Jane Austen’s Ethical Conversations
Jane Austen, the great chronicler of the leisured classes from 1790 to
1817, recognised the centrality of both “conversation” as an ideal and
“conversations” as practice in the lives she portrayed. In her novels, as in
Hume’s philosophy, there is a close and important link between
conversation and moral or ethical judgement. Austen is famously
economical with her use of visual description; it is through the voices of
her characters, either in direct speech or through her characteristic free
indirect speech that a reader comes to know them. Austen’s style is, in this
sense, truly “conversational” but she also uses the term “conversation” in a
very specific sense. Conversation, for her, is differentiated from mere
social communications. In Persuasion (1818), Anne Elliot regrets, for
example, that she and Wentworth had had “no conversation together, no
intercourse but what the commonest civility required”.20
Conversation must be meaningful, either emotionally or intellectually.
The difference between communication that is not conversation and
conversation itself is clearly spelt out in Northanger Abbey (1818), where
the imbecilic Mrs Allen spends the chief of her days “by the side of Mrs.
Thorpe, in what they called conversation, but in which there was scarcely
ever any exchange of opinion, and not often any resemblance of subject,
for Mrs. Thorpe talked chiefly of her children, and Mrs. Allen of her
gowns.”21 Although Emma Woodhouse and her father communicate all the
time, he “cannot meet her in conversation, either rational or playful”.22
Similarly, in Sense and Sensibility (1811), Elinor Dashwood is constantly
listening to others, but has very little conversation: “Neither Lady
Middleton nor Mrs. Jennings could supply to her the conversation she
missed; although the latter was an everlasting talker, and from the first had
regarded her with a kindness which ensured her a large share of her
discourse.”23
Conversation is vital in an Austen novel, because without it, it is
impossible to know another person—it is only through what they say and
how they interact that judgements about their character can be made. In
Mansfield Park (1813), for example, it is Mary Crawford’s conversation
that exposes her, for it demonstrates both her charm and her insincerity.
Edmund Bertram is bewitched by Mary’s liveliness and wit, but her moral
unsuitability is nonetheless revealed beneath the charms of her
conversation. Both Edmund and Fanny Price (the moral arbiter of the
novel) recognize that there was something “in her conversation that struck
you as not quite right” as soon as they meet her, and even when he is most
in love with her, Edmund worries that “the influence of her former
xvi Introduction
companions makes her seem—gives to her conversation, to her professed
opinions, sometimes a tinge of wrong.”24 Mary reveals her moral
slipperiness by her verbal slipperiness: in a conversation about
conversations, she shows that she is happy to play around with the truth,
and that she fundamentally misunderstands the ethical necessity of
sincerity in conversation: “Never is a black word. But yes, in the never of
conversation, which means not very often, I do think it.”25
In an Austen novel, real conversation is impossible with someone who
is dishonest. The wickedness of her villains hinges almost entirely on their
untruthfulness. Unlike those of her contemporaries, Austen’s villains
rarely behave badly within the timescale of the novels. We may hear of
their previous misdoings—such as Willoughby’s seduction of Colonel
Brandon’s ward in the pre-history of Sense and Sensibility, or William
Walter Elliot’s unkindness to Mrs Smith in the pre-history of
Persuasion—but their wickedness within the novels always depends on
their verbal deceptions. Conversations are essential to knowledge of
another person in an Austen novel, but they are also peculiarly vulnerable
to exploitation. Emma Woodhouse is taken in by Frank Churchill because
of his plausibility as a conversationalist, and she is hurt by the difference
between what he says and what he is. As a novelist, Austen naturally
exploits the gap between speech and meaning—as she puts it in Emma,
“Seldom, very seldom, does complete truth belong to any human
disclosure; seldom can it happen that something is not a little disguised, or
a little mistaken”.26 As a moralist, however, she is deeply suspicious of
things that are disguised or mistaken, demonstrating the virtues of
sincerity and the dangers of insincerity in conversation through the plots of
her novels. For Austen, therefore, the term conversation has a moral
imperative: not only should it be meaningful and intelligent, it should also
be sincere. Like Shaftesbury, Austen also recognises the importance of the
particular relationship between text and reader, and moulds the relatively
new genre of the novel into a form that could create an ethical
conversation between text and reader. Austen’s famously spare, elliptical
and elegant novels demand from their readers a particular type of readerly
engagement: a willingness to fill in the gaps that are deliberately left open
for interpretation. At the same time, the narrative voice subtly manipulates
readers, ensuring that we are encouraged to recognise the difference
between good and bad choices, ethical and unethical behaviour.27
Austen’s faith in the morality of conversation28 and her recognition of
the dangers of the exploitation of conversation puts her squarely in a
tradition of female Christian moralists. Eliza Haywood is relevant here,
but we wish to focus briefly on Hannah More. Although elsewhere Austen
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth
Century, 1688-1848
xvii
mocks and parodies More, their views on conversation are strongly
congruent. Hannah More’s Strictures on the Modern System of Female
Education (1799) contains a long chapter on conversation, in which she
points out conversation’s vulnerability to the dangers of affectation, false
wit, pedantry, vanity, irreligion, flattery, duplicity, and a whole catalogue
of other sins. However, she claims that conversation also has an inherent
moral value precisely because of these dangers; by struggling against the
temptation to show off in conversation, we strengthen our Christian
humility:
Conversation must not be considered as a stage for the display of our
talents, so much as a field for the exercise and improvement of our virtues;
as a means for promoting the glory of our Creator, and the good and
happiness of our fellow-creatures. Well-bred and intelligent Christians are
not, when they join in society, to consider themselves as entering the lists
like intellectual prize-fighters, in order to exhibit their own vigour and
dexterity, to discomfit their adversary, and to bear away the palm of
victory. Truth and not triumph should be the invariable object; and there
are few occasions in life, in which we are more unremittingly called upon
to watch ourselves narrowly, and to resist the assaults of various
temptations, than in conversation. Vanity, jealousy, envy, misrepresentation,
resentment, disdain, levity, impatience, insincerity, and pride, will in turn
solicit to be gratified. Constantly to struggle against the desire of being
thought more wise, more witty, and more knowing, than those with whom
we associate, demands the incessant exertion of Christian vigilance; a
vigilance which the generality are far from suspecting to be at all necessary
in the intercourse of common society. On the contrary, cheerful
conversation is rather considered as an exemption and release from
watchfulness, than as an additional obligation to it. But a circumspect
soldier of Christ will never be off his post; even when he is not called to
public combat by the open assaults of his great spiritual enemy, he must
still be acting as a centinel (sic), for the dangers of an ordinary Christian
will arise more from these little skirmishes which are daily happening in
the warfare of human life, than from those pitched battles that more rarely
occur, and for which he will probably think it sufficient to be armed.29
For both Hannah More and Jane Austen, conversation is to some extent a
battleground, a struggle with oneself and one’s conversational partner to
discover truths about both self and other. To converse is to make oneself
vulnerable, but in doing so, to make oneself stronger. Conversation
encourages skirmishes with evils of many kinds, but it allows people to
resist and conquer these evils. It is for this reason that it can be a moral
force for the good, as well as a dangerous tool in the hands of evil. More’s
martial rhetoric, referencing the battlefield and the jousting list, may seem
xviii Introduction
to us overblown and faintly ridiculous, but More is by no means unique
among eighteenth-century writers in conceptualizing conversational
choices starkly in terms of good and bad, right and wrong, and when
focusing on the long eighteenth century, it is always as well to bear in
mind the moral framework within which long eighteenth-century writers
understood themselves to be working. We may not generally associate the
Evangelical Hannah More with the sceptical David Hume, but we see here
an unusual degree of agreement in their shared interest in the moral value
of conversation. While the motive for paying careful attention to
conversational habits and practices is different for Hume and More, the
result is the same: the purpose is to make individuals into better citizens of
the social world.
Selasa, 13 Oktober 2015
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1848 part 3
After Habermas
The eighteenth century has long been regarded as an “age of
conversation” in which forms of polite sociability developed (conversation
in this period could mean “company” or “society”), structured around
metropolitan coffee-houses, clubs, salons and country-house entertaining.
Much influenced by Jürgen Habermas’s account of the “public sphere”, an
idealized model of human interaction in the Enlightenment emerges in
which European bourgeois subjects congregate in the newly created social
spaces of salons and coffee-houses to exchange ideas freely, equally and
reasonably in an environment governed by the rules of politeness.4 These
gentlemen spoke on their own authority on what the period characterized
as matters of “general ethical humanism, indissociable from moral,
cultural and religious reflection.”5 According to Habermas, such
conversations developed into a critical discourse, through which the
people monitored state authority, and modern democracy was ultimately
born.
Habermas’s account has itself been subject to much criticism in recent
scholarship, usually on the grounds that his idealized model of the
bourgeois public sphere as rational, male and egalitarian rests on a set of
unsustainable exclusions.6 Further, as Peter de Bolla points out in Chapter
Nine of this volume, Habermas’s account is seriously flawed in the ways
he understands, and demarcates, private and public experience in the
eighteenth century. Indeed de Bolla suggests that the Habermasian notion
of the “public sphere”, whether accepted or contested as an account of
aspects of the period, has become “so ubiquitous in the scholarship on the
Enlightenment … that its utility may no longer be very significant.” With
this scepticism towards Habermas’s account in mind, it is noteworthy that
a number of authors in this volume offer versions of conversation that,
explicitly or implicitly, depart from the Habermasian ideal: Ludmilla
Jordanova discusses James Northcote’s gossipy, competitive conversations,
motivated by personal relationships and rivalry; Paul Kerry cites the
familiar “rational-critical” characterization of conversation in eighteenthcentury Germany, only to show how Heinrich von Kleist’s concept of
conversation differs from this; and Jay Fliegelman charts the discrepancies
between democratic ideals of conversation and their practical embodiments.
Further, if we no longer read eighteenth-century conversational
concepts and practices through a Habermasian lens, two possibilities–not
necessarily mutually exclusive–become open to us. Firstly, we may find
ourselves giving less weight to those well-known documents of
eighteenth-century rational conversation that are often invoked by
xii Introduction
commentators on the period, namely, the periodicals, The Tatler and The
Spectator, the writings of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of
Shaftesbury and some of David Hume’s essays. These texts’ emphases on
the improvement and cultivation of the human subject by means of
reasonable conversation on “History, Poetry, Politics”7 may chime with
Habermas’s account of the public sphere, but are–we now know–only one
version of conversation in the eighteenth century, and not necessarily the
dominant one. As Markman Ellis, for example, has shown, rational and
improving conversation had to vie for attention with other forms of
sociability that were “vulgar, popular, subversive, grotesque and sexual”.8
Future research will give us a more accurate map of the relative
significance of rational and “unruly” conversations in the period.9
Secondly, if we are no longer to regard these texts as providing us with
descriptive accounts of life in the eighteenth-century coffee-house or
salon, or perhaps more accurately, accounts of the point at which a
conceptual ideal of conversation is embodied in practice, we are free to see
them as something else: contributions to the normative intellectual projects
of their authors, to their conceptualizations of the disciplines within which
they wrote. To take one key example, Lord Shaftesbury’s ambition to
rescue “philosophy … from colleges and cells” and place it in the domain
of “modern conversations”10 is imitated, linguistically and conceptually,
by Addison and Hume. These texts of Shaftesbury, Addison and Hume are
now taken as exemplars of the spirit of the Habermasian public sphere,
with conversation read invariably as synonymous with rational sociability.
