A reexamination of Edmund Burke's rhetorical art: A rhetorical struggle between prudence and heroism

Scholars have recognized sharp inconsistencies in Burke's rhetorical abilities. To explain these inconsistencies, this essay explores two distinct conceptions of rhetoric as an instrument of prudential reason and as an existential means of constituting oneself. These two uses of rhetoric, as Burke's writings reveal, commonly take discourse in contradictory directions. In Burke's case, this struggle between rhetorical prudence and rhetorical heroism generated discourse which was at war with itself. In order to further this claim, this essay generally focuses on a largely unexplored body of Burke's rhetoric, his private correspondence.