Studies in Romanticism, September 22nd, 2002
THERE IS A RECIPROCAL RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN A NATION'S POLITICAL institutions and the value it places on oratory. Some form of this maxim would have appeared a commonplace remark (and a locus of argument) throughout the eighteenth century, and within the context of political debate the attempt to divorce oratory from a political or religious institution would have seemed unusual. The classical education of Englishmen who were prepared for "the senate, the bar, or the pulpit" encouraged them to view great oratory, among the other arts, as indivisible from "free" institutions; among the ancient...
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