CCR 601: *Rhetoric Review* and Rhetorical Analysis: Danisch, Eubanks, Ritter, and Elliot

601 Notes

10/28/09

Rhetoric Review

Each of these articles are from RR, Vol. 27, No. 3, 2008

Features

• Obviously the focus is rhetorical studies / rhetorical analysis
• Short abstract of argument
• Argument laid out up front and often restated
• Review of lit is on rhetorical traditions/definitions usually provided
• Sometimes organization of article laid out
• Sometimes methods of analysis defined
• Key passages from texts are used for analysis
• Other scholars used as framework and evidence for analysis
• Concludes with a call for new ways of analyzing the terms in question
• Endnotes and works cited (MLA)
• Topics in this issue (rhetorical analysis of…): rhetorical features in the rhetorics of law; rhetorical features in the rhetorics of globalization and government; student public discourse online meets classroom practices; Jewish laws and morals (midrash) as applied to democratic culture and literature when analyzing an author’s work

ROBERT DANISCH

“Aphorisms, Enthymemes, and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. on the First Amendment”

• Investigates how Supreme court justice Holmes uses aphorisms for enthymematic reasoning
• Some of his moves:
• Introduction: outlines his argument, reviews some rhetorical traditions of analyzing law, defines aphorism and enthymeme, restates his thesis in most paragraphs
• Application: provides key passages from these texts for the reader before analyzing them, analyzes Holmes calling on sources (Morson, Lerner, Menand, Posner) and in later sections argues how enthymemes and aphorisms are alike (in the ways that they persuasive through audience’s held assumptions and how they leave interpretations going).

PHILIP EUBANKS

“An Analysis of Corporate Rule in Globalization Discourse: Why We Need Rhetoric to Explain Conceptual Figures”

• Investigates how metaphors (specifically the metaphor Corporations are Government) work to influence linguistic choices and the ideologies depended upon to interpret evidence. Applies conceptual metaphor theory to argue rhetoric works to create metaphors that cognitively reshape “political and ideological commitments” (237).
• Some of his moves
• Introduction: outlines his argument, defines key terms (conceptual metaphors) by drawing on Lakoff and Johnson and then providing examples, explicitly signals his argument (“I argue that…”),
• Provides a method of analysis section (part of a larger case study, reviews his selection process) and overviews the organization of his argument (in 3 sections)
• His analysis: provides historical context of globalization and his texts under analysis, points to common metaphorical phrases in these texts for analysis, provides key passages from these texts for the reader before analyzing them, cites sources as evidence for his analysis (Karliner, Hightower, Perkins, etc.)

KELLY RITTER

“E-Valuating Learning: Rate My Professors and Public Rhetorics of Pedagogy”

• Placing rhetoric as public discourse and civic resistance, Ritter investigates how RMP works as a way for students to engage in public assessment of pedagogy, thus leading teachers to think in new ways about classroom instruction focusing on civic engagement and online communication.
• Some of her moves
• Historicizes student evaluation, provides a framework of rhetorical studies; defines terms (public discourse, rhetoric as resistance); Cites Berlin, Enos, Couture, Crowley, Giroux, among many others; organizes under major claims (we value evaluation, pedagogy and civic engagement is going public in online discussion forums, we should bring RPM discourse in the classroom); provides clear examples of the online text

NORBERT ELLIOT

“A Midrash for Louise Rosenblatt”

• Analyzes Louise Rosenblatt’s Literature as Exploration to argue that literature works to shape democratic culture and citizenry.
• Some of his moves
• Provides context of Rosenblatt and argues that she’s hugely under-recognized in the field; likens Rosenblatt’s philosophies to the New Deal; defines “midrash,” contextualizing how rabbinic literature contributes to woman studies and lit theory; organizes analysis under the three steps for midrashing: parable (her bio), paraphrase (summary of her works), and prophecy (what she foresaw in the discipline); uses a dramatic monologue to illustrate liberated expression; ends with the words of Louise

(Rhetorical) Analysis

• Collin’s answer: when performing RA, we are performing some kind of separation (opposite of synthesis). Break down layers or scales of a particular object. Differentiating the reality from what is perceived or looking at new scale to alter our perception of a particular event or text or phenomenon. For the purpose of noticing things that we hadn’t noticed before.
• We start with a site or text or something we want to investigate
• Framework of investigation that you take a closer look at a common thread
• Subjective Purpose

CCR 720: Inge (2001) "Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship"

Inge, M. Thomas. "Collaboration and Concepts of Authorship." PMLA 116.3 (May 2001): 623-630.

