Poetic/Rhetorical Ethos and the Performative Power of Words in the “French” Books of The Prelude
Poetic/Rhetorical Ethos and the Performative Power of Words in the “French” Books of The Prelude

Summary/Abstract: Wordsworth attended revolutionary debates in Paris in 1791. As a young republican he felt unskilled in public speaking. When he later sympathized with Tory principles he extolled Burke’s oratorical genius. However, he never disowned his early use of ideologically loaded words like “liberty.” Wordsworth’s poetic ethos is related to collaboration with the reader. Classical argumentation is a feature of his work, but his verse rhetoric favours the performative power of words. The notion of verbal effectiveness percolates through the sensualist reflection on language from Burke to Condillac and the Idéologues. It was also sustained by the reassessment of style in eighteenth century belletrism and rhetoric of communication. Romantic appraisal of ethos undercuts Aristotle’s ideal of the orator’s control over speech, which depends on a measure of balance between ethos, logos and pathos. Unlike Burke’s Ciceronian rhetoric and neoclassical poetics in Reflections on the Revolution in France, Wordsworth’s periodic syntax in Books 9-11 of The Prelude is energized by words geared to deliberative-cum poetic persuasion. Verbal echoes disseminate memorializing effects through such heterodox spots of time as the “hunger-bitten girl” episode. Ethos permeates the poetic persona and his practice of language indiscriminately, infusing words with an unprecedented combination of ethical and ideological ambiguity.

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