.
POSTSCRIPT: 3 April 2008
--Dangerous
Beauty. "Do you know what my
daughter's nurse told her today? 'In a girl's voice lies temptation--a known fact.
Eloquence in a woman means promiscuity. Promiscuity of the mind leads to promiscuity of
the body.' She doesn't believe it yet, but she will. She'll grow up just like her mother.
Marry, raise children, and honor her family. Spend her youth in needlepoint and rue the
day she was born a girl. And when she dies, she'll wonder why she obeyed all the rules of
God and Country for no biblical hell could ever be worse than a state of perpetual
inconsequence." Purely optional: For some background on the historical connection between
rhetoric and courtesans, visit The
House of Rhetoric.
--Erasmus and De Copia. See preview (below) of this week's classes.
--Swift's "Modest
Proposal."
-Swift uses savage irony to point out
the inhumane condition of the colonized Irish. Near the end, his
"Projector" rejects several rational ways to help the poor, strategies Swift,
himself, had previously proposed in pamphlets, including the series known as "The
Drapier's Letters." Part of the satire's effect derives from the thoroughness
with which it works out its basic metaphor equating the English devouring of innocent
babies and wealthy absentee landowners devouring the Irish economy. This has the effect of
literalizing the metaphor as the butchery, sale, and consumption of the
"product" are worked out. . . .
One of the infuriating things about the "Proposer"'s or "Projector"'s
voice is its serene rationalism. All of its rhetoric imitates the ideal public speaker's
tone of sweet reason and enlightened concern for the well-being of others. He never
descends to polemical ranting. The scariest part of the essay may be when the
argument turns to the suggestion that, if the Irish were offered the chance to kill their
children, they might prefer it to seeing them grow up in such total poverty.
-Charles K. Smith argues that Swift’s
rhetorical style persuades the reader to detest the speaker and pity the Irish.
Swift’s specific strategy is twofold, using a “trap” (Lewis 135) to create
sympathy for the Irish and a dislike of the narrator who, in the span of one sentence,
“details vividly and with rhetorical emphasis the grinding poverty” but feels
emotion solely for members of his own class. Swift’s use of gripping details of
poverty and his narrator’s cool approach towards them creates “two opposing
points of view” which “alienate the reader, perhaps unconsciously, from a
narrator who can view with "melancholy" detachment a subject that Swift has
directed us, rhetorically, to see in a much less detached way” (Lewis 136).
Swift has his proposer further degrade the Irish by using language ordinarily reserved
for animals. Lewis argues that the speaker uses “the vocabulary of animal
husbandry” (Lewis 138) to describe the Irish. Once the children have been
commoditized, Swift’s rhetoric can easily turn “people into animals, then meat,
and from meat, logically, into tonnage worth a price per pound” (Lewis 138).
Swift uses the Proposer’s serious tone to highlight the absurdity of his proposal.
In making his argument, the speaker uses the conventional, text book approved order of
argument from Swift’s time (Lewis 139). The contrast between the “careful
control against the almost inconceivable perversion of his scheme” and “the
ridiculousness of the proposal” create a situation in which the reader has “to
consider just what perverted values and assumptions would allow such a diligent,
thoughtful, and conventional man to propose so perverse a plan” (Lewis 139).
(Smith, Charles Kay (1968), "Toward a Participatory Rhetoric:
Teaching Swift's Modest Proposal", College English 30 (2): 135-149)
--Two Rhetorical Analyses. Next Tuesday we'll continue reviewing the comparative strengths and
weaknesses of these two student papers (on texts by Chopin and Twain). Make sure that
you've read the essays carefully--and that you bring them to class.
POSTSCRIPT: 1 April 2008
PREVIEW: 3 April 2008
--IRONY & GORDON GEKKO'S "GREED IS GOOD" SPEECH from Wall Street (1987): The text of the speech is online at
American Rhetoric (video at
YouTube -- and a related clip). The inspiration for the "Greed is good" speech seems to have come
from two sources. The first part, where Gekko complains that the company's management owns
less than three percent of its stock and that it has too many vice presidents, is taken
from similar speeches and comments made by Carl Icahn about companies he was trying to
take over in the early 1980s. The defense of greed is a paraphrase of a 1985 commencement
address at UC Berkeley, delivered by arbitrageur Ivan Boesky (who himself was later
convicted of insider-trading charges) in which he said, "Greed is all right, by the
way. I want you to know that. I think greed is healthy. You can be greedy and still feel
good about yourself." Purely optional: Roger
Ebert's review of Wall Street.
