One of the most popular Dutch educational enlightenment authors was Hieronymus van Alphen. His three volumes of "Little Poems for Children" published in 1778 and 1782 were extremely successful, both in the Netherlands and abroad. Inspired by the German poets Christian Felix Weisse and Gottlob Wilhelm Burmann, Van Alphen brought about an…

Background: Twenty-first-century undergraduates often find eighteenth-century culture difficult to access and, influenced by popular assumptions about the period in current media theory, characterise the century as individualist, underestimating the cultural significance of social networking in literary and political history. Purpose: This study…

Examines how eighteenth-century critics treated the visual format of traditional verse as a determinant in readers' appreciation of form and meaning. Explores correspondences between eighteenth-century work and modern criticism. Argues that twentieth-century appreciations of the visual format of verse are limited by their concentration upon more…

Examines, rhetorically, the formal dynamics and internal action of an eighteenth-century political text by Edmund Burke, the "Letter to William Elliott, Esq." (1795). (SR)

A study focusing on the history of reading, or the uses of literacy, in the first years of the American republic examined the subscription list and content of "The New York Magazine; or, Literary Repository" for 1790. Data for the study were taken from the magazine's subscription list and from various biographical sources, such as the…

Surveyed Voltaire's 50 plays to examine traits and roles assigned to elderly, influence of genre and author's age on portrayals, and factors to which elder's traits were attributed. Found elderly portrayed more favorably in tragedy than in comedy; no effect of period of life on portrayals. Wisdom was only trait consistently and specifically…

Explores how argumentation in the eighteenth-century miracles controversy (a century-long debate in Britain over the reasonableness of revealed religion) exhibited a controlling concern for procedural considerations. Discusses how the Deists and the Orthodox apologists used their argumentative force to advance rival methods for evaluating miracle…

Offers a naturalistic picture of literacy in colonial North America by exploring family literacy in an early eighteenth-century urban New England setting. Uses the diaries and other writings of Cotton Mather (1663-1728) as sources on literacy within his family. Notes the importance of writing within the family. (SR)

Analyzes how John Dickinson's "Letter from a Farmer in Pennsylvania" appropriates pastoral design and convention for rhetorical ends. Explores how literary idiom lends its force of expression to meet the needs of public controversy and how rhetorical judgment is both insubstantiated in the argument and is its chief mode of appeal. (KEH)

Proposes satire as a form of argumentative practice. Examines eighteenth-century satirical attacks upon London's ubiquitous debating societies (formed among tradesmen, craftsmen, professionals, and small businessmen to "improve" themselves) as evidence of satire's public role in which the ideological struggle between social classes was…

Analyzes Fisher Ames' fiery speech of 1796 on the Jay Treaty. Demonstrates the influence of Scottish enlightenment thinkers (particularly in moral sense philosophy and faculty psychology) on Ames and his rhetoric. Demonstrates how Ames made a compelling case to shift the standard of political judgment from reason to passion. (SR)

Examines within Laurence Sterne's "Tristram Shandy" two representative orientations (reasons and experience) as indices of popular attitudes about the rhetorical arts during the eighteenth century. Argues that, as a satire on rhetorical pretensions and excess, this novel is an important document in the venerable battle between the…

Reviews the use of humor in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Black Creole Jamaican literature and song. Concludes that irony is inherent in the creative expression of early Jamaicans and writers about Jamaica, arising from inconsistencies of attitudes of Blacks toward Whites and toward themselves. (FMW)

Investigates whether novelistic prose can be dated by considering marked stylistic changes that occurred over the past 240 years. Finds a positive correlation between publication date and stylistic markers of sentence length, word length, rare punctuation, and word shortening or informality. Argues that this process can form the basis for new…