ABSTRACT
A striking number of scholarly articles have focused on the question of whether Thomas De Quincey’s essays on rhetoric offer any coherent and substantive statement about rhetoric’s basic function. De Quincey himself would probably be among the first to acknowledge that they do not, and further to assert that our tendency to search through his writings for precise and efficient guidelines that explain the way rhetoric works is in itself symptomatic of the utilitarian approach to knowledge that his essays attempt to challenge. Although De Quincey’s interest in style resonates with the British rhetorical tradition that preceded him, De Quincey diverges from earlier theorists in demonstrating the intellectual play with words that he advocates rather than methodically describing the central features of rhetoric or providing practical instructions for its proper use. In assuming for his own writing the freedom to explore the subtleties of his topic in an unsystematic fashion, De Quincey directly responds to a modern culture that he diagnoses as too exclusively oriented toward the immediate and practical goals of science and public business. In De Quincey’s view, the creative impulse that preserves the vitality of society can only be recaptured through a rhetorical theory that recognizes the essential unity of style and invention.
