Dr James Kelly (Exeter / IASH): Irish Orators and Scotch Reviewers: Oratory and persuasion in post-Napoleonic Britain.
This seminar will serve as an introduction to my book, The Figure of Speech: Rhetoric and writing in Irish Romanticism. In the paper I will look at a debate around the nature of Irish oratory sparked by the publications of speeches by the lawyer Charles Phillips and their reception by Scottish reviewers, in particular Henry Brougham in the Edinburgh Review. The post-Napoleonic period saw a growing concern about the role oratory played in popular and radical politics, with the Spa Fields riots of 1816 and the Peterloo Massacre of 1819 all connected to the dangerous potential of speech to rouse a populace to revolt. 1819 also saw the publication of Phillips’ Specimens of Irish Eloquence; what can legitimately be called the first anthology of specifically Irish oratory. The debates about the role of ornament, emotion, and enthusiasm in Irish political speech would have a profound effect on how Irish literature and Irish writers conceptualised their own participation in a national literature, as well as tying into wider concerns about oratory, politics, and revolution in the period.