Such glosses may well be valid for Addison’s reinterpretation of
Shaftesbury. They can certainly be substantiated by comments to be found
throughout his periodicals and his well-documented attempts to encourage,
and participate in, what would now be regarded as the culture of the
Enlightenment public sphere. Shaftesbury’s original declaration, however,
has little to do with the construction of a “bourgeois public sphere”, and
everything to do with his conceptualization of philosophy, and in
particular, moral philosophy. As Lawrence Klein writes:
Shaftesbury thought that philosophy should make people effective
participants in the world. It was a practical enterprise and, given the
disabilities from which humans generally suffered, often a therapeutic
one.11
For Shaftesbury, philosophy’s task was to produce moral agents.
Crucially, these putative agents must experience philosophy
conversationally: the two-way interchange of moral ideas (in contrast to a
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth
Century, 1688-1848
xiii
“top-down” model of transmitting knowledge) encouraged the sought-after
activity and autonomy in the learning subject.12
In this instance, then, conversation is to be understood as a method of
communicating philosophy, as well as the means of making the concept of
practical philosophy a reality: it is necessary to execute Shaftesbury’s
prescriptive philosophical project. Shaftesbury suggests that the language
of philosophy should resemble that of “good company and people of the
better sort”13, but he does not inextricably link philosophical conversation
and the public sphere. The conversations or scenes of instruction he has in
mind could take place almost anywhere–not necessarily in a salon or
coffee-house–and what distinguishes them from other forms of linguistic
exchange is their pedagogic function. Shaftesbury’s notion of conversation
is indebted to classical as well as contemporary models and his rescuing of
philosophy is, in part, understood as a return to its classical heritage. Most
important for us, however, is Shaftesbury’s formulation of a distinctive
concept of conversation which accounts for a particular interaction
between the reader and philosophical text. Any readerly experience which
falls short of engagement with this active pedagogy cannot be classified as
properly conversational in Shaftesbury’s terms.
If we now turn to consider David Hume’s “Of Essay Writing” in
relation to Shaftesbury, instead of in relation to Habermas, we find
discussions of the nature of philosophical language, its relationship to
conversational forms and the role of philosophy, rather than a document in
the development of the Habermasian public sphere. Thus the demise of
philosophy, gone “to Wrack by this moaping (sic) recluse Method of
Study”, is exemplified by its linguistic deficiencies: philosophy is “as
chimerical in her Conclusions as she was unintelligible in her Stile and
Manner of Delivery.” Hume argues that philosophical discourse should
model itself on conversation, and that philosophers require experience of
conversation to acquire the “Facility of Thought and Expression”14
necessary to communicate with their audiences. Hume’s central concern is
the formation of a viable philosophical discourse which would succeed in
“alluring us into the paths of virtue by the views of glory and happiness
…”, “…make us feel the difference between vice and virtue” and “excite
and regulate our sentiments”15 without sacrificing “the Substance to the
Shadow.”16 This is philosophical discourse conceptualized in terms of
conversation, and such conversation as ethical sentimental education.
For Hume and Shaftesbury, then, conversation is understood primarily
as a specific means of communicating between readers and philosophical
texts. Such writings draw on conversational forms in order to enable twoway conversations between writers and readers. Thus conversation in this
xiv Introduction
sense becomes conceptualized, to a large extent, as the antithesis of
Habermasian sociability. In The Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock
relates Machiavelli’s account to Francesco Vettori of “how he comes
home in the evening, puts on formal clothing, and enters into the presence
and conversation of the ancients by reading their books. The conversation
is meant to restore Machiavelli not only to the understanding of politics,
but indirectly to actual civic participation”.17 Hume’s and Shaftesbury’s
readers are prepared, if not for civic participation, at least for ethical
conduct, but, like Machiavelli, they are prepared indirectly, and frequently
alone, through reading. The human interactions, quick-fire exchanges and
bustle of the salon or coffee-house are far away. Instead, the philosophical
text as conversation seeks to shape the subject who may afterwards
become a social subject in the form of, for example, a Humean moral
agent. Towards the end of the long eighteenth century, however, this
particular connection between private and public selves began to
disintegrate. Paul Hamilton writes of the “romantic habit” of “recovery
through one’s own aesthetic…of an intimacy with past writers which can
restore their readers to the citizenship of a neglected republic.”18 For
Hamilton, romantic readers are still characterized according to the
conversational model: they experience “intimacy” with writers. But their
“citizenship” is of a “neglected republic”, that is, an historical or forgotten
state. And there is no mention of virtue or ethics, as there is in Hume and
Shaftesbury. It seems that these romantic textual conversations, in contrast
to those of the earlier eighteenth century, will end in fantasy or illusion.
The early to mid eighteenth-century concept of conversation as a two-way
interaction between reader and text, in which a specific type of
philosophical discourse formed ethical, self-governing subjects, is no
longer in extensive use.
Hume’s belief in the moral and educational value of conversational
forms is taken up and reformulated in much eighteenth-century writing,
perhaps most notably in the didactic and advice literature discussed by
Michèle Cohen in Chapter Six of this volume, but also in the fiction—by
writers such as Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth,
Hannah More, Mary Brunton, Jane West and even Laurence Sterne—of
the long eighteenth century. Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-
54), for example, notably educates its female protagonists, Harriet, Emily
and Charlotte, through the medium of the conversations held in the cedar
parlour. We turn now to one of Richardson’s most dedicated readers, Jane
Austen, 19 who learned much from the pedagogical scenes of conversation
in Grandison, discovering in them a stylistic technique that she could
appropriate and perfect.
The eighteenth century has long been regarded as an “age of
conversation” in which forms of polite sociability developed (conversation
in this period could mean “company” or “society”), structured around
metropolitan coffee-houses, clubs, salons and country-house entertaining.
Much influenced by Jürgen Habermas’s account of the “public sphere”, an
idealized model of human interaction in the Enlightenment emerges in
which European bourgeois subjects congregate in the newly created social
spaces of salons and coffee-houses to exchange ideas freely, equally and
reasonably in an environment governed by the rules of politeness.4 These
gentlemen spoke on their own authority on what the period characterized
as matters of “general ethical humanism, indissociable from moral,
cultural and religious reflection.”5 According to Habermas, such
conversations developed into a critical discourse, through which the
people monitored state authority, and modern democracy was ultimately
born.
Habermas’s account has itself been subject to much criticism in recent
scholarship, usually on the grounds that his idealized model of the
bourgeois public sphere as rational, male and egalitarian rests on a set of
unsustainable exclusions.6 Further, as Peter de Bolla points out in Chapter
Nine of this volume, Habermas’s account is seriously flawed in the ways
he understands, and demarcates, private and public experience in the
eighteenth century. Indeed de Bolla suggests that the Habermasian notion
of the “public sphere”, whether accepted or contested as an account of
aspects of the period, has become “so ubiquitous in the scholarship on the
Enlightenment … that its utility may no longer be very significant.” With
this scepticism towards Habermas’s account in mind, it is noteworthy that
a number of authors in this volume offer versions of conversation that,
explicitly or implicitly, depart from the Habermasian ideal: Ludmilla
Jordanova discusses James Northcote’s gossipy, competitive conversations,
motivated by personal relationships and rivalry; Paul Kerry cites the
familiar “rational-critical” characterization of conversation in eighteenthcentury Germany, only to show how Heinrich von Kleist’s concept of
conversation differs from this; and Jay Fliegelman charts the discrepancies
between democratic ideals of conversation and their practical embodiments.
Further, if we no longer read eighteenth-century conversational
concepts and practices through a Habermasian lens, two possibilities–not
necessarily mutually exclusive–become open to us. Firstly, we may find
ourselves giving less weight to those well-known documents of
eighteenth-century rational conversation that are often invoked by
xii Introduction
commentators on the period, namely, the periodicals, The Tatler and The
Spectator, the writings of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of
Shaftesbury and some of David Hume’s essays. These texts’ emphases on
the improvement and cultivation of the human subject by means of
reasonable conversation on “History, Poetry, Politics”7 may chime with
Habermas’s account of the public sphere, but are–we now know–only one
version of conversation in the eighteenth century, and not necessarily the
dominant one. As Markman Ellis, for example, has shown, rational and
improving conversation had to vie for attention with other forms of
sociability that were “vulgar, popular, subversive, grotesque and sexual”.8
Future research will give us a more accurate map of the relative
significance of rational and “unruly” conversations in the period.9
Secondly, if we are no longer to regard these texts as providing us with
descriptive accounts of life in the eighteenth-century coffee-house or
salon, or perhaps more accurately, accounts of the point at which a
conceptual ideal of conversation is embodied in practice, we are free to see
them as something else: contributions to the normative intellectual projects
of their authors, to their conceptualizations of the disciplines within which
they wrote. To take one key example, Lord Shaftesbury’s ambition to
rescue “philosophy … from colleges and cells” and place it in the domain
of “modern conversations”10 is imitated, linguistically and conceptually,
by Addison and Hume. These texts of Shaftesbury, Addison and Hume are
now taken as exemplars of the spirit of the Habermasian public sphere,
with conversation read invariably as synonymous with rational sociability.
Such glosses may well be valid for Addison’s reinterpretation of
Shaftesbury. They can certainly be substantiated by comments to be found
throughout his periodicals and his well-documented attempts to encourage,
and participate in, what would now be regarded as the culture of the
Enlightenment public sphere. Shaftesbury’s original declaration, however,
has little to do with the construction of a “bourgeois public sphere”, and
everything to do with his conceptualization of philosophy, and in
particular, moral philosophy. As Lawrence Klein writes:
Shaftesbury thought that philosophy should make people effective
participants in the world. It was a practical enterprise and, given the
disabilities from which humans generally suffered, often a therapeutic
one.11
For Shaftesbury, philosophy’s task was to produce moral agents.
