“The spouting rant of high-toned exclamation”: The Art of Oral/Aural Caricature in Paine’s Rights Of Man
“The spouting rant of high-toned exclamation”: The Art of Oral/Aural Caricature in Paine’s Rights Of Man

Summary/Abstract: Taking as its starting point Steven Blakemore’s contention that Thomas Paine’s purpose, in writing Rights of Man, was to “linguistically suppress” Edmund Burke, this article explores a comparatively neglected aspect of this attempt at linguistic suppression, namely the deliberate use of punctuation by Paine to undermine his opponent’s authority. Paine’s memorable phrase to characterize Burke’s style, “The spouting rant of high-toned exclamation,” is not simply an instance of the author’s verbal inventiveness. It is deeply rooted in the rich soil of mid- to late eighteenth century Britain, when grammar, punctuation and elocution became the topic of a growing number of books, in a cultural context in which “reading” was widely understood to mean “reading aloud.” Even so-called “silent reading” could not go without a certain amount of subvocalization, thanks to which the reader could be said to “hear,” even internally, the words on the page. All reading therefore involving a degree of performance, this allowed Paine to make devastating use of the exclamation mark to distort significant quotations from Burke and alter the nature of the emotions the original text was supposed to convey. This reminds us that political caricature can be no less oral/aural than visual.

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