3QE: Beyond the Academic Essay

Earlier in the semester, I posed the following question: can writing ever capture the enormity of experience? As a consequence, we have examined several forms and genres and have analyzed, from a rhetorical perspective, the way each presents a unique argument—or, perhaps more accurately, how different forms or genres offer unique opportunities, unique presentations, of specific claims and thus employ different types of appeals. For your third quarterly essay, I would like you to return to that question in the attempt to capture your own “enormity of experience” and to advance an argument—either explicitly or implicitly—through the genre of creative nonfiction.

The work you have done thus far this semester has been analytical, formal, academic; this assignment offers you the opportunity to ‘play’ with language a little by exploring writing as a craft rather than as a mere vehicle for communication. The writing you will do for this assignment does not depart entirely from the practice you've had through the first two quarterly essays nor from the work you have been doing in your cohorts toward the research project; in fact, writing creative nonfiction relies on or draws from many of the principles that guide formal academic writing and research. The difference lies in the subject matter, approach, style, and delivery—in brief, the writer's rhetorical situation and purpose.

Lee Gutkind, himself an acclaimed creative non-fiction writer and editor of Creative Nonfiction magazine, cogently describes the genre of creative nonfiction thus:

Dramatic, true stories using scenes, dialogue, close, detailed descriptions and other techniques usually employed by poets and fiction writers about important subjects - from politics, to economics, to sports, to the arts and sciences, to racial relations, and family relations. Creative Nonfiction heightens the whole concept and idea of essay writing. It allows a writer to employ the diligence of a reporter, the shifting voices and viewpoints of a novelist, the refined wordplay of a poet and the analytical modes of the essayist.

Thus, this assignment offers you the opportunity to merge the discipline of research and analysis with the aesthetic qualities of creative writing and to write about a subject from a perspective and in a style that is entirely your own. As Gutkind advises, “Ultimately, the primary goal of the creative nonfiction writer is to communicate information, just like a reporter, but to shape it in a way that reads like fiction.” In this regard, our work with rhetorical tropes and schemes, types of appeals, kairos, and forms of public argument should serve you well; in short, rely on your rhetorical awareness when crafting your essay.

Your essay should run approximately 4-6 pages in length. It should be typed, double-spaced, with clean and consistent formatting (i.e. name, title, page numbers). No formal research is necessary, but the details and information you include in your essay must be presented in good faith; that is, they must be accurate and truthful given the limitations of memory and complexity of perspective.

In order to accommodate your schedule, you may submit your essay at your convenience,
before or after Thanksgiving break:

Tuesday, November 25 or Tuesday, December 2

Luttrell Interview

During today's discussion of Luttrell's Lone Survivor, Alex mentioned an interview with Luttrell about the book in which he references his reasons for writing it. During the interview, as Alex pointed out in class, Luttrell notes that "the top Navy Brass gave me a special mission to write a book about [Operation Red Wing]."

You may listen to the interview here.

As we began to discuss in class, Luttrell's situation as a service member writing about a classified mission complicates ethos in fascinating ways; this situation reveals, perhaps in a way we had not yet considered, the complexity of the rhetorical situation and the dynamic between participants involved in the situation, and the intricacy of composition.

Thanks, Alex, for passing along this clip.

Group Conference Schedule

Below you will find a list of both the open and confirmed time slots available for our conferences. If you have not yet signed up for a time, please get in touch with me so I may adjust the schedule or, if none of the available times work for your group, help you negotiate an alternate appointment.

Wednesday, November 12

[1:30] HAM Radio

[2:15] available

Thursday, November 13

[12:30] Dashboard PA

[1:15] available

[2:00] available

[2:45] available

[3:30] I.D.E.A.

Monday, November 17

[11:30] Advocatus Diaboli

Tuesday, November 18

This is a designated work day; however, I am available during our scheduled class time or until 3 p.m. by appointment.

Hold That Thought!

Dear 201 Bloggers---

I, your humble and imperfect instructor, have committed a fatal rhetorical error: I have given you a blog prompt that ignores kairos! Shame on me. Mea culpa. I would like to remedy that error now*.

I asked you, for this week, to consider form and genre and its inherent rhetorical power---

DURING AN ELECTION?!

Stop, please. Hold that thought. Genre will still be there for us to consider next week (week 11).

For THIS week (week 10), please blog about your response to and thoughts about the election. All are welcome to post, but all are also encouraged to read and respond.

