The Use and Abuse of Literature - Marjorie Garber [123]
EIGHT
Mixed Metaphors
There was a time when Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, written by the first Regius Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Edinburgh and initially published in 1783, was the most popular and widely taught language text in Britain and the United States. Blair’s lectures, on topics like Taste, the Sublime in Writing, Metaphor, the History of Eloquence, the Nature of Poetry, Dramatic Poetry, and Versification, contained extended discussions of major works in English literature. The lectures were intended, Blair explained, for those who sought professional employment in composition and public speaking, and also for those who simply wanted to improve their taste so that they could judge works of literature for themselves. But Blair also suggested that his course of study could be of assistance in fashionable society:
In an age when works of genius and literature are so frequently the subjects of discourse, when every one erects himself into a judge, and when we can hardly mingle in polite society without bearing some share in such discussions; studies of this kind, it is not to be doubted, will appear to derive part of their importance from the use to which they may be applied in furnishing materials for those fashionable topics of discourse, and thereby enabling us to support a proper rank in social life.1
Reading “works of genius and literature” was to provide the aspiring socialite with “fashionable topics of discourse.” So one use to which literature could be put, for the polite society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, was the achievement, and maintenance, of a proper social place or rank. This was not Blair’s preferred application of his precepts and examples—he would have preferred something “of solid and intrinsical use, independent, of appearance and show”—but he readily acknowledged that the eighteenth-century equivalent of “walking to and fro, talking of Michelangelo” could have positive social and intellectual results.
It’s worth noting that eloquence in the current political climate is often as much distrusted as it is admired. As we’ve noted, in the 2008 presidential race, the word eloquent went from a term of praise to an epithet in a campaign minute, as rivals to Barack Obama—both in his own party and in the opposition—deployed it against the eventual winner. “I admire so much Senator Obama’s eloquence,” said his Republican opponent, John McCain, before turning to a perceived difference between words and actions. Twice in the same debate, McCain used “the eloquence of Senator Obama” as a preface to a put-down, a practice that had been earlier used by several conservative broadcasters and columnists, and even by Obama’s chief rival for the Democratic nomination, Hillary Clinton. “It’s time to get real about how we actually win this election,” said Clinton at a campaign rally. “It’s time that we move from good words to good works, from sound bites to sound solutions.”2 This formulation, itself an eloquent model of tropes in action (anaphora, the beginning of consecutive sentences, clauses, or phrases with the same phrase or word; prosonomasia, a punning on words that resemble one another), is a typical and often successful debater’s move. In any case, we might wish to contrast such eloquent flights, even those that apparently speak ill of eloquence, with the full-blown collapse of syntax and figure, characteristic of such plain-spoken politicians as Sarah Palin and George W. Bush, that is taken to be unpretentious, honest, and authentic—the opposite of “sophistic,” “sophistical,” or sophisticated.3 Although these two politicians are Republicans, I should say at once that resistance to syntax or rhetorical style is an equal-opportunity failing (or success, depending upon your point of view).
The distrust of eloquence