Truth in American Fiction: The Legacy of Rhetorical Idealism by Janet Gabler-Hover (review)

248Reviews . . . the actors in American history" Smith claimed responsibility for doing, we may be forced to consider Kolodny's challenge to "[reshape] . . . our canon of major American authors" (p. 185). Northeastern UniversityBeth Bennett Gabler-Hover, Janet. Truth in American Fiction: The Legacy of Rhetorical Idealism. Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1990. 289 pp. Cloth: $35.00. In several nineteenth-century novels, Janet Gabler-Hover finds evidence of an authorial affirmation of the truth-telling capacity of language, principally its ability to disclose and reinforce an essentially Christian moral or ethical program. She demonstrates the abiding American cultural interest in the study of rhetoric, especially the work of Scottish ministers Hugh Blair and George Campbell, during the nineteenth century, and she specifically details Brown's, Hawthorne's, Clemens', and James' familiarity with the insistence of this rhetorical movement on an individual ethical responsibility and on a collective moral necessity for telling the truth. Central to this movement is the Quintilian principle, which assumes that rhetorical eloquence is inherently moral because believable discourse could be achieved only by a virtuous speaker, who would be compelled to honesty by the innate ability of an audience to separate truth from sophistry. Gabler-Hover does not suggest a simple relationship between this notion of rhetoric and the authors she reviews. Not only does she show that Melville's The Confidence-Man emphatically rejects the Quintilian principle, which asserts a trust in the possibility of truthful human relations, but she also observes that Brown, Hawthorne, Clemens, and James register skepticism about the intrinsic virtue of their audiences. Nevertheless, each of these authors, she argues, professes faith in the desirability and the possibility of a virtuous rhetorical transaction. Accordingly, Brown understands that the Quintilian principle can be easily corrupted by either an egotistic author or a solipsistic audience; by depicting Clara's failure in Wieland to fulfill the proper moral role of the audience, Brown instructs his readers about their ethical responsibility. Similarly educating his audience in The Scarlet Letter, Hawthorne focuses on Hester's improper abdication (to the law) of moral responsibility in regulating her passion and on Dimmesdale's improper use of rhetoric in the service of law and passion; neither character adequately manages the ethical ideal of balancing dialectical human behavior through an apprehension of the common bond of humanity. Clemens, too, heuristically depicts four types of rhetorical artists to suggest that judgments of sincerity require intelligence and good intentions , like Huck's, which are capable of transforming society when an audience-like citizenry abandons the conventional truth of ideology for the rhetorical truth of benevolence . Whereas in The Bostonians James condemns the rhetorician who lives only for public acclaim and who consequently loses conscience and soul, he nonetheless tentatively intimates, in the interaction between Verna and her audience, the possibility of realizing the Quintilian principle. And in The Wings of the Dove and The Golden Bowl James presents virtuous American women as intrinsic rhetorical arguments; their honesty serves as a moral persuasive engaging the honesty of others and potentially transforming the world. James, in short, insists upon the moral transcendence of the Quintilian principle. Studies in American Fiction249 Gabler-Hover knows what she is up against in presenting her thesis. She is fully aware of the current assault on employing the methods of contextual scholarship, on recovering (partially) authorial intention, and on defending the referential features of language. She goes against the grain of this assault and courageously reminds us of the viability of all three of these concerns and, as well, of the significance throughout time, including our own, of reading cultural expressions and human behavior with an eye to their ethical implications. She recognizes the difficulties and contingencies informing any specific ethical position; yet she also harkens, with admirable conviction , to this humanistic concern as a profound feature of transactions between people. Her interest in certain nineteenth-century authors' preoccupation with the ethical dimension of language provides one cogent response to Wayne Booth's pertinent reminder (in The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction) oí the critical need "to restore the full intellectual legitimacy of our common-sense inclination to talk about stories in ethical terms." Gabler-Hover builds her...