Crucially, these putative agents must experience philosophy
conversationally: the two-way interchange of moral ideas (in contrast to a
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth
Century, 1688-1848
xiii
“top-down” model of transmitting knowledge) encouraged the sought-after
activity and autonomy in the learning subject.12
In this instance, then, conversation is to be understood as a method of
communicating philosophy, as well as the means of making the concept of
practical philosophy a reality: it is necessary to execute Shaftesbury’s
prescriptive philosophical project. Shaftesbury suggests that the language
of philosophy should resemble that of “good company and people of the
better sort”13, but he does not inextricably link philosophical conversation
and the public sphere. The conversations or scenes of instruction he has in
mind could take place almost anywhere–not necessarily in a salon or
coffee-house–and what distinguishes them from other forms of linguistic
exchange is their pedagogic function. Shaftesbury’s notion of conversation
is indebted to classical as well as contemporary models and his rescuing of
philosophy is, in part, understood as a return to its classical heritage. Most
important for us, however, is Shaftesbury’s formulation of a distinctive
concept of conversation which accounts for a particular interaction
between the reader and philosophical text. Any readerly experience which
falls short of engagement with this active pedagogy cannot be classified as
properly conversational in Shaftesbury’s terms.
If we now turn to consider David Hume’s “Of Essay Writing” in
relation to Shaftesbury, instead of in relation to Habermas, we find
discussions of the nature of philosophical language, its relationship to
conversational forms and the role of philosophy, rather than a document in
the development of the Habermasian public sphere. Thus the demise of
philosophy, gone “to Wrack by this moaping (sic) recluse Method of
Study”, is exemplified by its linguistic deficiencies: philosophy is “as
chimerical in her Conclusions as she was unintelligible in her Stile and
Manner of Delivery.” Hume argues that philosophical discourse should
model itself on conversation, and that philosophers require experience of
conversation to acquire the “Facility of Thought and Expression”14
necessary to communicate with their audiences. Hume’s central concern is
the formation of a viable philosophical discourse which would succeed in
“alluring us into the paths of virtue by the views of glory and happiness
…”, “…make us feel the difference between vice and virtue” and “excite
and regulate our sentiments”15 without sacrificing “the Substance to the
Shadow.”16 This is philosophical discourse conceptualized in terms of
conversation, and such conversation as ethical sentimental education.
For Hume and Shaftesbury, then, conversation is understood primarily
as a specific means of communicating between readers and philosophical
texts. Such writings draw on conversational forms in order to enable twoway conversations between writers and readers. Thus conversation in this
xiv Introduction
sense becomes conceptualized, to a large extent, as the antithesis of
Habermasian sociability. In The Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock
relates Machiavelli’s account to Francesco Vettori of “how he comes
home in the evening, puts on formal clothing, and enters into the presence
and conversation of the ancients by reading their books. The conversation
is meant to restore Machiavelli not only to the understanding of politics,
but indirectly to actual civic participation”.17 Hume’s and Shaftesbury’s
readers are prepared, if not for civic participation, at least for ethical
conduct, but, like Machiavelli, they are prepared indirectly, and frequently
alone, through reading. The human interactions, quick-fire exchanges and
bustle of the salon or coffee-house are far away. Instead, the philosophical
text as conversation seeks to shape the subject who may afterwards
become a social subject in the form of, for example, a Humean moral
agent. Towards the end of the long eighteenth century, however, this
particular connection between private and public selves began to
disintegrate. Paul Hamilton writes of the “romantic habit” of “recovery
through one’s own aesthetic…of an intimacy with past writers which can
restore their readers to the citizenship of a neglected republic.”18 For
Hamilton, romantic readers are still characterized according to the
conversational model: they experience “intimacy” with writers. But their
“citizenship” is of a “neglected republic”, that is, an historical or forgotten
state. And there is no mention of virtue or ethics, as there is in Hume and
Shaftesbury. It seems that these romantic textual conversations, in contrast
to those of the earlier eighteenth century, will end in fantasy or illusion.
The early to mid eighteenth-century concept of conversation as a two-way
interaction between reader and text, in which a specific type of
philosophical discourse formed ethical, self-governing subjects, is no
longer in extensive use.
Hume’s belief in the moral and educational value of conversational
forms is taken up and reformulated in much eighteenth-century writing,
perhaps most notably in the didactic and advice literature discussed by
Michèle Cohen in Chapter Six of this volume, but also in the fiction—by
writers such as Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth,
Hannah More, Mary Brunton, Jane West and even Laurence Sterne—of
the long eighteenth century. Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-
54), for example, notably educates its female protagonists, Harriet, Emily
and Charlotte, through the medium of the conversations held in the cedar
parlour. We turn now to one of Richardson’s most dedicated readers, Jane
Austen, 19 who learned much from the pedagogical scenes of conversation
in Grandison, discovering in them a stylistic technique that she could
appropriate and perfect.
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1848 part 3
After Habermas
The eighteenth century has long been regarded as an “age of
conversation” in which forms of polite sociability developed (conversation
in this period could mean “company” or “society”), structured around
metropolitan coffee-houses, clubs, salons and country-house entertaining.
Much influenced by Jürgen Habermas’s account of the “public sphere”, an
idealized model of human interaction in the Enlightenment emerges in
which European bourgeois subjects congregate in the newly created social
spaces of salons and coffee-houses to exchange ideas freely, equally and
reasonably in an environment governed by the rules of politeness.4 These
gentlemen spoke on their own authority on what the period characterized
as matters of “general ethical humanism, indissociable from moral,
cultural and religious reflection.”5 According to Habermas, such
conversations developed into a critical discourse, through which the
people monitored state authority, and modern democracy was ultimately
born.
Habermas’s account has itself been subject to much criticism in recent
scholarship, usually on the grounds that his idealized model of the
bourgeois public sphere as rational, male and egalitarian rests on a set of
unsustainable exclusions.6 Further, as Peter de Bolla points out in Chapter
Nine of this volume, Habermas’s account is seriously flawed in the ways
he understands, and demarcates, private and public experience in the
eighteenth century. Indeed de Bolla suggests that the Habermasian notion
of the “public sphere”, whether accepted or contested as an account of
aspects of the period, has become “so ubiquitous in the scholarship on the
Enlightenment … that its utility may no longer be very significant.” With
this scepticism towards Habermas’s account in mind, it is noteworthy that
a number of authors in this volume offer versions of conversation that,
explicitly or implicitly, depart from the Habermasian ideal: Ludmilla
Jordanova discusses James Northcote’s gossipy, competitive conversations,
motivated by personal relationships and rivalry; Paul Kerry cites the
familiar “rational-critical” characterization of conversation in eighteenthcentury Germany, only to show how Heinrich von Kleist’s concept of
conversation differs from this; and Jay Fliegelman charts the discrepancies
between democratic ideals of conversation and their practical embodiments.
Further, if we no longer read eighteenth-century conversational
concepts and practices through a Habermasian lens, two possibilities–not
necessarily mutually exclusive–become open to us. Firstly, we may find
ourselves giving less weight to those well-known documents of
eighteenth-century rational conversation that are often invoked by
xii Introduction
commentators on the period, namely, the periodicals, The Tatler and The
Spectator, the writings of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of
Shaftesbury and some of David Hume’s essays. These texts’ emphases on
the improvement and cultivation of the human subject by means of
reasonable conversation on “History, Poetry, Politics”7 may chime with
Habermas’s account of the public sphere, but are–we now know–only one
version of conversation in the eighteenth century, and not necessarily the
dominant one. As Markman Ellis, for example, has shown, rational and
improving conversation had to vie for attention with other forms of
sociability that were “vulgar, popular, subversive, grotesque and sexual”.8
Future research will give us a more accurate map of the relative
significance of rational and “unruly” conversations in the period.9
Secondly, if we are no longer to regard these texts as providing us with
descriptive accounts of life in the eighteenth-century coffee-house or
salon, or perhaps more accurately, accounts of the point at which a
conceptual ideal of conversation is embodied in practice, we are free to see
them as something else: contributions to the normative intellectual projects
of their authors, to their conceptualizations of the disciplines within which
they wrote. To take one key example, Lord Shaftesbury’s ambition to
rescue “philosophy … from colleges and cells” and place it in the domain
of “modern conversations”10 is imitated, linguistically and conceptually,
by Addison and Hume. These texts of Shaftesbury, Addison and Hume are
now taken as exemplars of the spirit of the Habermasian public sphere,
with conversation read invariably as synonymous with rational sociability.
Such glosses may well be valid for Addison’s reinterpretation of
Shaftesbury. They can certainly be substantiated by comments to be found
throughout his periodicals and his well-documented attempts to encourage,
and participate in, what would now be regarded as the culture of the
Enlightenment public sphere. Shaftesbury’s original declaration, however,
has little to do with the construction of a “bourgeois public sphere”, and
everything to do with his conceptualization of philosophy, and in
particular, moral philosophy. As Lawrence Klein writes:
Shaftesbury thought that philosophy should make people effective
participants in the world. It was a practical enterprise and, given the
disabilities from which humans generally suffered, often a therapeutic
one.11
For Shaftesbury, philosophy’s task was to produce moral agents.
Crucially, these putative agents must experience philosophy
conversationally: the two-way interchange of moral ideas (in contrast to a
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth
Century, 1688-1848
xiii
“top-down” model of transmitting knowledge) encouraged the sought-after
activity and autonomy in the learning subject.12
In this instance, then, conversation is to be understood as a method of
communicating philosophy, as well as the means of making the concept of
practical philosophy a reality: it is necessary to execute Shaftesbury’s
prescriptive philosophical project. Shaftesbury suggests that the language
of philosophy should resemble that of “good company and people of the
better sort”13, but he does not inextricably link philosophical conversation
and the public sphere. The conversations or scenes of instruction he has in
mind could take place almost anywhere–not necessarily in a salon or
coffee-house–and what distinguishes them from other forms of linguistic
exchange is their pedagogic function. Shaftesbury’s notion of conversation
is indebted to classical as well as contemporary models and his rescuing of
philosophy is, in part, understood as a return to its classical heritage. Most
important for us, however, is Shaftesbury’s formulation of a distinctive
concept of conversation which accounts for a particular interaction
between the reader and philosophical text. Any readerly experience which
falls short of engagement with this active pedagogy cannot be classified as
properly conversational in Shaftesbury’s terms.
If we now turn to consider David Hume’s “Of Essay Writing” in
relation to Shaftesbury, instead of in relation to Habermas, we find
discussions of the nature of philosophical language, its relationship to
conversational forms and the role of philosophy, rather than a document in
the development of the Habermasian public sphere. Thus the demise of
philosophy, gone “to Wrack by this moaping (sic) recluse Method of
Study”, is exemplified by its linguistic deficiencies: philosophy is “as
chimerical in her Conclusions as she was unintelligible in her Stile and
Manner of Delivery.” Hume argues that philosophical discourse should
model itself on conversation, and that philosophers require experience of
conversation to acquire the “Facility of Thought and Expression”14
necessary to communicate with their audiences. Hume’s central concern is
the formation of a viable philosophical discourse which would succeed in
“alluring us into the paths of virtue by the views of glory and happiness
…”, “…make us feel the difference between vice and virtue” and “excite
and regulate our sentiments”15 without sacrificing “the Substance to the
Shadow.”16 This is philosophical discourse conceptualized in terms of
conversation, and such conversation as ethical sentimental education.
