Sir Joshua Reynolds’ nonliterary, preromantic rhetoric

Abstract

Sir Joshua Reynolds was a careful rhetorician whose Discourses on Art has often been misunderstood. Taken as art theory, some critics claim the work to be inferior. However, close intrinsic analysis as a rhetorical system reveals the consistency and theoretical superiority of the work. Some critics have missed the fact that Reynolds speaks to three types of audience in his Discourses and thus they read the work as inconsistent. Reynolds’ theory of genius includes the later romantic concept of genius as well as the neoclassical concept. Critics like Hazlitt and Blake miss this twofold conception when they read into the term only their own romantic meaning. Reynolds also argues for a nonliterary aesthetic and rhetoric of all the arts in answer to Burke's notion of the superiority of literature. Hence in contrast to previous communication scholarship, Reynolds’ work is nonliterary and not just “painterly”