Late-Humanism and Revolutionary Eloquence: James Lovell and His 1771 Boston Massacre Oration

Abstract

Abstract This article reconstructs the context of the first Boston Massacre Oration delivered by James Lovell. It argues that Lovell's rhetorical education and oratorical practice were primarily an offshoot of a classicizing renaissance tradition transmitted by the colonial colleges that faded, blurred and was repurposed in the eighteenth century.