For Hume and Shaftesbury, then, conversation is understood primarily
as a specific means of communicating between readers and philosophical
texts. Such writings draw on conversational forms in order to enable twoway conversations between writers and readers. Thus conversation in this
xiv Introduction
sense becomes conceptualized, to a large extent, as the antithesis of
Habermasian sociability. In The Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock
relates Machiavelli’s account to Francesco Vettori of “how he comes
home in the evening, puts on formal clothing, and enters into the presence
and conversation of the ancients by reading their books. The conversation
is meant to restore Machiavelli not only to the understanding of politics,
but indirectly to actual civic participation”.17 Hume’s and Shaftesbury’s
readers are prepared, if not for civic participation, at least for ethical
conduct, but, like Machiavelli, they are prepared indirectly, and frequently
alone, through reading. The human interactions, quick-fire exchanges and
bustle of the salon or coffee-house are far away. Instead, the philosophical
text as conversation seeks to shape the subject who may afterwards
become a social subject in the form of, for example, a Humean moral
agent. Towards the end of the long eighteenth century, however, this
particular connection between private and public selves began to
disintegrate. Paul Hamilton writes of the “romantic habit” of “recovery
through one’s own aesthetic…of an intimacy with past writers which can
restore their readers to the citizenship of a neglected republic.”18 For
Hamilton, romantic readers are still characterized according to the
conversational model: they experience “intimacy” with writers. But their
“citizenship” is of a “neglected republic”, that is, an historical or forgotten
state. And there is no mention of virtue or ethics, as there is in Hume and
Shaftesbury. It seems that these romantic textual conversations, in contrast
to those of the earlier eighteenth century, will end in fantasy or illusion.
The early to mid eighteenth-century concept of conversation as a two-way
interaction between reader and text, in which a specific type of
philosophical discourse formed ethical, self-governing subjects, is no
longer in extensive use.
Hume’s belief in the moral and educational value of conversational
forms is taken up and reformulated in much eighteenth-century writing,
perhaps most notably in the didactic and advice literature discussed by
Michèle Cohen in Chapter Six of this volume, but also in the fiction—by
writers such as Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth,
Hannah More, Mary Brunton, Jane West and even Laurence Sterne—of
the long eighteenth century. Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-
54), for example, notably educates its female protagonists, Harriet, Emily
and Charlotte, through the medium of the conversations held in the cedar
parlour. We turn now to one of Richardson’s most dedicated readers, Jane
Austen, 19 who learned much from the pedagogical scenes of conversation
in Grandison, discovering in them a stylistic technique that she could
appropriate and perfect.
The eighteenth century has long been regarded as an “age of
conversation” in which forms of polite sociability developed (conversation
in this period could mean “company” or “society”), structured around
metropolitan coffee-houses, clubs, salons and country-house entertaining.
Much influenced by Jürgen Habermas’s account of the “public sphere”, an
idealized model of human interaction in the Enlightenment emerges in
which European bourgeois subjects congregate in the newly created social
spaces of salons and coffee-houses to exchange ideas freely, equally and
reasonably in an environment governed by the rules of politeness.4 These
gentlemen spoke on their own authority on what the period characterized
as matters of “general ethical humanism, indissociable from moral,
cultural and religious reflection.”5 According to Habermas, such
conversations developed into a critical discourse, through which the
people monitored state authority, and modern democracy was ultimately
born.
Habermas’s account has itself been subject to much criticism in recent
scholarship, usually on the grounds that his idealized model of the
bourgeois public sphere as rational, male and egalitarian rests on a set of
unsustainable exclusions.6 Further, as Peter de Bolla points out in Chapter
Nine of this volume, Habermas’s account is seriously flawed in the ways
he understands, and demarcates, private and public experience in the
eighteenth century. Indeed de Bolla suggests that the Habermasian notion
of the “public sphere”, whether accepted or contested as an account of
aspects of the period, has become “so ubiquitous in the scholarship on the
Enlightenment … that its utility may no longer be very significant.” With
this scepticism towards Habermas’s account in mind, it is noteworthy that
a number of authors in this volume offer versions of conversation that,
explicitly or implicitly, depart from the Habermasian ideal: Ludmilla
Jordanova discusses James Northcote’s gossipy, competitive conversations,
motivated by personal relationships and rivalry; Paul Kerry cites the
familiar “rational-critical” characterization of conversation in eighteenthcentury Germany, only to show how Heinrich von Kleist’s concept of
conversation differs from this; and Jay Fliegelman charts the discrepancies
between democratic ideals of conversation and their practical embodiments.
Further, if we no longer read eighteenth-century conversational
concepts and practices through a Habermasian lens, two possibilities–not
necessarily mutually exclusive–become open to us. Firstly, we may find
ourselves giving less weight to those well-known documents of
eighteenth-century rational conversation that are often invoked by
xii Introduction
commentators on the period, namely, the periodicals, The Tatler and The
Spectator, the writings of Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of
Shaftesbury and some of David Hume’s essays. These texts’ emphases on
the improvement and cultivation of the human subject by means of
reasonable conversation on “History, Poetry, Politics”7 may chime with
Habermas’s account of the public sphere, but are–we now know–only one
version of conversation in the eighteenth century, and not necessarily the
dominant one. As Markman Ellis, for example, has shown, rational and
improving conversation had to vie for attention with other forms of
sociability that were “vulgar, popular, subversive, grotesque and sexual”.8
Future research will give us a more accurate map of the relative
significance of rational and “unruly” conversations in the period.9
Secondly, if we are no longer to regard these texts as providing us with
descriptive accounts of life in the eighteenth-century coffee-house or
salon, or perhaps more accurately, accounts of the point at which a
conceptual ideal of conversation is embodied in practice, we are free to see
them as something else: contributions to the normative intellectual projects
of their authors, to their conceptualizations of the disciplines within which
they wrote. To take one key example, Lord Shaftesbury’s ambition to
rescue “philosophy … from colleges and cells” and place it in the domain
of “modern conversations”10 is imitated, linguistically and conceptually,
by Addison and Hume. These texts of Shaftesbury, Addison and Hume are
now taken as exemplars of the spirit of the Habermasian public sphere,
with conversation read invariably as synonymous with rational sociability.
Such glosses may well be valid for Addison’s reinterpretation of
Shaftesbury. They can certainly be substantiated by comments to be found
throughout his periodicals and his well-documented attempts to encourage,
and participate in, what would now be regarded as the culture of the
Enlightenment public sphere. Shaftesbury’s original declaration, however,
has little to do with the construction of a “bourgeois public sphere”, and
everything to do with his conceptualization of philosophy, and in
particular, moral philosophy. As Lawrence Klein writes:
Shaftesbury thought that philosophy should make people effective
participants in the world. It was a practical enterprise and, given the
disabilities from which humans generally suffered, often a therapeutic
one.11
For Shaftesbury, philosophy’s task was to produce moral agents.
Crucially, these putative agents must experience philosophy
conversationally: the two-way interchange of moral ideas (in contrast to a
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth
Century, 1688-1848
xiii
“top-down” model of transmitting knowledge) encouraged the sought-after
activity and autonomy in the learning subject.12
In this instance, then, conversation is to be understood as a method of
communicating philosophy, as well as the means of making the concept of
practical philosophy a reality: it is necessary to execute Shaftesbury’s
prescriptive philosophical project. Shaftesbury suggests that the language
of philosophy should resemble that of “good company and people of the
better sort”13, but he does not inextricably link philosophical conversation
and the public sphere. The conversations or scenes of instruction he has in
mind could take place almost anywhere–not necessarily in a salon or
coffee-house–and what distinguishes them from other forms of linguistic
exchange is their pedagogic function. Shaftesbury’s notion of conversation
is indebted to classical as well as contemporary models and his rescuing of
philosophy is, in part, understood as a return to its classical heritage. Most
important for us, however, is Shaftesbury’s formulation of a distinctive
concept of conversation which accounts for a particular interaction
between the reader and philosophical text. Any readerly experience which
falls short of engagement with this active pedagogy cannot be classified as
properly conversational in Shaftesbury’s terms.
If we now turn to consider David Hume’s “Of Essay Writing” in
relation to Shaftesbury, instead of in relation to Habermas, we find
discussions of the nature of philosophical language, its relationship to
conversational forms and the role of philosophy, rather than a document in
the development of the Habermasian public sphere. Thus the demise of
philosophy, gone “to Wrack by this moaping (sic) recluse Method of
Study”, is exemplified by its linguistic deficiencies: philosophy is “as
chimerical in her Conclusions as she was unintelligible in her Stile and
Manner of Delivery.” Hume argues that philosophical discourse should
model itself on conversation, and that philosophers require experience of
conversation to acquire the “Facility of Thought and Expression”14
necessary to communicate with their audiences. Hume’s central concern is
the formation of a viable philosophical discourse which would succeed in
“alluring us into the paths of virtue by the views of glory and happiness
…”, “…make us feel the difference between vice and virtue” and “excite
and regulate our sentiments”15 without sacrificing “the Substance to the
Shadow.”16 This is philosophical discourse conceptualized in terms of
conversation, and such conversation as ethical sentimental education.
For Hume and Shaftesbury, then, conversation is understood primarily
as a specific means of communicating between readers and philosophical
texts. Such writings draw on conversational forms in order to enable twoway conversations between writers and readers. Thus conversation in this
xiv Introduction
sense becomes conceptualized, to a large extent, as the antithesis of
Habermasian sociability. In The Machiavellian Moment, J. G. A. Pocock
relates Machiavelli’s account to Francesco Vettori of “how he comes
home in the evening, puts on formal clothing, and enters into the presence
and conversation of the ancients by reading their books. The conversation
is meant to restore Machiavelli not only to the understanding of politics,
but indirectly to actual civic participation”.17 Hume’s and Shaftesbury’s
readers are prepared, if not for civic participation, at least for ethical
conduct, but, like Machiavelli, they are prepared indirectly, and frequently
alone, through reading. The human interactions, quick-fire exchanges and
bustle of the salon or coffee-house are far away. Instead, the philosophical
text as conversation seeks to shape the subject who may afterwards
become a social subject in the form of, for example, a Humean moral
agent. Towards the end of the long eighteenth century, however, this
particular connection between private and public selves began to
disintegrate. Paul Hamilton writes of the “romantic habit” of “recovery
through one’s own aesthetic…of an intimacy with past writers which can
restore their readers to the citizenship of a neglected republic.”18 For
Hamilton, romantic readers are still characterized according to the
conversational model: they experience “intimacy” with writers. But their
“citizenship” is of a “neglected republic”, that is, an historical or forgotten
state. And there is no mention of virtue or ethics, as there is in Hume and
Shaftesbury. It seems that these romantic textual conversations, in contrast
to those of the earlier eighteenth century, will end in fantasy or illusion.
The early to mid eighteenth-century concept of conversation as a two-way
interaction between reader and text, in which a specific type of
philosophical discourse formed ethical, self-governing subjects, is no
longer in extensive use.