Executive Summary:

Inge begins his argument by criticizing English and composition for holding on to narrow definitions of authorship—mainly the view that the author works alone and is considered what Stillinger calls a “solitary genius”—despite our recognition that all texts are constructed based on various influences of social and political interactions, including social interactions amongst multiple individuals during composition and revision processes. After providing numerous convincing examples of how prominent literary authors (like Milton, Fitzgerald, and Dreiser) have depended on various individuals (like friends, family, acquaintances, editors, and proofreaders, among others) for writing their famous works, Inge questions why we still deny the extensive social and authorial collaboration occurring during the writing of literary works. Inge posits that our habit of viewing texts as unique works of individual authors (instead of collaborative pieces) falsely substantiates an idealistic view of how literary texts are constructed. He stresses that holding on to this view also negatively promotes the common reaction to and criticism of collaboration as producing less original—and, therefore, less valuable—texts.

Quotable Quotes:

· “there should be a change in attitude about how we discuss our literature and culture so that we do not constantly downgrade authors according to the extent to which they compromise with the pragmatic and economic forces of time and place. We might reconsider the priority we give to what authors think is best for their works, since like parens thay are too often blind to the imperfections of their children. If we allow more for a social and contextual concept of authorship, perhaps we can provide a more realistic and less romantic view of literary production” (630).

· Texts “are the result of any number of discourses that take place among the writer, the political and social environments in which the writing occurs, the aesthetic and economic pressures that encourage the process, the psychological and emotional state of the writer, and the reader who is expected to receive or consume the end product when it reaches print. Even if not intended for an audience or the publishing marketplace, a piece of writing cannot escape the numerous influences that produce it. All discourse is socially constructed” (623).

Citable Sources:

· Stillinger, Jack. Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius. New York: Oxford UP, 1991.

CCR 720: Eliot (1920) "Tradition and the Individual Talent"

Eliot, T.S. “Tradition and the Individual Talent.” Perspecta, Vol. 19 (1982), pp. 36-42. (originally published in 1920).

Executive Summary:

Eliot seems to have two goals in this short piece of literary criticism: 1) to illustrate how literary criticism should not view poets as unoriginal when they call upon or resonate with previously written poetry; and 2) to illustrate how poets themselves must rely on past poetry in their new contexts not in order to produce new ideas, but in order to process and transmit ideas through the poet's understanding and reordering of historical writings in his new era.

The essay is presented in three sections. In the first section, Eliot critiques practices of literary criticism for finding flaws in artists being traditional (in other words, for finding artists unoriginal if they resemble any of their writerly predecessors). Although he acknowledges that blindly following traditions of earlier authors should be discouraged, Eliot argues that a poet’s strongest moments of originality can be identified as his ability to fit in with past work while writing for the modern day. As a consequence of poets being compared to historical works in criticism, of poets having to address historical and social changes over time, and of poets needing to be conscious of the past and presence he writes from and within, Eliot concludes that gaining knowledge about the past will eventual lead to a poet’s abandonment of unique inner-self since he must attend to more important contextual issues of time: “What happens is a continual surrender of himself as he is at the moment to something which is more valuable. The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of personality” (39).

Second, Eliot posits his “Impersonal theory” as being the mature poet’s ability to use poetry as a means to vary his historical knowledge of poetry into new combinations—a practice where the poet creates art by separating himself from the content, absorbing information and the feelings of others, and then communicating this already authored material in new ways in accordance with new times: "The poet’s mind is in fact a receptacle for seizing and storing up numberless feelings, phrases, images, which remain there until all the particles which can unite to form a new compound are present together” (40). In his last section, Eliot concludes by reestablishing his claim that criticism should focus on poetry not the poet and that poets must necessarily surrender themselves to the influences of past works and the present moment in order to successfully produce impersonal art, which he sees as the only way to illustrate true feelings.

