Copyright © by Julia Marie Smith 2014 “MY MAKYNG THOW WRYTE MORE TREWE”: RHETORICAL CHORUS IN MEDIEVAL AND DIGITAL SPACES BY JULIA MARIE SMITH DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2014 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Professor Martin Camargo, Chair Professor Dennis Baron Associate Professor Spencer Schaffner Associate Professor Ned O’Gorman Associate Professor Bonnie Mak ii Abstract I argue that speech acts are artificially divided into individual (Campbell 1993) or collaborative (Biesecker 1992) work, which obscures the nuanced differences between rhetorical group activities: cooperation, concert, alliance, interface, harmony, disharmony, counterpoint, breach. Rather, the individual and the collaborative can intersect, but not only by providing direct feedback to the original speaker (LeFevre 1987) or through consensus (Bruffee 1984) or by partnering to create a single rhetorical event (Lundsford and Ede 1990). Instead, some rhetorical speech acts are distinguished as the work of both an individual speaker and a collaborative group. Since this communicative act resembles musical and classical dramatic chorus, I utilize choral activity to create a model for describing how the ensemble comes together, responds to the original speaker, and distributes that speaker’s message. Typically, a collaborative group tends to be described as homogenous, proximal, reciprocal, and synchronous. Whereas a chorus model offers the means to articulate how a collaborative group can be heterogeneous, asynchronous, diachronic and remote. This methodology is applied to a range of case studies, which have two unifying features: First, each example represents a case of contested authority, agency, and authenticity for an individual speaker. This contestation occurs because others have contributed to the preservation and distribution of the speaker’s ideas; the presence of these individuals is often used to problematize the speaker’s authority on the basis of the speaker’s gender, race, education or other limitations which would justify the contributors’ interventions at the expense of the individual speaker’s authority. Second, these examples compare the actions of the rhetorical chorus in medieval manuscripts (Chaucer, Kempe, Pizan) to contemporary digital websites (Wikipedia, Huffington iii Post, Gay Girl in Damascus). Both medieval manuscripts and digital sites are dynamic material spaces in which the choral actors can enter and alter the space. The materiality of the different spaces also allows for their actions to be identified, traced, and mapped. Applying rhetorical chorus to the case studies demonstrates that the concept of collaboration can be expanded to include a group of participants, who are tools of rhetorical invention. The chorus offers a conceptual framework for discussing how a group can propagate an original speaker’s message through their own agendas, mediate the message to an audience, and thus participate in the invention of social knowledge. A chorus model reveals that authority and agency are not fixed and finite entities, which can only be conferred to either an individual or a group, but can be distributed through the transmissions of one and many. iv Acknowledgements I would like to thank Martin Camargo for his patience and guidance as I worked through the dissertation process. I would not have been able to do this project without his expertise and excellent suggestions. I would also like to thank Dennis Baron and Ned O’Gorman who both took the time to encourage my work in class and later as I grappled with the complex questions posed in my dissertation. Spencer Schaffner and Bonnie Mak were kind enough to join my committee and have always expressed enthusiasm for the project. A special thank you to my mentor at Florida State University, Kristie Fleckenstein, who taught me how to revise and edit my work tirelessly. My work would not have been possible without the support offered by my parents, Lawrence and Susan Smith, and my friends, Kaitlin Marks-Dubbs, Jon Stone, Andrea Olinger, and Carla Thomas. I owe each and every one of them for reading the many versions of this project. Funding for this project was made possible by the University of Illinois, Urbana- Champaign Center for Writing Studies and the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign, English Department. Lastly, I want to thank Teresa Bertram who reminded me that the important thing was to finish the dissertation. v Table of Contents CHAPTER I: COLLABORATIVE RHETORICS AND BUILDING THEORY………………. 1 CHAPTER II: CHAUCER, WIKIPEDIA, AND MULTI-VOCAL RHETORICAL SPACES… 30 CHAPTER III: THE MYSTIC, THE FRAUD, AND THE CHORUS…………………………. 89 CHAPTER IV: PIZAN, HUFFINGTON, CHORUS……………………………………………. 