Hume’s belief in the moral and educational value of conversational
forms is taken up and reformulated in much eighteenth-century writing,
perhaps most notably in the didactic and advice literature discussed by
Michèle Cohen in Chapter Six of this volume, but also in the fiction—by
writers such as Samuel Richardson, Frances Burney, Maria Edgeworth,
Hannah More, Mary Brunton, Jane West and even Laurence Sterne—of
the long eighteenth century. Richardson’s Sir Charles Grandison (1753-
54), for example, notably educates its female protagonists, Harriet, Emily
and Charlotte, through the medium of the conversations held in the cedar
parlour. We turn now to one of Richardson’s most dedicated readers, Jane
Austen, 19 who learned much from the pedagogical scenes of conversation
in Grandison, discovering in them a stylistic technique that she could
appropriate and perfect.
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1848 part 2
INTRODUCTION
KATIE HALSEY AND JANE SLINN
Conversation, as concept and practice, arrived at pivotal, and
unprecedented, stages in its development during the historical period that
has come to be known as the long eighteenth century.1 The eighteenth
century’s attention to, and production of, conversational forms manifests
itself in the period’s plethora of texts and images that address themselves
to the description and conceptualization of conversation across a range of
disciplines and genres. The chapters in this book attest to this period’s
breadth of interest in conversation by their disciplinary range: there are
contributions from literary studies, art history, philosophy, history and
law. An exceptionally wide range of long-eighteenth-century authors,
artists, texts and works of art are also covered, with the volume containing
essays discussing artists, philosophers and lawmakers as different as Jane
Austen, Henry Ballow, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Gainsborough. Even
allowing for the rearrangement and rethinking of disciplinary boundaries
between the eighteenth century and today, the reach of conversation into
so many areas of the period’s life and thought is striking. Also striking are
the serious purposes and functions (for example, ethical, pedagogical or
political) with which concepts of conversation are imbued in the period.
Thus we find David Hume insisting that conversation “gives and receives
Information, as well as Pleasure”, and that the “conversible” world must
be brought into contact with that of the “Learned” to reinforce
conversation against triviality, or “gossipping (sic) Stories and idle
Remarks”.2 Michèle Cohen’s emphasis on the inextricable connections
between pleasure and improvement in domestic conversations (in Chapter
Six of this volume) demonstrates the reach of Hume’s philosophy into the
didactic literature of the period, and its corresponding influence on the
education of young people. Significantly, in the Oxford English
Dictionary’s definition of conversation, the only meaning that does not
include an eighteenth-century example is that which emphasizes
conversation’s triviality, as well as being the most familiar gloss of the
term to a modern reader: 7c, “to make conversation: to converse for the
sake of conversing; to engage in small talk.”3
x Introduction
Despite the breadth of conversation’s conceptual and semantic reach in
the eighteenth century, most existing scholarship on the subject tends to
focus on examining a limited set of generic forms, most notably
“Conversation Poems” and, in painting, “Conversation Pieces”, or to
identify conversation too easily with the sociability of the expanding
“public sphere” in the period. Further, the distinctiveness of conversation
as a concept and practice–and indeed the question of whether conversation
can be said to be distinct from its cognate concepts (dialogue, discussion
and argument, for example) is rarely examined in literature about the
period. This volume was inspired largely by the wish to redress these
deficiencies. Thus the introductory text will proceed by examining two
key places in which we can observe the development of conversational
concepts and practices in the long eighteenth century. First, we will
consider how, at the beginning of the period, notions of conversation were
forged in the “conversible” world of salons and coffee-houses, described
by David Hume and his near contemporaries, which cannot be made to fit
into Jürgen Habermas’s theorization of the public sphere. We will then
turn to reflect on the ethical content of conversation in the novels of Jane
Austen, a novelist who has gradually come to represent to many readers
the world of the long eighteenth century. In discussing these texts and
authors, we attempt to address and define some of the interactions between
conversational concepts and practices.
Our title for this volume draws attention to the fact that conversational
forms, concepts and practices developed, and continue to develop, in
dialogue with, in distinction from, and in the shadow of, each other. In
other words, language, practices and concepts are inextricably intertwined.
However, we currently lack a satisfactory theory and vocabulary for the
ways in which these three variables are interrelated. When we find
ourselves in such a situation, we can only begin, as it were, “from the
bottom up”. Suffice it to say, the relationships concerned are complex and
multifarious; and the essays collected here explore the contours of some of
these complexities, dealing with a range of different media, authors, subperiods, genres and languages. Although the focus of the work is largely
on eighteenth-century Britain, the volume takes note of the rich
relationships between continental European thought and British
intellectual life in the period, and of the influence of British ideas in the
newly independent American republic.
KATIE HALSEY AND JANE SLINN
Conversation, as concept and practice, arrived at pivotal, and
unprecedented, stages in its development during the historical period that
has come to be known as the long eighteenth century.1 The eighteenth
century’s attention to, and production of, conversational forms manifests
itself in the period’s plethora of texts and images that address themselves
to the description and conceptualization of conversation across a range of
disciplines and genres. The chapters in this book attest to this period’s
breadth of interest in conversation by their disciplinary range: there are
contributions from literary studies, art history, philosophy, history and
law. An exceptionally wide range of long-eighteenth-century authors,
artists, texts and works of art are also covered, with the volume containing
essays discussing artists, philosophers and lawmakers as different as Jane
Austen, Henry Ballow, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Gainsborough. Even
allowing for the rearrangement and rethinking of disciplinary boundaries
between the eighteenth century and today, the reach of conversation into
so many areas of the period’s life and thought is striking. Also striking are
the serious purposes and functions (for example, ethical, pedagogical or
political) with which concepts of conversation are imbued in the period.
Thus we find David Hume insisting that conversation “gives and receives
Information, as well as Pleasure”, and that the “conversible” world must
be brought into contact with that of the “Learned” to reinforce
conversation against triviality, or “gossipping (sic) Stories and idle
Remarks”.2 Michèle Cohen’s emphasis on the inextricable connections
between pleasure and improvement in domestic conversations (in Chapter
Six of this volume) demonstrates the reach of Hume’s philosophy into the
didactic literature of the period, and its corresponding influence on the
education of young people. Significantly, in the Oxford English
Dictionary’s definition of conversation, the only meaning that does not
include an eighteenth-century example is that which emphasizes
conversation’s triviality, as well as being the most familiar gloss of the
term to a modern reader: 7c, “to make conversation: to converse for the
sake of conversing; to engage in small talk.”3
x Introduction
Despite the breadth of conversation’s conceptual and semantic reach in
the eighteenth century, most existing scholarship on the subject tends to
focus on examining a limited set of generic forms, most notably
“Conversation Poems” and, in painting, “Conversation Pieces”, or to
identify conversation too easily with the sociability of the expanding
“public sphere” in the period. Further, the distinctiveness of conversation
as a concept and practice–and indeed the question of whether conversation
can be said to be distinct from its cognate concepts (dialogue, discussion
and argument, for example) is rarely examined in literature about the
period. This volume was inspired largely by the wish to redress these
deficiencies. Thus the introductory text will proceed by examining two
key places in which we can observe the development of conversational
concepts and practices in the long eighteenth century. First, we will
consider how, at the beginning of the period, notions of conversation were
forged in the “conversible” world of salons and coffee-houses, described
by David Hume and his near contemporaries, which cannot be made to fit
into Jürgen Habermas’s theorization of the public sphere. We will then
turn to reflect on the ethical content of conversation in the novels of Jane
Austen, a novelist who has gradually come to represent to many readers
the world of the long eighteenth century. In discussing these texts and
authors, we attempt to address and define some of the interactions between
conversational concepts and practices.
Our title for this volume draws attention to the fact that conversational
forms, concepts and practices developed, and continue to develop, in
dialogue with, in distinction from, and in the shadow of, each other. In
other words, language, practices and concepts are inextricably intertwined.
However, we currently lack a satisfactory theory and vocabulary for the
ways in which these three variables are interrelated. When we find
ourselves in such a situation, we can only begin, as it were, “from the
bottom up”. Suffice it to say, the relationships concerned are complex and
multifarious; and the essays collected here explore the contours of some of
these complexities, dealing with a range of different media, authors, subperiods, genres and languages. Although the focus of the work is largely
on eighteenth-century Britain, the volume takes note of the rich
relationships between continental European thought and British
intellectual life in the period, and of the influence of British ideas in the
newly independent American republic.
INTRODUCTION
KATIE HALSEY AND JANE SLINN
Conversation, as concept and practice, arrived at pivotal, and
unprecedented, stages in its development during the historical period that
has come to be known as the long eighteenth century.1 The eighteenth
century’s attention to, and production of, conversational forms manifests
itself in the period’s plethora of texts and images that address themselves
to the description and conceptualization of conversation across a range of
disciplines and genres. The chapters in this book attest to this period’s
breadth of interest in conversation by their disciplinary range: there are
contributions from literary studies, art history, philosophy, history and
law. An exceptionally wide range of long-eighteenth-century authors,
artists, texts and works of art are also covered, with the volume containing
essays discussing artists, philosophers and lawmakers as different as Jane
Austen, Henry Ballow, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Gainsborough. Even
allowing for the rearrangement and rethinking of disciplinary boundaries
between the eighteenth century and today, the reach of conversation into
so many areas of the period’s life and thought is striking. Also striking are
the serious purposes and functions (for example, ethical, pedagogical or
political) with which concepts of conversation are imbued in the period.
Thus we find David Hume insisting that conversation “gives and receives
Information, as well as Pleasure”, and that the “conversible” world must
be brought into contact with that of the “Learned” to reinforce
conversation against triviality, or “gossipping (sic) Stories and idle
Remarks”.2 Michèle Cohen’s emphasis on the inextricable connections
between pleasure and improvement in domestic conversations (in Chapter
Six of this volume) demonstrates the reach of Hume’s philosophy into the
didactic literature of the period, and its corresponding influence on the
education of young people. Significantly, in the Oxford English
Dictionary’s definition of conversation, the only meaning that does not
include an eighteenth-century example is that which emphasizes
conversation’s triviality, as well as being the most familiar gloss of the
term to a modern reader: 7c, “to make conversation: to converse for the
sake of conversing; to engage in small talk.”3
x Introduction
Despite the breadth of conversation’s conceptual and semantic reach in
the eighteenth century, most existing scholarship on the subject tends to
focus on examining a limited set of generic forms, most notably
“Conversation Poems” and, in painting, “Conversation Pieces”, or to
identify conversation too easily with the sociability of the expanding
“public sphere” in the period. Further, the distinctiveness of conversation
as a concept and practice–and indeed the question of whether conversation
can be said to be distinct from its cognate concepts (dialogue, discussion
and argument, for example) is rarely examined in literature about the
period. This volume was inspired largely by the wish to redress these
deficiencies. Thus the introductory text will proceed by examining two
key places in which we can observe the development of conversational
concepts and practices in the long eighteenth century. First, we will
consider how, at the beginning of the period, notions of conversation were
forged in the “conversible” world of salons and coffee-houses, described
by David Hume and his near contemporaries, which cannot be made to fit
into Jürgen Habermas’s theorization of the public sphere. We will then
turn to reflect on the ethical content of conversation in the novels of Jane
Austen, a novelist who has gradually come to represent to many readers
the world of the long eighteenth century. In discussing these texts and
authors, we attempt to address and define some of the interactions between
conversational concepts and practices.
