Integrating Classical Rhetoric into Writing Curriculum Review

1. Textbook Review: ENC 6339 Matthew McBride and David Dadurka Nov. 8, 2010

2. Integrating Classical Rhetoric in a Writing about Writing Curriculum A Review of Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (4th ed.) and Ancient Rhetorics for the Contemporary Students (4th ed.)

3. Benefits of Incorporating Classical Rhetoric into WAW • Draws attention to historical roots of composition studies • Establishes foundation for understanding of contemporary uses and studies of rhetoric • Useful heuristics for invention • Compliments and balances focus on academic writing with attention to other social and political concerns

4. Student Learning Outcomes For ENC 1101 at UCF • understand how writers construct texts persuasively (or not); • understand how readers construct meaning(s) from texts; • understand the concept of the rhetorical situation and be able to apply it to writing and reading situations; • understand writing and research as processes requiring planning, incubation ,revision, and collaboration; • understand how language practices mediate group activities; • understand how and why discourse conventions differ across groups (including groups within the university); • have acquired a vocabulary for talking about writing processes and themselves as writers; • have acquired strategies for reading complex, college‐level texts; • have acquired tools for analyzing the discourses and genres of various communities (including within the university); • have acquired tools for successfully responding to varied discourse conventions and genres in different situations (including different classes); • be able to actively reflect on their own writing processes and practices and adjust them as appropriate to rhetorical situations.

5. Two Textbooks to Consider for Use in ENC 1101

6. Written by Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors • First published in 1965 • Last updated in 1999

7. Key Features

8. Feature: Handbook-Style Reference Guide • Makes finding specific items easy • Most helpful if you know what you are looking for • Suggests use as a Reference

9. Feature: Survey of the History and Theory of Rhetoric • Brief but useful background for instructors • Seems to present a linear and progressive narrative • Leaves out early women contributors

10. Feature: Introduction • Exposes readers to the basics • Presents rhetoric as a scholarly analytical tool • Might not engage students

11. Feature: Progymnasmata • Lists 14 ancient exercises • Adapts them to create 8 exercises appropriate for modern writers • Independent section in the back of the book

12. Feature: Bibliography • Divided into six sections: 1. Bibliographies 2. Primary Texts 3. History of Rhetoric 4. Theories of Rhetoric 5.Collections of Articles of Rhetoric 6.Style • Useful for instructors and students • No entries were written in the last 11 years

13. Observations and Criticisms

14. Observations and Criticisms: Illustrative examples • Belletristic • Dated • Authors’ writing may seem stilted “Literature and Science” by Matthew Arnold “Civil Disobedience” by Henry David Thoreau Beloved by Toni Morrison Lake Wobegon Days by Garrison Keillor

15. Observations and Criticisms: The Canons How many canons? 1. Discovery 2. Arrangement 3.Style 4. Memory 5.Delivery

16. Observations and Criticisms: The Canons Discovery Arrangement Style Memory Delivery • Limited largely to logical appeal • Useful for analysis • Larson’s plan is valuable • Incomplete discussion of status theory

17. Observations and Criticisms: The Canons Discovery Arrangement Style Memory Delivery • Formulaic • May seem limiting

18. Observations and Criticisms: The Canons Discovery Arrangement Style Memory Delivery • Core of the book • Provides a stilted argument for style • Useful for teaching meaning with sentence variety and construction

19. Observations and Criticisms: Presentation of Rhetoric Aristotelian • A collection of discrete pieces • Rhetoric as an abstraction • Assumes a largely uniform audience • Logic as the primary appeal

20. Written by Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee • First edition authored together 1999 • Last Updated in 2009

21. Key Features

22. Feature: Introduction • Not called an introduction • Begins with what readers are likely to know already • Casts rhetoric as human action, not just rules • Illustrates contemporary examples of rhetoric

23. Feature: Progymnasmata and Rhetorical Activities • Integrated in the text • Thorough explanations • Additional rhetorical activities

24. Feature: Glossary • Increase ease of use • Terms are bolded in the text proper • Glossary descriptions are useful but not exhaustive

25. Feature: Bibliography/ Suggested Readings • Concise • Up to date

26. Feature: Signposts • Ancient Rhetoric as its scope • Brief • Provides limited context

27. Observation and Criticism

28. Observation and Criticism: Invention • Treatment of Invention takes up over half the book • Entire chapter devoted to rhetorical situation • Emphasizes the roles of kairos • Gives adequate attention to all three appeals: logos, ethos, pathos

29. Observations and Criticisms: Illustrative Examples • Generally engaging • Tied to mostly to civic concerns • Timely • Left leaning

30. Observation and Criticism: Heuristics • Heuristics for invention • Rhetoric as a heuristic

31. Observation and Criticism: Presentation Rhetorics Isocratean and Kairotic • Associated with human action • Contingent

32. Recommendations • Best if used as a reference • Could be used by instructors for brushing up • Heuristics for invention and some sections regarding style can be used in class • Not recommend as core text • Excellent for training FYC instructors with little experience studying rhetoric • Many chapters could be used as readings for students • Recommended as a complimentary text for WaW curricula

33. Ways to Compliment WAW with Classical Rhetorics • Incorporate classical modes of discourse in a discussion of genres • Consider the classical concept of partition with Swales’s CARS Model • Pair C&H chapter on rhetorical situation and kairos with Grant-Davie’s “Rhetorical Situations and Their Constituents” • Pair C&H’s discussion of grammar and style with John Dawkins’s “Teaching Punctuation as a Rhetorical Tool” or Joseph William’s “The Phenomenology of Error”

34. Ways to Compliment WAW with Classical Rhetorics • Include C&H’s discussion of ideologies with the study of discourse community • Include the teaching of the five canons as a contrast to contemporary conceptions of the writing process • Introduce modes of appeal into discussion of types of evidence valued by different communities • Provide heuristics to students for inventing arguments

35. References Corbett, Edward P.J., and Robert J. Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. Print. Crowley, Sharon, and Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. LOCATION: Longman, 2009. Downs, Doug, and Elizabeth Wardle. Writing about Writing: A College Reader. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2011. Print. Fulkerson, Richard. “Four Philosophies of Composition.” College Composition and Communication 30.4 (1979): 343-348. JSTOR. Web. 7 Nov. 2010. Haskin, Ekaterina V. Logos and Power in Isocrates and Aristotle. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. Welch, Kathleen E. “Appropriating Plato’s Rhetoric and Writing into Contemporary Rhetoric and Writing Studies.” The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appropriations of Ancient Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1990. PDF. UCF WebCourses. Web. 8 Nov. 2010. 93-111. Print. Welch, Kathleen E. “Appropriating Competing Systems of Classical Greek Rhetoric: Considering Isocrates and Gorgias with Plato in the New Rhetoric of the Fourth Century B.C.” The Contemporary Reception of Classical Rhetoric: Appropriations of Ancient Discourse. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1990. PDF. UCF WebCourses. Web. 8 Nov. 2010. 113-141. Print.