On Living and Dying in Rhetoric: an Analysis of the Writings of Jim W

On Living and Dying in Rhetoric: An Analysis of the Writings of Jim W. Corder

Item Type text; Electronic Dissertation

Authors Jacovitch, Jennifer

Publisher The University of Arizona.

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Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/193515 ON LIVING AND DYING IN RHETORIC: AN ANALYSIS OF THE WRITINGS OF JIM W. CORDER

Jennifer Jacovitch

A Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY WITH A MAJOR IN RHETORIC, COMPOSITION, AND THE TEACHING OF ENGLISH

In the Graduate College

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA

2010 2

THE UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA GRADUATE COLLEGE

As members of the Dissertation Committee, we certify that we have read the dissertation prepared by Jennifer Jacovitch entitled On Living and Dying in Rhetoric: An Analysis of the Writings of Jim W. Corder and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

______Date: 04/14/2010 Theresa J. Enos

______Date: 04/14/2010 Keith D. Miller

______Date: 04/14/2010 Anne-Marie Hall

______Date: 04/14/2010 Adela C. Licona

Final approval and acceptance of this dissertation is contingent upon the candidate’s submission of the final copies of the dissertation to the Graduate College. I hereby certify that I have read this dissertation prepared under my direction and recommend that it be accepted as fulfilling the dissertation requirement.

______Date: 04/14/2010 Dissertation Director: Theresa J. Enos 3

STATEMENT BY AUTHOR

This dissertation has been submitted in partial fulfillment of requirements for an advanced degree at the University of Arizona and is deposited in the University Library to be made available to borrowers under rules of the Library.

Brief quotations from this dissertation are allowable without special permission, provided that accurate acknowledgment of source is made. Requests for permission for extended quotation from or reproduction of this manuscript in whole or in part may be granted by the copyright holder.

SIGNED: Jennifer Jacovitch 4

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am blessed to have spent my entire life in the context of teaching and learning, and I must acknowledge the people who have made such an education possible. I am grateful to my family, especially my parents Janet and Stephen, my sister Kathryn, my uncle Jack, my aunt Susan, and my grandparents Cecil and Ethel for providing me with a childhood full of warmth, support, and unconditional love. I am grateful to the countless teachers, mentors, and dear friends who have offered me so many opportunities to grow, specifically Judy Gibson, Elisabeth Gumnior, Royce Campbell, and Pedro Diaz. I am thankful for the perpetual patience and guidance of my dissertation committee, particularly Theresa Enos and Keith Miller. I thank Alison Miller for her invaluable support and friendship during my time in the RCTE program. I give special thanks to Mark Cox who has contributed the most to my survival in graduate school. 5

For Elisabeth 6

TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT...... 8

PREFACE...... 9

INVENTION: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1950s-1960s...... 19

I. The Restoration Way of the World: A Study of Restoration Comedy…....21

II. Corder’s Earliest Scholarly Publications……………………………...…44

III. “Gulliver in England”……………………………………………………49

IV. Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Language and Its Uses……………………53

V. “Rhetoric and Meaning in Religio Laici”……………………………..…57

STYLE: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1970s...... 61

I. Uses of Rhetoric………………………………………………………….64

II. “Ethical Argument in Amos”…………………………………………….71

III. “Efficient Ethos in Shane, with a Proposal for Discriminating Among

Kinds of Ethos”…………………………………………………..……81

IV. “Varieties in Ethical Argument, with Some Account of the Significance of

Ethos in the Teaching of Composition”……………………….………86

ARRANGEMENT: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1980s...... 96

I. “Rhetoric and Literary Study: Some Lines of Inquiry……………...….101

II. “From Rhetoric to Grace: Propositions 55-81 About Rhetoric;

Propositions 1-54 and 82 et. seq. Being Yet Unstated; or, Getting from

the Classroom to the World”…………………………………………104

TABLE OF CONTENTS - Continued

III. “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love”…………………….……118

IV. “A New Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Taken as a Version of Modern

Rhetoric”………………………………………………………..……124

MEMORY SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1990s……………………..135

I. Book Reviews of Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne…………..………..147

DELIVERY: A CORDERIAN PEDAGOGY IN COMPOSITION………...….157

I. Advanced Composition: Rhetorics of Scholarship……………….……162

II. Advanced Composition: A Corderian Theoretical Rationale …………164

III. Advanced Composition: Extensions in Genre and Literary Theories….175

IV. Advanced Composition: Analytical Methods and Writing Prompts…...180

CONCLUSION…………………………………………………………………186

APPENDIX A: PERSONAL NARRATIVE ESSAY……..……...... 187

APPENDIX B: OPINION, FACT, AND AUTHORITY…..…………..………188

APPENDIX C: CONCEPTS IN INQUIRY PARADIGMS..………….….……190

APPENDIX D: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO ARTICLES………..193

APPENDIX E: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THREE ARTICLES….….195

WORKS CITED...... 197 8

ABSTRACT

An analysis and discussion of selected writings of Jim W. Corder, this project traces the development of Corder’s theory of rhetoric across four decades, spanning from the late 1950s to the late 1990s. As one of the most prolific scholars in the history of the modern discipline of rhetoric and composition, Corder’s body of writings is a continuous work in progress, one that begins with Corder’s initial interest in rhetoric study within the context of literary criticism and grows into his in-depth consideration of the history and canons of rhetoric, with specific emphasis on theories of ethos and invention, the teaching of composition, the liberal arts tradition, and his later engagement with postmodern theories authorship, memory, and identity. The project seeks to reclaim and reassert Corder’s rhetorical perspective as means to shape future research in rhetorical analysis and composition pedagogy.

PREFACE

Everything I know about rhetoric I learned from Jim Corder. While this claim might appear as simple, or maybe excessive, the words provide a place for me to begin a discussion about the life and writings of Jimmie Wayne Corder—Jim W. Corder (1930-

1998). Specifically, the words establish a fundamental assumption that I bring to a consideration of Corder’s work. That is, “Corderian” rhetoric, his philosophy of rhetoric, embodies a way of knowing and learning for me. The questions and concerns that emerge from his writings on rhetoric exist both as the theoretical basis of my pedagogy as well as my approach to scholarly research and writing. I did not arrive at this perspective overnight; reading and writing about Corder’s work within the last six years has afforded me the opportunity to explore his unique prose style and theoretical point of view in a variety of contexts, and my understanding of his writings—particularly how I define and make use of Corderian rhetoric—continually evolves.

I read “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” perhaps his best-known work, nearly a decade ago. Now, as I attempt to assemble a useful discussion of his writing as evidence of a Corderian rhetoric, or a Corderian approach to rhetorical study, I consider this text significant for several reasons. First, it represents my own introduction to and subsequent understanding of Corder’s work. I had never read a word of Corder’s writing prior to my initial encounter with this essay, but “Argument as Emergence,

Rhetoric as Love” has since functioned as the primary lens through which I have read

Corder’s other works. Second, written roughly in the middle of his career (1984), the essay offers one of Corder’s most concise treatments of rhetoric, in which he refines 10

several theoretical threads evident in his earlier writings and lays the groundwork for concepts he considers later. Third, Corder offers a theory of argumentation in this essay by crafting prose that inherently illustrates several primary elements of his rhetorical philosophy; in other words, Corder’s use of language in the essay reveals a style that blends form and content—an embodiment, rather than just a discussion, of the features of his unique rhetoric. Consequently, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” has become a central component of this dissertation, because it offers a greater possibility for me to connect the rhetorical concepts Corder discusses in his most significant works, to identify and analyze those features that distinguish Corder’s perspective on rhetoric not just as his own unique style and point of view, but as one that is useful as a tool or an approach for others in rhetoric and writing studies as well.

I would like to return for a moment to my opening claim: “Everything I learned about rhetoric I learned from Jim Corder,” as a means to clarify the research process I use in the analysis and interpretation of Corder’s work for this project and to explain the rationale I employ in the structure and writing style of the following chapters. That is, elements of Corder’s rhetoric—evident in what and how he writes—inform my examination of Corder’s work and shape my writing process in the discussion of his work. A key assumption evident in Corder’s writing—and, consequently, an assumption that I make as well in my analysis of his writing—exists in his perspective on and definition of the term rhetoric.

[R]hetoric offers usable methods of investigation, as it is inextricably involved with epistemology. [. . .] [T]he art is a way of thinking and a way to opening up other ways of thinking, that it is a means of entering on 11

decent study of how we speak and write and might do so better. (Uses of Rhetoric 8)

Thus, in my study of Corder’s work, I have approached each text with the hope of discovering a new way to think about the concepts of rhetoric or rhetorical analysis, a search to open up other ways of thinking about our discourse, creating a greater possibility for understanding our uses of language. A second assumption, implicit in the passage above as well in numerous instances within his writing, is Corder’s affinity to classical rhetoric, particularly the philosophy of Aristotle. When Corder speaks of

“usable methods of investigation, as inextricably involved with epistemology,” he is referring to the offices (canons) of rhetoric—primarily the first three: invention, arrangement, and style—and Aristotle’s well-known definition of rhetoric: “The capacity to observe or discover all of the available means of persuasion.”

Much of Corder’s perspective on rhetoric and how he approaches the study of language and the teaching of writing is grounded in a discussion of invention, because he emphasizes the investigative nature inherent not only in Aristotle’s discussion of it but also later in the writings of Cicero and Quintilian. Corder argues that a consideration of invention, primarily as a method for examining uses of language as well as a means of discovering available means of crafting language, perpetually enables the opportunity to reflect upon our communication practices. He draws a clear distinction between what he labels as “pre-writing exercises,” the form that invention has most often assumed in modern rhetoric and composition textbooks rhetoric, and invention in the classical sense, a methodology designed for exploring and opening possibilities both to understand and to use language well. In addition, the process of invention directly informs and shapes a 12

consideration of the four other canons of rhetoric: style, arrangement, memory, and delivery.

