Sigmund Freud / T.S. Eliot – On Authorship
Sigmund Freud – “Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming” Freud is operating – even in the first paragraph – under the paradigm of creative writer as genius in this piece. He also likens creative writer creativity to the world of play – like children. Freud defines humour as something of a situation where the reality of daily life is interpellated with the play of childhood games. People never stop playing – they just move their play... Read More
Williams and Enos – Vico’s Triangular Invention
Williams, Mark T. and Theresa Enos. “Vico’s Triangular Invention.” Atwill, Janet, and Janice M. Lauer. Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention. 1st ed. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2002. The rhetorical situation has long been conceived of in spatial terms – as triangles, fields, waves, planes, webs, pentads, pyramids, and maps. Despite the influence of empirical philosophy in the 18th century, Giambattista Vico’s work on rhetoric... Read More
Hawk – A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity
Hawk – A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity Introduction: From Vitalism to Complexity Hawk claims that compositionists consider the term vitalism as an “anything goes” approach to writing and thinking, as an “ahistorical category that subsumes multiple divergent practices, and as an assumed negative counterpart to preferred rhetorical practices that establishes a binary between rhetoric and poetics” (3). ... Read More
Leff – The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius
Leff, Michael C. “The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius.” Rhetorica 1 1 (1983): 23-44. Print. 21 L. provides a nice definition of topoi at the beginning of this piece: “rhetoricians must draw their starting points from accepted beliefs and values relative to the audience and the subject of discourse. When these beliefs and values are considered at a high level of generality, they become... Read More
Thompson – An Expanded View of Aristotle’s Invention
Thompson, Wayne N. “An Expanded View of Aristotle’s Invention.” RSQ: Rhetoric Society Quarterly 12 1 (1982): 16-18. Print. 2 Thompson argues in this piece that the most significant passage from Aristotle’s Rhetoric is found in Book II, Chapter 22, page 1396, lines 3-8. It reads: “Consequently, as appears in the Topics, we must first of all have by us a selection of arguments about questions that may arise and are suitable for... Read More
