Traditions of Rhetoric, Criticism, and Argument in Lord Kames’s Elements of Criticism

Abstract

The recent neglect of Kames’s Elements of Criticism (1762) has been due in part to disciplinary angst which has fostered two incomplete views of Elements: (1) as a work that trains readers in receptive competence and (2) as significant for primarily philosophical reasons. Reading Elements as a rhetoric of criticism, however, suggests first that it is aimed toward production of criticism--not simply reception--although the critical argumentation is oriented toward judgment in terms of universals. Second, it suggests that its significance is practical--that it appeals to readers’ anxieties about the burgeoning British economy.