Consequently, while invention itself is frequently the subject (as are the other canons) of Corder’s writing, more often his language embodies and enacts his process of invention, which is evident when we consider his use of the other canons, particularly style and arrangement. For example, Corder’s use of narrative, his practice of including the personal stories, anecdotes, and other various musings or reflections as rhetorical tools for crafting argument, are immediately apparent in the style of his writing, as well as in its structure or arrangement—especially within the context of academic discourse, where the generic conventions that determine these rhetorical elements are fairly rigid. In other words, Corder seeks to reveal his inventive process within the writing, to uncover for his readers’ consideration the underlying assumptions and lines of thinking that inform and shape his argument in the text. Therefore, invention exists not just as the investigative process Corder uses prior to crafting an argument, but as the primary means for revealing the argument itself within the text.

Because so much of Corder’s theoretical perspective—specifically, his emphasis on and uses of classical rhetorical principles and his assumptions about the nature of language and knowledge—are evident both in what he writes and how he writes, for me to make a useful discussion about his work in this dissertation presents a formidable challenge. That is, I seek to describe the major tenets and features of Corder’s rhetoric, while I simultaneously attempt to demonstrate them within my discussion of his writings.

However, I do not intend to mimic or to mirror the exact way that Corder wrote, nor do I 13

recommend anyone else trying to do so. Not to say that the personal revelations, poetic moments, and sentence-level or other linguistic turns that Corder takes within his writing are unworthy of imitation. In fact, from a creative (or, even, aesthetic) standpoint,

Corder’s language represents some of the most beautiful prose produced in the modern discipline. But the beauty of Corder’s writing is not its most significant quality, and the capacity to make use of a Corderian approach does not require writing just like Jim

Corder.

One does not need to write like Jim Corder in order to embody a Corderian rhetoric or to employ a Corderian approach. In addition, one does not need to share detailed, personal experiences, as Corder does so often, in order to be writing from a

Corderian perspective; likewise, a text filled with personal accounts does not always or necessarily embrace a Corderian approach as well. Thus, the narrative’s function, rather than just its presence within the text, distinguishes Corder’s use of it within so many of his writings, and the same can be said for other rhetorical devices evident in his work.

I have my work cut out in the following chapters, which I see divided primarily into two tasks—both of which inform the other. First, I must construct a working definition of Corderian rhetoric, or more specifically, the characteristics of a Corderian approach. Second, I must illustrate this unique rhetorical approach in such a way that helps both to clarify my treatment of these concepts as well as to provide a way for others to make use of Corder’s perspective within their own writing, research, and teaching. In the first four chapters, I address the first task— I discuss a selection of Corder’s publications, writings that span across four decades, and I identify and synthesize several 14

major themes and concerns emerging from those texts. In the fifth chapter, I address the second task—I demonstrate how Corder’s rhetorical approach is useful in the teaching of composition, drawing not only on his own theories of rhetoric and language but on the works of scholars in other disciplines, and I discuss a one particular manifestation of a

Corderian pedagogy in the teaching of Advanced Composition.

Before I move into the first chapter and a discussion of the earliest writings of

Corder’s academic career, I would like to comment on two stylistic choices that I make in writing about Corder’s work. First, throughout the dissertation, I embed many excerpts of

Corder’s language in my analysis and discussion. These selections frequently assume the form of long block quotations, as I attempt to provide readers with thick examples of

Corder’s writing to consider in the context of my arguments. I am well aware of the genre considerations and scholarly philosophies suggesting that authors should limit the number of block quotations they include in their writings, and I understand the basic assumption present in such advice—numerous, lengthy block quotations are the result of poor editing and evasive arguing. Writers who appropriate whole chunks of others’ language into their own texts are merely providing a substitute for the argument they wish to make.

This is good advice in many situations, such as when first-year writers copy/paste blocks of text from sources into their research papers, providing a few transitional sentences and an occasional comment—but offering no original discussion. However, in other situations, the advice is less useful, particularly when the goal of the analysis is to emphasize and illustrate the writing style of a given author. My analysis of Jim Corder falls into the latter situation, and I choose to include large sections of Corder’s writing 15

within my discussion because I desire my readers to see what I am seeing during the analysis, to have access immediately to the language that I am examining in that moment.

Also, because so much of Jim Corder’s style is marked by his adeptness in blending form and content, blurring structure and meaning, he simultaneously enacts and describes his theories of rhetoric. As a result, I cannot—and wish not to—extract or nutshell Corder’s language as the means illustrate those same qualities. I would be unable to describe how carefully Corder develops a series of idea or the ways he skillfully moves the reader through a sequence of concerns or examples, without showing the reader how.

More significantly, Corder incorporates large block quotations into his own writing, most often to illustrate particular linguistic and rhetorical choices a writer makes or critiques, and he has received negative criticism over his choice to do so as well. For example, in chapter four, I discuss reviews of Corder’s last monograph Hunting

Lieutenant Chadbourne, in which more than one reviewer notes Corder’s tendency to fold long block quotations and reproductions of primary sources into his writing. I argue that Corder’s choice is effective in my analysis of Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, because it serves his goal to subvert conventional academic genre expectations while enacting a broader rhetoric of scholarly discourse. Thus, in adhering to my initial hope to assume a Corderian rhetorical approach while writing about Corder’s rhetoric, I provide substantial excerpts of his writing throughout this work.

Second, as a means to organize the dissertation, I have used the canons of rhetoric to name each of the chapters because I wish to demonstrate the progressive sequence that marks the development of Corder’s rhetorical perspective over a period of forty years. In 16

the “Afterword” of a recent collection of some of Corder’s previously unpublished manuscripts, The Heroes Have Gone: Personal Essays on Sport, Popular Culture, and the American West, Keith D. Miller and James S. Baumlin discuss the breadth and volume of Corder’s writing and note a continuous and connective thread that distinguishes Corder’s overall body of work. Baumlin and Miller write,

Through the last two decades of an academic career that spanned from the 1950s to the late 1990s, Corder’s writing—regardless of genre, topic, or audience, and despite his intense engagement with postmodernist theory—remained a continuous personal essay. (176)

While Baumlin and Miller comment specifically on the last two decades of Corder’s life,

I would add that their perspective accurately depicts Corder’s writing in the first two decades of his career as well. Wendy Bishop echoes Miller and Baumlin’s perspective in her essay, “Preaching What He Practices: Jim Corder’s Irascible and Articulate Oeuvre,” and she cites the cumulating, evolving nature of Corder’s work as a whole. Bishop explains

He is a writer working as he knows writers work, progressing by increment, not trying always to make new, keeping the bathwater, sometimes keeping the baby. To hell with you if you don’t like or sanction it; welcome into his world if you do. As is normal in a writing life, his prose grows over the years—like a raindrop turning to hail—the attentive reader can hear what is imperative for him as he works up his strongest beliefs in greater detail, with more backing and passion. He’s willing to say something again, to let his premises grow. (97-98)

Therefore a significant goal of this dissertation is to illustrate the continuous nature of

Corder’s overall body of work and to reveal the connections between Corder’s earliest writings (for example, his own dissertation) and those pieces he wrote in the years just 17

before his death in 1998. Especially because his writings in the 1990s represent Corder’s attempt to negotiate emerging theories on postmodernism with his rhetorical perspective, the assertion that Corder’s writing “remained a continuous personal essay” becomes all the more evident from an exploration of his earlier writing as well.

One method of describing the development of Corder’s body of work over his forty-year career, a strategy advocated by Corder himself in numerous writings, is to use the classical offices or canons of rhetoric to organize the analysis and discussion of his writings and to provide the structural rationale for the dissertation as a whole. Corder argues that the canons themselves can be used as a means to organize knowledge, to arrange a program of study, particularly because when taken together, the canons represent an evolutionary structure—invention informs style, style informs arrangement, and vice versa. Corder develops his rhetorical theory over a process of stages, each building on the one that follows. Therefore, in the present work, the content of each chapter serves to illustrate specific features of Corder’s writing in the context of the classical canons of rhetoric: Invention, Style, Arrangement, Memory, and Delivery. More significantly, the explanation of each rhetorical canon in the context of Corder’s writing of a particular era—which I cover primarily at the beginning and end of each chapter— provides an effective way to transition from one section to the next, while emphasizing the cumulative, always in the process of developing, quality of Corder’s life’s work.

However, rather than offer a specific analysis of or discussion about the five classical canons of rhetoric in themselves, I present the canons (and the basic concepts that 18

distinguish them) as a starting place to explore Corder’s writing at different stages in his life and as a means to synthesize the essential features of his body of work as a whole.

