Civil Tongues and Polite Letters in British America

by David S. Shields

• ISBN13: 9780807823514
• ISBN10: 0807823511
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2012-12-01
• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press

Summary

In cities from Boston to Charleston, elite men and women of eighteenth-century British America came together in private venues to script a polite culture. By examining their various 'texts'--conversations, letters, newspapers, and privately circulated manuscripts--David Shields reconstructs the discourse of civility that flourished in and further shaped elite society in British America.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
List of Illustrations	xi
Introduction: Of Civil Discourse and Private Society	xiii
Prologue	1	(5)
Overture: The Promise of Civil Discourse	6	(5)
Belles Lettres and the Arenas of Metropolitan Conversation	11	(44)
A Conversation in the Suburbs	22	(4)
Politeness and Wit	26	(2)
The Model of Belles Lettres	28	(3)
Sociability	31	(6)
Gentility and Taste	37	(3)
The Spas and the Sexes	40	(6)
The Profanations of Grub Street	46	(9)
Coffeehouse and Tavern	55	(44)
Henry Brooke: The Poet as Agent of Urbanity	65	(14)
Tavern Talk Transfigured	79	(9)
Beyond Politeness	88	(11)
Tea Tables and Salons	99	(42)
Tea and Sympathy	104	(22)
The Garden of Sensibility	126	(15)
Rites of Assembly	141	(34)
At the Ball	145	(13)
Card Games and the Muse	158	(3)
The Sphinx's Challenge	161	(4)
Crambo	165	(3)
The Contest of Wit	168	(7)
The Clubs	175	(34)
The Brotherhood of Fish	189	(9)
The Practice of Good Fellowship	198	(11)
The College, the Press, and the Public	209	(66)
Elegy and the College Cult of Memory	219	(7)
The Religious Sublime	226	(10)
The Polite Christian	236	(7)
Famous Characters and the Defamer	243	(19)
The Duplicities of Print	262	(4)
Old Janus	266	(9)
Gaining Admission	275	(33)
The Rapid Rise of Dr. Dale	277	(24)
An Anatomy of Hospitality	301	(7)
Toward the Polite Republic	308	(21)
Index	329