The Rhetoric of Writing

THE RHETORIC OF WRITING: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN WRITING MEMOIRS A Dissertation by LINDSAY PENELOPE ILLICH Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 2008 Major Subject: English THE RHETORIC OF WRITING: A RHETORICAL ANALYSIS OF MODERN WRITING MEMOIRS A Dissertation by LINDSAY PENELOPE ILLICH Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies of Texas A&M University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Approved by: Chair of Committee, M. Jimmie Killingsworth Committee Members, C. Jan Swearingen Marian Eide John J. McDermott Head of Department, M. Jimmie Killingsworth December 2008 Major Subject: English iii ABSTRACT The Rhetoric of Writing: A Rhetorical Analysis of Modern Writing Memoirs. (December 2008) Lindsay Penelope Illich, B.A., Texas A&M University; M.A., Texas A&M University Chair of Advisory Committee: Dr. M. Jimmie Killingsworth This dissertation analyzes concepts of the writing self in works about writing by professional creative writers (writers, poets, and essayists). Through a rhetorical analysis of these texts, I observe that writers view the writing self as a complex structure that is fully conscious as a rhetorical agent, an embodied self that interacts with the world and actively chooses linguistic representations of that experience, and maintains a concept of self that is subject to influences which the writers do not fully understand (such as inspiration and insight). The discourse used by writers to describe their writing processes challenges recent critiques of expressionism and the model of social construction that pervades contemporary composition scholarship. Chapter II examines Virginia Woolf's use of the central metaphor for invention in A Room of One's Own, a river, which sharply calls into question a unified view of the self which is central to critiques of expressivism by composition scholars. Woolf's concept of invention requires a negation of the self and harmony with nature (widely conceived as the entire world, including texts). Chapter III, an analysis of two writing memoirs by iv contemporary professional creative writers, Annie Dillard's The Writing Life and Donald Hall's Life Work, finds that Dillard and Hall use metaphors that establish freedom (rhetorical agency) and bodily presence as primary characteristics of their writing processes. Chapter IV, an analysis of two collections of essays about writing by professional creative writers, argues that the writers' use of metaphors of inspiration and instrumental metaphors creates a concept of the writing self that maintains a sense of writerly control (rhetorical agency) alternating with a sense of a diminished control; ultimately, the two concepts coexist in the minds of the writers. Chapter V proposes that the rhetorical situation of the contemporary composition classroom affects students' creativity adversely. The chapter also suggests further analyses of writing memoirs can provide new ways of understanding writing processes (as opposed to one writing process model) and therefore contribute substantially to composition scholarship and pedagogy. v To Dobie Boone Illich vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my committee chair, Dr. Killingsworth, and my committee members, Dr. Swearingen, Dr. Eide, and Dr. McDermott, for their guidance and support throughout the course of this research. Thanks also go to my friends and colleagues and the department faculty and staff for making my time at Texas A&M University a great experience. Finally, thanks to my family for their encouragement. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ABSTRACT.......................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION ...................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................... vi TABLE OF CONTENTS....................................................................................... vii CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION............................................................................. 1 A Brief History Modern Writing Memoirs.................................. 9 A Brief Overview of Writers on Writing Scholarship in Composition Studies.................................................................... 23 Method and Approach ................................................................. 27 II THE EXPRESSIVIST AIM RECONSIDERED: A VIEW FROM A ROOM OF ONE'S OWN.................................................................... 32 Rivers of Invention ...................................................................... 36 The Eddies of Expressivism......................................................... 57 The Expressivist Aim Reconsidered............................................. 67 III THE WRITING LIFE AND LIFE WORK: THE WRITING BODIES OF ANNIE DILLARD AND DONALD HALL................................ 74 Getting Started: The Body in Motion ........................................... 78 Writing Exercises, Writing Practices, and Un-Disciplined Bodies 93 Embodiment and Composition Studies......................................... 102 IV INSPIRATION AND INSTRUMENTALISM: THE NEW YORK TIMES WRITERS ON WRITING SERIES ....................................... 111 viii CHAPTER Page Current Instrumentalist Tendencies in Composition Scholarship.. 112 Instrumental Metaphors for Inspiration in Writers on Writing ...... 119 Quests and Hunts......................................................................... 128 Religious Metaphors for Inspiration............................................. 135 Instrumentalism and Inspiration in Composition Scholarship ....... 147 V CONCLUSION: CREATIVITY AND THE COMPOSITION CLASSROOM .................................................................................. 156 The Practice of Idleness ............................................................... 161 The Practice of Diligent Indolence............................................... 165 Idling Bodies ............................................................................... 170 Conclusion................................................................................... 176 WORKS CITED.................................................................................................... 179 VITA..................................................................................................................... 194 1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Composition studies is a transition mode: process theory is waning while some scholars push for post-process and post-theory in order to discover new directions and new ways of thinking about writing. This dissertation attempts to answer the call for a new direction and new ways of understanding how writers compose by opening the enormous cache of writings about writing in the form of writing memoirs by novelists, essayists, and poets. From these works, we can gain valuable insights about the writing processes of working writers, particularly that writing is more complicated and "creative" than the textbooks steps on the writing process suggest. Also, we can learn something about the nature of creativity and how we might address the lack of creativity in the composition classroom. The seminal work of process model pedagogy, Janet Emig's The Composing Processes of Twelfth Graders, published in 1969, opens with a description of the available data sources for the researcher concerned with the composing process: 1) the works by what Emig terms "established writers" appearing in the form of the writers' own accounts of the writing process through diaries, letters, essays, etc; 2) dialogues and interviews such as the ones made famous in The Paris Review in which an interviewer delivers a series of questions to writers followed by the writers' responses; 3) literary This dissertation follows the style of the MLA Style Manual. 2 critics' analyses of the evolution of specific works of literature such as Jerome Beaty's study Middlemarch, From Notebook to Novel; 4) the advice given to students in composition textbooks (although Emig doesn't address how directives about writing offer insight about the writing process, unless we are to understand her study as one dealing with the perceptions about writing rather than writing itself); and finally, 5) theoretical and empirical (her word) research about the writing process (she classifies her work in this category). She dismisses established writers as a source of data for inquiries into the writing process for the following reasons: 1. Established writers are incapable of describing their composing processes. Here, Emig quotes the novelist Peter de Vries: "Don’t ask the cow to analyze the milk" (9). 2. When writers discuss the writing process in modes that do have a specific audience, such as an extended autobiography or critical essay—what I call in this dissertation writing memoirs— writers are likely to lie because "they fear any conscious, explicit probing into their methods of work" might "spook" their writing (10). In this section, she refers to D. H Lawrence's claim in Studies in Classic American Literature that "all of the old American artists were hopeless liars" (9). 3 3. Established writers' descriptions of writing are post hoc endeavors and most likely do not reflect the actualities involved in the writing process because the descriptions are written

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