reason to believe: romantic/pragmatic rhetoric

Notes/uses for Reason to Believe: Romanticism, Pragmatism, and the Teaching of Writing, Hephzibah Roskelly and Kate Ronald (SUNY Press, 1998).

• historical account primarily of “a movement in rhetorical theory and philosophy that composition as a discipline has overlooked” (1)–which they name romantic pragmatic rhetoric. Emerson is a key example, not their starting point (they look at Puritan rhetoric) nor their end point–Cornel West and Friere and Dewey–but a key figure in that they see his romanticism neglected for his interest in pragmatism. So first use here: a similar interest in a neglect in education–tied to Emerson. Also a work to use to bridge Emerson and Dewy (and Peirce).
• Specific focus for this work is on teaching writing. Begin with a tension (and despair: they cite Tompkins “Pedagogy of the Distressed” and Berthoff’s “Is Teaching Still Possible?”)  between theory and practice that they want to argue either offers mere romanticism or mere pragmatism, and misses this tradition in which the two interact dialectically. “Romanticism and pragmatism both operate from principles of mediation, and we argue that romanticism and pragmatism together offer ways of thinking again about the debates that continue in composition and English studies” (25). So a link for me between Emerson, rethinking somewhat of his pedagogical interests, and issues of the profession, the purpose of English studies (here focused more on composition). To the extent that the teaching/practice and theory/research split has largely traced the composition/literature split in English, this is an important microcosm of larger issues. They don’t use the terms I use, nor discuss technology (or metonymy), but their focus on ‘mediation‘ can certainly open to more recent issues of technology in the teaching of English–a debate that I believe tracks to issues of pedagogy, reiterates the theory/practice split.
• Do not offer specific pedagogical practices for romantic/pragmatic rhetoric. But come close in their conclusion to surveying (briefly) some places to observe this in action–including in Matthiessen’s reading of Emerson, in which he undestands Emerson’s writing as teaching. In this, they also provide further evidence of how/why a specific Emersonian curriculum or school is not possible. They cite Whicher 158: he best part of Emerson’s program is, it breeds the giant that destroys itself. [whitman's point from Specimen Days]. So the pragmatic lessons for teachers from Emerson are always going to be resisted by the philosophy. Does this matter for teachers, for me? Or, what are the ways this romantic/pragmatic tension can be put into lessons in school? I think for one here about the ways Lanham focuses on rhetorical pedagogy (padeia) as crucially a matter of oscillation–between product and process, looking at and through: and how digital media can bring this old conception of learning to light. Lanham, as I recall, only barely cites Emerson at one point (the end of Electronic Word). This notion or romantic/pragmatic can connect Emerson more directly to his argument. And thereupon, to some specific lessons or methods for teaching, by way of computer mediated learning and communication.
• In terms of Emerson’s neglect: context for understanding his neglect in composition studies, perhaps more broadly in pedagogy in later 20th century. The ’specter of romanticism’ (35)–that critics locate in the ‘expressivism’ of Peter Elbow; Ross Winterowd refers to the “Emersonian ivory tower’ which they critique as stereotypical definition of romanticism. So, on the one hand, Emerson is too romantic for academics and for teaching. On the other, earlier in the century, isn’t he too pragmatic, too useful to business and to rotary? Other than Bickman’s Minding American Education, and the book on Cavell, Emerson and Dewey (Gleam of Light), this is the only book I know of to treat Emerson in an explicit context of teaching and pedagogy and education. With some understanding of how the inability to be too explicit (no Emerson’s 101 rules or lessons for education) might continue to be a problem for some.

What do teachers of English–and we shouldn’t forget, former students of English who are now in position to judge and develop education policy–remember of Emerson? My sense is too little a memory and understanding of the pragmatic engagement with education (as incipient pragmatism), his outright critique; and perhaps too much of the stereotypes; the transcendental without the machine.

Ross Winterowd, “Emerson and the Death of Pathos”

Lanham: reading

 

Lanham, The Electronic Word.

