Earnestness and Reality: Oratory and Speech in the Fiction of John and Michael Banim

Abstract

The work of John and Michael Banim has often been read against a normative model of British realism. However, it is better to read their work within the contexts of debates about the relationship between literature and oratory. The early nineteenth century saw a transformation in the role and scope of the passions versus reason in theories of rhetoric. Debates within rhetorical theory were matched by concerns in Irish writing about the relationship between sentimental effect and political agency in literature, with the Banims returning in their fictions to moments of oratorical performance to argue for a distinctive form of Irish eloquence that responds to rising British concerns about the violent consequences of Irish political speech. Those concerns became clearly evident in a debate about Irish eloquence between the lawyer Charles Phillips and the Edinburgh Review from 1815–1819, which revolved around eighteenth-century theories concerning the persuasion/conviction duality in rhetorical theory.