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Warren, James Perrin. Culture of Eloquence: Oratory and Reform in Antebellum America. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999.

The scholarship of Culture of Eloquence: Oratory and Reform in Nineteenth-Century America is symptomatic of larger issues plaguing the disciplines of English and Communication Studies. Indeed, James Perrin Warren’s inquiry into oratory and reform in nineteenth-century America illustrates the schism between literary and rhetorical studies by highlighting, on the one hand, the way in which literary studies could be deeply enriched by a complex understanding of rhetorical theory, and, on the other, the value of manuscript and archival research for rhetorical studies. Warren argues that writers and orators of nineteenth-century America configured eloquence in ways that created new cultural spaces for enacting democracy, and each chapter traces out the idea of a culture of eloquence through detailed analysis of primary documents. He illustrates how figures as wide ranging as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Frederick Douglass, and William Gilmore Simms contributed to a culture that valued eloquence as a means to social reform. The analysis is powerful and demonstrates clearly that even people such as Simms, who is largely ignored in the discipline of rhetoric, has significant statements on rhetoric, literacy, and eloquence. The reason, as Warren argues, is that the idea of eloquence and a sense of its importance was so pervasive in the culture that most literary figures grappled with it and offered statements of their own visions of it. Warren mines significant statements from places most have not bothered to look.

Even so, Warren’s selection of figures betrays the disciplinary divide between rhetoric and literature. With the exception of Emerson and Douglass, and to a lesser degree Margaret Fuller, the people under analysis are those discussed largely (sometimes almost exclusively) in literary circles, and figures such as Channing, Everett, or even Blair or Whately, all of whom had significant impact on nineteenth-century conceptions of eloquence and rhetoric are, for the most part, ignored. The reason, I think, is less a desire to bring to rhetoric figures less discussed by rhetoricians, as it is a lack of awareness of the depth of rhetorical studies. For example, Nan Johnson’s landmark Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in North America is never mentioned, nor is Warren Guthrie's series on "The Development of Rhetorical Theory in America, 1636-1850," and S. Michael Halloran's and Gregory Clarke’s Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America is mentioned once, an article of it cited virtually without discussion in a footnote. All of these studies, considered central to understanding rhetoric in America by rhetoricians, fail to appear in a book that offers itself as appealing to scholars in both literature and rhetoric.

Despite the omissions, however, the book is valuable to a wide range of readers. Warren’s study is meticulous in its research and analysis of primary sources, many of which are available only in manuscript form. His discussion of Emerson in the second chapter, for example, brings to light journal entries that accompany Emerson’s well-known "Eloquence" essays, manuscript sources that have had little or no scholarship addressing them, particularly among historians of rhetoric. Additionally, Warren highlights the force that Adamic language theories had on Emerson's conception of eloquence, highlighting both Jacob Boehme's and Charles Kraitsir's influence on transcendentalist ideals of language. And Warren’s discussion of Thoreau and eloquence in the third chapter demonstrates decisively that a concept of eloquence is central not only to Thoreau's language theory but his epistemology. In fact, Warren locates passages in both Emerson and Thoreau that reconfigure our ideas on rhetorical theory in antebellum America, and though his analysis centers on traditional literary analysis and cultural critique more than a re-envisioning of rhetorical theory, the primary sources he offers and his analysis of them are cross-disciplinary and break new ground.

Equally important are Warren's analyses in his fourth chapter. In it, he synthesizes manuscript sources from Elizabeth Peabody and Margaret Fuller and demonstrates how both women crafted a space for women's eloquence. Both writers, Warren argues, are central to understanding literacy in nineteenth-century America, and both women contribute significantly to the role that literacy plays in creating a cultural space for women to participate in a broadly conceived eloquence. Peabody, for Warren, balances the intuitive aspects of language with her desire for a practical education for her students, while at the same time, she attempts to configure a form of eloquence that would work within existing modes of domesticity. By contrast, Fuller redefines concepts of audience participation through her Conversations, thus creating a different type of space for women to work with language. In his discussion of both women, Warren connects the women's theories with those Emerson and Charles Kraitsir to demonstrate the broad set of relationships governing language theory and literacy in antebellum America. These theories help figures such as Peabody and Fuller to craft a new, gendered space for the performance of literacy.