Ideas/passages key to my focus on Franklin. Overall, see his understanding of the rhetorical padeia, the repressed of how we have denuded rhetoric in our education today (viewed only as through, not at)–as finding an exemplar in Franklin’s ideas for the academy: franklin is one historical location for this understanding of rhetoric (in his interest in what I call rhetorical grammar)–but also an exemplar in how he also osciallates (and sees education as osciallating) between at and through–is there a more potent example of that than the famous art of virtue plan? Or means and manner

 

Lanham becomes particularly useful in how I can use it to challenge the Warner reading of Franklin as interested in the disembodiment of print–suggest there are other, more robust understanding of rhetoric (and gestural presence) at work–perhaps in line with fliegelman.

And perhaps a more embodied sense of print even in franklin–one that the electronic is bringing back to view.

 

73-75:

The fixed print surface of arnoldian masterpiece/basis of humanities since renaissance–now put into play by volatile surface of electronic.

 

But more: this new makes us go back and re-see the old (see this interactivity already in the print, in typography–something he sees futurism doing, similar to mcgann’s view of modernism)

Typographical tricks make us self-conscious again–tricks that print invite us to forget. Print is trickery too. ‘Print represents a severe abstraction’

 

74: electronic prose moving back toward the world of oral rhetoric, where gestural symmterties. Any print text oscillates between denial and expression of tensions (at/through; literacy/orality). Volatile surface invites us to intensify rather than subdue this oscillation, make it more self-conscious.

Revealing the conditions of writing

 

33: his overview of the shift from oral to literate (havelock) and how key to this is that written surface must become ‘transparent and unselfconscious”–this then is the tension/contradiction that rehtorical education deals with–and which is repressed in Renaissance.

34: exphrasis once again returning–the icon/word interaction of oral rhetoric [could link this to how in franklin's citation of locke: the focus is on the power of the visual figure over the written]

 

Sees a ‘native didacticism of the genre’ resisting the transparency claim: could argue this in franklin’s ideas as well. The point is that style is supposed to be seen (just as the habit of virtue) if it is to become cultivated.

 

105: imagines a students brought up on computers, using them to interact with shakespeare.

“all of these machinations are pedagogical techniques that open literary texts to people whose talents are not intrinsically ‘literary,’ people who want, in all kinds of intuitive ways, to operate upon experience rather than passively receive it…new ways to democratize the arts.’

–can read this into franklin: his interest in use (and of course, lanham’s notion of ‘literary here [refernce to great books] is about the traditional view that has stripped the kind of rhetoric. So franklin’s interest in mother tongue, not in the classics of latin, is an analogue of this.

–can link this forward to dewey: certainly notion of experience over passive (as well to emerson)

[and this may be a place where my reading of franklin is important: to extent that locke is associated most with a passive reception--franklin's version gives more emphasis to experience and exercise]

 

172: refers to Dewey as Hirsch’s villain: so, can see Lanham make the link to Dewey as a version of rhetorical education (without dewey being his focus

 

Emerson doesn’t appear (except implication from Hirsch that the deweyan is romantic notion): but deconstruction/derrida do, as one version of the kind of oscillation he sees. Connect to peters view of emerson/derrida dissemination (where communication is also not transparent). And perhaps part of my interest is not only to re-mediate that understanding of communication/dissemination for education (over the platonic dialogue), but also, by way of emerson, to show a more humane version of the kind of rhetorical tradition deconstruction taps into.

 

Revising Prose. His focus on the economy of the sentence and again on the economics of attention as a rhetorical matter: suggest ways to tie Lanham to the legacy of Franklin’s ‘business’ of learning’ (Cremin) and the links between handwriting and business. So too does Lanham’s paramedic method and emphasis on means behind the manner of writing (even the emphasis on visualizing, on habit) evoke franklin to me. One might say that Lanham is arguing in his work that we in English and composition studies need to return to the economics of attention we found, but lost, in franklin.

Historical question (perhaps to pursue further with robert connors essays): how does the ‘hand’ get removed from compostion or english studies? (when does consumption overtake production?)

 _______

 

Key passage–sum of his thesis and the pedagogical implications (focused here on re-thinking the traditional textbook/handbook approach to ‘Freshman Comp’)–with echoes of where Scholes goes–the need to rejoin composition and literature, thinking of production.

 

96: sytlistic self-cosciousness/awareness is goal

The traditional scientific/normative approach (focuesed on ‘clarity’) banishes this.

