The Elocutionary Rationale of Verse: Poe’s Poetry and Antebellum Eloquence (original) (raw)

Abstract

Poe’s poems and critical writings had numerous points of contact with what has variously been described as the antebellum “culture of eloquence” (Warren 1999) or “oratorical culture” (Clark and Halloran 1993), e. g. the first book publication of “The Raven” in George Vandenhoff’s A Plain System of Elocution (1845), Poe’s comments on lecturing and acting in the pages of the Broadway Journal (82, 89-90, 105, 175, 177, 184, 193, 215, 235, 335, 339), the commission of “Ulalume” by elocution professor Cotesworth P. Bronson (Poe Log, 704), and Poe’s own poetical recitations up to his final lecture on “The Poetic Principle” on September 24th, 1849, in Richmond (Poe Log, 841). This paper examines the most representative cultural, poetical, and theoretical interrelations between antebellum eloquence and Poe’s poetry. Based on the assumption that antebellum poetry in general was “oratorical and occasional” (Wolosky 2010, 53), I shall argue that – in the time of the romantic opposition to rhetorical poetry (Mill [1833] 1981) – it was to elocutionary theories, discourses, and practices that Poe responded, partially affirming and partially subverting them in poems such as “Ulalume,” his recitations of his own and other authors’ poetry, and his critical theories, for instance, in “The Rationale of Verse.” My focus will be on the question how the notion that Poe’s compositions “require actual performance” by the reader (McGann 2013, 871) becomes explicable in terms of antebellum eloquence, ultimately suggesting some of the ways in which Poe’s connections to rhetorical culture are essential in “remapping” antebellum print culture (Kennedy and McGann 2013).

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