William Cobbett
Subtitle: the politics of style
By: Leonora Nattrass.
Series: Cambridge studies in Romanticism ;; 11
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 1995
Place of publication: Cambridge; New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 249
Subjects: Cobbett, William, 1763-1835 -- Literary art.; Rhetoric -- Political aspects -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Journalism -- Great Britain -- History -- 19th century.; Style, Literary.; Polemics.; Great Britain -- Politics and government -- 1789-1820 -- Historiography.
Description: This book offers the first thoroughgoing literary analysis of William Cobbett as a writer. Leonora Nattrass explores the nature and effect of Cobbett's rhetorical strategies, showing through close examination of a broad selection of his polemical writings (from his early American journalism onwards) the complexity, self-consciousness and skill of his stylistic procedures.

Her close readings examine the political implications of Cobbett's style within the broader context of eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century political prose and argue that his perceived ideological and stylistic flaws - inconsistency, bigotry, egoism and political nostalgia - are in fact rhetorical strategies designed to appeal to a range of usually polarized reading audiences. Cobbett's ability to imagine and to address socially divided readers within a single text, the book argues, constitutes a politically disruptive challenge to prevailing political and social assumptions about their respective rights, duties, needs and abilities.

This rereading revises a prevailing critical consensus that Cobbett is an unselfconscious populist whose writings reflect rather than challenge the ideological paradoxes and problems of his time.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 238-246) and index.