In Chapter One (Invention) I locate the early evidence of Corder’s academic training, his introduction to rhetoric studies and his initial publications, and the inventive universe that he invokes as he fuses literary criticism with the concerns of rhetorical analysis. I demonstrate Corder’s movement beyond literary texts and authors, in Chapter

Two (Style), and I trace his instigation of several issues facing the contemporary discipline of rhetoric and composition—the teaching of writing, the processes of writing in different contexts and situations (and the function of rhetoric in each)—concerns that highlight the essential theories of style. In Chapter Three (Arrangement), I illustrate

Corder’s desire to reach into other disciplines, using rhetoric as a lens through which to discuss the research practices of scholars, the structures of education, the liberal arts curricula, and the uses of rhetoric to organize various methods and subjects of inquiry. I describe Corder’s perspective on historical research methods, in Chapter Four (Memory), and I highlight his particular concern with the function of memory in the processes of historiography, or any critical inquiry, and the function of rhetoric in recounting and recording events from the past. In Chapter Five (Delivery), I offer an application of

Corder’s theories in the teaching of writing, a Corderian pedagogy that draws on his lifetime of thinking and writing about rhetoric and its infinite uses. 19

INVENTION: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1950s-1960s Invention (Inventio) The matter of invention is exploration beforehand. Since all writing occurs in a time and a place, at the hand of some author, and for some kind of audience, rhetoricians have assumed the first task in discourse-making is to determine the character and need of time and place, the possibilities and resources and goals of the author, and the requirements created by the relationship among subject matter, author, and audience. (Uses of Rhetoric 23) An in-depth investigation of Corder’s writings still stands as a virtually unexplored avenue of research or, to use Corder’s language, remains as “soil rich for rhetorical hoeing.” Thus, in the spirit of Invention, to begin at the beginning, I have devoted this chapter to a consideration of Corder’s first published works, starting with his dissertation, The Restoration Way of the World: A Study of Restoration Comedy, completed in 1958, and ending with an article he wrote for PMLA, “Rhetoric and

Meaning in Religio Laici,” published in 1967. I also have included an analysis of two other significant works that Corder wrote during the 1960s: “Gulliver in England”

(College English, 1961) and Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Language and Its Uses

(Random House, 1965). Corder published a few other minor pieces during the first decade of his career, such as a couple of book reviews, but the texts that I have selected to discuss here in the first chapter offer the clearest view of the evolution of Corder’s thinking during this time period, specifically his move from a study of and emphasis on literary criticism to his focus on rhetorical theory and the teaching of writing—a trajectory he follows throughout the remainder of his career.

I hope to show that these early writings reveal evidence of the rhetorical theory that Corder spends decades developing throughout his career. That is, these texts enable 20

one to locate the roots of several fundamental aspects of his rhetorical approach and perspective that Corder fleshes out in his later works. In addition, following a path that begins with his dissertation and winds along through his first-published works offers the possibility to see the evolution of Corder’s specific interest in the study of rhetoric, particularly how it informs—or, rather, enlarges—the study of literature. By the time he writes his first book, Uses of Rhetoric (1971), Corder is able to articulate a refined, concrete discussion of rhetoric, a perspective that demonstrates a coalescence of concepts that Corder has been grappling with for over ten years. 21

I. The Restoration Way of the World: A Study of Restoration Comedy

Jim Corder studied English literature at the University of Oklahoma, and I am probably the first person to read his dissertation from cover to cover since his committee read it back in 1958. At first, I did not know what to expect as I flipped through the nearly 400-page document, but as I began to read the first page, I discovered that

Corder’s voice—which is so distinct in his later texts—is immediately apparent in this early work as well. However, the presence of his voice does not stem from his use of personal narrative, as it does later (in fact his entire dissertation is devoid of personal narrative), nor does it result from particular, sentence-level, stylistic moves that so many associate with Corder’s later writings. Instead, the stance that Corder assumes in his study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century comedies, recognizable within the first few pages, reveals early evidence of Corder’s approach to language study, one that illustrates the defining characteristics of the rhetorical theory he fleshes out in later writings. That is, both his analysis of Restoration comedies in the dissertation and later in his other works, Corder seeks to enlarge an understanding of his subject matter, through a process of recovery and reconsideration. Consequently, through his attempt to recover lost or overlooked perspectives concerning Restoration comedies, Corder discovers rhetoric— not just as a concept but as an investigative and instructive tool, one that is bound inextricably with epistemology, ethics, and pedagogy.

The subject of his dissertation, English comedies of the Restoration era, provides

Corder with a wealth of materials to cover, including both primary sources—the plays themselves, written by famous (and not-so-famous) dramatists—and secondary sources— 22

the work of contemporary critics of the era, modern literature scholars, and also writings about the plays themselves by the original authors. In addition, Corder offers a fairly comprehensive discussion of the historical context of the Restoration period, highlighting the work of critics and scholars such as Thomas Hobbes as a means to emphasize the intellectual and philosophical concerns of the era.

Corder’s dissertation is divided into nine chapters: the first four are discussions of various aspects of the long history and criticism of Restoration comedies, and the remaining five are given over to Corder’s original analysis of several plays and other writings produced during the Restoration era. Therefore, in the first chapters, Corder identifies a wide range of critical perspectives on Restoration comedies, constructing a unique theoretical point of view that he applies in his discussion of the primary texts in the later chapters. The approach that Corder takes, not only in his treatment of existing literary criticism on Restoration comedy in the initial chapters but also in his analysis of the primary texts in the later chapters, reveals a fundamental aspect of Corderian rhetoric, one that he does not articulate himself until much later: the purpose of language study is to enlarge our understanding of the human condition. And this idea becomes Corder’s primary assertion throughout the dissertation, concerning the form, function, and effect of

Restoration comedy, the aim of which is to provide audiences with an occasion for critical reflection—and to laugh, of course.

At its heart, the first chapter of Corder’s dissertation is a literature review in which he covers the major threads of criticism on Restoration comedy, both before and within the twentieth century. Corder also lays out the structure for the discussion and 23

analysis that appear in the subsequent chapters, which enable him to clarify the purpose of his study as well as to establish the thesis of the dissertation. Corder’s reconciliatory approach concerning the existing studies of and commentaries about Restoration comedy is readily apparent even on the first page of chapter one, because he points to the limited and misunderstood (even divergent) nature of criticism on Restoration comedy:

There has been scarcely a single study, from 1700 to yesterday, to examine the comedies by their own standards and by the standards of their time without the prejudicial influence of early moralistic denunciations. As a result, little justice has been done to a group of plays that, at their best, represent the last great English comedy, and, at their peak moments, rank with the monuments of English literature of any period, any form or impulse. (1-2)

Corder touches upon the work of a number of critics, illustrating that perspectives on

Restoration comedy generally have represented two extremes. On one end of the spectrum, the plays historically have been viewed as immoral, sexually explicit, and socially reprehensible in every way; on the other end, the plays have been viewed as artificial and trivial, full of merriment and jest, designed purely for the sake of entertainment. As a result of the two extremes, Corder argues that most criticism has tended to fall into either category, with the exception of several scholars who have offered alternative views of Restoration comedy, and he reveals that his own approach to the study of Restoration comedy is an extension of these more moderate perspectives, one that takes into consideration previously overlooked writings of critics and of the authors themselves. Corder explains that in

sources contemporary with the comedies themselves, the most spectacular remarks upon Restoration comedy occur in the various documents which, in one way or another, have been responsible, or partly so, for the ill repute into which Restoration comedy has 24

fallen at various times in its history. Counter to these more or less violent attacks and vastly more important are the calmer views available in prefaces and dedications to some of the plays and the comments of several critics of the time, especially John Dryden and John Dennis. (3)

Thus, from the start of his discussion, Corder positions himself slightly outside of the mainstream of critical perspectives on Restoration comedy, by identifying—yet going beyond—much of the conventional discourse among literary scholars about this era.

However, he does not seek to invalidate the points of view previously offered by critics, but he seeks to extend them and to enlarge the scope for analyzing Restoration comedy by including additional texts and lesser-known commentaries. For example, Corder identifies the work of T. H. Fujimura as a useful starting point in an investigation of

Restoration comedy, even though Fujimura “ultimately reverts to the view that the comedies are unreal, playful, and, if one carries the argument to its natural conclusion, unimportant” (15). However, Fujimura’s work points to the historical context of the era, which, according to Corder, offers a clearer view not only of Restoration comedies, but any text in context. Corder states:

According to Fujimura, the key words in the background of the plays are skepticism, naturalism, and libertinism; the key figure Thomas Hobbes. Science, the new philosophy, and the breakdown of the medieval pattern led to skepticism, he says, and to the naturalistic approach, which is revealed in the complete materialism and hedonism of Hobbes. (15)

Additionally, Corder points out the inherent rhetorical nature of Fujimura’s discussion, because “considering the aesthetics of wit comedy, Fujimura is concerned primarily with its effect and structure” (15). Thus, Corder uses Fujimura as the foundation of his own 25

analysis of Restoration comedy, despite the fact that Fujimura’s purpose and conclusions diverge from Corder’s perspective. Corder further explains,

While this study was not begun with Fujimura’s work in hand, and while such is not the principal purpose here, it is hoped that the following study will be to some extent an answer to Fujimura’s contentions. Because his work is unquestionably the best available on the subject, his incomplete treatment of the background and his inadequate account of the aesthetics of comedy and of individual plays demand drastic qualification. (16)

Thus, Fujimura provides the basis for Corder’s study, but he also draws on the work of several other critics who contribute to the rhetorical approach (whether intentional or not) that Corder seeks to construct in his own study. Several of these perspectives concern the actual production of Restoration comedies, with emphasis on the physical context of the stage, the theatre, and the audience. Corder appears to be the most interested in discussions of audience, explaining,

while the history of the theatre is not to the purpose here, it is well to note one thing about the characteristic audience of the time. It is essential to understand that it was typically upper-class, composed of sophisticated men and women, lords and ladies, often without any occupation except sophistication. It was an audience composed of people with leisure time, aristocrats who were familiar, to some extent at least, with most of what was written and thought in England and on the continent, an audience, moreover, that had grown somewhat tired of restraints. (18)

I think it is worthwhile to notice Corder’s detailed description of the audience of

Restoration comedies, and, furthermore, to point out the significance of the fact that he mentions a specific awareness of audience. His comments about the audience in particular reveal Corder’s emphasis on studying the social, economic, and even political issues that comprise the context from which Restoration comedies emerge. That is, 26

informed by Fujimura’s discussion of the structure and effect of Restoration comedies,

Corder includes the audience as a crucial component of the historical context necessary to gain a broader understanding of the meaning and function of these plays.

