Rhetorical Analysis

Ed Bull
Rhetorical Analysis – The Algerine Captive – 750 words
LIT 6009
Dr. Lisa Logan

The title page of The Algerine Captive is an unassuming one; there is hardly more than a title, a seal, a brief quote from Shakespeare, and acknowledgements. In the first edition, kept by Evans Early American Imprints, there are no illustrations, and the title page is followed by a dedication and a very straightforward preface.

The unassuming and straightforward dedication, preface, and first chapter of The Algerine Captive reflect of an overall rhetorical strategy to portray the novel as truthful, even factual. To echo Shakespeare’s quote on the title page, a strategy to present the appearance of delivering an “unvarnished tale” (1). To not do so might have placed Tyler among the ranks of the “frivolous” literature to “be deplored” (9).

The preface reveals why Tyler would adopt such a strategy. Beginning with the popularity of novels and their ill effects, the speaker asserts that “no sooner was a taste for amusing literature diffused than all orders of country life, with one accord, forsook the sober sermons and Practical Pieties of their fathers, for the gay stories and splendid impieties of the Traveller and the Novelist” (7). Tyler follows through with an anecdote about “Dolly, the dairy maid, and Jonathan, the hired man” amusing themselves into “so agreeable a terrour … that they were both afraid to sleep alone” and other notes about the corrupting effect of fiction (7-8). By adopting this perspective, Tyler positions himself alongside the very people who might criticize his novel as “frivolous” or “impious,” and then justifies his work with that same credible voice (8). By ending on a story about a woman who throws away Plutarch after enjoying the first volume because “a man of letters had inadvertently told her, the work was founded on FACT,” Tyler invites these would-be critics to demonstrate more enlightenment than this silly young lady (11-12). It would be self-deprecating to not read on. This artful strategy becomes all the more ironic in light of the fictional and outlandish nature of The Algerine Captive—one can’t help but wonder if Tyler’s 18th century readers got a laugh out of the text’s double-cross.

The dedication offers the best hints to the authorial intent of The Algerine Captive. Tyler dedicates his novel to David Humphreys, as a “detail of those miseries of slavery, from which your public energies have principally conduced to liberate hundreds of our fellow citizens” (3). While this mission-statement seems straightforward, it has a certain nuanced ambiguity to it—the novel being titled the “Algerine” captive, a reader could read this as being about captive Americans abroad. Tyler here approaches a potentially hostile audience by stating his intent subtly, easing them into his anti-slavery message through the progression of his novel.
The first chapter begins as an historical account of Updike Underhill’s “honoured ancestor” Captain John Underhill, who, through a series of political upheavals found himself joining “Governour Winthrop” in New England, “disciplining the Boston Militia” and expelled from a position as a judge due to “his ideas of religious toleration being more liberal than those around him” (26-36). The chapter asserts its historical authority by rebuffing “the writers of those times” for misconstruing the story of John Underhill’s banishment from the jurisdiction of Massachusetts—offering an alternate explanation that Captain Underhill was guilty of “ADULTERY OF THE HEART”:

“... instead of noting the referred texts in his bible, according to the profitable custom of the times, this gallant soldier had fixed his eyes stedfastly, and perhaps inordinately, upon one Mistriss Miriam Wilbore; who it seems was, at that very time, herself in the breach of the spirit of an existing law, which forbad women to appear in public with uncovered arms and necks, by appearing at the same lecture with a pair of wanton open worked gloves, slit at the thumbs and fingers, for the conveniency of taking snuff” (32-36).

To present something so ironic and obviously satirical as historical fact takes nerve. Readers would have quickly recognized the openly critical, embellished take on Puritanism run rampant as fictional. Turning that recognition back on their readings of the dedication and preface, and the reversals that that generates, readers could have enjoyed the meta-fictional game that Tyler is playing with them through the use of historical allegory. They would be in on the joke, for lack of a better phrase.

The title, front matter, and first chapter of The Algerine Captive establish credibility for the text and its author, and present the work as factual. In doing so, Tyler appealed to an audience that might otherwise dismiss fiction. The novel subtly communicates its primary message about slavery, while easing potentially hostile audiences into the subject. While reinforcing its historical credibility, the first chapter made religious fundamentalism the brunt of an extended, lighthearted joke, simultaneously letting readers in on its own meta-fictional game.

Works Cited
Tyler, Royall. The Algerine Captive, or, The Life and Adventures of Doctor Updike Underhill. Printed at Walpole, Newhampshire, by David Carlisle, Jun. and sold at his bookstore, 1797. Evans Digital Database. 02 Feb 2009.