Blogora Classic: Representing Rhetoric, February 20, 2005

February 20, 2005

Representing Rhetoric

I've been taking notes for a long time on references to "rhetoric" in poetry and also to representations of speeches and/or persuasion in literature. I don't know where the notes are going--perhaps towards a very modest troping of Auerbach's Mimesis.

A few examples: some familiar, some obscure. Any other examples you can think of?

1. Alexander Pope, Dunciad IV: 21-26: Beneath her [Dulness] footstool, Science groans in chains,/And Wit dreads exile, penalties and pains. / There foamed rebellious Logic, gagged and bound,/There, stripped, fair Rhetoric languished on the ground,/His blunted arms by Sophistry are borne,/And shameless Billingsgate her robes adorn.

2. Wallace Stevens, "Add This to Rhetoric" [selections]: It is posed and it is posed. /But in nature it merely grows. /Stones pose in the falling night; / And beggars dropping to sleep, /They pose themselves and their rags. . . . /In the way you speak/You arrange, the thing is posed,/What in nature merely grows. . . ./Add this. It is to add.

3. Samuel Butler, Hudibras: For rhetoric, he could not ope/His mouth, but out there flew a trope. (Part i. Canto i. Line 81.) For all a rhetorician's rules/Teach nothing but to name his tools. ( Part i. Canto i. Line 89.)

4. Thomas McGrath, "The Rituals at the Chapel Perilous: for the black revolutionaries Henry Winston & Angela Davis": Then the limber artillery of the orators/Was trained on that butterfly of speculation/The Historic Moment: which exists, for rhetoric/Forever, like the flower in the heart of the lotus."

5. There is a punk group called Welt with a song called "Rhetoric" on their album Broke Down (but I can't hear the words on any of the music the kids play these days. . . )

Posted by jim at February 20, 2005 12:14 PM

Eavan Boland, "Writing in a Time of Violence":

In my last year in College /
I set out /
to write an essay on /
the Art of Rhetoric. I had yet to find /

the country already lost to me /
in song and figure as I scribbled down /
names for sweet euphony /
and safe digression.

(And it goes on.)

Boland talks about her interest in rhetoric here: http://www.newyorker.com/online/content/?011029on_onlineonly01a

Posted by: Donna Strickland at February 21, 2005 09:10 AM