Canonizing the Prophet: The Emergence of the Fourth Persona in Radical Reform Rhetoric

• In Event: Studies in the Rhetorical Potential and Limitations of Liberalism and Radicalism in Democracy

Abstract

This paper investigates the extremes of audience authentication through a reception study of suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s controversial The Woman’s Bible (1895), an exemplar of the prophetic tradition in American radical rhetoric. Extending the work of Edwin Black and Philip Wander on the second persona and third persona, respectively, this study re-theorizes audience to include publics that are paradoxically both idealized and unimagined by the prophet, a group of auditors constituting the fourth persona.

Author

• Kerith Woodyard, Northern Illinois Univ