Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Spectacular passions: eighteenth-century oratory and the reform of eloquence
- 2 Bodies on the borders of politeness: ‘Orator Henley’, Methodist enthusiasm, and polite literature
- 3 Thomas Sheridan: forging the British body
- 4 The art of acting: mid-century stagecraft and the broadcast of feeling
- 5 Polite reading: sentimental fiction and the performance of response
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Epilogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Spectacular passions: eighteenth-century oratory and the reform of eloquence
- 2 Bodies on the borders of politeness: ‘Orator Henley’, Methodist enthusiasm, and polite literature
- 3 Thomas Sheridan: forging the British body
- 4 The art of acting: mid-century stagecraft and the broadcast of feeling
- 5 Polite reading: sentimental fiction and the performance of response
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
POLITENESS, PERFORMANCE, AND APOSIOPESISES
Ye who govern this mighty world and its mighty concerns with the engines of eloquence, – who heat it, and cool it, and melt it, and mollify it, — and then harden it again to your purpose —
Ye who wind and turn the passions with this great windlass, – and, having done it, lead the owners of them, whither ye think meet –
Ye, lastly, who drive — and why not, Ye also who are driven, like turkeys to market, with a stick and a red clout – meditate–meditate, I beseech you, upon Trim's hat.
Thus readers of Laurence Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman (1759–67) are urged to contemplate the central prop of a most eloquent performance. Before an audience of his fellow servants in the kitchen of Shandy Hall, Corporal Trim has made expressive use of his hat while reflecting upon the news that Tristram Shandy's brother is dead: ‘Are we not here now, continued the corporal, (striking the end of his stick perpendicularly upon the floor, so as to give an idea of health and stability) – and are we not – (dropping his hat upon the ground) gone! in a moment!’ (p. 431). It is an eloquent gesture, the power of which is confirmed by the responses of its witnesses: ‘Susannah burst into a flood of tears … Jonathan, Obadiah, the cook-maid, all melted … The whole kitchen crouded about the corporal’ (p. 431).
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- The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture , pp. 182 - 201Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004
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