Quotable Quotes:

· In this passage, Eliot criticizes literary criticism for praising an author for originality when his work differs from other writers. Eliot counters that a writer’s work can be the most original when he calls upon his predecessors. Thus, Eliot asserts that a shortcoming of literary criticism is:

“our tendency to insist, when we praise a poet, upon those aspects of is work in which he least resembles anyone else. In these aspects of parts of his work we pretend to find what is individual, what is the peculiar essence of the man. We dwell with satisfaction upon the poet’s difference from his predecessors, especially his immediate predecessors; we endeavor to find something that can be isolated in order to be enjoyed. Whereas if we approach a poet without this prejudice we shall often find that not only the best, but the most individual parts of his work may be those in which the dead poets, his ancestors, assert their immortality most vigorously. And I do not mean the impressionable period of adolescence, but the period of full maturity” (pp. 36-37).

· Eliot argues that writers can never be critiqued as individuals since they rely on those around them for our understanding and critique of them and their work. For me, this has resonance with the scholarly practice of reviewing literature as a means to establish yourself and your argument as a contribution to the field. Besides the quote below, he elaborates on this by referring to how artists must know historical and present day art.

“No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead” (37).

Contextual info:

· Eliot is a well known American Nobel Prize of Literature winner, who wrote during the modernism period (publishing between 1915 and 1965). Besides being a literary critic, he was also an author of famous poems and plays such as The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, The Waste Land, Ash Wednesday, and Four Quartets. He was born in America but lived in England, and attributes both of his citzenships as being influential to his writing.

· Criticism on Eliot: Eliot has been criticized for his practice of interweaving quotes within his work, and has thus been charged as unoriginal and/or a plagiarist. His defense included recognition of the fragmented nature of writing today, calling attention to his style of juxtaposition to affirm his unique take on things.

· Eliot’s criticisms: According to his short biography on nobelprize.com, Eliot advocated traditional approaches to literature (perhaps related to his religious practices in Christianity). This may be seen as contradictory since he has often been viewed as stemming away from traditional approaches. He has also been suggested to have influenced New Criticism, although he heavily criticized this approach later in his career. You see this echoed in his comments such as “Honest criticism and sensitive appreciation is directed not upon the poet but upon the poetry” (39), or “It is not in his personal emotions, the emotions provoked by particular events in his life, that the poet is in any way remarkable or interesting” (41), or “To divert interest from the poet to the poetry is a laudable aim: for it would conduce to a juster estimation of actual poetry, good and bad” (42).

· Perspecta is a student edited journal published at Yale (The Yale Architectural Journal). The journal publishes new scholars from around the world as well as older theoretical works, but from what I cang gather, it’s themes are dedicated to scholars interested in architecture. I can’t find info online regarding this edition of the journal.

CCR 720: Eagleton (1976) "The Author as Producer"

Eagleton, Terry. "The Author as Producer." Marxism and Literary Criticism. Berkeley: U California P, 1976. 59-76.

After situating the production of art as an industry in capitalist business (where art is a commodity to be consumed by audiences for a profit), Eagleton calls on the work of Marxist theorist Walter Benjamin to illustrate how one particular dramatic production redefines meanings of artistic form, artistic author, and artistic product. The artistic example Eagleton calls on in service of illustrating his argument is that of Bertolt Brecht’s “epic theatre,” where Brecht, in accordance to Benjamin’s Marxist theories, reproduces art in a way that transforms writers, actors, and audience members as collaborators in the making of the art form. As participants collaborating with the production of the drama, the form moves away from that of bourgeois theatre (where an audience acts as observer of a final product that is constructed for ‘easy’ mass consumption) to a form that uses “alienation effects” in order to show audiences some familiar occurrences in a disconnected and unfamiliar light. Eagleton distinguishes how art can be viewed from a production standpoint (analyzing the work, distribution, and consumption of art) and from an ideological standpoint (analyzing how art constructs, maintains, and relies upon ideological modes of representation). These perspectives for analyzing art aim to uncover and transform cultural and historical norms and in turn support the author’s overall argument that Marxism helps to liberate oppressed ideologies and systems of meaning making.

In regard to how definitions of author are reshaped, Eagleton explains that under Marxist theory the author is not the creator of a text, but is instead seen as a producer, “as a worker rooted in a particular history with particular materials at his disposal” (68). Eagleton cites Marxist Pierre Macherey who similarly views the author in this fashion: “the author is essentially a producer who works up certain given materials into a new product. The author does not make the materials with which he works: forms, values, myths, symbols, ideologies, come to him already worked-upon, as the worker in a car-assembly plant fashions his product from already-processed materials” (69).