All best,
Christine


*Kudos for revision!

On Form and Genre

In class on Thursday, I briefly introduced George Campbell’s definition of rhetoric, which we will discuss in greater detail next week:

Rhetoric is that art or talent by which discourse is adapted to its end. The four ends of discourse are to enlighten the understanding, please the imagination, move the passion, and influence the will.

~The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1776

Campbell’s definition, like understanding the full extent of Aristotle’s ‘available means,’ points to the complexity of crafting an effective rhetorical appeal. We’ve already discussed the value of atechnic and entechnic pistis (support, or proof); the centrality of ethics in manipulating language to achieve a desired outcome; the value of rhetorical figure (tropes and schemes) in the marriage of sound and sense; the importance of audience and maintaining clarity of purpose; and the ‘situatedness,’ including awareness of expectations and conventions, of any rhetorical act. Now is the time to take that analysis one step further: now is the time to consider genre and form.

While it is not entirely correct to use the terms genre and form synonymously, form and genre are related in that both give shape to a text and are, themselves, rhetorical.

The important thing to understand about genre and form is that they are expressions of thought rather than impositions on thought; they are organized systems of conventions, and in this may be considered cultural artifacts, and each performs a unique function. They are not, as is often presumed, prescriptive, but tools at your disposal; in other words, once you understand a form, or genre, you—as author/composer—engage it. You harness its rhetorical power as an 'available means.'

Still—and this is where it gets tricky—you must consider kairos when considering form and genre: what is the most appropriate expression, relative to your purpose, for your audience at a particular moment? In this, we begin to see that form is not imposed on thought but, in Edward Hirsch’s words, a significant “technical accomplishment.” As the poet mark Strand explains, forms are not comprised of “cold and arbitrary rules, imposed to close out readers rather than include them [. . .] form is not abstract, but human.” This is an idea we will spend more time with in the coming weeks.

For now, it is useful enough to think about form and genre as we’ve seen it thus far this semester: the candidates’ uses of rhetorical tropes and schemes to affect their appeals; the evolution (devolution?) of presidential campaign ads from 1952 to those associated with the present election cycle; and Ellison’s brilliant use of symbolism and surrealism available to him through the genre of fiction to make cogent arguments about identity, race, freedom, and democracy.

Taking the time to consider genre as an important rhetorical element revisits the idea presented by Samuel Johnson, channeling the poet Horace, in his 1765 Preface to The Plays of William Shakespeare that the writer’s purpose is to “instruct and delight” to “combine education (especially moral instruction) with pleasure.”

Week 10: Consider This . . .

Consider FORM and GENRE

Vis-à-vis our recent class discussions and the above class notes, this week’s blog asks that you think critically about form and genre as a rhetorical ‘means.’* Specifically, I would like you to choose any text in any form that has moved you and consider its form or genre from a rhetorical perspective. What does the form/genre lend to its impact or appeal? How does genre affect its rhetorical efficacy, its meaning? Why is the form an appropriate expression of its meaning?

Please note that in the selection of your example, ‘text’ may be considered broadly to include any form that makes a rhetorical statement, i.e. movies, music, poetry, photography, painting, sculpture, speeches, ads, a work of fiction, drama, a skit, a nonfiction essay . . . an animated series or short?—

In brief, please select a favorite or memorable movie, song, poem, book, painting, etc. and examine its form or genre in relation to its rhetorical appeal.

For example, in Invisible Man^ Ellison uses surrealism, flashback, and symbolism—available to him through the genre of fiction—to present and lend strength to his arguments. It allows him to 'play' with his argument, present it through an artistic medium and make a powerful, pathetic appeal. His argument would look very different if it were a speech or an academic argument and would probably favor a more explicitly logical approach. In other words, genre itself makes an argument and works in tandem with content to achieve a particular rhetorical objective.

So think about a time when you have been, in George Campbell’s language, enlightened, pleased, moved, or influenced by a text . . . and then consider what form or genre had to do with your reaction.

NOTES:

*This is, by any measure, a challenging assignment. I am willing to allow additional time, beyond our usual Tuesday-by-midnight deadline, for its completion; this will also give us the opportunity to discuss it in class on Tuesday, should you so desire.

^I have—with apologies—been delinquent in posting our class notes from our discussion of Invisible Man, so please refer to your notes from class to remind you of our collective observations and the arguments we teased out of the novel.