Our title for this volume draws attention to the fact that conversational
forms, concepts and practices developed, and continue to develop, in
dialogue with, in distinction from, and in the shadow of, each other. In
other words, language, practices and concepts are inextricably intertwined.
However, we currently lack a satisfactory theory and vocabulary for the
ways in which these three variables are interrelated. When we find
ourselves in such a situation, we can only begin, as it were, “from the
bottom up”. Suffice it to say, the relationships concerned are complex and
multifarious; and the essays collected here explore the contours of some of
these complexities, dealing with a range of different media, authors, subperiods, genres and languages. Although the focus of the work is largely
on eighteenth-century Britain, the volume takes note of the rich
relationships between continental European thought and British
intellectual life in the period, and of the influence of British ideas in the
newly independent American republic.
KATIE HALSEY AND JANE SLINN
Conversation, as concept and practice, arrived at pivotal, and
unprecedented, stages in its development during the historical period that
has come to be known as the long eighteenth century.1 The eighteenth
century’s attention to, and production of, conversational forms manifests
itself in the period’s plethora of texts and images that address themselves
to the description and conceptualization of conversation across a range of
disciplines and genres. The chapters in this book attest to this period’s
breadth of interest in conversation by their disciplinary range: there are
contributions from literary studies, art history, philosophy, history and
law. An exceptionally wide range of long-eighteenth-century authors,
artists, texts and works of art are also covered, with the volume containing
essays discussing artists, philosophers and lawmakers as different as Jane
Austen, Henry Ballow, Immanuel Kant and Thomas Gainsborough. Even
allowing for the rearrangement and rethinking of disciplinary boundaries
between the eighteenth century and today, the reach of conversation into
so many areas of the period’s life and thought is striking. Also striking are
the serious purposes and functions (for example, ethical, pedagogical or
political) with which concepts of conversation are imbued in the period.
Thus we find David Hume insisting that conversation “gives and receives
Information, as well as Pleasure”, and that the “conversible” world must
be brought into contact with that of the “Learned” to reinforce
conversation against triviality, or “gossipping (sic) Stories and idle
Remarks”.2 Michèle Cohen’s emphasis on the inextricable connections
between pleasure and improvement in domestic conversations (in Chapter
Six of this volume) demonstrates the reach of Hume’s philosophy into the
didactic literature of the period, and its corresponding influence on the
education of young people. Significantly, in the Oxford English
Dictionary’s definition of conversation, the only meaning that does not
include an eighteenth-century example is that which emphasizes
conversation’s triviality, as well as being the most familiar gloss of the
term to a modern reader: 7c, “to make conversation: to converse for the
sake of conversing; to engage in small talk.”3
x Introduction
Despite the breadth of conversation’s conceptual and semantic reach in
the eighteenth century, most existing scholarship on the subject tends to
focus on examining a limited set of generic forms, most notably
“Conversation Poems” and, in painting, “Conversation Pieces”, or to
identify conversation too easily with the sociability of the expanding
“public sphere” in the period. Further, the distinctiveness of conversation
as a concept and practice–and indeed the question of whether conversation
can be said to be distinct from its cognate concepts (dialogue, discussion
and argument, for example) is rarely examined in literature about the
period. This volume was inspired largely by the wish to redress these
deficiencies. Thus the introductory text will proceed by examining two
key places in which we can observe the development of conversational
concepts and practices in the long eighteenth century. First, we will
consider how, at the beginning of the period, notions of conversation were
forged in the “conversible” world of salons and coffee-houses, described
by David Hume and his near contemporaries, which cannot be made to fit
into Jürgen Habermas’s theorization of the public sphere. We will then
turn to reflect on the ethical content of conversation in the novels of Jane
Austen, a novelist who has gradually come to represent to many readers
the world of the long eighteenth century. In discussing these texts and
authors, we attempt to address and define some of the interactions between
conversational concepts and practices.
Our title for this volume draws attention to the fact that conversational
forms, concepts and practices developed, and continue to develop, in
dialogue with, in distinction from, and in the shadow of, each other. In
other words, language, practices and concepts are inextricably intertwined.
However, we currently lack a satisfactory theory and vocabulary for the
ways in which these three variables are interrelated. When we find
ourselves in such a situation, we can only begin, as it were, “from the
bottom up”. Suffice it to say, the relationships concerned are complex and
multifarious; and the essays collected here explore the contours of some of
these complexities, dealing with a range of different media, authors, subperiods, genres and languages. Although the focus of the work is largely
on eighteenth-century Britain, the volume takes note of the rich
relationships between continental European thought and British
intellectual life in the period, and of the influence of British ideas in the
newly independent American republic.
The Concept and Practice of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth Century, 1688-1848
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This volume had its genesis in a conference, The Concept and Practice
of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth Century, organised at the Centre
for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at
the University of Cambridge in October 2005. We would like to
acknowledge the financial support provided at that stage by the British
Academy, CRASSH, and King’s College, Cambridge. We are also grateful
to all the participants at the conference, in particular to the chairs of and
respondents to the various sessions, and to Peter de Bolla, Simon Goldhill,
and Ludmilla Jordanova. We would like to express our gratitude to the
Syndics of Cambridge University Library, the Walters Art Museum, The
Smithsonian American Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Fine
Art, the New York Historical Society, the National Portrait Gallery,
London, and the Royal Albert Memorial Gallery, Exeter, for permission to
reproduce material from their holdings. We would also like to thank
Rosalind Crone, Kate Griffiths, Luke Houghton, Amanda Millar, Maartje
Scheltens and Richard Serjeantson for their help in the preparation of the
manuscript. Sadly, Professor Jay Fliegelman did not live to see this
volume published, but we owe a debt of gratitude to him, and to his widow
Christine, for their dedication in preparing his chapter for publication
under very difficult circumstances.
This volume had its genesis in a conference, The Concept and Practice
of Conversation in the Long Eighteenth Century, organised at the Centre
for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (CRASSH) at
the University of Cambridge in October 2005. We would like to
acknowledge the financial support provided at that stage by the British
Academy, CRASSH, and King’s College, Cambridge. We are also grateful
to all the participants at the conference, in particular to the chairs of and
respondents to the various sessions, and to Peter de Bolla, Simon Goldhill,
and Ludmilla Jordanova. We would like to express our gratitude to the
Syndics of Cambridge University Library, the Walters Art Museum, The
Smithsonian American Art Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Fine
Art, the New York Historical Society, the National Portrait Gallery,
London, and the Royal Albert Memorial Gallery, Exeter, for permission to
reproduce material from their holdings. We would also like to thank
Rosalind Crone, Kate Griffiths, Luke Houghton, Amanda Millar, Maartje
Scheltens and Richard Serjeantson for their help in the preparation of the
manuscript. Sadly, Professor Jay Fliegelman did not live to see this
volume published, but we owe a debt of gratitude to him, and to his widow
Christine, for their dedication in preparing his chapter for publication
under very difficult circumstances.
Toeic answer sheet
ANSWER
SHEET
1 A 51 D 101 B 151 A
2 C 52 B 102 A 152 B
3 B 53 D 103 B 153 C
4 A 54 C 104 C 154 C
5 A 55 D 105 B 155 A
6 C 56 D 106 D 156 B
7 D 57 A 107 B 157 A
8 B 58 D 108 A 158 C
9 D 59 A 109 D 159 A
10 B 60 B 110 D 160 D
11 A 61 C 111 C 161 C
12 D 62 A 112 B 162 D
13 B 63 B 113 A 163 C
14 A 64 C 114 B 164 D
15 B 65 D 115 D 165 A
16 B 66 B 116 C 166 D
17 D 67 C 117 A 167 A
18 C 68 A 118 D 168 B
19 A 69 D 119 B 169 C
20 A 70 A 120 A 170 B
21 C 71 B 121 B 171 B
22 C 72 A 122 A 172 C
23 A 73 C 123 C 173 D
24 B 74 C 124 B 174 C
25 C 75 C 125 C 175 A
26 C 76 C 126 D 176 C
27 B 77 D 127 B 177 D
28 A 78 B 128 D 178 A
29 B 79 A 129 B 179 B
30 A 80 B 130 D 180 D
31 C 81 C 131 C 181 B
32 B 82 A 132 A 182 C
33 A 83 D 133 A 183 A
34 A 84 A 134 B 184 C
35 B 85 C 135 C 185 D
36 A 86 A 136 D 186 B
37 C 87 D 137 C 187 C
38 A 88 A 138 D 188 B
39 C 89 C 139 A 189 A
40 B 90 D 140 A 190 C
41 A 91 B 141 B 191 B
42 B 92 A 142 A 192 A
43 A 93 A 143 A 193 C
44 B 94 C 144 B 194 C
45 C 95 A 145 C 195 D
46 B 96 A 146 A 196 B
47 A 97 B 147 B 197 C
48 C 98 D 148 C 198 A
49 B 99 B 149 A 199 D
50 A 100 A 150 A 200 A
SHEET
1 A 51 D 101 B 151 A
2 C 52 B 102 A 152 B
3 B 53 D 103 B 153 C
4 A 54 C 104 C 154 C
5 A 55 D 105 B 155 A
6 C 56 D 106 D 156 B
7 D 57 A 107 B 157 A
8 B 58 D 108 A 158 C
9 D 59 A 109 D 159 A
10 B 60 B 110 D 160 D
11 A 61 C 111 C 161 C
12 D 62 A 112 B 162 D
13 B 63 B 113 A 163 C
14 A 64 C 114 B 164 D
15 B 65 D 115 D 165 A
16 B 66 B 116 C 166 D
17 D 67 C 117 A 167 A
18 C 68 A 118 D 168 B
19 A 69 D 119 B 169 C
20 A 70 A 120 A 170 B
21 C 71 B 121 B 171 B
22 C 72 A 122 A 172 C
23 A 73 C 123 C 173 D
24 B 74 C 124 B 174 C
25 C 75 C 125 C 175 A
26 C 76 C 126 D 176 C
27 B 77 D 127 B 177 D
28 A 78 B 128 D 178 A
29 B 79 A 129 B 179 B
30 A 80 B 130 D 180 D
31 C 81 C 131 C 181 B
32 B 82 A 132 A 182 C
33 A 83 D 133 A 183 A
34 A 84 A 134 B 184 C
35 B 85 C 135 C 185 D
36 A 86 A 136 D 186 B
37 C 87 D 137 C 187 C
38 A 88 A 138 D 188 B
39 C 89 C 139 A 189 A
40 B 90 D 140 A 190 C
41 A 91 B 141 B 191 B
42 B 92 A 142 A 192 A
43 A 93 A 143 A 193 C
44 B 94 C 144 B 194 C
45 C 95 A 145 C 195 D
46 B 96 A 146 A 196 B
47 A 97 B 147 B 197 C
48 C 98 D 148 C 198 A
49 B 99 B 149 A 199 D
50 A 100 A 150 A 200 A
TOEIC practice 2 part II
152. Jeff and Gloria went to pick out carpeting and decoration, including furnitures for the
new VIP lounge that was opening on the third floor.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee are rxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxequired toB
wexxxxxxxxxxxar their ideCntifxxon badgDes while at 153. Did you know that you can save up to 25 percent in disabled insurance if you are a nonsmoker?
