History has shown us that the power of political speech can be put to both positive and manipulative ends - while rhetoric is a powerful tool for those who seek to persuade others to adopt their views, it can also be employed to foment factionalism and undermine the very basis of a democratic society. In this unique study, Marc Hanvelt shows how eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume confronted questions about the negative moral and political effects of rhetoric, and how he differentiated between manipulative and non-manipulative political speech. Drawing on Hume's philosophical, historical, and popular writings, The Politics of Eloquence presents an understanding of rhetoric that can be properly ascribed to this important thinker, an understanding hitherto overlooked in the scholarly literature. Offering an original approach to thinking about political rhetoric – an essential element of democratic politics – Hanvelt makes important contributions to both Hume scholarship and to broader areas in political theory and philosophy.

"A penetrating account of the long debate about the kind of public language appropriate for a democratic society. . . . Cmiel manages to do justice to both sides."--Christopher Lasch, author of The Culture of Narcissism "Every scholar interested in the English language will put this book next to Mencken and Baugh. It will be indispensable to writing the social history of English into the 20th Century."--Joseph Williams, author of Origins of the English Language

On Eloquence questions the common assumption that eloquence is merely a subset of rhetoric, a means toward a rhetorical end. Denis Donoghue, an eminent and prolific critic of the English language, holds that this assumption is erroneous. In this book, Donoghue maintains that eloquence should be examined independent of mere rhetoric and that it has its own intrinsic value.

Why is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire returns to the origins of rhetoric to recover the central place of eloquence in political thought. Eloquence, for the orators of classical antiquity, emerged from rhetorical relationships that exposed both speaker and audience to risk. Through close readings of Cicero – and his predecessors, rivals, and successors – political theorist and former speechwriter Rob Goodman tracks the development of this ideal, in which speech is both spontaneous and stylized, and in which the pursuit of eloquence mitigates political inequalities. He goes on to trace the fierce disputes over Ciceronian speech in the modern world through the work of such figures as Burke, Macaulay, Tocqueville, and Schmitt, explaining how rhetorical risk-sharing has broken down. Words on Fire offers a powerful critique of today's political language – and shows how the struggle over the meaning of eloquence has shaped our world.

Oratory emerged as the first major form of verbal art in early America because, as John Quincy Adams observed in 1805, "eloquence was POWER." In this book, Sandra Gustafson examines the multiple traditions of sacred, diplomatic, and political speech that flourished in British America and the early republic from colonization through 1800. She demonstrates that, in the American crucible of cultures, contact and conflict among Europeans, native Americans, and Africans gave particular significance and complexity to the uses of the spoken word. Gustafson develops what she calls the performance semiotic of speech and text as a tool for comprehending the rich traditions of early American oratory. Embodied in the delivery of speeches, she argues, were complex projections of power and authenticity that were rooted in or challenged text-based claims of authority. Examining oratorical performances as varied as treaty negotiations between native and British Americans, the eloquence of evangelical women during the Great Awakening, and the founding fathers' debates over the Constitution, Gustafson explores how orators employed the shifting symbolism of speech and text to imbue their voices with power.

An exploration of the culture of public speaking in the Iberian world, which places the classical rhetorical tradition within the context of Iberian global expansion in Europe, the Americas, Asia and Africa between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries.

In the mid-19th century, rhetoric surrounding slavery was permeated by violence. Slavery’s defenders often used brute force to suppress opponents, and even those abolitionists dedicated to pacifism drew upon visions of widespread destruction. Provocative Eloquence recounts how the theater, long an arena for heightened eloquence and physical contest, proved terribly relevant in the lead up to the Civil War. As antislavery speech and open conflict intertwined, the nation became a stage. The book brings together notions of intertextuality and interperformativity to understand how the confluence of oratorical and theatrical practices in the antebellum period reflected the conflict over slavery and deeply influenced the language that barely contained that conflict. The book draws on a wide range of work in performance studies, theater history, black performance theory, oratorical studies, and literature and law to provide a new narrative of the interaction of oratorical, theatrical, and literary histories of the nineteenth-century U.S.