By the end of the first chapter, having covered the major trends in critical discourse about Restoration comedy and lamenting the incomplete or inadequate nature of such perspectives, Corder lays out the trajectory of his discussion for the remaining chapters. His purpose is three-fold:

In the study of Restoration comedy proposed here, it is my intention to present an approach to the plays that offers a marked contrast to views heretofore mentioned, an approach that relies for its validity upon (1) a wider study of the thought of the time, (2) a more thorough examination of the critics of the period and of the comments of the dramatists themselves, who have not yet been given credit for knowing what they were doing, and (3) a re- examination of the comedies, based, it is hoped, on the plays themselves rather than on previous judgments of them. (19)

In each component of the study, Corder’s attempt to enlarge an understanding of

Restoration comedy through a process of recovery and reconsideration is readily apparent. His language in this section: “a wider study of the thought”; “a more thorough examination of the critics”; and “a re-examination of the comedies” reveals evidence of

Corder’s effort to augment the perspectives of earlier critics, by enlarging the scope through which to study Restoration comedies. Thus, Corder does not lay groundwork to invalidate the work of previous scholars, nor does he seek to align himself with one of the two extremes perspectives concerning the meaning and function of Restoration comedies that he identifies earlier in the chapter. Instead he seeks to broaden the discussion, taking into consideration views that have been thoroughly hashed out by scholars and adding 27

several new facets—particularly an examination of the historical context of Restoration comedy, including a discussion of audience, as well as an investigation of writing about these comedies by the authors themselves, who, according to Corder, “have not yet been given credit for knowing what they were doing” (19).

Ultimately, Corder claims that the wider critical perspective on Restoration comedies, one that takes into account the historical and cultural concerns that are both reflected in and affected by the creation of these plays, offers a clearer view not only of the plays themselves, but of the historical context that produced them as well. Corder argues that the

comedies do not probe metaphysics, but one can, indeed, assert that they do probe almost to the very limits of ethics and epistemology. . . . The primary principle of this view is the idea of decorum, which during the age came to have far more than a purely literary meaning. The comedies arrive at this code through a reconciled and whole view of life, in which all the human faculties find perfect balance. (20)

Among the dramatists of the era, Corder identifies a number of well-known figures who best represent the spirit of Restoration comedy, citing their work as evidence of a particular “sane and balanced attitude toward life,” one that “reflected the establishment for a moment of new enlightenment of the eighteenth century, an enlightenment seen in the literature of this period perhaps at the peak of the work of Wycherly, Congreve,

Swift, and Pope” (20).

Corder concludes the first chapter, by clarifying the three major goals of his study of Restoration comedy. That is, he describes what he intends to discuss in detail in the remaining chapters. For example, as a means to engage a “wider study of the thought of 28

the time,” (19) Corder points to the need to “consider the nature of Epicureanism in

England at this time; to re-examine the terms which indicate the intellectual preoccupations of the period—reason, faith, naturalism, skepticism, the new science, libertinism” (21). As a way to provide “a more thorough examination of the critics of the period and of the comments of the dramatists themselves,” (19) Corder seeks to explore

“the role played by the rules and conventions of dramatic literature, by wit, judgment, fancy, and decorum, and of criticism contemporary with the plays” (21). Finally, to provide “a re-examination of the comedies, based, it is hoped, on the plays themselves rather than on previous judgments of them, “ (19) Corder posits that this “will involve study of the definitions of comedy and the comic tradition,” including an investigation of the terms “comedy of humours,” “comedy of manners,” and “wit comedy” (21). In his clarification of this third component, Corder provides the most clearly articulated version of his thesis throughout the dissertation. That is, his study represents “an attempt to state completely the nature, function, and meaning of Restoration comedy, its ethics, and its aesthetics” (22). Because of his emphasis on the function of Restoration comedy, and in light of his earlier assertions about effect and audience, Corder’s study appears inherently rhetorical in nature. His inclusion of and insistence on a consideration of the historical context surrounding Restoration comedies, which necessarily involves an understanding of the social, ethical, and political concerns of the audience, illustrates Corder’s commitment to go beyond the parameters of traditional literary criticism and his first steps toward a lifetime of studying rhetoric. 29

Chapter two is arguably Corder’s most ambitious section of the dissertation, largely because he attempts to cover such a wide range of thinkers, ideas, and writings emerging from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The chapter also represents a literature review as well, highlighting a number of scholars who consider not just the intellectual preoccupations of the era, but also those who specifically discuss Restoration comedy as evidence of a literary low point, relevant to its context. From any research standpoint—literary criticism, philosophy, or the study of rhetoric (just to name a few)— this era offers vast opportunities for exploration, especially because it represents a convergence and emergence of intellectual concerns that had been percolating for centuries in Europe. Corder asserts that a study of Restoration comedy provides clearer insight into the intellectual and philosophical issues of the period, despite the fact that many literary scholars historically have believed otherwise. Corder points out that the

intellectual interests that have been considered most fruitfully are those centering in the development of science and the concurrent emphasis on rationalism. These studies have discussed the influence of such factors as the Royal Society, the Cambridge Platonists, Hobbes, and Descartes. Their interests have centered too in the ideas of reason, faith, and skepticism. (23-24)

However, because of their specific interest in these ideas and concepts, literary critics have failed historically to recognize the value of Restoration comedy within its context and to acknowledge the connection between the plays and the intellectual mindset of the day. Corder further explains,

The intellectual mood of the time is defined with a rather special set of terms or emphases. The comedy, however, is created with its own interests, not adequately noted in these intellectual histories. The comedies, then, not reconciling with these definitions of 30

intellectual interest, can only be seen as alien, foolish, foppish, inane—in short, as a slick monument to Cloud-Cuckoo land. (23)

In addition, much of the existing literary criticism on Restoration comedy has suggested that the plays grow out of an intellectual fragmentation occurring at the time, leading to discussions of “the dissociation of sensibility.” For example, referring to the work of

Basil Willey, Corder identifies a typical perspective on literature of the era:

Willey, in discussing the influence of Descartes, suggests that the dissociation of sensibilities, the cleavage which, after the time of the Metaphysical poets, begins to appear between facts and values, between what one felt and what one thought as a man of enlightenment.... The “cold philosophy,” he says, did destroy “the union of heart and head, the synthesis of thought and feeling out of which major poetry seems to be born. (25)

Thus, while he points to valuable aspects of the work of some literary critics, Corder concludes that “because of their rather selective interests, they have created a picture of the late seventeenth century mind that leaves no place for Restoration comedy” (26).

Consequently, Corder returns to a discussion of audience—“to understand that comedy correctly and to understand that individual plays are not just lusty flights, it is necessary to consider further aspects of the Restoration mind” (27).

Here again, Corder’s attempt to understand the mindset of audiences of

Restoration comedy reveals his own inherent rhetorical intent. Not satisfied with the incomplete treatment and analysis of these plays, citing the work of previous critics as inadequate, Corder seeks to extend those discussions of scholars who investigate the intellectual and philosophical concerns of the era, yet do not fully engage these concepts within their discourse about Restoration comedy. He reiterates the predominating point of view among scholars, then and in the twentieth century, concerning the disconnect 31

between literature and audiences during that era, if the concept of audience is at all. For example, in reviewing the work of Alexandre Beljame, Corder reveals that though “he recognizes a real society behind the comedy, Beljame refuses to admit any serious intent either in that society or in the works that were its record,” instead characterizing audiences (as well as authors) as virtually incapable of taking anything seriously (27).

However, Corder asserts that any serious investigation of the comedies of this era must dispel this particular perspective:

The fact remains that despite the pranks, the midnight sins, the public lechery, even that rather select group that was the subject of most Restoration comedy was faithfully recorded in the plays— and what is more important, not only its license and lechery but also its strict code and serious conduct were faithfully depicted. (28)

However, to prove such an assertion, Corder turns to texts that heretofore had not been considered a viable component of discussions concerning Restoration comedy, arguing that an investigation of “letters, diaries, journals, memoirs, conduct books, and other records of the day is enough to reveal the serious concerns of the society which were reflected in the serious intentions of the comedy” (28). In these texts Corder finds evidence of the value of Restoration comedy, a serious consideration of the themes, structures, and function of these plays within the time period. Therefore Corder establishes an urgency to reconsider the comedies of the Restoration era, both in light of concurrent intellectual and philosophical assumptions as well as in consideration of alternative texts that were produced at the same time. His approach to studying the texts and ideas of this era paves the way for his ultimate assertion of the chapter—that 32

Restoration comedy provides the best means to understand the intellectual environment of the era. Corder argues,

In the best of the comedies, all the forces active in the period appear refined into great literature. The same forces influence all the comedies, the best and the worst; one must remember that while some of the plays justify the most adverse criticism possible, others, especially the work of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve, refine the intellectual and philosophical influences of the time as well as the exploits of the court wits to produce good comedy. It must then in this refinement that the essentials of the intellectual milieu of Restoration comedy are to be found. (31)

Thus, Corder’s ultimate claim about Restoration comedy is two-fold. First, he establishes the inherent value of these plays, by suggesting that they are a reflection or embodiment of the intellectual and philosophical trends of the era. Second, he asserts that Restoration comedy represents a convergence—a “refinement”—of a number of distinct philosophical perspectives; contrary to the belief of literary critics, who argue that

Restoration comedy is the embodiment of a cultural and social decay, a morally and ethically reprehensible, “dissociation of sensibilities,” resulting from the tension created by divergent philosophical points of view of the era. Thus, Corder asserts that “an attempt to show in its reflection of the intellectual pre-occupations of the time the great literature of the Restoration reveals not a dissociation, but a harmony of sensibilities and interests”

(34). Corder’s conclusion about the relationship between comedies of the Restoration and the social context that produced them shows early evidence of his emerging rhetorical perspective; that is, rather than attempting to disprove prior critical perspectives, or to decide on one point of view once and for all, he seeks to show how these texts represent a 33

convergence of perspectives, which ultimately creates the potential for a broader understanding of them.