Now, to the matter of irony in (and about) Wall Street--what might be called
the "unstable" or "uncertain" irony of the film in general and the
"Greed is good" speech in particular. In a recent
blog discussing an upcoming sequel to Wall Street, Simon Vozick-Levinson argued
that the real reason for Wall Street's continued popularity is the fact that many
viewers "actually identify with the monstrous character of Gordon Gekko,
played so brilliantly by Michael Douglas. When he proclaims that 'Greed . . . is good,'
they clap along enthusiastically. Even Douglas himself, who's agreed to reprise the role
in the sequel, has just complained to the New York Times about 'drunken Wall
Street broker[s]' who 'come up to me and say, "You're the man!"' Unless the
sequel is played just right, then, we can look forward to another five to 10 years of
nattily-attired meatheads spouting amoral catchphrases like 'Lunch is for wimps' without a
trace of irony." (Popwatch Blog, May
2007) A reviewer for The Village Voice wrote that "Stone’s
rhetorical masterstroke is putting the most outrageously left-wing lines in the mouth of
his capitalist monster."
Here's another (postmodern?) level of irony.
In a more recent movie, Boiler Room (2000), a group of ambitious 20-something
stock traders gather nightly to watch their favorite film--Wall Street--and
recite the dialogue from memory. Critic Sean Mallory observed, "Its
members quote . . . Oliver Stone's Wall Street as if they were reading from the
Bible, and take every word from [the film] with their irony and sarcasm detectors held in
the off position with a piece of duct tape."
So is it simply a question of some viewers failing or refusing to see the irony of Gekko's
speech, or does the speech itself encourage a non-ironic response?
Or are we in the land of cosmic irony? Another reviewer of Boiler
Room (fyi from YouTube, Ben
Affleck's speech in Boiler Room) said, "One of the
funniest and most telling scenes in [Boiler Room] involves a group of the young
brokers drinking beer and watching Wall Street on video, quoting the dialogue
line-for-line. After all, these twenty-somethings were born and raised on television and
movies, [and] one of the themes Younger brings out most clearly is that the lives
they live are pop-culture-infused fantasies. They all want be Michael Douglas in Wall
Street, and it is this tunnel-vision that blinds them to the criminal reality of
their situation."
And here's another ironic perspective on Wall Street,
this from Tom O'Brien in the bookThe Screening of America (1990): "
In Wall Street Stone laid on
his own shoulders an old albatross: how to make good interesting—or at least as vital
as evil. Milton faced the problem in Paradise Lost, as other artists and
filmmakers have innumerable times since. But the problem has a specific contemporary
side. We have not been long lately on charismatic spokesmen for the common
good—either in art of life. Gekko’s “greed is good” speech begs
a question: when was the last time that anyone spoke equally commandingly about ethics and
public life? President Reagan’s rhetorical gifts lay elsewhere. The
recent cast of “good guys” who stress communal responsibility have been, for the
most part, short of charisma: John Gardner, Jimmy Carter, Michael Dukakis—it’s
Snoresville Central. By contrast, the flamboyant, headline-grabbing egos in the
eighties (Boesky, Trump, Icahn, the Helmsleys, Steinbrenner) may hve given loads to
charity, but they didn’t exacly use their charisma to spread social enlightenment. .
. . that is, both Wall Street and the world it mirrored lacked a figure whose ego
was not just big but grand—big enough to join the world’s and his own
interest in one. Gordon Gekko put it bluntly: “If you want a friend, man, get
a dog.” 10 to 1, his would have been a pit bull.” (O’Brien, 1990, p.
72-73)
Are they agents of social change, or passive
mirrors? To drag an old chestnut out of the fire, do artists and filmmakers simply
reflect, or transform their age? And who will ever prove in which order? . . . We
are left with what common sense tells us: any art form or medium both reflects and shapes
the culture around it. . . . Their audiences respond, assimilate a created image, and
sometimes act according to its message. (O’Brien, 1990, p. 20)
Let's just say that if you choose an ironic
text (or a text that can be read ironically) for your final project, you should have plenty to write about.
