The Evolution of English Prose, 1700-1800: Style, Politeness, and Print Culture

Scholars of eighteenth-century style and rhetoric have keenly felt the need for a comprehensive study describing the evolution of eighteenth-century prose style. Despite worthy contributions from writers like David A. Hansen, James Sutherland, Robert T. Adolph, and others, no single study has answered the fundamental question of whether there was any development in the prose style of the period. The task of writing such a study is made daunting not only by the scope required of such a work--especially if one were to describe both fictional and non-fictional prose--but also by many theoretical and practical issues that cannot easily be resolved. How does one describe a stylistic norm for an historical period? Any linguist or rhetorician can attest to the enormous degree of stylistic variation that exists in the works of even a single author--variation that depends on new rhetorical contexts and occasions. Indeed, since the time of Louis T. Milic's 1967 studies of Swift and style, the question of whether a period style can be described objectively has been a serious issue. Given the stylistic diversity of written discourse, how can one establish adequate stylistic criteria for describing changes in prose spanning a century?

In The Evolution of English Prose, 1700-1800, Carey McIntosh attempts to chart the development of prose style in fiction and non-fiction, fully aware of the difficulties involved. McIntosh argues that grammatical, semantic, and stylistic changes are discernible during the period, while noting that "historical style-studies do not easily escape from uncertainties inherent in the fact that it is difficult to do justice . . . to the complexity and variety of the language in a given period or decade" since "no sampling however extensive can" ever fully represent that period (38). Nevertheless, McIntosh argues, "disproving hypotheses like those I offer here is not easy because any counter evidence can be classified as an exception to them." Thus, the main hypothesis of the book's opening sections, which outline the book's hypotheses on the evolution of eighteenth-century prose, is "both unprovable and unfalsifiable" (38).

This is, of course, a risky assertion to make in the beginning of such a study, but McIntosh nevertheless proceeds to present hypotheses which are provocative and argued with attention to detail and method. His main hypothesis is that English prose, both fiction and non-fiction, does indeed evolve from 1700 to 1800, despite the tendency of some historians to assert that no distinctive changes take place from the early modern period of the seventeenth century to the present (2). McIntosh contends that "by 1790 many of the low, colloquial, informal strands in written English had disappeared, and the middle-class strands [of British English] had been multiplied and gentrified." Essentially, this gentrification process is a movement of the written language away from orality and toward more literate language which was "more polite, precise, correct, and less vernacular than it had been" (3).

This happened, says McIntosh, because of the influence of several factors: the rise of print culture (5); the rise of "standardization" in everything from weights and measures to language (6); increasing prescriptivism in grammars and dictionaries; the New Rhetoric of 1748-93 which emphasized politeness and sensibility for an emerging middle class (10); and finally, the "feminization" of culture (9). (This final term McIntosh appropriates from the works of Ann Douglas and Terry Eagleton. It refers to the "new respect for manners and sentiment" [9] reflected in language and style adapted to show deference for what were perceived as feminine sensibilities.) These influences promote a new stylistic standard that eliminates archaisms, colloquialisms, solecisms, and loosely constructed sentences (28). The prose of the second half of the eighteenth century is characterized by periodic sentences featuring tighter syntactic balance and antithesis, a higher degree of nominalization, abstraction, and polysyllabic diction (31-33), plus more elegant language.

How does McIntosh test his theory? His method, he says, is both rhetorical and pragmatic (13). In short, he studies prescriptive grammars, dictionaries, literary texts, and speeches while doing his best to hold contextual "variables [as] constant as possible" (24). Whenever McIntosh compares samples of discourse of the period--whether from grammar books, essays, or novels--he selects authors from similar social backgrounds addressing similar rhetorical occasions. For example, he compares prefaces to poetic works by Pope and Wordsworth and argues that the style shows Pope to be more colloquial and less verbose than Wordsworth, even though Pope is more elegant than some of the eighteenth-century grammarians described in the preceding chapter (49). Likewise, McIntosh's study of Astell and Wollstonecraft shows that Astell was less gentrified than her successor (50).

The analyses are close and engaging--though on first perusal the reader will wonder how they are to be evaluated fairly since McIntosh has not, at this point, defined what he means when he says he is a rhetorical pragmatist. His theoretical assumptions regarding rhetoric are not explained until near the end of the book when most of the rhetorical analyses of style have been concluded. In the book's final chapter, McIntosh shows how ethos and logos (and apparently pathos, though it doesn't receive its own section) can be analyzed as expressive, veridical, iconic, affective, indexical, and formalist aspects of discourse (230-33). These discursive functions, it turns out, inform McIntosh's analyses in earlier chapters (233). They allow him to show how style is connected to intellectual movements since they identify patterns of form and their relationship to politeness as a cultural ideal (233-35).

How effective is this apparatus? How convincing is the rhetorical approach? In a study as brief as this--just over two hundred pages--McIntosh does not have sufficient space to adequately discuss primary and secondary sources of eighteenth-century prose style--and this compromises the potential effectiveness of his methodology. A case in point: the section on Samuel Johnson's prose style in chapter four. Here McIntosh argues that while Johnson's letters show some of the colloquialism and informality of his less polished predecessors like Pope, Swift, and Addison, his prose in The Rambler is "abstract and general" just as Wimsatt argued over fifty years ago (126-27). McIntosh, in this eleven-page section on Johnson, ignores the decades of scholarship on Johnson's style which has sought to qualify, confirm, or refute Wimsatt's arguments. The reader will find no references to the important work conducted in this area by Alan T. McKenzie, Ian Watt, Donald J. Greene, Pat Rogers, Brian McCrea, Howard D. Weinbrot, and many others. Nor does McIntosh note that many Rambler essays take the form of familiar letters--and thus probably reflect the stylistic practices of Johnson's personal correspondence. And, despite the fact that he studies the language of the novel in Defoe, Richardson, and others, McIntosh does not show whether Johnson's style in Rasselas is comparable to his style in the essay or the epistle. Given such oversights as these in a single section--and others could be cited in the sections on Addison and other authors--can we trust the hypothesis of this study? Can we be persuaded that the "gentrified" prose of the latter half of the period probably imitated Johnson's (31) when the discussion of Johnson alone ignores so much scholarship? When it presents such a small sampling of primary textual evidence? To be entirely persuasive, McIntosh's rhetorical approach would require a more representative sampling of data to demonstrate what he hopes to prove about Johnson and his imitators in the latter part of the eighteenth century.

McIntosh's study will not resolve lingering questions about period styles. Nor will it convince every reader that its methodology and scope are adequate to the task at hand. Nevertheless, McIntosh presents much useful historical information about the culture and milieu that informed the stylistic practices of the eighteenth century. His descriptions of theories of style and language use, past and present, especially in chapters two, seven, and eight, are thorough and say much about how writers in the eighteenth century perceived prose style and prescribed stylistic practice. The debate about actual stylistic practices in the period, however, will continue, though McIntosh's attempt to describe how the culture of politeness affected the sensibilities of eighteenth-century writers ensures that this debate will be better informed. For this reason alone, his efforts here are to be applauded, despite limitations that result less from his methodology than from occasional oversights and problematic choices revealed in its implementation.