William Cobbett
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First published: 1995
1 language
ISBN: 9780511885044
Description
This book offers the first thoroughgoing literary analysis of William Cobbett as a writer. Leonora Nattrass explores the nature and effect of Cobbett's rhetorical strategies, showing through close examination of a broad selection of his polemical writings (from his early American journalism onwards) the complexity, self-consciousness and skill of his stylistic procedures.
Her close readings examine the political implications of Cobbett's style within the broader context of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century political prose and argue that his perceived ideological and stylistic flaws - inconsistency, bigotry, egoism and political nostalgia - are in fact rhetorical strategies designed to appeal to a range of usually polarized reading audiences. Cobbett's ability to imagine and to address socially divided readers within a single text, the book argues, constitutes a politically disruptive challenge to prevailing political and social assumptions about their respective rights, duties, needs and abilities.
This rereading revises a prevailing critical consensus that Cobbett is an unselfconscious populist whose writings reflect rather than challenge the ideological paradoxes and problems of his time.
Her close readings examine the political implications of Cobbett's style within the broader context of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century political prose and argue that his perceived ideological and stylistic flaws - inconsistency, bigotry, egoism and political nostalgia - are in fact rhetorical strategies designed to appeal to a range of usually polarized reading audiences. Cobbett's ability to imagine and to address socially divided readers within a single text, the book argues, constitutes a politically disruptive challenge to prevailing political and social assumptions about their respective rights, duties, needs and abilities.
This rereading revises a prevailing critical consensus that Cobbett is an unselfconscious populist whose writings reflect rather than challenge the ideological paradoxes and problems of his time.