Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Spectacular passions: eighteenth-century oratory and the reform of eloquence
- 2 Bodies on the borders of politeness: ‘Orator Henley’, Methodist enthusiasm, and polite literature
- 3 Thomas Sheridan: forging the British body
- 4 The art of acting: mid-century stagecraft and the broadcast of feeling
- 5 Polite reading: sentimental fiction and the performance of response
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Thomas Sheridan: forging the British body
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction
- 1 Spectacular passions: eighteenth-century oratory and the reform of eloquence
- 2 Bodies on the borders of politeness: ‘Orator Henley’, Methodist enthusiasm, and polite literature
- 3 Thomas Sheridan: forging the British body
- 4 The art of acting: mid-century stagecraft and the broadcast of feeling
- 5 Polite reading: sentimental fiction and the performance of response
- Epilogue
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
[A] new Book came into the World under the specious Title of BRITISH EDUCATION: said to be wrote by Thomas Sheridan … Bless us, what a Cry was rais'd! Ladies that could not spare time from the Card-table, even on Sundays, to read a Chapter in their Bible, or afford half an Hour to consider how Affairs stand between God and their Souls, yet contrived to snatch some Intervals for the reading of Mr. Sheridan's Book.
Anon. (1769)NATIONAL BODIES
Graves and Goldsmith were writing their works during a period in which the business of forging ‘natural’ eloquence among the subjects of Britain had acquired a new degree of public prominence. Much of this interest in matters of public eloquence was due to the sensational publication in 1756 of Thomas Sheridan's weighty and controversial British Education. This was the first of several works in which Sheridan addressed elocution, and in it he laid out the central contention of all his later writing, arguing that an improvement in standards of oratory – including a reform of the manner in which public bodies should perform – would significantly contribute to the strength and stability of the nation.
When Sheridan thought about his nation, he had in mind ‘Great Britain’ – a relatively new concept in his time, described by Linda Colley in her celebrated Britons: Forging the Nation 1707–1837 as ‘an invented nation superimposed … onto much older alignments and loyalties’.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture , pp. 91 - 113Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2004