--Mrs. & Mrs. Gary Hart and Mr. and Mrs. Eliot
Spitzer. At the start of term, we listened to a
resignation speech from Senator Gary Hart after he was caught in a sex scandal. During the
week of our midterm exam, New York Governor Eliot Spitzer delivered a resignation speech
after he was caught in a sex scandal (speech posted at YouTube). Both politicians made use
of their wives as props for a media performance. Purely
optional: compare the two speeches, and consider the inherent ironies.
--Poe's "Tell-Tale Heart" and Swift's "Modest
Proposal." Compare (rhetorically and stylistically) the opening paragraphs of
these two different works. What specific characteristics of the prose and the personae
work to define the major appeals (ethos, pathos, logos), identify a role for the reader to
play, and either encourage or discourage identification with the narrator? How does
each text make use of irony and logos? We'll conclude our discussion of "A Modest
Proposal" on Thursday.
--Two Stories by Kate Chopin & Two
Rhetorical Analyses. Before Thursday's class
discussion, please read Gretchen Stewart's draft rhetorical analysis of "The
Storm." Be prepared to let me know if you have questions about her analysis or
about the analysis of Twain's "Littery Folk" by Stephanie Roberts. (Twain's
"Birthday Dinner Speech" is online here.)
PREVIEW: 1 and 3 April 2008
OVERVIEW: This week we'll continue to focus on aspects of irony and logos, with
special attention to the assigned essays and short stories. In our historical survey,
we'll move from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. To reserve more of our class time for
rhetorical analysis (and thus help you prepare for your final project), please study these
notes on Renaissance rhetoric:
--RHETORIC OF THE RENAISSANCE. "During
the European Renaissance [roughly 1400 to 1700] rhetoric attained its greatest
preeminence, both in terms of range of influence and in value" (Brian Vickers). With
the discovery (and rediscovery) of many Greek and Latin texts, Renaissance humanists
worked to reclaim the entire rhetorical tradition of antiquity. For example, by 1500 (just
four decades after the advent of printing), Cicero's complete works were readily available
in print throughout Europe; by 1550, one hundred editions of Quintilian's Institutes
of Oratory were in print. Between the late 14th and early 18th centuries, more than
2,500 different books on rhetoric appeared in Europe. Skill in rhetoric became
the hallmark of the educated person in the Renaissance, much as it had been in Cicero's
Rome.
--ERASMUS. The most influential figure in the
rebirth of interest in classical rhetoric was Erasmus. His
textbook De Duplici Copia Verborum et Rerum (1512), commonly known as De Copia,
went through more than 150 editions throughout Europe. Its treatment of rhetoric is
less comprehensive than the classical works of Aristotle and Cicero and promotes an
arguable distinction between matter and form ("Style is to thought as are clothes to
the body, and the practice of giving variety to expression is exactly like changing
clothes. The garment should be clean, it should fit, and it should not be wrongly made
up."). The first book of De Copia treats the subject of style, showing
students how to use figures and tropes; the second book covers invention. Much of
the emphasis is on abundance of variation (copia means "plenty" or
"abundance," as in copious or cornucopia), so both books focus
on ways to introduce the maximum amount of variety into discourse. The skilful
writer, Erasmus argued, is capable not only of correctness but of great variety of
expression. In one section of De Copia, Erasmus demonstrates over 200 ways to write the simple sentence,
"Your letter pleased me greatly." He recommends the exercise of keeping a
commonplace book, of paraphrasing poetry into prose (and vice versa), of rendering the
same subject in multiple styles, of using the figures of speech for stylistic variation,
and of proving a proposition along several different lines of argument.
--WOMEN & RENAISSANCE RHETORIC. Women were more likely to have access to education during
the Renaissance than at earlier periods in Western history, and one of the subjects they
would have studied was rhetoric. Nonetheless, such access was available only to women of
high social rank. "Very little, if any, opportunity existed in the power structure of
Renaissance courts, principalities, universities, or professional organizations for the
woman scholar to rise above her born position through education and intellectual
accomplishments." (Katharine Wilson, Women Writers of the Renaissance and
Reformation, 1987).
