ABSTRACT
A classically educated novelist who also distinguished himself as a leading playwright and an influential jurist, Fielding offers a particularly catholic, eloquent perspective on eighteenth-century culture. As Ruben Quintero suggests in his recent study of Alexander Pope's poetry, classical conceptions of rhetoric broadly informed the "literate culture" of eighteenth-century England. Classical judicial rhetoric employs both general or common topics and specialized arguments specific to the particular subject matter. In order to determine the key issues and stock arguments in court cases, rhetors employ elaborate stasis systems. Whereas much scholarship has addressed Henry Fielding's novelistic presentation of legal principles and his attitudes toward the law in general, it has not emphasized in a precise or systematic way his use and depiction of the rhetorical forms of eighteenth-century law. The special territory of advocates, legal or forensic rhetoric centers on distinctions between two or more clearly opposed sides of a case—most basically, justice or injustice, guilt or innocence.
