Newman Studies Journal

Volume 5, Issue 2, Fall 2008

“A Rhetoric in Conduct”
The Gentleman of the University and the Gentleman of the Oratory

Newman’s explicit presentation of the ideal type, “the gentleman,” appears first and foremost in his Oratory papers of 1847 and 1848, and appears only secondarily, and then but partially, four and five years later in his Dublin Discourses of 1852 (The Idea of a University). This essay traces lines of similarity and of difference between these successive portraits and distinguishes both from the attractive, better-known sketch Newman presents as Lord Shaftesbury’s, the “beau ideal” of the man of the world.