Instead of this normative, he wants ‘rhetorical corrective’–understanding this going back to earliest sense of rhetoric; also calls it ‘the comparative method‘ [116]–which seems to be, give in to style, be more self-conscious about it., become a connoisseur [link to Franklin?]

 

Think how this re-focuses the ‘grammar’ debate: the problem for Lanham isn’t learning the meta-language (he sees value in knowing the names)–it is in how the grammar prescriptions (of 18th c, where clarity is asserted) loose sight of rhetorical moorings in stylistic awareness.

 

114: another link with Scholes

Cites Frye: ‘literary education’ should not lead only to admiration of great literature but to some possession of its power of utterance.

 

His argument: the moral attitude toward prose doesn’t offer a way out of the jargon–since it too derides jargon, but no remedy (other than just be clear–in effect, be moral)

 

116: oldest jargon is poetic diction;

120: cliché, petrified metaphor, refrehsed in poetry

Place to link to Whitman in Democratic Vista: concerned about jargon/cant–but also looking for a poetic awareness–rather than moralizing approach? Also looking for a new pedagogy?

 

134: afterthought on jargon: can learn from jargon if you play with it.

Makes a specific connection (to Drucker and knowledge society) to need for specialists more and more to be able to translate outside domain; can connect here to Scholes, also to Liu–and to my own interests in creating a text that will not be limited to the ‘jargon’ of academic English (more popular audience). His suggestion to get out of that trap is to play with it, move back and forth through parody, translation, be more, not less, self-conscious.

His emerson addressing this in AS, the language and philosophy of the street

 

148: cites Burke: the “muscular imagination’ of prose rhythm/sound

Seems like a kind of metonymic concept [especially given Lanham's sense that we perform a prose text when we read it--so in emerson's case, would be tying/connecting back to the performace of lecture?]

 

151: deliberate training in variation

Cites Erasmus: turning poetry into prose. Note Franklin also does this for training

152: learning how to play all the keys on the piano

154: restoring voice to our own writing [note how hard this has been even to talk about in discussions of teachers of comp] 

 

158-9: imposture

The object of study, the stylistic surface

Manner, not matter, not call for originality, sincerity

Dramatic self, vs. traditional view of central self [and thus contrast with SB: both on depth and central]

 

177: prose self-consciousness leads to/fits with self-awareness of knowledge, study of method

Links this to Daniel Bell and new undergraudate curriculum?

Echoes of Dewey, of method and self-awareness, a kind of process pedagogy?

 

183: his interest in prescription, need to know rules (but isn’t it a different grammar? The presecriptive grammar is not his rhetorical grammar)–see his concluding paragraph, where prescription is part of a larger view, one that sounds more descriptive, more like a rhetorical grammar approach–toward pleasure in language (note he refers to Emerson: also the way to learn grammar)

 

189: his key process and pedagogy of stylistic awareness, drawn from classical rhetorical training: continual osciallation from looking at surface to looking through it, analyzing meaning

 

191: electronic expression not destroying Western tradition, but reviving it–even imitating its pre-print (mixed media and oral) traditions.

______

 

Scholes, The Rise and Fall of English

 

148: “What we take in through our eyes and ears must emerge from our hands and mouths if we are to hold on to it.”

 

See overall in his focus (and re-focus) on the rhetorical (textuality) rather than aesthetic as basis for literary education a link with Lanham.

And in shifting (back) to literariness of texuality, rather than transcendental textuality: see key his focus on production as well as consumption, about learning about composition and mediation from inside

 

So, could cite his re-focusing on the trivium in line with Franklin, perhaps even Emerson: a different way to learn grammar: rethink grammar, logic, rhetoric in terms of textual production and extending into media

 

Historical context: sees the disappearance of rhetoric into English department by turn of 1900 (after eliot’s elective system). Oratory drops from composition, students shifts from producers to consumers [p. 11]

 

Metonymy:

Perhaps need to define/locate my use/definition of metonymy more in the rhetorical tradition that Lanham and Scholes identify (the source of textual power), rather than in the more attenuated senses when it is viewed as a literary figure.

I presume that emerson’s ‘use of life to learn metonymy’ is not strictly about learning one literary figure: but more a larger rhetorical education/pedagogy that informs a habit of living/seeing the world. [is dimock's read of metonymy the more narrow?]