Little know fact: Shakespeare wrote “The Big Lebowski”: http://runleiarun.com/lebowski/.
David Mamet on writing drama
Lots of advice in few words. Read it here.
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English 2510: Greenblatt and Smith
Assuming that, as the book suggests, origin stories “posit a general cultural outlook and offer perspectives on what life is and how to understand it” (17), what is the best way to understand life according to John Smith’s narrative of America’s origin? What is life like according to it? What “general cultural outlook[s]” might it imply? Record at least three and include examples.
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Logos, Ethos, and Pathos
| Logos | Ethos | Pathos | |
| Definition | Appeal to reason and logic | Projection of the speaker or writer’s character or personal authority | Appeal to emotions and values |
| Case study | Reasons why you can’t go | You can’t go because I say so | Weeping so you won’t go |
| Aristotle | Reason | Will | Emotion |
| Wizard of Oz | Scarecrow | Lion; Dorothy | Tinman |
| Star Trek | Spock | Kirk | McKoy |
| Superheros | Vision | Batman | Hulk |
| Harry Potter | Hermione | Dumbledore | Ron |
| LOTR | Elrond | Gandalf | Gollum |
| Evidence | Statistics, informal logic | Experts | Anecdotes |
| Methods | Scientific method, factual details, unbiased reportage | Narrative and descriptive details, cases, and examples to back up and support generalizations and demonstrate accuracy | Narrative and descriptive details calculated to evoke an emotional response |
| Problems and weaknesses | No “soul” | Bankrupt personal authority or character | Suspicions of manipulation |
| Remembering | Logos, Logic | E is for Ethos and Ethical | Pathos, Passion (an emotion) |
- Jung suggests healthy individual are characterized by a balance of reason, will, and emotion. We are suspicious of people who are stuck in one mode of thought.
- The best thinkers, speakers, and writers move among argumentative strategies, adapting to variations in audience. For example, in “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” Martin Luther King shifts strategies to speak to different segments of his audience.
- Ethos often mediates between logos and pathos.
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Julie Myerson on the pleasures of writing
Writing gives me such enormous pleasure, and I’m a much happier (and therefore nicer) person when I’m doing it. There’s a place in my head that I go to when I write and it’s so rich and unexpected – and scary sometimes – but never ever dull. I first went there when I was seven and I wrote a poem which startled me a bit because it felt like someone else had written it. The adrenaline rush that gave me was incredible and I wanted more. These days, maybe because I can now access that place quite easily, writing feels like something I simply could not live without. It is a joyous thing. I feel very lucky to be paid to do it, but even if I’d never been published, I think I’d still be writing. I love being read, but the person I’m really always writing for is me.
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Form and desire
[Form is] an arousing and fulfillment of desire. A work has form insofar as one part of it leads a reader to anticipate another part, to be gratified by the sequence.
–Kenneth Burke
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I will be in class on Monday
Here are your assignments for Friday, 06 Nov 09.
2250
Using the material you wrote and emailed me in class the last time we met, complete exercise one on page 206. Use this, like all the exercises in class, as a way to move your story along, improve it, explore different aspects of it. You will be revising to increase your understanding of other points of view. Email me the finished exercise.
3510
Continue to keep up with the reading. We will discuss at least the previous post “rhetoric and fiction” in class. You should have finished the first 156 pages of Hope Leslie by the time we meet.
2010 (both sections)
Friday is your last chance to conduct research for your annotated bibliography, which is still due on Monday. Email me on Friday with “annotated bibliography question,” your name, and the class and section number in the subject line if you have questions. I’ll try to reply before the assignment is due.
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Rhetoric and fiction
English 3510
Our introduction to Hope Leslie suggests that Sedgwick sees her texts as teaching morals: “Nineteenth-century critics endowed literature with both an aesthetic and moral purpose, which accorded with her perspective. Their laudatory recognition of her moral intent gave her particular gratification” (xiii). What moral is she trying to impart? How does she go about teaching readers in her text? What rhetorical strategies does she use? Lentricchia and Burke describe such strategies here, but what do you think? Defend you ideas with specifics from the text.
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The sickness continues
2010 (both sections)
Proceed with the peer review we have planned. Be sure to email the completed forms to me as well as the peer whose work you review. The link “logos, ethos, and pathos” under 2010 can help you in evaluating assessments of rhetoric in the annotated bibliographies and your sources.
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I’ve got a sick family
and so I won’t be at school today.
2250
Workshop without me. You don’t need to email the completed forms to me this time.
3510
Keep up with the assigned reading. We’ll talk about the first big chunk of Hope Leslie on Wednesday, I think.
2010 sections
Our plan has always been to use today for library research. Remember that a draft is due to your peers on Wednesday.
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Metaphor by Metaphor 