For centuries societies have understood the importance of art in relationship to other disciplines. Many great artists were also writers and poets. Many artists were well educated in classical literature from which they drew inspiration for paintings and sculptures. The document argues that the obvious meeting place for the two disciplines of art…

Rachel Speght, a London (England) minister's daughter, was not yet 20 years old when she wrote her first pamphlet. In it and her other works, she attempted to transcend patriarchal discourses that sought to both define her identity and determine the limits of her rhetorical situation. Women's ontological status, as derived from orthodox…

When teachers claim that the idea of community serves as the inspiration for a writing course, the question of what exactly is meant by the term community is compelling. The idea of community has any number of interpretations, ranging from the idealistically inspired to the downright deranged. In the new Honors Program at Ohio State University at…

Several implications for the understanding of the Darwinian revolution follow from an analysis of the role of colloquial language and prudential reason in Charles Darwin's quest for a theory of evolution. First, the term "natural selection" is not merely or even primarily a technical term and thus cannot be understood accurately apart…

Many debate textbooks give few examples of well structured arguments, and often the examples which the books do give are inconsistent with current debate practice. All too often, young debaters learn how to structure and deliver arguments from more experienced teammates, or even from debate competition opponents. The clearest example of…

"Verbal atom cracking," according to Kenneth Burke, entails a process where the reader reconstructs what the writer has constructed--a necessary process before the reader can begin deconstructing. Foregrounding opposites, rather than looking for apposites, may not be the best way to approach discourse that covers especially esoteric…

Such terms as "intrinsic justification,""intrinsicness," and "intrinsicality" are increasingly being heard in academic debate circles. Intrinsic justification consists of an argument which focuses evaluation of a resolutional term on the term's definitional contours. Essential qualities are defining characteristics…

Intercollegiate competitive speech and debate is at a crossroads requiring massive reforms, or the academic exercise will lose its power to provide lasting benefits. Likewise, the scope of individual events is in a constant state of change. One constant, however, is the value of extemporaneous speaking which encompasses many of the ideals…

According to Mikhail Bakhtin, a 20th century Russian linguist and literacy critic, texts represent battlegrounds for competing voices, including the author's, the narrator's, and the characters'. This concept of "heteroglossia" can be applied to a short story such as Ambrose Bierce's "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," about…

In recent years some exceptionally optimistic writings by feminist scholars have addressed a shift away from the male manque model of femininity to one celebrating feminine growth. Archetypal myths have inculcated people's minds with the notion that domination and conquest serve to justify men's domination over the feminine. Narrative communicates…

Russian Village Prose began in the 1950s with articles critical of the way collective farms were being managed and developed into an insider's view of rural life and a celebration of the values and rituals of traditional rural Russia. It represented a new approach to rural themes and characters and a return to literature of high aesthetic quality…

Paul Zimmer's latest poetry collection, "The Great Bird of Love," is serious and somber, fraught with the burden of evil, the indifference of God, and the certainty of death. The book is not humorless, however, as humor is central to both the chaotic evil and the ordered goodness of human life. It is in this collection that it is…

Students must learn to maintain authority over their texts as they attempt to deal with the chaos they encounter when they approach a writing task. The authority with which Jacques Derrida deals with chaos in his essay, "...That Dangerous Supplement," suggests some strategies. In his essay, Derrida seems to be able to move the reader…

The two papers presented in this compilation were drawn from a conference designed to encourage scholars to continue the rhetorical tradition. The first paper, presented by Dominic A. LaRusso, was the opening address of the conference and discusses the rhetorical tradition of the Renaissance. The second paper, by Phillip Marshall, was the paper…

In competitive debate, a view of meaning as something that a team has a right to pre-select is inconsistent with Ludwig Wittgenstein's conception of meaning as use. The "language-linked value objection" rejects conventional value objection of identifying the negative consequences of taking a stance in the hypothetical world of the…