Corder devotes a sizeable portion of the chapter to discussions of the intellectual movements of the era, citing a number of scholars and critics as evidence of the various perspectives that converge during the era of Restoration comedy. He describes in detail the significant facets of philosophical thought present during the era, even pointing to the seemingly incompatible nature of these perspectives. He explains,

A tendency that is noticeable in studies of this period, a tendency possibly the result of the undue interest in a dissociation of sensibility, is that which seeks to classify all impulses of the time into only two major divergent interests—with science, rationalism, materialism, and skepticism lumped together and opposing the emotions, the imagination, and religion. This calm splitting of interests, of course, can no longer stand. (37)

However, among the philosophical perspectives and notable critics he discusses in this chapter, Corder identifies the work of Thomas Hobbes as the most useful in understanding the intellectual mindset of the era, even in light of divergent points of view among critics concerning the writings and philosophy of Hobbes. That is, critics historically have characterized the work of Hobbes as aligned with one side or the other in the dichotomy Corder discusses in the above passage. However, Corder asserts that in

“Hobbes there is some support for that harmony of sensibilities that will be noted in

Restoration comedy, despite those studies which see his work only as defining the purely materialistic attitude” (40). Again, it is significant to notice Corder’s emphasis on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes as evidence of his own inherent rhetorical approach.

Always seeking to enlarge an understanding of language use, and, in this case, to broaden 34

an understanding of the intellectual underpinnings of Restoration comedy, Corder points to the work of Hobbes, because it embodies the widest range of philosophical perspectives of the time period, unifying points of view that are decidedly incongruent in the work of other scholars of the same era. Corder states,

Hobbes’ position, among other things, proclaims the senses and the passions as fundamental to human behavior. All mental processes come from the sensations, and man without passions is dead. These passions are neither good nor bad. Man acts in his own interests; his life is a progress from satisfaction of one desire to another. . . . Hobbes sought to push back the limits to the power of reason. (41)

The last phrase of the above passage: “to push back the limits of the power of reason” shows evidence of Hobbes’s effort to reconcile seemingly contradictory concepts— emotion and reason. Corder argues that it is “through this extension of the powers of the human reason and through his examination and recognition of the place of the imagination that Hobbes comes to have great importance for Restoration comedy” (41).

The fact that Hobbes gives legitimacy to a study of human imagination as connected with human reason sets him apart from other scholars of his era and beyond, but it endears him to Corder. He explains further:

To Hobbes the imagination provided a natural, unerring test of the validity of notions; consequently, through his influence, the imagination could no longer be associated solely with error and passion. Hobbes, then, suggests a reconciliation of sensibilities, and allows for the accommodation of the claims of the rational and the imaginative. (42)

Moreover, Hobbes’ perspective provides Corder with a way to characterize the philosophical undertones that inform and shape comedies of the Restoration period, which enables him to offer a more complete argument about the meaning and function of 35

Restoration comedy—the ultimate purpose of his study. In other words, “It is not only through his respect for the imagination as well as the reason that Hobbes suggests something of the balance of the mind that is characteristic of the best Restoration comedy” (42). Consequently, Corder identifies the balance of divergent intellectual and philosophical perspectives as the key aspect that distinguishes comedies of the

Restoration era.

Overall, Corder’s goal in the second chapter, to identify and discuss the significant philosophical and intellectual trends of the Restoration era, shows clear evidence of his rhetorical approach, because he constructs such a broad overview of perspectives that culminates in his discussion of Hobbes as the most inclusive embodiment of these points of view. Thus Corder demonstrates not only the spaciousness of his rhetorical approach—the attempt to broaden and extend an understanding of language use—but also the connective aspect of his rhetoric in his affinity to Thomas

Hobbes, whose work Corder identifies as a useful balance of the various intellectual perspectives circulating during the Restoration era. Corder best summarizes his discussion of the second chapter in a paragraph that appears near the end of the section:

The point of consideration in these brief glances at some of the major intellectual interests of the Restoration, the point that is of extreme significance in the work of Etherege, Wycherley, and Congreve, is that the primary ideas of the time coalesce in the great literature of the time to produce not rationalism, nor materialism, nor skepticism, nor any trace of a dissociation of sensibilities, but a balanced body of thought. It was a body of thought which knew the place of both the reason and the emotions, which recognized both science and supernatural, both materialism and spiritualism. Remembering the tensions that existed among the ideas of the time, one might characterize this body of thought not as materialistic, not as skeptical, not as rationalistic, but as 36

reasonable. It is a prevailing attitude which appropriately balances both human interests and human sensibilities. (45)

With a working notion of the intellectual and philosophical perspectives embodied in comedies of the Restoration, Corder has a rich rhetorical lens through which to examine the primary texts he covers in later chapters. However, before arriving at the analysis portion of the dissertation, he seeks to broaden the scope of his investigation even further.

In the next two chapters, he further explores the history surrounding the study of

Restoration comedies, first looking more closely at literary discourse about these plays

(Chapter three) and, then, exploring the cultural and historical roots of Restoration comedies that determined the shape and structure of the plays, drawing on classical Greek and Roman philosophy (Chapter four).

Corder opens the third chapter by discussing some common perceptions about

English literature in the Neo-Classical era (1660-1750), and he points out that the general consensus among many literary scholars and students has often been to characterize the writing as “cold and brittle, as complex, rationalistic, and dispassionate, lacking all the warmth and humanity that characterizes great literature” (54). Names like John Milton and Alexander Pope are considered as typical examples of the kind of writing produced during the era. Corder also points to a widespread assumption of the Restoration era that

“men wrote by a set of rules, denying the heart for the head, placing correctness above all else. It was an age when reason, we have been told, ruled all, when literature was formal, precise, correct, and dull” (54). Of course, inherent in these assumptions, there is an underestimation—even a nonrecognition—of the comedies produced during the same era.

Given that Corder sees Restoration comedy as the most complete embodiment of the 37

intellectual mindset of the time period, he portrays an ironic gap between this body of literature and literary critics—especially in light of the specific denunciations of these plays that Corder covered in the first couple of chapters. However, Corder suggests that modern assumptions about writing during that period overlook several critical perspectives, occurring within the Restoration era, especially those that speak specifically to the subject of Restoration comedy. In other words, Corder argues that there is a general misconception of the era, because of a misunderstanding not only about the comedies themselves (and how they historically have been interpreted), but a less-than-complete knowledge of the philosophical discourse of the age as well.

In the preceding chapter, Corder argues that Restoration comedies represent a convergence of philosophical concepts—ideas perhaps best embodied in the writings of

Thomas Hobbes—and the dramatists of that era grappled with these divergent, seemingly contradictory elements as well. Thus, the assumption held by many literary critics and students, that the writing produced during this era either was dull, sterile, and highly logical or absurd, passionate, theatrical garbage (i.e., the splitting of sensibilities), is more or less misinformed or incomplete. Corder explains,

This suggests a picture quite different from that indicated in the preceding chapter, where an attempt was made to re-assert a golden mean as the ethical and aesthetic principle most important in the intellectual background of Restoration comedy. This difference is apparently due only to a general refusal to examine the literature of the period. The greatest literature, in this case the best of Restoration comedy, is the prime means of asserting that golden mean. (55)

Yet, despite the general consensus regarding literature of the era among critics, Corder points to the work of a few literary scholars, particularly Paul Wood and Donald Bond, 38

who question the prevailing assumptions held by other scholars and, instead, assert, “Just as the influence of science has been exaggerated, so the strictness of the rules and ideas associated with neo-classicism has been over-stressed” (56). Thus, according to Corder and these other two critics, the general confusion or misinformed understanding about the era has contributed to a gross underestimation of Restoration comedies—a perspective that Corder seeks to dispel.

To do so, Corder looks to the work of scholars who, beyond a study of the literature of the era, focus on other cultural aspects, specifically discussions of art and aesthetics, and he posits: “In the gardens of the period, formal in design, men looked for symmetry, proportion and balance. One must also be convinced that the same principles are at the basis of the best Restoration comedies” (58). Likewise, Corder examines the writing of Gilbert Highet who, “speaking in another connection of the art of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, discusses the baroque as ‘the interplay of strong emotion and stronger social, aesthetic, intellectual, moral, and religious restraints,’” a perspective that is “suggestive of the balance and proportion that have been declared characteristic of the best Restoration literature” (58). Corder includes an excerpt from

Highet’s work that highlights the relationship between audiences and literature produced during the Restoration era and how modern critics view that relationship:

“What we, nowadays, usually see in baroque art and literature is its formality, its symmetry, and frigidity. What the men and women of the baroque era saw in it was the tension between ardent passion and firm, cool, control (289)”. (58)

Thus, based on Highet’s assertion—that is, both dramatists and audiences living during the Neo-Classical era viewed the form and function of Restoration comedies differently 39

than the scholars who have looked back to study the era from later generations—Corder calls for a more serious investigation of the perspectives held by dramatists and critics during the era, as a means to gain a broader understanding of these plays within their original context. In addition, Corder’s attempt to consider the perspectives of the critics and dramatists themselves writing during the era, shows further evidence of his rhetorical approach—paying particular attention to the context from which these plays (as well as the commentary about them) emerged and recognizing that criticism of these texts (both contemporary and modern) are situated within a context as well. In other words, Corder argues:

A careful look at literary standards, at the literary criticism along with brief examinations of the attitude of practicing writers toward the rules and conventions, as well as some of the principle terms in use is necessary before an intelligent examination of the comedy can be made. (58)

In his search to understand more about the work of dramatists living and writing during the Restoration era, Corder makes an interesting connection—he discovers the influence of classical theories on criticism within this time period, particularly those concerned with the study and teaching of rhetoric. Corder explains that the

bases of that critical theory were many, but of the sources, Aristotle was supreme….The work of Horace, assumed then to be something like an addition to Aristotle, was extremely important, as was the work of the Roman rhetoricians, to whom many critics turned for a theory of comedy in default of comic theory by Aristotle or Horace. (59)

Corder identifies the work of critic John Dennis as the most representative of the tone of critical and literary thought during the time, and he argues that “it must be insisted that to find the crucial counterpart of that ideal Restoration way of the world, one must look to 40

the ethical and aesthetic opinions of John Dennis” (61). He later adds, “It is this aesthetic philosophy which best reveals the literary background of the comedies and helps to show how they synthesize the best thought of the time into a new way of the world” (62).