152 CHAPTER V: SPEAK TRUTH: AUTHORITY, INVENTION, AND CHORUS……………… 207 BIBLIOGRAPHY………………………………………………………………………………... 232 APPENDIX A……………………………………………………………………………………. 263 APPENDIX B……………………………………………………………………………………. 264 APPENDIX C……………………………………………………………………………………. 265 APPENDIX D……………………………………………………………………………............ 266 APPENDIX E……………………………………………………………………………………. 268 1 Chapter I: Collaborative Rhetorics and Building Theory In 1851 at the Woman’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, a tall African American woman and ex-slave asked to speak before the convention. Despite the audience’s initially negative reaction, the chair of the convention, Frances Gage, invited the now famous Sojourner Truth to speak. According to later accounts, what followed was a stirring example of sound rhetorical practice. Truth used her trademark colloquialisms, biblical knowledge, bodily gestures, and her experience both as a woman and as a slave to refute the claims made by a number of men throughout the convention (Lipscomb 1995). The eloquently crafted speech is now identifiable by the name “Arn’t I a Woman?.” This oration has come to signify not only Truth’s rhetoric and her authority as a speaker, but also remains a crucial example of African American rhetoric during a significant era for abolitionism and women’s rights1. This iconic speech carries with it several inherent concerns for historians of rhetoric regarding speaker authority and agency. When Truth spoke, she made no record of her speech. In fact, Truth was illiterate and had to rely on others, mostly educated white women, to help her record her narratives and letters. The only available versions of the speech come from Marius Robinson’s newspaper account of the convention printed a few weeks after the event and Frances Gage’s article written some ten years later. Because neither participant worked with Truth to produce her message and the two versions were written much later than the original rhetorical event, neither of these two examples comfortably adheres to standard descriptions of collaboration. In a situation such as this one, focusing exclusively on Truth as the lone voice operating is problematic, but so too is denying her any authority or agency. 1 On Sojourner Truth and her rhetorical influence on the history of rhetoric, see Richardson 675-704, Mandziuk 271-291, Fitch and Mandziuk, Lipscomb 227-246, Painter 461-492, and Roseann M. Mandziuk and Suzanne Pullon Fitch “The Rhetorical Construction of Sojourner Truth” 120-138 and Campbell 1-19. 2 The 1851 Akron speech is a good example of how other people often intervene in the construction, preservation and circulation of rhetoric using their skills with writing technologies. This example further demonstrates some of the problems that arise because of these interventions: Who should be considered the source of authority for the message? Whose agenda affects the construction of rhetoric in this speech? Truth’s experience with speaking and having her words recorded by others is not a new situation; rather, most examples of historical rhetoric come mediated to us through the active interventions of other persons other than the one who originated the rhetorical act. This project intervenes by analyzing examples of contested authority in order to explore how authority gets attributed and how our understanding of collaboration might be refined. I examine specific case studies like that of Sojourner Truth in which the lines of rhetorical authority and agency for an individual speaker are blurred by the presence of other people who helped the speaker distribute her message. I identify members of this ensemble, define the actions that set them apart from the audience, and classify their positions within continuous and ongoing sequences of responses, which arises between speaker and ensemble, between members of the ensemble and between the ensemble and audience. In order to facilitate an analysis of this ensemble, I propose a theoretical model based on musical and classical dramatic chorus designed to examine how the ensemble impacts rhetorical invention and affects the speaker’s authority and message. Throughout this project, I address four questions or concerns: (1) Who participates in the production, distribution, and use of rhetoric and how might they be identified separately from an audience? (2) How do these individuals affect the creation of rhetoric and the circulation of a rhetorical message? (3) How do we attribute authority to a speaker, especially in situations where the speaker’s authority might be contested based on education, gender, race or some other 3 limitations? (4) How do the responses by participants affect the social