The Literary Genres of Edmund Burke

The Literary Genres of Edmund Burke brings a literary perspective to bear upon Edmund Burke's political writings. Burke understood himself to be a `literary' writer, a claim that held a much greater cultural and political significance in his time than it does in our own. This study recontextualizes Burke's writings by exploring what the eighteenth century understood by the term `literature' and by demonstrating how thoroughly he relies on the dominant literary discourses of his time, especially the satire and georgic/didactic modes, in composing his speeches and polemics. From his debt to the Scriblerian satire of Pope and swift to his extensive use of the theatrical metaphor and his forays into the fields of gothic romance, tragedy, and epic, De Bruyn argues that the literary forms Burke uses are instrinsic and indispensable elements in the meanings of his texts, both for himself and for his audience.