The religious text in Daniel Webster's “first Bunker Hill address”

• Andrew C. Hansen ^[1]
  1. [1] Trinity University

     Trinity University

     Estados Unidos

     
• Localización: Southern communication journal, ISSN 1041-794X, Vol. 71, nº 4, 2006, págs. 383-400
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Responding to the need for close textual analyses of rhetorical touchstones in American public address, this essay analyzes Daniel Webster's use of Biblical language in the “First Bunker Hill Address,” tracing it through allusive movements in particular words and finding an intricate world of typologies. My close textual analysis reveals Webster employing coherent Biblical language to define not only the American past but also his immediate rhetorical situation and himself as fit for inclusion into the growing text of America's civil religion. The context that operates within Webster's text works to transform the immediate context in which Webster spoke, potentially reassuring and solidifying a national identity in flux. The results of my focused attention to the Biblical allusions in the text point to the need for further close textual analysis in the determination of how or whether a rhetorical work can be judged a rhetorical touchstone.