Thus, using Dennis’s work as a critical lens, Corder is able to draw a connection between canonical figures of the Restoration: Pope, Dryden, Milton, Swift and authors like Wycherley, Congreve, and Etherege, writers of comedy. He is able to make the connection a discussion of rhetoric, arguing that all of the writers of this era show evidence of epistemological and linguistic concerns founded on classical theories of rhetoric and philosophy—and that this evidence is readily apparent in the form and function of comedies produced during this era.

Corder’s essential claim in the fourth chapter rests on the assertion that to understand the form, function, and meaning of comedy during the Restoration era, one must look beyond much of the existing criticism on the subject, “most of which, in their effort to show that Restoration comedy is either artificial, narrow, or immoral, fail entirely to discuss the matters of comic drama” (88). Corder also reiterates his argument that has appeared throughout his discussion thus far, that the inattention to and inadequate consideration of Restoration comedies provide the motivating force behind his own study of these plays and the context that produced them. Thus, Corder establishes his primary purpose for chapter four:

It is obvious, of course, that to understand Restoration comedy, one must understand it first as comedy, not as either moral or immoral preachment or witty nonsense; in other words, one must search out the principles of these works as comedies. To do this, it seems necessary, [. . .] to consider their milieu the source of the comic impulse, their form, and their function. (88-89) 41

However, among the majority of literary scholars who have discussed these issues, there is general consensus that “the only criticism that defenders of Restoration comedy need to answer is that the plays are ‘trivial, gross, and dull’” (89). Echoing some of his discussion in the earlier chapters, Corder explains:

Many critics have found a similar philosophy, or worse, depicted in Restoration comedy, and so has grown the great body of criticism which denounces these works as immoral. From Collier through Macaulay to many present-day critics, the same attacks recur. (90)

Nevertheless, Corder identifies the work of several scholars who “have approached nearer to the essential elements of comic drama, in this case that of the Restoration. Of these, some have considered the order or potential order depicted by the plays, while others have examined the source of the comic and, to a lesser extent, the form and function of comedy” (90). Among his discussion of a handful of literary critics who delve into and form various opinions about the key features of Restoration comedy, Corder points to the work of several critics in particular—Kathleen Lynch and George

Meredith—and he returns to his earlier discussion of T. H. Fujimura as well.

Among these scholars, Corder isolates several points of view that enable him to construct his own perspective, one that represents a convergence of ideas that emerge from the individual discussions of each critic. For example, in the work of Kathleen

Lynch, Corder emphasizes her investigation of “the code of existence apparent or potential in these comedies. There is a code discovered in Restoration comedy, and one of its features is its flexibility” (91). Corder highlights the fact that Lynch’s perspective diverges from conventional notions about a code of manners or conduct within 42

Restoration comedies, revealing that “where students have thought of such a code, they have deemed it to be purely social and quite rigid” (91). In his discussion of Meredith’s work, Corder focuses on the notion that comedy is a source of solid reasoning, found through laughter, and he includes a passage from Meredith’s book to clarify his perspective: “‘The Laughter of comedy is impersonal and of unrivalled politeness, nearer a smile, often no more than a smile. It laughs through the mind, for the mind directs it, and it might be called the humor of the soul.’(47)” (91). Among the scholars that Corder identifies as those concerned about the comic form or function within this era, he maintains his emphasis on the work of T. H. Fujimura, specifically Restoration Comedy of Wit.

He draws a number of parallel connections between comedies of the two eras, pointing to scholars who identify the characteristics of classical, Greek comedy, and he argues that the model created by ancient dramatists provide a flexible structure on which to build comedic content that engages an epistemological progression—not just for the characters of the play, but for audiences as well. Corder’s discussion of the nearly identical ethical and social concerns of both Greek and Restoration comedy opens the door for his discussions of ethos later in his career. But, more importantly for the moment, Corder is able to articulate his own definition of the form and function of

Restoration comedies:

The comic view, then, is concerned either with an implied or a stated order. As suggested above, comedy may at first reveal an upset order or a potential order, but the possibility of an ideal order exists throughout and is revealed through the play. This order is based upon balance, harmony, propriety, and ethical conduct. (103) 43

Thus, the remainder of Corder’s dissertation is given over to primary analysis of a range of texts from the Restoration era, in which Corder applies the perspective he has just formulated.

Much could be said here about the plays that Corder analyzes in the last half of his dissertation, because he shows some compelling evidence of the theory he had been developing in the first few chapters within the texts that he covers in these chapters.

However, for the purpose of my own study of his work, I am not sure that a specific look at this section is specifically relevant, especially because the works that I cover next show a continuation and extension of some of the ideas he explores in his dissertation. Another reason is that these chapters of his dissertation are detailed and full of selections and excerpts from the texts he analyzes, making it quite difficult to nutshell his discussion, without including all of the references that he covers. 44

II. Corder’s Earliest Scholarly Publications

After completing his graduate work at the University of Oklahoma, Jim Corder returned to his home state, taking position among the literature faculty in the English department at Texas Christian University. Within the first several years, Corder produced a handful of writings that appear both in College Composition and Communication and College

English, and I hope to show that an analysis of these texts reveals Corder’s strong connection to the ideas he was grappling with in his dissertation. That is, Corder’s thinking about Restoration comedies, as well as the era that produced them, continues to evolve and emerge as a specific discussion of and argument about rhetoric in his earliest publications.

Corder’s first publication, “The Story of Rhetoric: A Long Protest and a Short

Program,” a short piece he wrote under the “Staff Room Interchange” section of CCC, in

May 1961, shows not only a specific argument about the study of rhetoric, but about the importance of its function in the teaching of college composition. Pointing to earlier editions of CCC of the year prior, specifically the work of Robert Stevick and George

Wilson, Corder celebrates the imminent possibility “that perhaps one day soon we may teach an authentic university course in composition,” and he adds that “from our own complaints and those of others, present standard methods—remedial study of grammar, the new fashion of structural linguistics, or the old habit of studying essay content—have obviously failed to produced acceptable writing” (93). In the opening paragraph, Corder explains,

We have time and again seen students succeed at reading essays, using commas, and conjugating verbs, and yet remain miserable 45

writers. Their failure to write acceptably is partly attributable to us: we have not taught them. We have not given our students techniques and forms reliable in any situation: we have not given them university training in composition. In order to do so, we must assume some knowledge on the part of the student, eliminate time wasted on elementary grammar and punctuation, and devote the freshman composition course to the study of style and rhetoric. (93)

The last sentence in particular shows evidence of Corder’s specific emphasis on the study of rhetoric, mainly to fulfill his earlier assertion that we should give students “techniques and forms reliable in any situation,” referring to this approach as indicative of a

“university training in composition.” Following his opening claim about the relevance of rhetoric to the teaching of composition, Corder spends the rest of piece outlining the core components of a one-semester, experimental composition course he taught with a colleague. Arranged in a progressive sequence, moving students through a study of diction, sentence style, paragraph style, organization, and the techniques of exposition, the course is focused on a study of “the great stylists of our language, precisely the authors for some reason neglected in most freshmen anthologies” (94). Corder’s uses the word “style” as well as his reference to some writers as great “stylists,” appears rather uncontroversial, in that he offers no specific definition or interpretation of this term.

However, based the structure of the course, it becomes clear that, for Corder, the study of style is founded on a classical notion of language study, via the study of rhetoric, and the great stylists are those writers who demonstrate this connection to classical rhetoric’s concern with style. Thus, Corder points to writers such as John Donne (“Selected

Meditations”), John Milton (“Of education” and “Areopagitica”), Samuel Johnson

(“Letter to Chesterfield”), and Jonathan Swift (“A Modest Proposal”) as examples of 46

classical structures that lend themselves readily for stylistic analysis in a composition course.

It is worthwhile to note that the composition course Corder describes here is not unlike the current structure and curriculum for the English 101 course here at the

University of Arizona, largely because the focus rests on text analysis and close reading of language. In the last paragraph, Corder points to a second-semester course that would augment the strategies and approaches introduced during the first semester, which “is devoted to the techniques of description, argumentation, narration, and research;” however he does not lay out in detail how such a course might be structured (95). Again,

I see another connection in the second-semester course that Corder describes to the current English 102 course at the University of Arizona, particularly in terms of the emphasis on argumentation and research. Whereas the English 101 course provides an opportunity for students to study language through close reading and analysis, the

English 102 curriculum is designed to enable students to craft arguments about language based on research. While I doubt that the first-year composition curriculum was conceived with or informed by Corder’s article, I am encouraged by the fact that the

University of Arizona’s writing program—one of the discipline’s most distinguished and progressive composition programs—embraces the rhetorical approach that Corder had envisioned so many years ago.

