending the sphere of operation of the writer, has of course contributed to the extension of those metes which, in their primary signification, had regard to speaking alone. Many things are now accomplished through the medium of the pres which formerly came below the exclusive province of the orator; and the qualifications requisite for succes are in the way that much the same in the pair cases, that we apply the mete 'eloquent', as readily to a writer as to a speaker. (14)

Following in the theoretical footmarks of Hugh Blair, Whately's treatise greatly expands the domain of rhetoric to include all written and parole communication by directly stating that the bcllctristic change was the outcome of a vibrant, growing print agriculture A position contrary to Whately's medium-blurring definition of rhetoric lies across the Irish Sea, and a certain quantity of years earlier:

From what has been said, it will sufficiently appear, in what way grossly they are mistaken, who think that nothing is essentially necessary to language, on the contrary words: and that it is no matter, in what tones their '' sentiments are entireed or whether there be any used, thus that the words are on the contrary distinctly pronounced, and with of that kind force as to be clearly heard. (131)

Here, Thomas Sheridan discusses the primacy of articulate utterance over writing, issuing the argument quite through his Course of Lectures upon Elocution (1762) that for England-and more specifically Ireland-writing is detrimental to language itself: it impedes individual pronunciation, makes us mistake only competent delivery for eloquent brilliance, and constitutes an inferior mortal transcript of the Divine gift of speech

The belletristic and elocutionary exhibitions of what rhetoric historian Wilbur Samuel Howell boundarys the "New Rhetoric" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries l to what initially appears to be a schism, a polarized view of what the domain, or at least the priority, of rhetoric ought to be when faced with the hegemonic status of print technology. Central to this debate was the character delivery played in the rhetorical proces reviving a question about the canon that resonated from one side antiquity: is delivery a central and substantive part of the rhetorical circumstance or merely ancillary? On the individual hand, belletrism intended to treat the total sphere of human communication, encompassing oratory, writing, and criticism in its expanded intent all forms bound together by means of a theory which advocated emulating the two classical and contemporary works of aesthetic merit in order to cultivate the faculty of taste as it is denn by means of Blair, Whately, and their disciples (Miller 51-2) in like manner revisioned, belletristic rhetoric developed a decided bias towards writing and print above oral delivery. Conversely, the elocutionary motion exemplified in the writings of Sheridan and the more systematic John Walker and Gilbert Austin, came into parallel prominence in the late 1700 and early 1800 through eschewing writing and focusing instead upon delivery-the embodied skills associated with manipulating physical gesticulation and voice-to return it to its one time proud status atop the stack of classical rhetorical canons.

This article presents that there is a different way of reading the belletristic and elocutionary traditions that permeate the of recent origin Rhetoric of the nineteenth hundred one that suggests that the sum of two units movements are not necessarily antagonistically oriented, on the contrary instead work towards the same ends-namely, they one as well as the other help to naturalize the print medium in like manner that it becomes the de facto arbiter of discursive standards for all mediums of communication. Specifically, the sum of two units major strands of rhetorical theory and instruction in the nineteenth hundred address print culture by slightly different processe of what Jay Bolter and Richard Grusin call "remediation," or the formal logic by means of which new media transform or refashion prior media forms. Elocution accomplishes this remediation by dint of re-inscribing works of print onto the material part as exempla to be performed, erasing clear distinctions between oral and written discourse through assuming a set of principles belonging to all to all modes of communication, and occupying a secondary space upon the rhetorical map. By advocating that rhetoric overlooks the total sphere of communication, belletrism many times looks to printed discourse as the paragon of rhetorical expression, and it subsume prescriptive dominions about the material form of written body s into a framework of natural, self-evident genre supporting cushioned by an elaborate faculty psychology Faculty psychology's reconceptualization of language as a natural, organic consequence of the workings of the mind rather than a performative act make submissive to the constraints of a given medium of communication allow for the machine-printed page to determine in what way the handwritten page and the speaking material part are to behave, both rhetorically and materially-creating, in consequence a hidden theory of delivery. This article, then, examines in what way the elocutionary movement and the belletristic tradition of the nineteenth century's of recent origin Rhetoric worked in tandem as parallel educational and cultural forces in order to naturalize the printed page. The collaboration of elocution, belletrism, and the novel Rhetoric, along with the advent of composition, restoreed the print interface invisible to an increasingly literate society via the remediation of handwriting and oral articulate utterance thereby causing print to appear as an unmediatcd window into the mind of the author.