Research Catalog
William Cobbett : the politics of style
- Title
- William Cobbett : the politics of style / Leonora Nattrass.
- Author
- Nattrass, Leonora.
- Publication
- Cambridge ; New York : Cambridge University Press, 1995.
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1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Use in library | DA522.C5 N38 1995 | Off-site |
Details
- Description
- xiii, 249 pages; 24 cm
- Summary
- 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.
- Series Statement
- Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 11
- Uniform Title
- Cambridge studies in Romanticism ; 11.
- Subject
- Cobbett, William, 1763-1835 > Writing skill
- Cobbett, William, 1763-1835
- Cobbett, William 1763-1835
- Cobbett, William
- Cobbett, William, 1763-1835
- 1789-1899
- 1750-1800
- 1800-1850
- Rhetoric > Political aspects > History > Great Britain > 19th century
- Journalism > Great Britain > History > 19th century
- Literary style
- Polemics
- 18.05 English literature
- Journalism
- Politics and government > Historiography
- Rhetoric > Political aspects
- Literarischer Stil
- Style, Literary
- Great Britain > Politics and government > Historiography. > 1789-1820
- Great Britain
- Genre/Form
- History.
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-246) and index.
- Contents
- Introduction: change and continuity -- pt. I. The Creation of Cobbett. 1. Early writings 1792-1800. 2. A version of reaction. 3. Oppositional styles 1804-1816. 4. Representing Old England -- pt. II. Cobbett and His Audience. 5. Dialogue and debate. 6. A radical history. 7. Tracts and teaching. 8. Constituting the nation.
- ISBN
- 0521460360
- 9780521460361
- LCCN
- 94014479
- OCLC
- ocm30110230
- 30110230
- SCSB-14088581
- Owning Institutions
- Princeton University Library