All exxxxxxmpAoyee are requixxxxxxxxred toB weaxxxxr their ideCntixxn badgDes while at 154. The computer has mistakenly canceled your club membership but it can be reinstate by tonight or tomorrow at the latest.
All exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxmpAoyee are required xxxxxxxtoB weaxxxxxxxr their
ideCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 155. Copyright law clearly stated that you have to have the permission of the authors or the publishers before copying their work.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee are required toB wr their
ideCntificxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxation badgDes while at 156. Your paycheck for last week given to the head of your department to pass on to you.
All emxxxxpAoyee are requirxxed toB wexxr ideCntificationxxxxxxxxxxx badgDes while at 157. These interested paintings were donated to the library by the Gilmore Foundation over twenty years ago.
All exxxxxxmpAoyee are required toB wear their ixxxxxxdeCntificatixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon
badgDes while at 158. When you show him your letters of recommendation, I'm sure he will not hesitant to give you the salary that you want.
All emxxxxxpAoyee are required txxxxxxxoB wear thexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxir
ideCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 159. When we entering Tokyo proper, we drove right through a tunnel that opened into the Royal Gardens.
All exxxxxmpAoyee are required xxxxxxtoB weaxxr their ideCntification bxxadgDes while
at 160. I think it would be easier to hold the audience's attention if you had a slide show along to the lecture.
All xxxxxxxxxxxempAoyee xxxxxxxxare required toB wear thxeir ideCntificatxxion
badgDes while at
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee are rxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxequired toB
wexxxxxxxxxxxar their ideCntifxxon badgDes while at 153. Did you know that you can save up to 25 percent in disabled insurance if you are a nonsmoker?
All exxxxxxmpAoyee are requixxxxxxxxred toB weaxxxxr their ideCntixxn badgDes while at 154. The computer has mistakenly canceled your club membership but it can be reinstate by tonight or tomorrow at the latest.
All exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxmpAoyee are required xxxxxxxtoB weaxxxxxxxr their
ideCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 155. Copyright law clearly stated that you have to have the permission of the authors or the publishers before copying their work.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee are required toB wr their
ideCntificxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxation badgDes while at 156. Your paycheck for last week given to the head of your department to pass on to you.
All emxxxxpAoyee are requirxxed toB wexxr ideCntificationxxxxxxxxxxx badgDes while at 157. These interested paintings were donated to the library by the Gilmore Foundation over twenty years ago.
All exxxxxxmpAoyee are required toB wear their ixxxxxxdeCntificatixxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxon
badgDes while at 158. When you show him your letters of recommendation, I'm sure he will not hesitant to give you the salary that you want.
All emxxxxxpAoyee are required txxxxxxxoB wear thexxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxir
ideCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 159. When we entering Tokyo proper, we drove right through a tunnel that opened into the Royal Gardens.
All exxxxxmpAoyee are required xxxxxxtoB weaxxr their ideCntification bxxadgDes while
at 160. I think it would be easier to hold the audience's attention if you had a slide show along to the lecture.
All xxxxxxxxxxxempAoyee xxxxxxxxare required toB wear thxeir ideCntificatxxion
badgDes while at
TOEIC Practice test 2
Practice test 2
YOU WILL HAVE ONE HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES TO COMPLETE PARTS V,
VI, AND VII OF THE TEST.
READING In this section of the test, you will have a chance to show how well you understand written English. There are three parts to this section, with special directions for each part.
PART VI Directions: In Questions 141-160, each sentence has four words or phrases underlined. The four underlined parts of the sentence are marked (A), (B), (C), (0). You are to identify the one underlined word or phrase that should be corrected or rewritten. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and mark your answer. Example: All employee are required to wear their identification badges while at work.
All empAoyee are required toB wear their ideCntification badgDes while at The underlined word "employee" is not correct in this sentence. This sentence should read, "All employees are required to wear their identification badges while at work" Therefore, you should choose answer (A). Now begin work on the questions.
READING In this section of the test, you will have a chance to show how well you understand written English. There are three parts to this section, with special directions for each part.
PART VI Directions: In Questions 141-160, each sentence has four words or phrases underlined. The four underlined parts of the sentence are marked (A), (B), (C), (0). You are to identify the one underlined word or phrase that should be corrected or rewritten. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and mark your answer. Example: All employee are required to wear their identification badges while at work.
All empAoyee are required toB wear their ideCntification badgDes while at The underlined word "employee" is not correct in this sentence. This sentence should read, "All employees are required to wear their identification badges while at work" Therefore, you should choose answer (A). Now begin work on the questions.
141. The deputy officer was charged with looking at over the files to find other evidence of
wrongdoing.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee are required tB w ear their ideCntification ba
xxxxxxxxxxdgDes while at 142. Initial we were very anxious to start the computer seminar, but we found it so difficult that we eventually withdrew.
All emAoyee are requxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxired toB wear t
ideCntificatioxn badgDes while at 143. Gone through the folders one by one, we were able to find the missing invoice in the storage drawer.
All emxxpAoyee are required xxxtoB wear their ixxxxxxxdeCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn
badgDes while at 144. All things considered, the inclement weathers this month hasn't significantly decreased productivity of the staff.
All empxxxxxAoyee are requirxxxxxxxed toB wear txxxxxxxxheir
ideCntificaxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxtion badgDes while at 145. Having been to Barcelona twice himself, Bob told us last week that aquatics sports are becoming increasingly popular there.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyexxxxxxe are required toB wear their
xxxxxxxideCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 146. She repeated because she did not want any of her money invested in the heavily advertised, but high-risk companies.
All emxxxxxxxxpAoyee are requitoB wexxxxxxxxxxxxxar their ideCntification
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbadgDes while at 147. We will be traveling with the vice president and his wife they are members of the finance committee for the new arts center.
All emxxxxxxpAoyee are required xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxtoB weaxxxxxxxxxr
their ideCntification bxxxxxxxxadgDes while at 148. The staff worked throughout night to meet the client's deadline.
All emAoyired toB weair ideCntificatioxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 149. Biologists are always search for insights into the nature of the human cell.
All exxxxxxxxxxxxmpAoyee are requiretoB weareir ideCntification baxxdgDes while at 150. The museum director was neither friendly or professional in his approach to the interested students and their teacher.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee axxxxxxre required toB wear thxxxxxxxeir
ideCntificaxxxxtion badgDes while at 151. Remembered the backlog from last year, the staff decided to work a little overtime every day to avoid a recurrence.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee are required tB w ear their ideCntification ba
xxxxxxxxxxdgDes while at 142. Initial we were very anxious to start the computer seminar, but we found it so difficult that we eventually withdrew.
All emAoyee are requxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxired toB wear t
ideCntificatioxn badgDes while at 143. Gone through the folders one by one, we were able to find the missing invoice in the storage drawer.
All emxxpAoyee are required xxxtoB wear their ixxxxxxxdeCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn
badgDes while at 144. All things considered, the inclement weathers this month hasn't significantly decreased productivity of the staff.
All empxxxxxAoyee are requirxxxxxxxed toB wear txxxxxxxxheir
ideCntificaxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxtion badgDes while at 145. Having been to Barcelona twice himself, Bob told us last week that aquatics sports are becoming increasingly popular there.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyexxxxxxe are required toB wear their
xxxxxxxideCntificatioxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 146. She repeated because she did not want any of her money invested in the heavily advertised, but high-risk companies.
All emxxxxxxxxpAoyee are requitoB wexxxxxxxxxxxxxar their ideCntification
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxbadgDes while at 147. We will be traveling with the vice president and his wife they are members of the finance committee for the new arts center.
All emxxxxxxpAoyee are required xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxtoB weaxxxxxxxxxr
their ideCntification bxxxxxxxxadgDes while at 148. The staff worked throughout night to meet the client's deadline.
All emAoyired toB weair ideCntificatioxxxxxxxn badgDes while at 149. Biologists are always search for insights into the nature of the human cell.
All exxxxxxxxxxxxmpAoyee are requiretoB weareir ideCntification baxxdgDes while at 150. The museum director was neither friendly or professional in his approach to the interested students and their teacher.
All emxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxpAoyee axxxxxxre required toB wear thxxxxxxxeir
ideCntificaxxxxtion badgDes while at 151. Remembered the backlog from last year, the staff decided to work a little overtime every day to avoid a recurrence.
TOEIC READING Practice
Practice test 2
YOU WILL HAVE ONE HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES TO COMPLETE PARTS V,
VI, AND VII OF THE TEST.
READING In this section of the test, you will have a chance to show how well you understand written English. There are three parts to this section, with special directions for each part.
PART V Directions: Questions 101-140 are incomplete sentences. Four words or phrases, marked (A), (B), (C), (D) are given beneath each sentence. You are to choose the one word or phrase that best completes the sentence. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and mark your answer. You will read: Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with ..... (A) caring (B) careful (C) care (D) carefully The sentence should read, "Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with care." Therefore, you should choose answer (C). Now begin work on the questions.
