Studies CR: Rhetoric & Lit

Rhetoric
and Literature

This course
will trace what happened to rhetoric during various literary historical eras in 
order to
demonstrate how an awareness of rhetorical theory can lead to a fuller
appreciation of literary poetics during those eras.

The course
will have two major parts. In the first part, about half the semester, we will
first investigate the rhetoric/poetics nexus via considering Plato and
Aristotle, both of whom had a great deal to say about rhetoric and poetics. We
will then seek to explore the presence of classical (and other) rhetoric in at
least four texts: Chaucer’s
The Nun’s
Priest’s Tale
, Shakespeare’s Othello,
Milton’s
Paradise Lost (selections),
and Swift’s
A Modest Proposal. In the
course’s second part, also about half a semester, we will bring our
investigation of the nexus between rhetoric and poetics up to the present via
texts that members of the class will choose. Students will also write their
long independent research paper on these texts of their own choosing.

This is a
writing-intensive course that will feature regular class discussion. Required
reading not listed below will be available to download and print via Laulima.
But such texts are also readily available online, in the library, and in
anthologies such as the Norton.

Course Requirements

Steady
attendance and active participation

Informal
writing assignments posted to the class’s Laulima site

A
midterm examination covering the first half of the course

A written and oral report on a chapter
from the Conley course text

An
oral report on the text that you have chosen for your long essay

A
journal recording the research that you will be doing for your long essay

An
oral report on your long essay

A
peer review of the long essay of someone else in the class

The
long essay itself

A
final examination

 

Required Texts

Thomas
M. Conley, Rhetoric in the
European Tradition
 (1994).

Patricia
Bizzell and Bruce Hertzberg, eds., The
Rhetorical Tradition:
Readings from
Classical Times to the Present
, 2nd edition
(2001).