297. Gentlemanly Prose

Gentlemanly Prose

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For disambiguation and demystification see critical pedagogy

 and critical theory.

Gentlemanly Prose is a logocentric stylistic deriving from the classical discourse of privileged classes in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, known at the time as "the Republic of Letters."   Its product is variously self-described as writing that is "easy," "simple," "clear," or "perspicuous."

Gentlemanly Theory is the extension of this stylistic into theoretical or philosophical discourse.

Nomenclature.  Practitioners have retained the class- and gender-inappropriate term "gentlemanly" for its historical, and therefore explanatory, function.  "Prose" is synechdochic for non-metricized discourse.

Foundational proponents.  Frequently cited as avatars are Socrates (Attic or Athenian style) and Cicero (Roman style midway between the humble Attic and the aspiring Asiatic style). 

Foundational frame.  The cultural frame, taken to be foundational, is that of slave-holding Greek and slave-holding Roman aristocracies, with corresponding lifestyle: patriarchal banqueting and discourse while women ("flute girls") provide the music.

History.

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Gentlemanly prose in the purest Attic style was first valorized in England by the theorist Francis Bacon, exemplified by the chemist Robert Boyle, and imposed in 1662 by the founders of the Royal Society for the Advancement of Science in their requirements for submitted papers.  The need for "precision and objectivity" paralleled similar needs and similar impositions in France, where René Descartes was the exemplar.

Less pure, but only slightly, was the Attic of philosophers Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, whose conceptual aspirations forced concessions to the Asiatic , making a space for metaphor.

Enlightenment scientists and philosophers retained in their "objectivity" the racialized subjectivity of the Attic avatars, reflecting in the eighteenth century the cultural hegemony of ancient Athens, where Scythian speech was freely called "barbaric" and clumsy forms "barbarisms."  Calling obscure Medieval writers "Gothic" continued this prejudice.

Gentlemanly theorists cite the writing of Joseph Addison as a model of balance between Attic and Asiatic, recreating in the English language Cicero's compromise ("a plain, middle style") in Latin.  Addison's Spectator papers (early eighteenth century) are taken to be the model for the "easy but precise" writing in the magazines produced for the educated middle classes since his time, as now in The New Yorker.  It is the style of Jonathan Swift, taken as the exemplar for longer interventions, observable in the following:

I know not how it comes to pass that professors in most arts and sciences are generally the worst qualified to explain their meaning to those who are not of their tribe.

Politics.  Consciousness-raising efforts have led some gentlemanly practitioners to believe themselves marginalized in some areas of the American university.  They have raised complaints against Communications, Sociology, and English (cultural studies) departments, and have felt condescension in Women's Studies and Black Studies programs.  However, little evidence of oppression has been offered, and none of abuse.  Though many gentlemanly writers are struggling to make a space for themselves, there has been little activism.

Polemics.

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Gentlemanly prose has not lent itself to direct polemical assertion.  Literary satire is favored, as in Alexander Pope's Dunciad, a poem "celebrating the goddess Dulness and the progress of her chosen agents as they bring decay, imbecility, and tastelessness to the Kingdom of Great Britain" (Wikipedia) or in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, third book, satirizing "scientizing pedants" (the theorists' name for them).  The language of all of Dulness's agents, in the Dunciad or out, is taken to be antipodal to the language of liberally educated gentleman.  Duns Scotus, known for jargonized Scholastic abstractions, and giving his name to the Dunciad, is the pole figure.

Difficulty in identifying current targets in these anachronistic satires no doubt accounts for the ineffectiveness of this polemic — that, and their distance from central postcolonial discourse, within which they appear as "belletristic irrelevance."  For those with a sense of political relevance "gentlemanly," then, demarcates not a positivity but simply a positionality vis-à-vis the normative. 

Pedagogy.  Language used in the way of Socrates and Cicero was imposed on students and teachers in the schools identified with the rise of "humanism" and the education called "liberal."  Renaissance court schools like Vittorino's "House of Joy," in which "anything in the nature of fine writing, of prolix or over-laden description, or of empty commonplace decked out in verbiage, was ruthlessly torn apart," are given credit for shifting the paradigm. The revived Ancient and Renaissance models went on to prevail in Oxford and Cambridge tutorial teaching, and the "tearing apart" there was retained in English Composition courses in America where, though often insensitive, gentlemanly prose became generally gender- and class-neutral.  Writers of such  prose held up as models for students today are as likely to be women (like Zoë Heller and Martha Nussbaum) as men (like Atul Gawande and Tony Judt).

Gentlemanly Theory.  Though hidden agendas are suspected, the open agenda of gentlemanly theorists has been to meet objections to gentlemanly prose. Their three most emphatic responses, condensed:

 (1) "No, gentlemanly prose is not just a feature of European cultural hegemony; it appears clearly (in a different idiom, of course) in the classical Chinese of Han scholars.  It appears in India and in Persia.  It is the writing of advanced civilization."

(2) "Yes, the language of Athenian gentlemen, Roman patricians, and Florentine governors is appropriate for the democratic masses in America because Americans — in their periodicals, on their websites — have to debate, and the language of these 'oligarchs' and 'hegemons' is still the best language for democratic debate.  It is clear, ample, and part of an easily dramatized revolutionary tradition: Paris ferment, salon exchanges, editorial wars, biting commentary, plain-spoken philosophy.  It's the great medium of the dialectical testing democracy depends on."

(3) "No, gentlemanly prose is not a belletristic indulgence; it is a necessary feature of realistic philosophy, as witness the appeals to its standards by the Ordinary Language philosophers of Oxford."

Some gentlemanly theorists argue (4) that meeting the standards of gentlemanly prose is a reliable test for sound philosophy.  Since "the slovenliness of our language makes it easier for us to have foolish thoughts" (George Orwell, taken axiomatically), slovenly philosophers are going to present readers with foolish thoughts.  To avoid this "foolishness" careful thinkers are urged to go to the most gentlemanly teacher or tutor they can find.  "Does this word make sense to you?  Is that paragraph foolish?"  It is claimed that no other test or appeal, as to "reality," provides more reliable protection against folly than this.

Philosophy.  A claim for the deepest relevance of gentlemanly prose has been made as follows: "What philosophers most need is a precise language that is in touch with the world.  Gentlemanly prose satisfies that need better than any other. The language of medieval theologians, the Scholastics and other abstract schematizers was, like that of mathematicians and logicians, precise, but it was not in touch with the world. The language of the marketplace, like that of poets and novelists, was in touch with the world, but it wasn't precise.  The gentlemen who held students to the standards of Socrates and Cicero and Locke and Addison were men of the world, in touch with the world, readers of literature that kept them in touch, and therefore the best servants, and trainers, of philosophers" (feetofsocrates 239).