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Rhetoric Commons

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Full-Text Articles in Rhetoric

Turning “Bad Jews Into Worse Christians”: Hermann Adler And The London Society For Promoting Christianity Amongst The Jews, Robert Ellison Oct 2019

Turning “Bad Jews Into Worse Christians”: Hermann Adler And The London Society For Promoting Christianity Amongst The Jews, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This paper explores how sermons contributed to Jewish-Christian relations in Victorian England. I begin with a rhetorical analysis of sermons preached on behalf of the London Society for Promoting Christianity among the Jews, the largest and best known missionary organization of its kind. I then examine a collection of sermons in which Hermann Adler, then rabbi of London’s Bayswater Synagogue and later Chief Rabbi of the British Empire, pushes back against their efforts, offering the “true explanations” of passages which, in his view, had been improperly employed by Christian preachers. Finally, I trace a kind of “feedback loop” in which …


Delivery, Facilitas, And Copia : Job Market Preparation And The Revival Of The Fifth Canon., Joseph Turner Sep 2017

Delivery, Facilitas, And Copia : Job Market Preparation And The Revival Of The Fifth Canon., Joseph Turner

Joseph Turner

This essay argues that English Studies departments should implement training programs in oral delivery strategies for graduate students seeking tenure track employment. A sample a 13-week training program, modeled on elements of classical rhetorical pedagogy, can help students develop and refine stills in oral delivery necessary for academic job interviews.


Rhetoric And Performing Anger : Proserpina's Gift And Chaucer's Merchant's Tale., Joseph Turner Sep 2017

Rhetoric And Performing Anger : Proserpina's Gift And Chaucer's Merchant's Tale., Joseph Turner

Joseph Turner

Although scholars have historically minimized the relationship between medieval grammatical and rhetorical traditions and Chaucer's poetics, Proserpina's angry speech in the Merchant's Tale represents the intersection of medieval classroom grammar exercises, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's theory of delivery, and poetics. Proserpina's angry speech reveals that her rhetoric is calculated to subvert the masculine power structures that surround her. Such a focus on Chaucer's depiction of women's persuasive tactics helps to highlight Chaucer's deep engagement with rhetoric beginning in the 1380's. Moreover, this investigation asks for increased attention to the overlap between classroom grammatical traditions, rhetorical theory, and medieval poetics.


Owning A Virus: The Rhetoric Of Scientific Discovery Accounts, Carol Reeves Aug 2015

Owning A Virus: The Rhetoric Of Scientific Discovery Accounts, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

No Abstract Available


"I Knew There Was Something Wrong With That Paper": Scientific Rhetorical Styles And Scientific Misunderstandings, Carol Reeves Aug 2015

"I Knew There Was Something Wrong With That Paper": Scientific Rhetorical Styles And Scientific Misunderstandings, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

This selection unpacks scientific prose and claim substantiation for Nobel Prize winner, Stan Prusiner, in the transmissible spongiform encephlopathies field (i.e., mad cow disease). Applying linguistic strategies such as M. A. K. Halliday's "favorite clause type," the author examines argumentative strategies in dense scientific prose both in bold and cautious rhetorical styles and invented lexical changes in new scientific development.


Visual Rhetoric And The Promotion Of Scientific Ideas: The Strange Case Of The Prion, Carol Reeves Aug 2015

Visual Rhetoric And The Promotion Of Scientific Ideas: The Strange Case Of The Prion, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

In the field that investigates infectious brain diseases such as mad cow disease, the verbal and visual packaging of scientific visuals associated with identifying the agent, prion, its processes, and structure served the community ritual of establishing belief in a highly unorthodox phenomenon. Visual promotion fed into cultural expectations of single agents and simple processes, even though the actual agency and disease process have proven highly complex and perhaps unknowable.