-CHRISTINE de PISAN (1364-1430). Europe's "first professional woman writer" was
largely self-educated, studying classical Greek and Latin works as well as those of
contemporaries such as Dante and Boccaccio. She identified the power of language as a key
to women's advancement. Her Book of the City of Ladies (1401) contains a vigorous
defense of women.
-MARGARET CAVENDISH (1623-1673). See Cavendish
timeline. Virginia Woolf on Cavendish: "Though her philosophies are futile, and
her plays intolerable, and her verses mainly dull, the vast bulk of the Duchess is
leavened by a vein of authentic fire."
-MADAME de SCUDERY (1607-1701). Using conversation as a model for other forms of
communication, she set out the first fully elaborated early modern theory of rhetoric by a
woman. According to Jane Donaworth (Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900,
2002), for de Scudery, language is "the bond that holds society together, not through
public speaking but through the conversation that educates and plants morality daily in
ordinary people." In works such as Les Femmes Illustres (1642), de
Scudery encouraged women to educate themselves and to seek social status through their
writing.
--RHETORIC
and the VITA ACTIVA (the active civic
life). During the Renaissance, a new ideal developed around a conception of of rhetoric as
the application of reason to the solution of the practical problems of human social life.
Speech is the means by which humans create civilizations, and so rhetoric and eloquence
(not prayer and meditation) were seen to bring about constructive, cooperative action on
the part of the citizenry.
--ENGLISH VERNACULAR RHETORICS of the 16th
CENTURY. Rhetoric textbooks in English began to
appear midway through the 16th century.
-The first to gain wide currency was Thomas
Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique (purely optional: online at Renascence
Editions), 1553: based on classical models, the text examines the five elements of
rhetoric, the seven parts of an oration, and the three kinds of oration. It focuses
largely on style (figures) at the expense of memory and delivery. According to Nicholas Sharp, "It has some of the least engaging features of a freshman English handbook
and some of the more pedestrian qualities of a desk encyclopedia. Compendious,
prescriptive, almost quaintly pedantic, at times it becomes as tedious in substance as its
original black letter editions were repulsive in appearance."
-George Puttenham's The Art of English Poesie (1589),
with its elaborate treatment of figures, also contributed to rhetorical theory. Puttenham
attempted to classify the figures (107 of them) according to the nature of their appeal.
His classification scheme includes English names for classical figures--which has only added
to the confusion over the names of the figures of speech.
POSTSCRIPT: 25 March 2008
--FINAL PROJECT. Once you've spent some time squeezing a potential
text (as discussed online and in Tuesday's class), send me your topic idea (with text
linked or attached to your email--or dropped off as a hard copy) so that I can offer a
little advice well before the topic-submission deadline of April 8.
--RHETORICAL
ANALYSIS OF FILM. For your final paper, are you
considering doing a rhetorical analysis of a portion of a film? Then you may find
this online
worksheet to be helpful. In our final class meetings we'll work with excerpts
from a number of different films.
--TWAIN's "WAR PRAYER." In 1904, Twain wrote
this fable to express his revulsion at the consequences of both the Spanish-American War
and the Philippine-American War. His family and friends begged him not to publish
it, and his publisher rejected it, thinking it too inflammatory for the times. Twain
agreed, but instructed that it be published after his death, saying, "None but the
dead are permitted to tell the truth."
"The War Prayer" was eventually published after
World War I. In the 1990s. the Washington Monthly's publisher, Markos Kounalakis,
recalled Twain's fable while he was covering the war in Yugoslavia. Eventually he turned
"The War Prayer" into a short video, featuring illustrations by Akis
Dimitrakopoulos and narration by Peter Coyote, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, and Erik Bauersfeld.
I strongly encourage you to view it here (hit "play").
--POE's "Tell-Tale Heart." We'll spend a few minutes with Poe's story
at the start of next Tuesday's class, but I'm leaving it up to you to study the analysis
of it that was handed out last week. Let me know if you have questions about Zimmerman's analysis. Be
prepared to identify the triggers (or rhetorical strategies) in the story that encourage
an ironic reading.