In a later edition of CCC that same year, December, 1961, Corder writes a short book review of Rhetoric for Exposition, by Roger D. Chittick and Robert D. Stevick, and 47

he continues to emphasize the study of style as the critical component of a first-year composition curriculum. Corder argues that

the most gratifying feature of the book is the author’s assumption

that individual responsibility is imperative to both reading and

writing and their consequent omission of the customary

discussions or reviews of grammar, mechanics, and punctuation. It

is high time for us all to do likewise and to free ourselves for the

study of style and composition. (250)

However, Corder believes that Chittick and Stevick do not go far enough in providing a useful study of style, because of their overemphasis on discussions of logic, “by devoting to definition, classification, syllogistic reasoning, and the inductive method” (250). Thus,

Corder is provided with an opportunity to articulate his own perspective on the study of style within a composition course, arguing that

while they [students] need such discussions of logic as this, they

also need much more. They need to know the sentence as an act of

judgment and as the basic device for developing a style. They need

to know the paragraph, the plan or outline, and the execution of the

whole essay as works of extended judgment and revelations of

style and point of view. These things, the whole problem of style,

this book does not discuss. (250) 48

Thus, Corder concludes that the book would be most beneficial as one part of a composition- course curriculum because, while it offers some useful techniques and strategies for language analysis, it neglects to emphasize a study of style. 49

III. “Gulliver in England”

During the same year that Corder produced the short book review and that his comments appear under the “Staff Room Interchange” for CCC, he also produced an article for College English, “Gulliver in England.” As his first peer-reviewed article,

“Gulliver in England” offers a snap-shot photo, a moment frozen in time, of Corder’s perspective on the study of rhetoric as a bridge that connects traditional literary criticism with emerging discussions of the teaching of writing. The article also shows an extension of Corder’s writing and thinking in his dissertation, his emphasis on British authors of the neoclassical period, and his focus on classical theories of rhetoric. Overall, “Gulliver in

England” represents an analysis of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, in which Corder suggests that a consideration of rhetorical concerns illuminates Swift’s use of structure and style as a means of constructing an argument. Corder asserts,

It is Gulliver’s point of view, so adroitly handled by Swift, which varies, becoming increasingly complicated as he looks upon Englishmen from several unusual vantage points. [. . .] The final absurdity of his education, which is the result of several partial views of human nature, is revealed through Swift’s management of point of view. Close attention to the mechanics of this shifting point of view, particularly in the last voyage, reveals that Gulliver remains in a recognizable human society, seeing it, however through warped lenses. (98)

Corder’s perspective on Restoration comedies, developed throughout his dissertation, becomes evident in his analysis here of Swift’s novel. Like the best comedies written during the same era, Gulliver’s Travels represents not just Gulliver’s voyage but the audience’s voyage as well, an intellectual journey in which both Gulliver and readers gain a critical distance that allows for social reflection. However, Corder explains that the 50

“craftsmanship that puts both Gulliver and, temporarily, the reader in a series of odd but revealing relationships to thoroughly routine situations has not been adequately explored.

It is through this control of method that Swift reaches the height of his argument” (98).

Thus, Corder seeks to illustrate Swift’s adept use of point of view within the novel as a means to explore the text’s effectiveness as a political satire.

Corder concludes that Swift manipulates point of view throughout the novel, by constructing the voyages that Gulliver makes within a specific order, one that enables a progression from one to the next, revealing both to Gulliver and the to the audience a new perspective that is informed by the last. Corder explains,

Gulliver sees his homeland everywhere he looks, but each time he looks, he sees it in a different focus. Taking a perfectly normal setting, Swift has shifted point of view and has furnished just that equipment necessary to parody travel and science fiction. Gulliver’s absurdity and much of the satiric effect of Gulliver’s Travels are achieved largely through this superb control of the point of view technique. The first three voyages, in addition to their individual functions, serve to prepare the reader for the final comic alienation of the fourth voyage. As most of us sometimes do, Gulliver perceives in the first voyage the littleness of man, especially in his social and political ambitions; yet, seeing this, Gulliver gradually comes to identify himself with these tiny men. His adventures begin when through a turbulent experience represented as the result of a storm, shipwreck, exertion, and brandy, he is suddenly detached from mankind. Detached and aloof, he thus acquires the first of the key points of view which help to create the double-edged satire of Gulliver’s Travels: an objective, dispassionate vantage point from which he can see man’s social and political foolishness. (101)

By the end of the article, Corder insists that Gulliver’s Travels must necessarily be viewed as a comedy, not only because it follows the same type of progressive sequence that Corder identifies within comedies of the Restoration era but also because it functions 51

as a tool for social reflection and critique—both for the characters and the audience.

Corder argues,

To speak of the tragedy inherent in Gulliver’s Travels and of the dark, rotten evil that broods there is to mistake the nature of comedy. We must laugh at Gulliver. If there is sadness here, it is a sadness we discover from the book, not in it, as once again, laughing, we are forced to contemplate the eternal inadequacy and inappropriateness of human behavior. [. . .] Evil is there, and vice and folly, but it is one of the miracles of Swift’s art to control them, perhaps even to exercise them, by exposure. (103)

Corder’s argument about Swift in this article is nearly identical to his claims about

Wycherley, Congreve, and Etherege in his dissertation several years prior; that is, these authors create the means for audiences to gain a larger understanding of social, ethical, and political concerns. The structures of their texts (whether they are plays, novels, or another genre) enable the audience to gain a broader awareness or understanding of some facet of human nature. The characters experience a form of intellectual progression as the structure of the text unfolds; likewise, the audience has the same potential to emerge at the end of the same sequence of events with a different perspective or awareness. Corder argues that Gulliver in “his detachment he can clearly see the political shams, the treachery, the nonsense of factions—all clearly human foibles as we all have known for some time,” and the audience is provided with the same perspective (101). Swift’s manipulation of the sequence of events and point of view enables him to create an argument in which he “illustrates that horrifying but hilarious comic flaw in man which leads him too often to forsake his own viewpoint for that of the society to which he belongs” (103). Consequently, Corder concludes confidently that the “shifting points of view are responsible for the magnificent comedy in Gulliver’s Travels, and they help to 52

create the same kind of double-edged satire which is so powerful in A Modest Proposal”

(103). Nevertheless, Corder’s thesis in this article shows clear evidence of the claims and illustrations he offers in his dissertation on Restoration comedies, and while he never mentions the word “rhetoric” his designation of Swift’s novel as an “argument” designed to inform political thought makes Corder’s study of Gulliver’s Travels a fairly convincing rhetorical analysis. And the inherent rhetorical approach evident in Corder’s earliest writing emerges as Corder’s focus over the next few years. The study of rhetoric itself becomes the subject of the writing that Corder produced during the mid-1960s—and beyond. 53

IV. Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Language and Its Uses

Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Language and Its Uses is a textbook for first-year writers, published by Random House in 1965, and it has been out of print for some time. I have been unable to locate any reviews of Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Language and Its

Uses (neither at the time of its publication nor in recent years). Nevertheless, this text brings Corder’s perspective sharply into focus, which makes the book significantly valuable for studying Corder’s later writing, especially because he offers such a concrete discussion of rhetoric, particularly the canon of style. The text is divided into two halves: the first part given over to a study of language as a subject matter; the second part given over to a study of language as a method. Corder explains in the preface,

Along with the study of and exercise of prose method, the student must necessarily study the development and quality of his language; for the student’s study and exercise of method, the best examples are to be found in the work of widely recognized and long-established masters of English prose style; and these examples can be arranged in a sequence that will help the student assimilate a body of methods he may use in any situation. (v)

It is clear that Corder has moved to a specific discussion of rhetoric, not just from looking at the book’s title, but also in noticing how he characterizes the study of language as concerned with “methods he may use in any situation” (v). However, what is most fascinating to me is how Corder moves into a more specific discussion of rhetoric, yet he does not abandon his use of British texts of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—in fact, writings from this period make up the largest portion of primary texts in the reader.

Instead, he continues to work with some texts that appear as early as his dissertation, and he extends his discussions of them by offering a more concrete connection to study of 54

rhetoric and the canon of style. Corder’s emphasis on rhetoric, particularly within a first- year composition course, becomes even more evident in the text’s introduction, where he asserts that “style, it may be presumed, should be paramount in a book designed for use in a college course in composition and rhetoric” (3). Corder explains further that

language is alive and controversial, and attitudes toward language may be manifestations of philosophical and moral positions. But while their intrinsic worth is great, it is assumed here that their ultimate function is to serve the rest of the book in its primary concern with style. (3)

The readings contained in the first part of the book are all dedicated to a discussion of language from a range of disciplinary perspectives, some literary, others more scientific. With each author covering a facet of language use, method, and style, the first part of the book offers students various opportunities to gain a critical perspective on language use, and the second part of the book provides particular examples of language use, method, and style for students to analyze.

