The Rhetoric of the Page


Book Description

This wide-ranging and entertaining book explores blank space from incunabula to Google books. Blanks are a paradox—simultaneously nothing and something, gesturing to what was once there or might be there. They are also a creative opportunity for readers as well as writers: readers respond to what is not there and writers come to anticipate that response. Thus, blank space develops literary and ludic applications. Each chapter focuses on one typographical form of what is not there on the page: physical gaps (Chapter One), marks of incompletion such as &c (Chapter Two), and the asterisk as a stand-in for things that cannot be said (Chapter Three). By looking at the early-modern page as a visual unit as well as a verbal unit, this volume shows how the relationship between textual layout and textual content is as productive for writers as it is for readers. Mise-en-page influences readers in the same way that rhetoric influences readers. It is thus possible to speak of 'the rhetoric of the page'.




The Rhetoric of the Page


Book Description

A readable account of the book as an object: a history of the page as well as a history of the book. Drawing an arc from the medieval scriptorium to googlebooks, this volume shows the creative and playful opportunities blank spaces on the page afforded readers and writers.




The Rhetoric of the Page


Book Description

This wide-ranging and entertaining book explores blank space from incunabula to Google books. Blanks are a paradox—simultaneously nothing and something, gesturing to what was once there or might be there. They are also a creative opportunity for readers as well as writers: readers respond to what is not there and writers come to anticipate that response. Thus, blank space develops literary and ludic applications. Each chapter focuses on one typographical form of what is not there on the page: physical gaps (Chapter One), marks of incompletion such as &c (Chapter Two), and the asterisk as a stand-in for things that cannot be said (Chapter Three). By looking at the early-modern page as a visual unit as well as a verbal unit, this volume shows how the relationship between textual layout and textual content is as productive for writers as it is for readers. Mise-en-page influences readers in the same way that rhetoric influences readers. It is thus possible to speak of 'the rhetoric of the page'.




Encyclopedia of Rhetoric


Book Description

The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric is a comprehensive survey of the latest research--as well as the foundational teachings--in this broad field. Featuring 150 original, signed articles by leading scholars from many different fields of study it brings together knowledge from classics, philosophy, literature, literary theory, cultural studies, speech and communications. The Encyclopedia surveys basic concepts (speaker, style and audience); elements; genres; terms (fallacies, figures of speech); and the rhetoric of non-Western cultures and cultural movements. It covers rhetoric as the art of proof and persuasion; as the language of public speech and communication; and as a theoretical approach and critical tool used in the study of literature, art, and culture at large, including new forms of communication such as the internet. The Encyclopedia is the most wide ranging reference work of its kind, combining theory, history, and practice, with a special emphasis on public speaking, performance and communication. Cross-references, bibliographies after each article, and synoptic and topical indexes further enhance the work. Written for students, teachers, scholars and writers the Encyclopedia of Rhetoric is the definitive reference work on this powerful discipline.




The Rhetoric of the Human Sciences


Book Description

Opening with an overview of the renewal of interest in rhetoric for inquiries of all kinds, this volume addresses rhetoric in individual disciplines - mathematics, anthropology, psychology, economics, sociology, political science and history. Drawing from recent literary theory, it suggests the contribution of the humanities to the rhetoric of inquiry and explores communications beyond the academy, particulary in women's issues, religion and law. The final essays speak from the field of communication studies, where the study of rhetoric usually makes its home.




The Rhetoric of Fiction


Book Description

The first edition of The Rhetoric of Fiction transformed the criticism of fiction and soon became a classic in the field. One of the most widely used texts in fiction courses, it is a standard reference point in advanced discussions of how fictional form works, how authors make novels accessible, and how readers recreate texts, and its concepts and terms—such as "the implied author," "the postulated reader," and "the unreliable narrator"—have become part of the standard critical lexicon. For this new edition, Wayne C. Booth has written an extensive Afterword in which he clarifies misunderstandings, corrects what he now views as errors, and sets forth his own recent thinking about the rhetoric of fiction. The other new feature is a Supplementary Bibliography, prepared by James Phelan in consultation with the author, which lists the important critical works of the past twenty years—two decades that Booth describes as "the richest in the history of the subject."




Rhetoric, Remembrance, and Visual Form


Book Description

This volume offers a multifaceted investigation of intersections among visual and memorial forms in modern art, politics, and society. The question of the relationships among images and memory is particularly relevant to contemporary society, at a time when visually-based technologies are increasingly employed in both grand and modest efforts to preserve the past amid rapid social change. The chapters in this book provide valuable insights concerning not only how memories may be seen (or sighted) in visual form but also how visual forms constitute noteworthy material sites of memory. The collection addresses this central theme with a wealth of interdisciplinary and international approaches, featuring conventional scholarly as well as artistic works from such disciplines as rhetoric and communication, art and art history, architecture, landscape studies, and more, by contributors from around the globe.




Disability Rhetoric


Book Description

Disability Rhetoric is the first book to view rhetorical theory and history through the lens of disability studies. Traditionally, the body has been seen as, at best, a rhetorical distraction; at worst, those whose bodies do not conform to a narrow range of norms are disqualified from speaking. Yet, Dolmage argues that communication has always been obsessed with the meaning of the body and that bodily difference is always highly rhetorical. Following from this rewriting of rhetorical history, he outlines the development of a new theory, affirming the ideas that all communication is embodied, that the body plays a central role in all expression, and that greater attention to a range of bodies is therefore essential to a better understanding of rhetorical histories, theories, and possibilities.




Public Forgetting


Book Description

Forgetting is usually juxtaposed with memory as its opposite in a negative way: it is seen as the loss of the ability to remember, or, ironically, as the inevitable process of distortion or dissolution that accompanies attempts to commemorate the past. The civic emphasis on the crucial importance of preserving lessons from the past to prevent us from repeating mistakes that led to violence and injustice, invoked most poignantly in the call of “Never again” from Holocaust survivors, tends to promote a view of forgetting as verging on sin or irresponsibility. In this book, Bradford Vivian hopes to put a much more positive spin on forgetting by elucidating its constitutive role in the formation and transformation of public memory. Using examples ranging from classical rhetoric to contemporary crises like 9/11, Public Forgetting demonstrates how, contrary to conventional wisdom, communities may adopt idioms of forgetting in order to create new and beneficial standards of public judgment concerning the lessons and responsibilities of their shared past.




Writing and Rhetoric Book 1: Fable


Book Description

The Writing & Rhetoric series method employs fluent reading, careful listening, models for imitation, and progressive steps. It assumes that students learn the best by reading excellent, whole-story examples of litereature and by growing their skills through imitatiion. Each excercise is intended to impart a skill (or tool) that can be employed in all kids of writing and speaking. The excercises are arranged from simple to more complex. What's more, the exercises are cumulative, meaning that later exercises incorporate the skills acquired preceding exercises. This series is a step-by-step apprenticeship in the art of writing and rhetoric. Fable, the first book in the Writing & Rhetoric series, teaches students the practice of close reading and comprehension, summarizing a story aloud and in writing, and amplification of a story through description and dialogue. Students learn how to identify different kinds of stories; determine the beginning, middle, and end of stories; recognize point of view; and see analogous situations, among other essential tools. The Writing & Rhetoric series recovers a proven method of teaching writing, using fables to teach beginning writers the craft of writing well.