This carving of cultural space for a gendered enactment of eloquence is paralleled in the next chapter with the formation of a cultural space for African-American eloquence. Warren's analysis of Douglass is the best work of the study, and it highlights the way in which Douglass is best understood in a context that embraces a rhetorical history. Warren carefully situates Douglass's statements on language and rhetoric in a cultural context of Douglass's lecture career, and from this context, Warren demonstrates that while Douglass sought to break open the constraints on African American literacy and eloquence, he was at the same time bound by his own fondness of limiting theories. Warren calls this a "drama of limitation," with Douglass's language relying on the newly arisen discipline of Ethnology while he simultaneously denounces the conclusions Ethnology drew about the inferiority of the black race. Warren's point is that while Douglass is able to appropriate and revise the language and, in part, the message of "niggerology" in order to create a cultural space for African Americans, he must assume the role of the Negro in order to create this space. He must, in short, delimit himself in order to liberate.

While Douglass might be seen as representing a liberatory eloquence, William Gilmore Simms might be seen as offering an eloquence to defend cultural institutions of the nineteenth-century South. Warren's chapter on Simms demonstrates the cross-cultural influence of a culture of eloquence in America, and he succeeds in describing both how Simms descends from an Emersonian vein of rhetoric and how Simms offers a rhetoric that fails to evoke appropriate responses in New England. Warren provides a detailed history of Simms's aspirations to become a prominent orator, but how, with the issue of slavery, Simms's attempt ultimately fails when he schedules a lecture series in the North. This chapter, in particular, demonstrates the necessity of linking literary and rhetorical studies, for in it, Warren relies simultaneously on Simms's statements on literature and his statements on oratory to make the argument that Simms consciously participated in a culture of eloquence. That Simms seems to conflate the two and that Warren at least interweaves the two considerations demonstrates that in nineteenth-century America, any discussion of eloquence included with it a discussion of both literary and oratorical endeavors.

In Warren's final chapter, on Whitman's "agonistic arena," the struggle implicit in Simms's rhetoric becomes the center for a new conception of the interaction of lecture and poem. Warren argues that Whitman calls for a broadening of the idea of eloquence, a re-envisioning of it to include a carefully crafted cultural space between orator and audience in which eloquence emerges. In this space is a constant struggle, not only in genre (poem, lecture, oration), but also between orality and literacy. The argument Warren makes is compelling, and it points to the significance Whitman had in not only the literary landscape of America, but the oratorical as well; Warren's work again implicitly suggests the necessity of drawing together literary and rhetorical studies.

Even so, the chapter on Whitman perhaps most starkly illustrates the gaps in the breadth of Warren's scholarship that runs throughout the work. The term "agonistic arena" tempts his audience with positioning Whitman as part of a line of agonistic rhetoricians, but it ultimately fails to do so. In fact, despite the recent wealth of information on agonistic rhetoric, Warren's work fails to cite any work done in rhetorical studies. Indeed, it seems completely unaware that "agonistic" is a rhetorical term. Similarly, throughout the book, Warren discusses the significance of the "occasion" for eloquence, yet he fails to connect it with the rhetorical idea of kairos.

These absences are strange considering the detail with which Warren painstakingly examines primary works and manuscript sources under study, and it suggests a tradition from which Warren writes, one which prioritizes literary studies to the exclusion of rhetorical. And while this exclusion is disappointing, it might be seen as a remarkable opportunity for scholars in rhetoric and composition to draw from his detailed work. He has, after all, broadened the scope of eloquence for scholars, and he has offered a starting place for engaging the major figures in the literary canon as rhetorical theorists.

Roger Thompson

Virginia Military Insititute