The Shattered Majesty of Newman's Spontaneous Style

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Newman's arguments on the importance of rhetoric in education are implicitly attested by the efficacy of his own. Walter Pater spoke for many when he vaunted The Idea of a University for its "perfect handling of a theory." This essay, however, examines the achievement of Newman's writings on education through the other end of the telescope, by focusing on the selfconscious ways he confounds the conventional aesthetics of "perfection": how his Rise and Progress of Universities deploys such a restless, reflexive, ragged prose style, and why it proves so effective in exciting our imaginative sympathies.