The formation of the Regius Chair of rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the university of Edinburgh

During the mid‐eighteenth century, a combination of circumstances—cultural, political, and educational—created a public environment in which the formation of the Regius Chair of Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at the University of Edinburgh was a logical development. Several figures at Edinburgh who preceded Blair included material related to rhetoric and belles lettres in their lectures, among them John Stevenson, William Cleghorn, Adam Smith, and Robert Watson. The curricular events leading up to Blair's appointment to the Chair demonstrate that The University of Edinburgh was reflecting and reacting to the social situation outside its walls rather than instituting a preconceived design for either the discipline of rhetoric or the new discipline of literature and literary criticism.

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