An Orthodox Heresy: Scientific Rhetoric And The Science Of Prions., Carol Reeves Aug 2015

An Orthodox Heresy: Scientific Rhetoric And The Science Of Prions., Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

A significant theoretical shift in the research community examining a class of terminal, infectious neurological disorders that includes Mad Cow Disease, Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, and Kuru was assisted by rhetorical production. The local rhetoric of one laboratory, that of Professor Stanley B. Prusiner, involved first situating an heretical hypothesis within the framework of the orthodox narrative and then audaciously promoting that heresy. Another aspect of rhetorical production in this case involved situating a new language associated with the heretical hypothesis. To promote their new lexicon, the Prusiner team evoked orthodox values of consistency, efficiency, and collective ratification. Eventually, what was once …


Rhetoric And The Aids Virus Hunt, Carol Reeves Aug 2015

Rhetoric And The Aids Virus Hunt, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

By comparing the papers produced by the laboratory teams of Robert Gallo and Jean Luc Montagnier during the AIDS virus hunt, we have an opportunity to discern the fine line between a bold, explicit rhetoric that may convince as well as offend and a bald, reserved rhetoric that may actually conceal important implications. Going too far in either direction may create misunderstandings and ethical dilemmas as will be demonstrated in a textual analysis deepened by an exploration of historical context and interviews with key participants. Since a public health crisis calls upon communication that thwarts misunderstandings, scientists should understand the …


Establishing The Phenomenon: The Rhetoric Of Early Research Reports On Aids, Carol Reeves Aug 2015

Establishing The Phenomenon: The Rhetoric Of Early Research Reports On Aids, Carol Reeves

Carol Reeves

In the first three medical reports on AIDS which were published in 1981 in the New England Journal of Medicine, the writers' primary rhetorical agenda was to argue that a new medical discovery had been made. A secondary agenda was to offer etiological explanations for the new problem. To establish the new disease entity as deserving serious attention, the writers built a sense of mystery by confronting established medical knowledge about immunodeficiency and emphasizing the inability of modern medicine to diagnose and treat the problem. When they explained the phenomenon in etiological terms, rather than confronting the disciplinary matrix, the …


Exploring Metaphor In The Great Gatsby, Dan Gleason Mar 2014

Exploring Metaphor In The Great Gatsby, Dan Gleason

Dan Gleason

In this lesson, students engage with one approach to metaphor and then apply that learning to metaphors in Great Gatsby. To start, students learn about I. A. Richards’s definition of metaphor as the link between tenor (topic) and vehicle (way of thinking about it). They then generate some metaphors by randomly combining tenors and vehicles in order to understand how the parts interrelate. Finally, the class interacts with the messier, more beautiful face of metaphor by working through, in groups, some key metaphors from the novel. Students identify the components of each metaphor (tenor, vehicle) and also consider what subtle …


Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo Dec 2012

Memory Of A Racist Past — Yazoo: Integration In A Deep-Southern Town By Willie Morris, Nick J. Sciullo

Nick J. Sciullo

Willie Morris was in many ways larger than life. Born in Jackson, Mississippi, he moved with his family to Yazoo City, Mississippi at the age of six months. He attended and graduated from the University of Texas at Austin where his scathing editorials against racism in the South earned him the hatred of university officials. After graduation, he attended Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship. He would join Harper’s Magazine in 1963, rising to become the youngest editor-in-chief in the magazine’s history. He remained at this post until 1971 when he resigned amid dropping ad sales and a lack of …


Religion And The Academy: Report On The Western Conference On British Studies Roundtable, Robert Ellison Aug 2012

Religion And The Academy: Report On The Western Conference On British Studies Roundtable, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This article is a report of a roundtable I moderated at the 2006 meeting of the Western Conference on British Studies. It proposes some directions religious studies might take in the 21st century; it is also the first publication to mention of the British Pulpit Online, an emerging digital resource for the study of the sermon from 1688-1901.


“’National Apostasy,’ Tracts For The Times, And Plain Sermons: John Keble's Tractarian Prose.”, Robert Ellison Aug 2012

“’National Apostasy,’ Tracts For The Times, And Plain Sermons: John Keble's Tractarian Prose.”, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

John Keble is perhaps best known for The Christian Year and his work as Professor of Poetry at Oxford from 1831 to 1841. In this essay, I argue that his prose is worthy of study as well. I focus on "National Apostasy," the sermon that John Henry Newman saw as the inauguration of the Oxford Movement; the 8 pieces he contributed to the Tracts for the Times; and his many contributions to the Plain Sermons, by Contributors to the "Tracts for the Times."


