Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women's Tradition, 1600-1900

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Southern Illinois University Press RHETORIC “Jane Donawerth’s new book fills a significant gap in our understanding of both the history of women’s rhetorical practices and women rhetoricians ’ influential contribution to theory and pedagogy. This book is certain to be required reading for historians of rhetoric and composition and feminist researchers alike.” —Nan Johnson, author of Gender and Rhetorical Space in American Life: 1866–1910 “Arguing that for women in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries , the model for discourse was conversation, not public speaking, Donawerth draws on their treatises defending women’s education, their conduct books, their preaching, and their elocution manuals to demonstrate how women theorized the communication they took part in. Assiduously researched and beautifully written, this project’s contributions to our understanding of women’s rhetorical traditions is, in a word, magnificent.” —Lucille M. Schultz, coauthor of Archives of Instruction: Nineteenth-Century Rhetorics, Readers, and Composition Books in the United States “Jane Donawerth is the historian of rhetoric who has done the most to establish the significance of conversation as a women’s genre. It is tremendously valuable to have her new and groundbreaking work here, in which she demonstrates that conversation forms the basis not only of premodern women’s rhetorical performance but more, of women’s rhetorical theorizing from the parlor to the pulpit and eventually onto the public platform.” —Patricia Bizzell, coeditor of The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present southern illinois university press 1915 university press drive mail code 6806 carbondale, il 62901 www.siupress.com Jacket illustration: Abraham Bosse (1602–76), Conversation of Women during the Absence of Their Husbands: The Dinner, oil on wood; Inv. ECL 846. Photo by Stéphane Maréchalle, Musée national de la Renaissance, Écouen, France; photo credit: Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource, New York. G Conversational Rhetoric TheRiseandFallofa Women’sTradition,1600–1900 Jane Donawerth I Donawerth Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women’ s Tradition, 1600–1900 Much of the scholarly exchange regarding the history of women in rhetoric has emphasized women’s rhetoricalpracticesratherthanwomen’srhetorical theory. In Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women’s Tradition, 1600–1900, Jane Donawerth traces the historical development of rhetorical theory by women for women and argues that women constructed a theory of rhetoric based on conversation, not public speaking, as a model for all discourse. Using the works of English and American women (and one much-translated French woman) in alternative genres such as humanist treatises and dialogues, conduct books, defenses of women ’s preaching, and elocution handbooks, Donawerth demonstrates how these women cultivated theories of rhetoric centered on conversation that faded once women began writing composition textbooks for mixedgender audiences in the latter part of the nineteenth century. Conversational Rhetoric recovers and elucidates the importance of the theories in dialogues and defenses of women’s education by Bathsua Makin, Mary Astell, and Madeleine de Scudéry; in conduct books by Hannah More, Lydia Sigourney, and Eliza Farrar; in defenses of women’s preaching by Ellen Stewart, Lucretia Mott, Catherine Booth,andFrancesWillard;andinelocution handbooks by Anna Morgan, Hallie Quinn Brown, Genevieve Stebbins, and Emily Bishop. In each genre, Donawerth explores facets of women’s rhetorical theory, such as the recognition of the gendered nature of communication in conduct books, the incorporation of the language of women’s rights in the defenses of women’s preaching , and the adaptation of sentimental culture to the cultivation of women’s bodies as tools of communication in elocution books. Rather than taking a strictly linear historical approach, Conversational Rhetoric follows women’s rhetorical theory as it starts, stops, and starts over again. It covers a broad range of women’s rhetorical theory in the Anglo-American world and places those theories in their social, rhetorical, and gendered historical contexts. This study adds women’s rhetorical theory to the rhetorical tradition, advances our understanding of women’s theories and their use of rhetoric, and offers a paradigm for analyzing the differences between men’s and women’s rhetoric from 1600 to 1900. Jane Donawerth is a professor of English at the University of Maryland, editor of Rhetorical Theory by Women before 1900: An Anthology, and prize-winning translator of Madeleine de Scudéry’s rhetorical writings. Printed in the United States of America Studies in Rhetorics and Feminisms isbn 0-8093-3027-x isbn 978-0-8093-3027-0 Donawerth cvr mech.indd 1 9/20/11 9:38 AM Studies in...