--SWIFT's "Modest Proposal." Next Tuesday we'll attend to Swift's
manipulation of logic and irony in this classic essay. I also
encourage you to read this brief biographical
sketch of Swift. And here, courtesy of Eva:
--ADVICE to PRINCES.
-CASTLIGIONE'S The Courtier. Rhetoric in the Renaissance provided the basis for
prescriptive manuals on how to conduct oneself in social settings; the most famous example
is The Courtier (1528). Standards of personal decorum were drawn from the model
of the finished orator--refined, well-spoken, dignified. Thus, rhetoric was perceived as a
source of personal power or advancement. See sprezzatura.
-MACHIAVELLI's The Prince (1513): "Is
it better to be feared or loved?" If you're unfamiliar with Machiavelli's The Prince, at a minimum
skim this summary of the text at
Wikipedia. Much of the force of The Prince derives from a single set of terms:
Fortuna and Virtù. Virtù may be translated as "power" or
"strength of character"; virtù can be the quality of a person's strength of
body or mind, but it can also refer to the spirit of a nation. Fortuna, is
usually translated with "fortune" (or sometimes "luck"), but in
chapter 25 of The Prince, Machiavelli slightly alters both the denotation and
connotation of Fortuna. Rather than portraying Fortuna as a goddess who has complete
control over human affairs, he insists on joint control: "I think it may be true that
Fortune governs half more or less of our actions, but that even so she leaves the other
half more or less in our power to control." Machiavelli's Fortuna is a creator of
opportunity, not just the ruler of temporal affairs or the goddess of bad luck.
Purely optional: Chapter
One of Mikael Hornqvist's Machiavelli and Empire makes a case for
understanding The Prince more as a work of rhetoric than as a treatise on
political power. Likewise, see Victoria Kahn's Machiavellian Rhetoric (Princeton
UP, 1994):
Kahn argues that though Machiavellian
rhetoric uses the Aristotelian technique of debate and dialogue on both sides of an issue,
it does so not to produce consensus under preconceived truth. Rather, it aims to show the
ambiguity and probability inherent in rhetoric and politics and to stimulate dissent and
conflict. Interrogating conformity and consensus opens up space for the creativity,
individuality, and dissent that consensus and philosophical truth often overwhelm. The
value Machiavelli put on conflict may be adduced from his belief that the excellence of
the Roman republic was due, not to fortuna as Livy had said, but to the
constant conflict between pleb and noble. Rome's virtue was due, therefore, to its
rhetorical politics, its ability to absorb both sides of the class conflict. In short, if
the virtue of a good rhetor is the ability to weave both sides of an argument into a
coherent argument for a single course of action, the virtue of a successful politics is
its ability to weave opposing classes and groups into a coherent course of action.
(Review by Edmund Jacobitti, Italica, Summer 1996)
POSTSCRIPT: 25 March 2008
--FINAL PROJECT. Start now sending me
your topic ideas for the final project.
--RHETORIC
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. On Thursday be prepared to identify St. Augustine's
role in the history of rhetoric along with the
different forms of communication that helped to keep the rhetorical tradition alive during
the medieval period. See ASSIGNMENTS
due this week and today's handout.
--Mark Twain's "War Prayer." Read
for Thursday's class and be prepared to discuss the nature of irony in Twain's fable.
--IRONY. Irony, as we've seen, is a trope. It's also a way of
viewing the world. Our own time has been described as "the age of irony." What
does all this mean--if anything? Consider some of the different definitions of (and
presumptions about) irony contained in these observations:
-"I’m tired of the age of irony.
The age of irony is just an attitude that excuses you for consuming junk as if it were
worth consuming." (film critic Roger Ebert, 2006)
-"One good thing could come from this
horror: it could spell the end of the age of irony. For some 30 years — roughly as
long as the Twin Towers were upright — the good folks in charge of America's
intellectual life have insisted that nothing was to be believed in or taken seriously.
