Thomas Paine's "Common Sense," published in 1776, was a significant rhetorical event, having a polarizing effect on a situation marked by confusion and conflicting loyalties, in which prevailing views favored reconciliation of the American colonies with England. Paine's rhetoric intensified the conflict, forcing a cognitive restructuring…

Richard Whately's imprecise description of the concept "presumption" and the brevity of his treatment of it have led to confusion in applying the concept within the realm of argumentation. In proposing a theory to eliminate such confusion, it is argued that any dispute concerning the concept of presumption and its attendant burden of proof ("onus…

This paper focuses on the pedagogical strategies that can be constructed from the technique of using questions in composition writing. Questions are classified into real, pedagogical, and rhetorical; the rhetorical intentions of real questions are examined; and the "possibility of negation" and three-stage rhetorical patterns…

"The Chronicles of Narnia" are a series of seven fairy tales written by C.S. Lewis that have become popular with both children and adults. Lewis points to five aspects of the fairy tale form that made the form suitable for expressing the images he saw. The aspects are: (1) no love interest; (2) no close psychology; (3) severe restraints…

This paper describes an approach to teaching students to become more sensitive to voice, audience, and meaning in fiction. Examined are several passages of monologue, including a passage spoken by a character named Mr. Tyler in the opening of E.M. Forster's "The Story of a Panic." The rhetorical triangle made up of speaker, audience, and subject…

This paper argues that the prevailing tendency in the teaching of literature today is to rely too heavily on secondary material. An approach to training English majors to explicate and evaluate literature on their own is described. Students should understand that literature is not often autobiographical, that the writer's original intent is not…

The distinguishable black theatre in America, mirroring a distinguishable black experience, is an artistic product which demands audience involvement. Both the Afro-American oral tradition and the art of gesture are integral aspects of black theatre. In addition, the tragedy found black theatre is not tragedy in the classic sense, as blacks feel…

In analyzing literary works within a conceptual framework, the student needs the freedom to choose from a variety of critical standpoints and to discover for himself various approaches to the literary symbol. To illustrate the necessity of movement from one theory to another, the theories are arranged in the following order: transcendental theory…

This paper attempts to extract and summarize the truth-, fact-, and reality-bases of Chaim Perelman's and Mme. L. Olbrechts-Tyteca's "The New Rhetoric." This paper considers: the four basic factors which the theorist needs to take into account when interpreting "The New Rhetoric"; the descriptive characteristics of the…

In teaching literature appreciation, study of the academic criticism concerning a literary work may prove neither relevant nor more comprhensive to students. Moreover, attempts to overcome this difficulty by conducting classes in which students discuss the work freely often degenerate into cliche swapping and the cataloguing of superficialities.…

This paper explores Charles D. Kingsley's (1874-1926) perspectives on civic education, his impact on the 1916 "The Social Studies in Secondary Education: A Six-Year Program Adapted Both to the 6-3-3 and the 8-4 Plans of Organization and Report of the Committee on Social Studies of the Commission on the Reorganization of Secondary Education of…

The concepts of "learning community" and "community of practice" may hold value to researchers, but questions exist as to how well they help in organizing and clarifying the type of critical thinking involved in investigative work. This paper approaches the problem from two directions. One is to deconstruct the two concepts…

Using a feminist poststructuralist perspective, investigated academic feminism as a case of transformation in higher education. Used narrative analysis to examine the transformative role of feminist scholarship in the contexts of disciplines, departments, and the university, illustrated by the life histories of nine diverse feminists and their…

This essay explains the relevance of critique in rural education to novels about rural places. The most important quoted passage in the essay is from the noted physicist Richard Feynman: "Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." Novelist-physicist C. P. Snow, historian Henry Adams, and poet and student-of-mathematics Kelly Cherry also…

As a writer and critic, Kenneth Burke defies convenient pigeonholing. Even if just one segment of Burke's public writings is considered, the 40-plus critical essays of the post-Libbie (his Muse and secretary), post-LSA ("Language as Symbolic Action") era, the difficulty of categorizing him remains. The earlier periods of his life are…