‘To record the world as it is. To set down the past before it is all forgotten. To excavate the past because it has been forgotten. To satisfy my desire for revenge. Because I knew I had to keep writing or else I would die. Because to write is to take risks, and it is only by taking risks that we know we are alive. To produce order out of chaos. To delight and instruct (not often found after the early twentieth century, or not in that form). To please myself. To express myself. To express myself beautifully. To create a perfect work of art. To reward the virtuous and punish the guilty; or—the Marquis de Sade defense, used by ironists—vice versa. To hold a mirror up to Nature. To hold a mirror up to the reader. To paint a portrait of society and its ills. To express the unexpressed life of the masses. To name the hitherto unnamed. To defend the human spirit, and human integrity and honor. To thumb my nose at Death. To make money so my children could have shoes. To make money so that I could sneer at those who formerly sneered at me. To show the bastards. Because to create is human. Because to create is Godlike. Because I hated the idea of having a job. To say a new word. To make a new thing. To create a national consciousness, or a national conscience. To justify my failures in school. To justify my own view of myself and my life, because I couldn’t be “a writer” unless I actually did some writing. To make myself more interesting than I actually was. To attract the love of a beautiful woman. To attract the love of any woman at all. To attract the love of a beautiful man. To rectify the imperfections of my miserable childhood. To thwart my parents. To spin a fascinating tale. To amuse and please the reader. To amuse and please myself. To pass the time, even though it would have passed anyway. Graphomania. Compulsive loggorrhea. Because I was driven to it by some force outside my control. Because I was possessed. Because an angel dictated to me. Because I fell into the embrace of the Muse. Because I fell pregnant by the Muse and needed to give birth to a book (an interesting piece of cross-dressing indulged by male writers of the seventeenth century). Because I had books instead of children (several twentieth century women). To serve Art. To serve the Collective Unconscious. To serve History. To justify the ways of God toward man. To act out antisocial behaviour for which I would have been punished in real life. To master a craft. To subvert the establishment. To demonstrate that whatever is, is right. To experiment with new forms of perception. To create a recreational boudoir so the reader could go into it and have fun (translated from a Czech newspaper). Because the story took hold of me and wouldn’t let me go (the Ancient Marnier defense). To search for understanding. To cope with my depression. For my children. To make a name that would survive death. To defend a minority group. To speak for those who cannot speak for themselves. To expose appalling wrongs or atrocities. To record the times through which I have lived. To bear witness to horrifying events that I have survived. To speak for the dead. To celebrate life in all its complexity. To praise the universe. To allow for the possibility of hope and redemption. To give back something of what has been given to me.’
Rhetoric CFPs & TOCs
Photo: Kristoffer Trolle (creative commons)
Friday, July 27, 2018
Why do people write? Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead
Why do people write? Margaret Atwood, Negotiating with the Dead
Friday, July 20, 2018
Rhetorical Theory is Problem-Solving:" R. L. Scott on Defining a Problem
Rhetorical Theory is Problem-Solving:" R. L. Scott on Defining a Problem
Thursday, July 19, 2018
Wednesday, July 18, 2018
Tuesday, July 17, 2018
Kenneth Burke on Austin, in Centrum (Published by the University of Minnesota) -- with a stellar TOC
Kenneth Burke on Austin, in Centrum (Published by the University of Minnesota) -- with a stellar TOC
Monday, July 16, 2018
Saturday, July 14, 2018
Friday, July 13, 2018
Wednesday, July 11, 2018
Maria Sanford, first woman professor in Minnesota, and professor of Rhetoric, in the Press
Maria Sanford, first woman professor in Minnesota, and professor of Rhetoric, in the Press
Sunday, July 1, 2018
Hulme's Final Thoughts on Cinders
From Speculations
Analogy.
I look at the reality, at London stream, and
dirt, mud, power, and then I think of the pale
shadowy analogy that is used without think-
ing by the automatic philosophers, the
"stream of time." The people who treat
words without reverence, who use analogies
without thinking of them : let us always
remember that solid real stream and the
flat thin voice of the metaphysician, " the
stream of time.''
Extended clay. Looking at the Persian
Gulf on a map and imagining the mud shore
at night.
Pictures of low coasts of any country. We
are all just above the sea.
Delight in perceiving the real cinder con-
struction in a port. Upon mud as distinct
from the clear-cut harbour on the map.
Travel is education in cinders ; the mer-
chants in Hakluyt, and the difference in
song. (When we are all gathered together
and when we are in a book.)
Must see these different manifestations of
the cinders ; otherwise we cannot work the
extended clay.
A melancholy spirit, the mind like a great
desert lifeless, and the sound of march music
in the street, passes like a wave over that
desert, unifies it, but then goes.
Hulme on Fountains and Knowledge
From Speculations
Truths don't exist before we invent them.
They respond to man's need of economy, just
as beliefs to his need of faith.
The fountain turned on. It has a definite
geometrical shape, but the shape did not
exist before it was turned on. Compare the
arguments about the pre-existence of the
soul.
But the little pipes are there before, which
give it that shape as soon as the water is
turned on.
The water is the same though the geomet-
rical figures of different fountains differ.
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