Nothing was real. With a giggle and a smirk, our chattering classes — our columnists
and pop culture makers — declared that detachment and personal whimsy were the
necessary tools for an oh-so-cool life. . . . No more. The planes that plowed into the
World Trade Center and the Pentagon were real. The flames, smoke, sirens — real. The
chalky landscape, the silence of the streets — all real. I feel your pain —
really." (essayist Roger Rosenblatt, Time magazine,
September 2001)
-"We have a grave problem with this word (well, in fact, it's not
really grave - but I'm not being ironic when I call it that, I'm being hyperbolic. Though
often the two amount to the same thing. But not always). Just looking at the definitions,
the confusion is understandable - in the first instance, rhetorical irony expands to cover
any disjunction at all between language and meaning, with a couple of key exceptions
(allegory also entails a disconnection between sign and meaning, but obviously isn't
synonymous with irony; and lying, clearly, leaves that gap, but relies for its efficacy on
an ignorant audience, where irony relies on a knowing one). Still, even with the riders,
it's quite an umbrella, no?
"In the second instance, situational irony (also known as cosmic irony) occurs
when it seems that 'God or fate is manipulating events so as to inspire false hopes, which
are inevitably dashed' (1). While this looks like the more straightforward usage, it opens
the door to confusion between irony, bad luck and inconvenience.
"Most pressingly, though, there are a number of misconceptions about irony that
are peculiar to recent times. The first is that September 11 spelled the end of irony. The
second is that the end of irony would be the one good thing to come out of September 11.
The third is that irony characterises our age to a greater degree than it has done any
other. The fourth is that Americans can't do irony, and we[the British] can. The fifth is
that the Germans can't do irony, either (and we still can). The sixth is that irony and
cynicism are interchangeable. The seventh is that it's a mistake to attempt irony in
emails and text messages, even while irony characterises our age, and so do emails. And
the eighth is that "post-ironic" is an acceptable term - it is very modish to
use this, as if to suggest one of three things: i) that irony has ended; ii) that
postmodernism and irony are interchangeable, and can be conflated into one handy word; or
iii) that we are more ironic than we used to be, and therefore need to add a prefix
suggesting even greater ironic distance than irony on its own can supply. None of these
things is true." (Zoe
Williams, "The Final Irony," The Guardian June 28, 2003 --
highly recommended)
-"I doubt shallow cynicism ever really did dominate the national mood, I'm happy to
join in the chorus of goodbyes to the über-smartass, the kind of "ironist" so
detached that heart and head were all but amputated.
"Which, hopefully, now opens the way to a golden age of irony. The real stuff. The
kind of irony that drove Socrates' queries, the irony that lies at the heart of much great
literature and great religion, the irony that pays attention to contradictions and
embraces paradoxes, rather than wishing them away in an orgy of purpose and certainty.
Whoever named Bush's still murky plan of retaliation "Infinite Justice" was
dangerously devoid of irony, not to mention a sense of Islamic theology.
"Here is one dictionary definition of irony: 'Incongruity between actual result of
a sequence of events and the normal or expected result.' That kind of irony might note
that America, for all its effort to shine a beacon of freedom throughout the world, is
seen as an imperial oppressor by large swaths of the Islamic world. That kind of irony
would wonder if in this new battle on behalf of freedom, we may rush to strip away civil
liberties. That kind of irony would wonder whether this new kind of war, waged to make us
safe from terrorist attacks, might plunge the world into a far more dangerous
conflagration.
'To note these ironies is to engage yourself in the grave purpose at hand and take some
responsibility for helping to think it through -- and that's the opposite of ironic
detachment.
'Call it, then, Ironic Engagement. One 20-something who championed this is Randolph
Bourne, a member of Generation Lost who died of influenza in 1918 at the close of the
First World War. Bourne had opposed that war and predicted a spiral of more bloodshed to
grow out of it. A brilliant social critic credited by some with fathering America's
counterculture, Bourne considered his sharpest tool irony. 'The ironic life is a life
keenly alert, keenly sensitive, reacting promptly with feelings of liking or dislike to
each bit of experience, letting none of it pass without interpretation and assimilation, a
life full and satisfying -- indeed a rival of the religious life.'"
(David Beers, "Irony
Is Dead, Long Live Irony," Salon.com, September 25, 2001)
-THE ATOMIC
CAFE (1982). Please read this student analysis of the
documentary that we saw parts of in today's class.
