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“Pertinent And Plain”: Robert Barclay And The Transformation Of Quaker Silence, Samuel Phillips

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Scholarship on Quaker rhetoric has frequently neglected the subversive possibilities of Quaker pamphleteering, particularly in the period following the publication of Robert Barclay’s Apology. This article develops an epistemological framework based on the Apology and demonstrates that although Quaker pamphleteers during this “Quietist” period asserted the honesty and transparency of their use of language, the Apology works to license certain circumlocutionary moves which Quaker authors used to obscure potentially seditious or heretical ideas. It focuses on two classical rhetorical figures, paralipsis and aposiopesis. Through a close reading of pamphlets written before and after the publication of the Apology, it demonstrates …