C de la Torre - Introduction

According to Burke, a dialectic “properly developed, can lead to the views transcending the limitations of each” (Covino, 3). This seems to follow the same concept that Carruthers discusses when she writes “the pieces brought together in cogitation make the sum greater than its parts… ‘New’ knowledge, what has not been thought, results from this process…” (203). According to Carruthers, “…learning is itself a process of composition, collation and recollection. But the result of bringing together the variously stored bits in memory is ‘new’ knowledge. It is one’s own composition and opinion…[t]his is the point at which collation becomes authorship” (203). Could this be the virtual space from which our individual cultural lenses are derived?

If text can be viewed as a non-written and non-verbal message (such as a sequence of images in a film), can one view the film’s soundtrack (i.e. music, sounds, vibrations) as something that complements the effect of the text? Imagine an emotionally driven scene and the music that accompanies it. Covino writes, “…rhetoric has as its medium the written and spoken word, although many scholars study how visual images and nonverbal sounds can complement the effect of a text’s words” (6). Perhaps this is a concept tied to written and spoken discourses only.

“More specifically, the audience comprises the people who have a reason to be concerned about the exigence and who are capable of acting on it or being acted upon by it” (11). What if those people don’t exist, but are merely a figment of the rhetor’s imagination or a product of her miscalculation? If a tree falls in a forest but no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?

Murphy’s explanation of the history of democratic education in Greece, and how it was adopted by the Romans opens up many debates, one being the relevance of tenure at the university. The idea of tenure seems to have originated with Quintilian, when Vespasian rewarded him for his benefit of service to the state. Regarding the preservation of Quintilian theory (the importance of separating learning from matters of faith?) by rhetors throughout the centuries, Murphy writes: “The continuity of method did not depend on any single book, but rather on the pragmatic conclusion that what was successful was worth continuing” (619). At what age do professors become “out of touch?” How can this, or has this, affected rhetorical teachings in the past? What of the “language of privileged society?”

“The felt need of the group for a sense of cultural identity and historical continuity cannot be satisfied by the mere transmission by word of mouth of a body of maxims and sayings or even by separate short stories…” (Havelock, 691-92). Where does Native American storytelling come into play? Later, Havelock explains how “the poets were essentially still oral poets, down to the time when a reading public came into existence…” (694). And later he writes: “…As the eye slowly invades the province of the ear, the reader the province of the listener” (694). What implication does this have for the next shift? How are computers/hypertext/visuals/graphics influencing this shift? What part will emotions have in the shift? We are already seeing a disconnect between individual and his/her spirit. Logic/calculation has taken the back seat to emotion/creativity. Havelock writes: “The history of the human mind, as of the human language, falls into roughly two epochs, the pre-alphabetic and the post-alphabetic” (695). Are we coming to a third epoch? Lastly, is the Havelock article written following a ‘Nestorian’ order?

WORKS CITED

Carruthers, Mary. "From: The Book of Memory." Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Eds. William A. Covino and David A. Jolliffe. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. 199-212.

Covino, William A. "What is Rhetoric?" Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Eds. William A. Covino and David A. Jolliffe. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 995. 3-26.

Havelock, Eric A. "The Coming of Literate Communication to Western Culture." Rhetoric: Concepts,Definitions, Boundaries. Eds. William A. Covino and David A. Jolliffe. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. 690-98.

Murphy, James J. "The Concept of 'School.'" Rhetoric: Concepts, Definitions, Boundaries. Eds. William A. Covino and David A. Jolliffe. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn and Bacon, 1995. 617-20.