EPISTOLARY RHETORIC IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY

Abstract

Eighteenth-century letter writers took great delight in the form and developed it to a sophisticated art, but invariably theorized that it was spontaneous and conversational . For Alexander Pope, who was among the earliest to publish his personal correspondence, it was a chance to project his ideal private self to counteract the public image of the spiteful satirist. His claim of 'undress' , belied by the elegant style of his crafted letters, is a rhetorical strategy to disarm his addressee into receiving his letters with sympathetic leniency. At a time of separation and feared estrangement, Jonathan Swift's approach in the Journal to Stella is to cultivate the apparatus of intimacy and bedside chats. He attempts to demonstrate the power of writing over experience, to rewrite a reality. Swift's use of masks in his literary works extends to his correspondence. In circumstances of emotion or vulnerability, Swift often prefers to adopt the opposite role, writing in a distanced way or exaggerating the case until it becomes a shield. His dislike of flattery made him prefer to use raillery, delivering a compliment so that it initially appears to be an affront. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu believed in the necessity of 'fig leaves' for the mind, a well-bred reticence in high social circles and feminine letters. Her Turkish Embassy Letters give the scope for pleasing the recipient as an objective witty observer with an eye for new customs, interesting incidents and lyrical descriptions. Her selection of detail and emphases reveal her style to be literary and pleasant, as well as indicating her personal cast of mind through candid and lively accounts of matters other than simply herself. Samuel Richardson's letters differ from narrative familiar letters in being primarily discursive: discussions of his three epistolary novels with a circle of admirers, many of whom are women with no opportunities for formal education. He is a chameleon didactic presence, sometimes playing devil's advocate to provoke and challenge his readers to exercise their minds in casuistical debates with him, meticulously organising facts into the rhetorical arguments of a lawyer. His letters, both in life and in Clarissa, demonstrate the power of manipulating the 'subject' through deliberate selection of fact, emphasizing or omitting, to strengthen the case. The four writers shared a common commitment to a theory of letters as spontaneous and transparent transcriptions of a 'real' self, while practising performativity in their letters. The fact that they all suffered from various disabilities which they tried to overcome, mask or disguise may account for the defensive steps they took to construct a self to counteract the negative images others had of them. Pope's desire to be accepted as the Augustan poet of the age amidst attacks on his physical deformity and Catholicism, Swift’s drive to find fulfilment in a career in the church, Lady Mary's bid to acquire authority though objectivity as the observing writer, and Richardson's zeal as a moralist and social reformer, all fuelled the act of writing and the reinterpretation of the perceived self.