Enos and Moss

I agree with Enos's citation of the elements Barnett Baskerville"s essay, which appeared in the April 1977 issue of the Quarterly Journal of Speech, "Must We All Be 'Rhetorical Critics"' (12). Baskerville complained that the fashionable critical work was taking students away from the laborious but valuable need for historical scholarship, which Baskerville defended this quote of Donald C. Bryant that "rhetorical criticism must depend almost entirely upon historical knowledge for its effectiveness" (12). Enos goes onto discuss non-literary sources and actively produce research, going beyond the speculative to viewing works"...not as isolated and autonomous events but as intertextual,..." as he maintains that even discrete texts are part of a diachronic chain of being. Enos practices what he preaches in his article on Rome, as he examines the architecture of classrooms, public rhetorical events, drama, libraries, the use of scribes in creating books, etc., to document the rise and fall of sophistry in Rome, paralleling the historical lessening of importance of Greece, as well as the wars lost and economic deterioration of Rome. I loved his description of locating a once published speech, as well as a tape of the speech and the original written speech with handwritten notes, as a way to create original research (19. I know that I personally respond much more to works that trace historical ethnographic developments, geographical, economic, sociological and anthropological developments, in critical analysis of literature, as well as within the literature itself.

Moss is the editor of Rhetoric and Praxis: The Conteribution of Classical Rhetoric to Practical Reasoning. It includes chapters by Edward P. J. Corbett (43-57), which examines Topoi; Maxine C. Hairston's chapter on Aristotle's Enthymeme in the classroom (59-77); and James L. Kinneavy's chapter on the importance of Kairos in classical rhetoric (79-105). I thought that the quote of Grimaldi saying that "the special topics yield subject matter or content for arguments and that the common topics represent patterns of forms of inference" (46) was helpful, as I believe that the process of writing tends to involve examining patterns and universals, more often than specific subject matter. Kenneth Pikes tagamemic method of invention which Corbett dscusses, along with the neo-classical invention, Kenneth Burke's dramatistic method, D. Gordon Rohman's pre-writing method all suggest patterns, whether journalistic self-actualization, problem solving, the marshaling of computer resources, examining Aristotle's non artisitc proofs, brainstorming,or using linguistic concepts of contrast, range of variation and distribution in conjunction with particle, wave and field perspectives to retrieve, organize and analyze, as well as discover ordering principles, which include"to help one discover features of the audience which facilitate communication. I particularly relate to the tagamemic method, as I have used it in several lesson plans around character development in creative writing made understandable through the visual and oral rhetoric of film, using Dramatica tool and Inspiration software to brainstorm, create, structure and organize ideas about universal themes and archetypes. It includes a square broken down into a number of squares within it in a three dimensional model using principles of physics, psychology, contrast, range of variation and distribution, often pairing characters in roles that support or oppose one another. For more information go to my website information at http://freewebs.lindadaly.com.

Hairston's chapter in Moss's book on Aristotle's Enthymeme centers on persuasion, not creating absolutes, centering on human affairs with the goal to establish probability (68). Here we are taking a particular subject (Dramatica theory for example) [even though it is based on many universally accepted concepts] to which we are convincing a particular, rather than a universal audience about character development in Star Wars, Jaws, Hemingway's Old Man and the Sea and To Kill a Mocking Bird. That audience is particular because they either buy the Dramatica software, views my You Tube and/or the lesson plans on my website, as well as reading and viewing the involved novels and films. The argument would otherwise be meaningless to those unfamiliar with the Dramatica tool, as well as the Inspiration tool, which I used to lay out Dramatica principals in a graph format utilizing graphics, as well as signifying words and names. So I really agree with Hairston's citation of Perelman's description of using Aristotle's Enthymeme's utilizing a "practical intellect," which focuses "..on the realm of human activity, the world of the contingent, the uncertain, and the changeable" 967). For example, using the Dramatica tool, there are various possibilities and outcomes using human archetypes and action to develop and change one's interpretation, as well as in the creative writing process. I also deeply respect "Aristotle's quest for human happiness and justice" being associated with the usage of the Enthymeme (68). Kenneavys charge that to view Aristotle's Enthymeme, only as a simplistic, or invalid syllogism as a "deeply antihumanistic view" certainly warrants the sincere attention of the composition community. While I have always tended to favor the expressionist approach to writing, now that I am considering other points of views, Faigley's social view of composing warms me, as he sees "..the writer at the center of a discourse community and holds that the composing process is largely determined by the demands of that community" (72). Certainly that would be more in keeping with Perelman and Moss feels Aristotle would "be more comfortable with this school of composing"(72). As I see writing as a persuasive process, whether a creative, legalistic or non-fiction narrative, audience does play a huge role, as they are persuaded by the ethics, emotions and logic demonstrated by the writer.

I also thought Hairston's idea to have teacher's "...point out how differently students would have to structure the argument if they postulate a different audience and purpose" was brilliant and really underlines the importance of audience and topoi, if not enthymeme. The Rogerian or nonthreatening argument,in which "...a writer can make good use of the enthymeme to discover what premises he or she shares with the audience and what common ground exists that can form the basis for communication and change," is certainly supported by communication and psychotherapy change theories, while the Toulmin logic in a legal atmosphere may hold sway in that arena (76). Both speak of the audience, and fitting your persuasive argument to a particular audience, and likely a particular topoi as well.


Kinneavys chapter on Kairos was also compelling, as the audience to me is part of a context. For example, consider Kinneavy's statement's as follows: "Justice was defined as giving to each according to merit, that is, generously to those who had worked hard and parsimoniously to those who had shirked. Justice, therefore, was determined by circumstances: justice was kairos"(87). Certainly one could not write a compelling argument about circumstances, without considering the audience. Are they members of the elite, the poor, the working class or the unemployed and how would that affect their understanding,logical, ethical, as well as emotional? It is my opinion that the art of composition, utilizes principles underlying argument and persuasion, as well as justice and that those principles include the use of topoi, enthymeme and kairos, all of which involve consideration of the audience. Kairos is not only concerned with justice or truth, but beauty, virtues, and knowledge. In Greece, even the word Kairos was associated with not only justice, but virtue, education and the concept of humanity, as Kinneavy tells us that the importance of the city or polis was tied to the idea of humaity (92). He illustrates this when he says that "Since freedom and the ability to persuade and be persuaded are the essence of the polis, it is not surprising to see the education to the life of the polis grounded in persuasion and to see this closely related to the notion of kairos. The audience not only of the writer but the educator is pointed out by Kinneavy as having centrality to kairos, as we are urged to have a composition program "based on the current life situation of the writer," once again showing that the audience is central to the context.

As an aside I was interested in Kaneavey's concept of grammar as the study of literature, as distinguished from logic and dialectic, although all three are distinguished from rhetoric ("persuasion in this narrower sense") (100). Rhetoric is said by Kinneavy to link humanities to the common citizen more than literature or the grammar and logic of the tradition" arts (100). In my opinion, Kinneavy's idea that "a liberal education should teach "expository to sharpen scientific thinking, "persuasive prose" to sharpen rhetorical thinking and "literary analysis" to sharpen aesthetic thinking and that "all three thinking skills were essential to a kairos program as a liberal arts program in the historic sense of the term" is certainly a pedagogical statement regarding the role of composition in education, which should be included in some way in all composition teacher's pedagogical beliefs (104-105). This is because thinking skills, or critical inquiry is at the most basic goal of education as a part of the acquisition of knowledge, not based on rote memory, but problem solving, ingenuity and ideas founded on reason.