101. Health care ..... have been rising but so has the quality. (A) cost (B) costs (C) costing (D) costly
102. We are restocking the warehouse now that the transport strike is over ..... that
customers get what they need right away. (A) to ensure (B) ensured (C) for ensuring (D) ensure
103. Electrical services will be restored more ..... if we call in some of the part-timers. (A) quicker (B) quickly (C) quickest (D) quick
104. Assembly lines in car manufacturing plants ..... for countless jobs. (A) supply (B) create (C) account (D) look
105 ..... spending is probably going to maintain this upward trend throughout the year. (A) Consume (B) Consumer (C) Consuming (D) Consumed
106. If you go ..... your travel agent you're likely to get a much better fare. (A) after (B) over (C) about (D) through
107. Whereas the language barrier, in ..... times, was once an obstacle to trade, that is no
longer the case. (A) earliness (B) earlier (C) earlyon (D) early to
108. The trade show has always been in Oslo, ..... this year the directors have decided to
hold it in Stockholm. (A) but (B) nor (C) during (D) when
109. The architecture of New York ..... its importance as a center of world trade. (A) realizes (B) inscribes (C) remembers (D) reflects
110. Not one of our representatives ..... to participate in the final draft (A) chosen (B) were choosing (C) have been chosen (D) has been chosen
111. If John had found the wallet we ..... you right away. (A) called (B) would call (C) would have called (D) would be calling
112. He bought an air conditioner and installed ..... himself. (A) them (B) it (C) him (D) your
113. Patrick didn't realize ..... his promotion also pushed him into a higher tax bracket. (A) that (B) then (C) when (D) since
114. Many stockholders didn't even notice when their shares went ..... .(A) out (B) down (C) way (D) to
115. The prime minister will impose a tariff ..... domestic interests are being threatened
by a flood of imports. (A) in spite of (B) despite (C) ever since (D) as
116. The professor praised him for his ..... the class when she was sick. (A) assist (B) to assist (C) assisting (D) assisted
117. According to the Financial Times, the prime rate ..... up slightly even without the
housing boom. (A) would have gone (B) will have gone (C) were to go (D) was going
118. I am honored to accept this award ..... our departed director. (A) in light of (B) because of (C) on account of (D) on behalf of
119. Economists watch the business cycle as it goes through its various ..... . (A) segments (B) phases (C) sectors (D) divisions
120. Studies ..... that these new policies have done nothing to boost the economy. (A) have shown (B) shown (C) has shown (D) are shown
121. The water department has warned that the water may not be potable, ..... the
residents shouldn't even use it to brush their teeth. (A) but (B) so (C) because (D) nor
122. The telephone lines of the United States are ..... than those of any country in the
world. (A) longer (B) longest (C) long (D) longs
123. These amendments will be ratified bya majority before they ..... presented to the
legislative body. (A) will be (B) would be (C) are (D) were
124. Please report ..... the engineering department. (A) directly (B) to (C) forward (D) aside
125. If you wait until the twelfth, the president ..... for two days by then.(A) has been waiting (B) has waited (C) will have been waiting (D) was waiting
126. I'm sorry, but he is not ..... to his trust fund yet. (A) authorized (B) allowed (C) accessed (D) entitled
127. The banks are very willing to give loans for home ..... . (A) impropriety (B) improvements (C) improvisation (D) impulse
128. She will neither ..... the terms nor give in to your badgering. (A) acceptable (B) accepts (C) accepting (D) accept
129. The Malaysian Peninsula is ..... Burma. (A) fastened with (B) connected to (C) put together (D) combined with
130 ..... .. we invested in the telecommunications industry, we would be rich by now. (A) Shall (B) Should (C) Will (D) Had
131. The presiding officials took off their hats ..... the slain leader. (A) in charge of (B) because of (C) in deference to (D) in light of
132. This prestigious award is not given to just ..... . (A) anyone (B) someone (C) somebody (D) many
133. Marine biologists want to reduce industrial ..... . (A) pollution (B) environment (C) pollutes (D) environmental
134. One of the things they will be ..... is whether or not you are a team player. (A) finding (B) looking for (C) inquiring (D) seeking
135. I was told that the maitre d', who ..... us so much, had just been fired. (A) helping (B) hadbeen helped (C) helped (D) are being helped
136. Since most of the business meetings were at night we were able to spend the day .....
. (A) to sightsee (B) to enjoy sightseeing (C) going to sightsee (D) sightseeing
137. These stocks have done very ..... since the company changed management. (A) slowly (B) weakly (C) poorly (D) steadily
138. She wasn't able to identify the man she ..... that night. (A) sees (B) was seen (C) will see (D) had seen
139. We were told we ..... be able to reserve a seat on the mailboat that passes through
the Arctic Circle. (A) might (B) must (C) can (D) could
140. The lower cost of doing business overseas is enticing ..... many of our local
manufacturers. (A) to (B) on (C) with (D) by
READING In this section of the test, you will have a chance to show how well you understand written English. There are three parts to this section, with special directions for each part.
PART V Directions: Questions 101-140 are incomplete sentences. Four words or phrases, marked (A), (B), (C), (D) are given beneath each sentence. You are to choose the one word or phrase that best completes the sentence. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and mark your answer. You will read: Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with ..... (A) caring (B) careful (C) care (D) carefully The sentence should read, "Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with care." Therefore, you should choose answer (C). Now begin work on the questions.
101. Health care ..... have been rising but so has the quality. (A) cost (B) costs (C) costing (D) costly
102. We are restocking the warehouse now that the transport strike is over ..... that
customers get what they need right away. (A) to ensure (B) ensured (C) for ensuring (D) ensure
103. Electrical services will be restored more ..... if we call in some of the part-timers. (A) quicker (B) quickly (C) quickest (D) quick
104. Assembly lines in car manufacturing plants ..... for countless jobs. (A) supply (B) create (C) account (D) look
105 ..... spending is probably going to maintain this upward trend throughout the year. (A) Consume (B) Consumer (C) Consuming (D) Consumed
106. If you go ..... your travel agent you're likely to get a much better fare. (A) after (B) over (C) about (D) through
107. Whereas the language barrier, in ..... times, was once an obstacle to trade, that is no
longer the case. (A) earliness (B) earlier (C) earlyon (D) early to
108. The trade show has always been in Oslo, ..... this year the directors have decided to
hold it in Stockholm. (A) but (B) nor (C) during (D) when
109. The architecture of New York ..... its importance as a center of world trade. (A) realizes (B) inscribes (C) remembers (D) reflects
110. Not one of our representatives ..... to participate in the final draft (A) chosen (B) were choosing (C) have been chosen (D) has been chosen
111. If John had found the wallet we ..... you right away. (A) called (B) would call (C) would have called (D) would be calling
112. He bought an air conditioner and installed ..... himself. (A) them (B) it (C) him (D) your
113. Patrick didn't realize ..... his promotion also pushed him into a higher tax bracket. (A) that (B) then (C) when (D) since
114. Many stockholders didn't even notice when their shares went ..... .(A) out (B) down (C) way (D) to
115. The prime minister will impose a tariff ..... domestic interests are being threatened
by a flood of imports. (A) in spite of (B) despite (C) ever since (D) as
116. The professor praised him for his ..... the class when she was sick. (A) assist (B) to assist (C) assisting (D) assisted
117. According to the Financial Times, the prime rate ..... up slightly even without the
housing boom. (A) would have gone (B) will have gone (C) were to go (D) was going
118. I am honored to accept this award ..... our departed director. (A) in light of (B) because of (C) on account of (D) on behalf of
119. Economists watch the business cycle as it goes through its various ..... . (A) segments (B) phases (C) sectors (D) divisions
120. Studies ..... that these new policies have done nothing to boost the economy. (A) have shown (B) shown (C) has shown (D) are shown
121. The water department has warned that the water may not be potable, ..... the
residents shouldn't even use it to brush their teeth. (A) but (B) so (C) because (D) nor
122. The telephone lines of the United States are ..... than those of any country in the
world. (A) longer (B) longest (C) long (D) longs
123. These amendments will be ratified bya majority before they ..... presented to the
legislative body. (A) will be (B) would be (C) are (D) were
124. Please report ..... the engineering department. (A) directly (B) to (C) forward (D) aside
125. If you wait until the twelfth, the president ..... for two days by then.(A) has been waiting (B) has waited (C) will have been waiting (D) was waiting
126. I'm sorry, but he is not ..... to his trust fund yet. (A) authorized (B) allowed (C) accessed (D) entitled
127. The banks are very willing to give loans for home ..... . (A) impropriety (B) improvements (C) improvisation (D) impulse
128. She will neither ..... the terms nor give in to your badgering. (A) acceptable (B) accepts (C) accepting (D) accept
129. The Malaysian Peninsula is ..... Burma. (A) fastened with (B) connected to (C) put together (D) combined with
130 ..... .. we invested in the telecommunications industry, we would be rich by now. (A) Shall (B) Should (C) Will (D) Had
131. The presiding officials took off their hats ..... the slain leader. (A) in charge of (B) because of (C) in deference to (D) in light of
132. This prestigious award is not given to just ..... . (A) anyone (B) someone (C) somebody (D) many
133. Marine biologists want to reduce industrial ..... . (A) pollution (B) environment (C) pollutes (D) environmental
134. One of the things they will be ..... is whether or not you are a team player. (A) finding (B) looking for (C) inquiring (D) seeking
135. I was told that the maitre d', who ..... us so much, had just been fired. (A) helping (B) hadbeen helped (C) helped (D) are being helped
136. Since most of the business meetings were at night we were able to spend the day .....
. (A) to sightsee (B) to enjoy sightseeing (C) going to sightsee (D) sightseeing
137. These stocks have done very ..... since the company changed management. (A) slowly (B) weakly (C) poorly (D) steadily
138. She wasn't able to identify the man she ..... that night. (A) sees (B) was seen (C) will see (D) had seen
139. We were told we ..... be able to reserve a seat on the mailboat that passes through
the Arctic Circle. (A) might (B) must (C) can (D) could
140. The lower cost of doing business overseas is enticing ..... many of our local
manufacturers. (A) to (B) on (C) with (D) by
TOEIC READING Prac
Practice test 2
YOU WILL HAVE ONE HOUR AND FIFTEEN MINUTES TO COMPLETE PARTS V,
VI, AND VII OF THE TEST.
READING In this section of the test, you will have a chance to show how well you understand written English. There are three parts to this section, with special directions for each part.
PART V Directions: Questions 101-140 are incomplete sentences. Four words or phrases, marked (A), (B), (C), (D) are given beneath each sentence. You are to choose the one word or phrase that best completes the sentence. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and mark your answer. You will read: Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with ..... (A) caring (B) careful (C) care (D) carefully The sentence should read, "Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with care." Therefore, you should choose answer (C). Now begin work on the questions.
101. Health care ..... have been rising but so has the quality. (A) cost (B) costs (C) costing (D) costly
102. We are restocking the warehouse now that the transport strike is over ..... that
customers get what they need right away. (A) to ensure (B) ensured (C) for ensuring (D) ensure
READING In this section of the test, you will have a chance to show how well you understand written English. There are three parts to this section, with special directions for each part.
PART V Directions: Questions 101-140 are incomplete sentences. Four words or phrases, marked (A), (B), (C), (D) are given beneath each sentence. You are to choose the one word or phrase that best completes the sentence. Then, on your answer sheet, find the number of the question and mark your answer. You will read: Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with ..... (A) caring (B) careful (C) care (D) carefully The sentence should read, "Because the equipment is very delicate, it must be handled with care." Therefore, you should choose answer (C). Now begin work on the questions.
101. Health care ..... have been rising but so has the quality. (A) cost (B) costs (C) costing (D) costly
102. We are restocking the warehouse now that the transport strike is over ..... that
customers get what they need right away. (A) to ensure (B) ensured (C) for ensuring (D) ensure
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