RHETORIC FOR BOTH SEXES
HENNEQUIN, Pierre.
Nouveau cours de rhétorique, à l’usage de la jeunesse des deux sexes; dédié à sa Majesté l’Impératrice mère.
Moscow, Auguste Semen, 1818.
8vo, pp. [vi], xiii, [14]–462, [2 (errata)]; engraved tailpieces; occasional marginal staining and light foxing, generally not affecting text, but otherwise clean and crisp; in contemporary tree calf, flat spine gilt, gilt red morocco lettering-piece; marbled endpapers, edges stained yellow; light wear to boards, corners, and extremities; but still an attractive copy.
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Nouveau cours de rhétorique, à l’usage de la jeunesse des deux sexes; dédié à sa Majesté l’Impératrice mère.
Only edition, very uncommon, of this guide to rhetoric by the Moscow-based French grammarian Pierre Hennequin (1772–1849), explicitly designed for both sexes and dedicated to the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna (1759–1828).
Hennequin asks men why they would ‘claim exclusively for themselves the right to reason and its cultivation, the right to a mind and its training, the right to a heart and its shaping, and the right to acquire knowledge and to communicate it’ (trans.). His aim, he continues, is to fight the prejudice that has historically condemned the ‘more interesting half of human society’ (trans.) to ignorance and obscurity, and to encourage women to take the place in society that their talents require. The work gives advice on invention, oratorical passion, rhetorical structures and techniques, the importance of good taste and style, figures of speech, and the use of flourishes, including repetition and parenthesis, pronunciation, and gesture.
Hennequin worked as a French teacher in Moscow throughout the 1810s, principally to young aristocratic women, before becoming professor of French at the University of Moscow in 1827. Among his other works was a Cours de litterature ancienne et moderne, also published by Semen in four volumes (Moscow, 1821–1822).
OCLC lists only two copies outside continental Europe (LoC, University of Oklahoma); not in Library Hub.