Purely optional: "Duck and Cover" is on YouTube. For an updated version, see
"Duct Tape and
Cover." And another excerpt
from "The Atomic Cafe."
PREVIEW: 25 and 27 March 2008
--RHETORIC
OF THE MIDDLE AGES. This week we'll have
a few things to say about early Christian rhetoric and the rhetoric of the Middle
Ages. We'll note how basic concepts introduced by Aristotle and filtered through
Cicero reappear in the context of medieval life. We'll consider why and how the rhetoric of the Middle Ages was
increasingly identified with written style, and we'll pay some attention to St.
Augustine (see below) and his contributions to rhetoric. You should be able to
identify the components of the
trivium and the quadrivium (i.e., the seven liberal arts: read the first
paragraph, skim the rest); and be able to explain the relationship of rhetoric to
preaching (skim this entry on homiletics)
and letter writing. Here, by the way, is a picture of the medieval Lady Rhetoric.
--RHETORIC & THE SEARCH FOR GOD. Though chronologically not of the Middle Ages, St.
Augustine of Hippo (353-430 A.D.) is generally considered a representative figure in the
development of rhetoric during the medieval period. In the Confessions (398 AD),
Augustine records his passage from a sinful youth to his conversion to Christianity
("I had prayed for chastity and said 'Give me chastity and continence--but not
yet'") under the influence of St. Ambrose (see the first three paragraphs of "On Reading Aloud"). After
his conversion he made significant contributions to rhetoric in On Christian Doctrine
(426-427):
Augustine was interested in rhetoric as a means of persuading Christians to lead a holy
life. With that exclusive interest he can be said to have narrowed the province of
rhetoric. But by rejecting the sophists'
preoccupation with style and the other elements of display and by returning to the more
comprehensive rhetoric of Cicero he can be said to have extended the province of rhetoric
once again. He concentrated on biblical texts and especially on the epistles of that
masterful rhetorical artist, St. Paul. Augustine's analyses of these texts, however, were
concerned not so much with the "message" as with the rhetorical craftsmanship.
Somewhat surprisingly, Augustine rejected Quintilian's notion that the rhetor must be a
morally good man. He did not deny that a preacher's reputation for a virtuous life would
have a persuasive effect on the audience, but he recognized that even a vicious preacher
could induce his audience to follow Christ if he were skillful enough in the manipulation
of his suasive resources.
Augustine's rhetoric laid the groundwork for the rhetoric of the sermon, the branch of
study known today as homiletics--a science that was to command a great deal of attention
during, and for many years after, the Renaissance and the Reformation. None of the
classical rhetoricians, of course, had discussed the art of preaching, but the foundations
for such an art lay in the epideictic variety of rhetoric.
(Corbett and Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th ed., 1999,
p. 498)
IRONY AND LOGOS
--SWIFT's "MODEST PROPOSAL." I'm guessing that most of
you will be re-reading this text and that you also have some familiarity with
Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Our focus will be on irony and logos in "A Modest
Proposal." I encourage you to read this brief biographical sketch of Swift. Remember to
bring your printout of Swift's essay to class this week.
--POE's "The Tell-Tale
Heart." You're probably familiar with this one as well. (This story is worth listening to.) Our
focus again will be on irony and logos. After you have read Poe's story read
pages 5-9 of the handout, "Frantic Forensic Oratory." When reading Zimmerman's
article, don't worry about learning all the unfamiliar rhetorical terms he introduces, but
do make sure that you understand his use of those concepts that appear in our Tool
Kit. Remember to bring your printout of Poe's story and Zimmerman's article to class
this week.
--FINAL PROJECT. It's not too
early to begin sending me your topic ideas.
____________________
NOTES ARCHIVE D: Mar. 25 - Apr.
3
NOTES ARCHIVE C: Feb. 14-Mar. 25
NOTES ARCHIVE B: Jan. 24-Feb. 7
NOTES ARCHIVE A: Jan. 10-Jan. 24
English 5730 is taught by Dr. Richard Nordquist
Office of Liberal Studies (Solms 211)
Armstrong Atlantic State University
Savannah, Georgia 31419
912/921 5991
e-mail: engl5730@lycos.com
UPDATED
07 April 2008
