Date of Award
2016
Degree Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy in English
Department
English
First Advisor
J. Jennifer Jones
Abstract
This dissertation is an inquiry into the ways rhetoric, as the study of the art of language use, and literature, as the art of written language, were coherently theorized in Enlightenment Scotland to articulate the complex nature of language and its inherent relationship to the human mind and its faculties. The chapters contained in this manuscript dissertation are previously published studies in eighteenth-century Scottish rhetorical theory, examining the multiple and sometimes contradictory legacies of this important body of work on language pedagogy, philosophy of mind and language, and political theory. These studies offer new grounds for examining the legacies of Scottish rhetoric, amongst them the creation of a new aesthetic of language arising from the moral sentiments tradition.
Recommended Citation
Greene-Smith Keefe, Rosaleen, "“A Peculiar Power of Perception”: Scottish Enlightenment Rhetoric and the New Aesthetic of Language" (2016). Open Access Dissertations. Paper 464.
https://digitalcommons.uri.edu/oa_diss/464
Terms of Use
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