The Rhetoric of Sensibility in Eighteenth-Century Culture

This wide-ranging study examines the role of the body in a number of eighteenth-century cultural contexts--including oratory, theatre and the novel--and charts the growing links between bodily eloquence and the wider formalities of politeness. Paul Goring shows how writers and performers including Samuel Richardson, David Garrick and Laurence Sterne were involved in the construction of innovative bourgeois ideals of sentimental eloquence in contrast to more patrician, classical bodily...
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This wide-ranging study examines the role of the body in a number of eighteenth-century cultural contexts--including oratory, theatre and the novel--and charts the growing links between bodily eloquence and the wider formalities of politeness. Paul Goring shows how writers and performers including Samuel Richardson, David Garrick and Laurence Sterne were involved in the construction of innovative bourgeois ideals of sentimental eloquence in contrast to more patrician, classical bodily modes, and how the body was caught up in a cultural contest concerning the 'proper' forms of physical expression.