The Formation Of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces
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In the middle of the eighteenth century, English literature, composition, and rhetoric were introduced almost simultaneously into colleges throughout the British cultural provinces. Professorships of rhetoric and belles lettres were established just as print was reaching a growing reading public and efforts were being made to standardize educated taste and usage. The provinces saw English studies as a means to upward social mobility through cultural assimilation. In the educational centers of England, however, the introduction of English represented a literacy crisis brought on by provincial institutions that had failed to maintain classical texts and learned languages. Today, as rhetoric and composition have become reestablished in the humanities in American colleges, English studies are being broadly transformed by cultural studies, community literacies, and political controversies. Once again, English departments that are primarily departments of literature see these basic writing courses as a sign of a literacy crisis that is undermining the classics of literature. The Formation of College English reexamines the civic concerns of rhetoric and the politics that have shaped and continue to shape college English.
AcknowledgmentsIntroduction: The Teaching of English in the British Cultural Provinces11The Expansion of the Reading Public, the Standardization of Educated Taste and Usage, and the Essay as Blurred Genre302The Antiquarianism of the English Universities623Liberal Education in the Dissenting Academies864The King's English and the Classical Tradition in Ireland1175English Studies Enter the University Curriculum in Scotland1446Adam Smith and the Rhetoric of a Commercial Society1787Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric and the "Science of Man"2058Hugh Blair and the Rhetoric of Belles Lettres2279"'Rhetoric' in Modern Times Really Means 'Criticism'"253Conclusion: Is the History of Classics a Model for the Future of English Departments?277Notes291Works Cited315Index341
