History Bump

Elocutio, classical rhetoric’s rendition of stylistics, was dubbed “style” in the eighteenth century. The works of George Campbell and Hugh Blair resulted in a new stylistics that “replaced the older conflation of Ciceronian and figurative style theories” and “became a foundation of composition-rhetoric in the nineteenth century” (258). Blair was more influential than Campbell, the more original of the two, in that he understood the value of alliteration and picked up on John Holmes’s description of elegance which Holmes broke into the alliterative qualities of purity, perspicuity (clearness, lucidity) and politeness (258). Blair broke style into the perspicuity and ornament, defining the former as containing purity, propriety, and precision. Not only was Blair’s 1783 textbook Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles-Lettres the most popular but during the Early American period, but his alliterative terms became dogma for composition-rhetoric in the first half of the nineteenth century (259). In addition, Blair’s de-emphasis of figurative rhetorics along with his emphasis on using adjectives or other subjective terms to categorize types of writing (260) had a lasting impact on the field. Unfortunately, “Blairian rhetoric became rigid and sterile because it was too easily made taxonomic, and any system of classifying styles tends to be reductive” (261).

Lindley Murray’s 1795 work English Grammar was the first to “conflate grammar and rhetoric, and the two would be interwoven in American education ever after” (262). Furthermore, his influence resulted in “numerous imitators” whose academy-level texts were to eventually have an impact on the college level. Practical System of Rhetoric, Samuel P. Newman’s 1827 work was “the first American college rhetoric text” (263). Richard Whatley’s 1828 Elements of Rhetoric was the first to break from Blair’s pervasive influence. Whatley’s “chief terms were Perspicuity, Energy, and Elegance” (265).

The demise of stylistics took place largely in the Postwar and Consolidation periods after 1860 when educators were concerned with new ways to teach students to write. Although Blair’s work was reduced into concrete mechanics on the one hand, on the other it was expanded via vague terminology—or static abstractions. The demise of stylistics can be attributed to ignoring other aspects of classical rhetoric, “especially invention (265). Henry Day was one of the few to attack attention on style in rhetoric at the expense of all else (266). But the most influential component in the downfall of style was how textbooks boiled it down to formula. The last text to cover Blair’s treatment of style completely was George Quackenbo’s 1854 Advanced Course (267), and the last to “valorize style was John Genung’s Practical Elements of 1886” (267). Adams Sherman Hill’s 1878 Principles of Rhetoric “was the first important text in which style qua style was completely absent” and as a result “after 1890 style existed less frequently as a separate canon, and more often as a diffused set of general ideas” (268).

After 1910 texts rarely dealt with style except as static abstractions: static because the terms were “unchanging” and “absolute”, and abstractions because the terms were “general” (270). Day is credited with introducing the “first true static abstractions into American composition” (271) through his efforts to make it scientific. The far extreme was David Hill, 1877, who “assumed that composition was as much a science as botany or chemistry” (272). The Consolidation period’s emphasis on a teachable rhetoric was answered by Alexander Bain who became the father “of the most popular static abstractions ever developed—the fabled trinity of Unity, Coherence, and Emphasis” (273). Barrett Wendell’s English Composition, “established the use of static abstractions as a central tenet of al the texts that followed its lead—and 90 percent did” (275).

The rise of stylistic monism which held that “form and content are inseparably welded” overtook traditional stylistic dualism which understood style as a “separate and teachable art” that could enhance text (276). The rise of this monism resulted in “a growing distrust” and the discrediting of the tenets to achieve style (277). The result was a deadening of style pedagogy that lasted until the “new rhetoricians” breathed life back into traditional rhetoric in the 1950s (279).

Emphasis on teaching over theory was a powerful reason that style declined in composition-rhetoric and found a home in literary theory (281). Ironically, it was the process-oriented approach where teachers began to reach students at students’ own level of experiences that helped the remnants of style theory housed in static abstractions to weaken (288). Vague terminology was not helpful to teaching. Textbooks began to experiment with new ways of teaching concepts and by the 1960s static abstractions were visibly demoted. By the 1970s this “new rhetoric” began to appear in textbooks and by 1975 the terms unity, coherence and emphasis in textbooks disappeared (291). Static abstractions held on stubbornly because they made teaching easier for teachers but were not helpful tools for students. Connors ends by cautioning that teachers need to be wary of what is simple to teach but has “no real contact with what students need to know in order to learn” (295).