The Tractarians' Political Rhetoric, Robert Ellison Aug 2012

The Tractarians' Political Rhetoric, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This article examines the political speaking and writing of John Keble, John Henry Newman, and other leading figures of the Oxford Movement. It argues that while they were essentially conservative in the pulpit, where they spoke as official representatives of the Established Church, they were more critical and outspoken in other works, where they enjoyed more of the freedom afforded to private citizens.


Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison Aug 2012

Introduction To A New History Of The Sermon : The Nineteenth Century, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This is the introduction to A New History of the Sermon:The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It discusses the concept and history of "rhetorical criticism," and seeks to lay a foundation for the rhetorical study of the Anglo-American pulpit.


The Tractarians' Sermons And Other Speeches, Robert Ellison Aug 2012

The Tractarians' Sermons And Other Speeches, Robert Ellison

Robert Ellison

This is the first chapter of A New History of the Sermon: The Nineteenth Century, a collection of essays I edited for Brill Academic Publishers. It provides an overview of the Tractarians' homiletic theory, and examines the various genres of their oratory: sermons (both "plain" and "university"), lectures, and episcopal charges.


Prophecy And Anti-Popery In Victorian London: John Cumming Reconsidered, Robert Ellison, Carol Herringer Aug 2012

Prophecy And Anti-Popery In Victorian London: John Cumming Reconsidered, Robert Ellison, Carol Herringer

Robert Ellison

John Cumming (1807-1881) was the popular minister of the Crown Court Church of Scotland in London's Covent Garden. This article examines his views on the end times and the Roman Catholic Church, two of the favorite subjects of his preaching.


0 Table Of Contents And Introduction, Peter Elbow Dec 2009

0 Table Of Contents And Introduction, Peter Elbow

Peter Elbow

newer version


A Feminist ‘Attack’ On Post-Structuralist And Psychoanalytical Readings Of Hamlet, Michele Gibney Nov 2000

A Feminist ‘Attack’ On Post-Structuralist And Psychoanalytical Readings Of Hamlet, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

This paper will do three things, the first of which will be to describe Jaqueline Rose’s argument within her essay, “Hamlet—The Mona Lisa of Literature.” The second task of this paper will be to explain what is at stake within Rose’s essay as it relates to previous criticism such as that of Irigaray, Freud, Woolf, and Derrida. Finally, by drawing upon the idea (in Rose’s paper) of femininity as a fetishisized concept that equals the opposite of “good” a correlation in opposition will be drawn between what she is trying to accomplish and what Freud argues in “The Theme of …


Goddess Of Death: The Pleasure Principle At Work In Shakespeare’S Texts, Michele Gibney Nov 2000

Goddess Of Death: The Pleasure Principle At Work In Shakespeare’S Texts, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

In the essay “The Theme of the Three Caskets,” Freud discusses man’s altering of a representation of death into one of love. This course of action is reminiscent of Nietzsche’s claim in Truth and Falsity in an Ultramoral Sense, where he claims that man invents truth to suit himself. Freud psychoanalyzes that man is altering reality out of a fear of his own mortality, while Nietzsche makes a similar claim by saying man does it out of a desire to live peacefully with others in a manner which preserves life.


Contradicting Theories Of Art By Nietzsche And Plato, Michele Gibney Oct 2000

Contradicting Theories Of Art By Nietzsche And Plato, Michele Gibney

Michele Gibney

Plato proposes that there are ultimate, pure forms created by God behind every object in the world. Nietzsche, in response to this, argues that not only is there a multitude of differences between each object that have been disregarded to keep the illusion of the ideal, but that man himself creates the ideals and not an omnipotent deity. For Plato, art imitates the imitations of the pure form: thus confusing mankind, hindering their path to finding the pure, and tying them to a reality that is an appearance only. But for Nietzsche, art can save man from reality by producing …