Shelley and radical rhetoric

Judged in the context of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century opposition rhetoric, the works of Percy Shelley are forward-looking and individualistic in their temporal and numerical orientations. Despite Shelley\u27s Pyrrhonic tendencies, his rhetoric is characterized by appeals to the future--immediate and intergenerational--and to an benevolent human essence, individually held, but universal in its nature. His forward-looking individualism informs both his rhetoric and his politics. Chapter 1 examines the rhetoric of early opposition writers. The Levellers and the Yorkshire Associations base their claims to legitimacy upon a past in which individual rights were valued. Chapter 2 applies an examination of temporal and numerical orientations to the writers of the Luddite movement, working-class writers who have no need to seek legitimacy among themselves; rather they seek to establish legitimacy for their actions against the manufacturers. Chapter 3 analyzes Shelley\u27s early chameleon tendencies in his letter to William Godwin and his rhetorical failures in his Address to the Irish People. Chapter 4 examines the issue of community-making via rhetoric, focusing on William Cobbett\u27s use of the demonology as a device to build coalitions against an identifiable enemy. Chapter 5 is a discussion of Shelley\u27s rhetorical self- analysis in Alastor and On Love, in which he discovers his own lack of faith in his readers. Chapter 6 establishes Shelley\u27s belief in benevolent essentialism, the inherent human goodness which permits ethical evaluation of texts. Chapter 7 examines the issues of temporal and numerical orientation which will inform the rest of Shelley\u27s work. In the Essay on Christianity Shelley offers a theory of reading which is thoroughly individualistic. Chapter 8 discusses The Colosseum, in which Shelley rejects both the optimistic and pessimistic materialist positions of Byron and Volney, embracing instead the view that individually apprehended truth is capable of being shared via rhetoric, even absent sensory confirmation. Chapter 9 establishes Shelley\u27s intergenerational futurism, demonstrating its sources and its application in his political ballad, The Masque of Anarchy. Chapter 10 concludes with The Cenci, a drama designed to permit the active reading which is Shelley\u27s ideal