In addition to the primary texts included in the reader, Corder provides a substantial amount of original analysis and illustration of the methods that are addressed in each section, and he arranges the sections along a specific sequence that emphasizes various linguistic concepts that build upon each other. The sequence, according to Corder, is based on classical notions of instruction that make use of progressive learning stages, a sequence that enables students first to learn linguistic skills that they then develop in later levels of instruction. That is,

Corder relies on classical structures of education in rhetoric as the informing 55

premise of the composition course. For example, in a discussion about the length of student essays, Corder offers the following suggestion:

For organizing longer essays, you may find the method of the classical oration useful. There is no reason why this system should not be employed; it has been successfully developed and used for two thousand years. Cicero followed a plan like this, as did Milton, Dryden, and countless other major prose stylists of our culture. It is in many respects easier to use than the standard Roman numeral outline because it shows the relationship among parts more clearly. (311-12)

From here, Corder explains the various parts of classical oration—exordium or proem, narration, proposition, partition, confirmation, and peroration—and how students might make use of these concepts within their own writing. Corder adds,

It should be understood that while this sequence of steps is probably the most common, the parts of the plan may be rearranged to serve your interests if you wish to get some special effect. And this plan has a further—and lovely—advantage; traditionally this system allows for digressions. The digressio should make this method of organizing especially attractive. (312)

One noteworthy feature of Corder’s explanation in this section is how he characterizes the parts of classical oration as discrete concepts with unique functions while simultaneously revealing the flexible nature of the structure as a whole. This feature becomes even clearer when looking at the examples that Corder provides after his discussion in this section, which include Milton’s Areopagitica, Dryden’s “Essay of

Dramatic Poesy,” and Wordsworth’s preface to Lyrical Ballads, because each text shows indisputable evidence of the parts of classical oration within its structure, as Corder carefully illustrates in the commentary sections following each example. In fact, Corder’s analysis in these sections, while intended to help first-year college students gains some 56

valuable language skills, rivals the work of scholars writing rhetorical analyses for publication in major research venues. The textbook is packed with original, insightful rhetorical analyses of dozens of texts, both canonical and lesser-known. 57

V. “Rhetoric and Meaning in Religio Laici”

By the late 1960s, Corder’s perspective on rhetoric as a useful tool in the work of literary criticism as well as in the teaching of writing becomes even clearer. The approach he establishes in Rhetoric: A Text Reader on Language and

Its Uses, a method for teaching first-year writing that employs classical theories of rhetoric, primarily the parts of classical oration, emerges as the thesis for an article Corder publishes in PMLA in 1967, “Rhetoric and Meaning in Religio

Laici.” That is, Corder broadens his discussion about classical oration, moving beyond the first-year composition classroom and incorporating his discussion of rhetoric into the study of literature. Corder uses the vocabulary of rhetoric as a way to offer an investigation of John Dryden’s Religio Laici. Corder makes his purpose clear in the opening sentences of the article:

Analysis of the rhetorical structure of Religio Laici, by directing attention to the form and development of the poem, clarifies its meaning. Such an analysis, further, enables us to accommodate equally appealing but apparently contradictory readings of the poem. (245)

What struck me immediately, as I read these first sentences, is how Corder makes use of rhetoric as a means to address a debatable issue within the scholarly community. As in his dissertation, Corder seeks to illuminate the meaning and function of a text by exploring both the text and the author’s relationship to theories of classical rhetoric, and

Corder remains interested in the critical perspective that the authors themselves take on their writing as well, pointing out that “Dryden indicates the rhetorical provenance of

Religio Laici in his marginal notes marking the progress of the controversy” (245). 58

Corder points out that the controversy (controversia) is the final exercise in judicial oratory, “which, far from being limited to the court, is the rhetorical means by which the speaker or writer can plead before public opinion, as in Newman’s Apology, or Milton’s

Defensio pro se. Dryden’s Religio Laici is an exercise of this type” (245). Furthermore,

Corder explains,

Dryden is working not only with a recognized rhetorical type, but also with a recognized rhetorical structure. A standard feature of all rhetorics used in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whether Ciceronian, Ramist, or whatever, is instruction in the fundamental parts of an oration. While some rhetorics list and discuss other parts, such as the digression and the proposition, the most common listing gives six basic parts: exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, confutatio, and peroratio. It is to this plan we should look now, for Religio Laici is organized in the manner of classical oration. (245)

Next, Corder begins to dissect the various sections of Dryden’s poem, pointing to the function of each as a part of classical oratory. In his examination of each segment, Corder interprets the meaning of the lines based on their relationship to the poem’s larger structure, as well as commenting on Dryden’s relationship to his audience. For example, in his discussion of the exordium, Corder argues that it

catches the reader’s attention with the withheld subject that suspends sense until the third line, and with the perfect simile that foreshadows Dryden’s treatment of reason and embodies an enthymeme, one of the customary resources for proof in discourse. The self-denial and the qualified and unassuming trust in reason of lines six and seven help to make Dryden’s audience benevolently disposed toward him. (246)

Taking his consideration of the relationship between Dryden and his audience even further, Corder is able to touch upon a subject that becomes of vast importance to his 59

later writing—ethos. Corder argues that in the confirmatio and confutatio sections of the poem, Dryden

relies on the modes of confirmation and on the kids of proof traditionally recommended for discourse. Among the accepted modes of confirmation is the achievement of such a rapport between the audience and the speaker (ethos) that the audience will think him reliable. Dryden’s Preface and the unassuming tone of the entire poem help to accomplish this end, and his parting words to the audience further establish his openness:

Thus have I made my own Opinions clear: Yet neither Praise, expect, nor Censure fear: And this unpolish’d, rugged Verse, I chose; As fittest for Discourse, and nearest Prose. (ll. 451-454) (246)

As far as I know, this section of the article marks the first time Corder discusses ethos, and until I discover otherwise, I will stick to this claim. While he mentions the concept of ethical discourse in earlier writings, particularly within his dissertation, he never talks about ethos as a concept in itself, until now. And, of course, he spends a great deal of time on ethos later, as early as in his first book, Uses of Rhetoric, which is his first major publication following this article.

Corder’s discovery of rhetoric in the realm of literary criticism is quite evident in the work that he does during the first decade of his career, including his graduate studies.

His interest in theories of Aristotelian rhetoric, primarily in theories of ethos, is established as one of the foundational concerns of Corder’s rhetorical theories and writings over the next forty years. Because of his interest in the teaching of composition, and the function that a rhetorical perspective might offer in such a context, Corder 60

becomes increasing concerned with pedagogy, education within a liberal arts tradition, and the possible uses of rhetoric beyond the academy.

In the next chapter, I begin with a discussion of Uses of Rhetoric, published (and now out-of-print) in 1971, using the text as a foundation and a lens through which to discuss the writings that Corder produced over the next decade. The text serves a clear transition from his scholarship in literature to his work as a rhetorician. 61

STYLE: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1970s

Style (Elocutio) The Study of style, whether ancient or modern, is far too complex to render satisfactorily in any kind of core outline. Some features of elocution we can name, however. We cannot cover the matter of style; we can discover some of the kinds of things taught, remembering that for the best of ancients, as for the best of the moderns, style is not the adornment of thought, but its fruition. (Uses of Rhetoric 27)

During the 1950s and 1960s, Corder shows clear evidence of an affinity to rhetorical theory, particularly how it informs a discussion of writing pedagogy and the burgeoning discipline of rhetoric and composition. Perhaps the most notable feature of

Corder’s transition into a specific and deliberate study of rhetoric is how, rather than moving away from the study of literature, he enlarges the scope of his research and theoretical interest by adding the discussion of rhetoric and writing. That is, he continues to focus on text artifacts that emerge (mostly) from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Great Britain—Jonathan Swift, Alexander Pope, and John Milton, for example—yet he uses these texts and writers as a means to craft arguments about and illustrate examples of adept uses of rhetoric. He also refers extensively to the work of other modern scholars, literary critics, and philosophers, with names such as Kenneth

Burke, Northrop Frye, and Walter Ong, who appear frequently throughout Corder’s discussions. His focus on these texts and writers becomes particularly evident in his first published work of the 1970s, Uses of Rhetoric, printed by Lippincott in 1971 and no longer available, although there are a surprising number of copies still in existence in several libraries and private collections. 62

Uses of Rhetoric functions in several ways, in terms of the larger context of

Corder’s theoretical orientation and writings. It is the first book-length work that Corder ever published, beyond the textbook for first-year writing that he had edited in during the previous decade (Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Language and Its Uses, Random House,

1965), arguably created to satisfy institutional requirements related to tenure and promotion. Second, he wrote this text during a pivotal moment within the history of the modern discipline of rhetoric and composition, a time in which scholars in English studies were seeking to carve out a space for rhetoric and composition studies, one that revolutionized the teaching of writing and the professional status of research about rhetoric and composition within departments that were—and still are—heavily dominated by literary criticism and scholarship. The rhetorical perspective he offers in Uses of

Rhetoric provides a counterstatement to arguments about the uses of rhetoric that were produced during the same era—primarily Edward P. J. Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (in its second edition in 1971) and Young, Becker, and Pike’s

Rhetoric: Discovery and Change (1970). Third, the perspective that Corder frames within

Uses of Rhetoric offers the most specific articulation of Corderian rhetoric available, especially when compared with most of his other writings; that is, Corder crafts his discussion of rhetoric using fairly conservative and traditionally academic prose; however, the content of his language is nothing short of revolutionary, which may offer one reason why the book not only received such little professional recognition but subsequently went out of print as well. However, just as Corder’s dissertation embodies a radical perspective on the study of literature, specifically in the analysis and 63

interpretation of Restoration comedies, Uses of Rhetoric offers a radical perspective on the study of rhetoric, specifically in terms of liberal arts education and writing pedagogy.

In both cases, though, Corder offers his perspective within the prevailing prescribed parameters and generic conventions of academic discourse practices—yet he manages to create a space for himself to move beyond those boundaries, establishing both an epistemology and methodology that he demonstrates in these texts and in his later writings.

Thus, I focus my discussion in this chapter on Corder’s work during the 1970s, starting with Uses of Rhetoric. Also, I provide a close reading and text analysis of three other publications that Corder produced throughout the same decade: “Ethical Argument in Amos,” appearing in The Cresset (1972); “Efficient Ethos in Shane, with a Proposal for Discriminating Among Kinds of Ethos, from Communication Quarterly (1977); and

“Varieties in Ethical Argument, with Some Account of the Significance of Ethos in the

Teaching of Composition,” published the following year in Freshman English News

(1978) . 64

I. Uses of Rhetoric

Corder’s larger argument in Uses of Rhetoric rests on his early assertion that a study of rhetoric should comprise the core of all higher education, not just first-year composition curricula, but all academic disciplines. The perspective that he crafts within this text—notably how he characterizes the history of the rhetorical tradition—provides a rich view of Corder’s perspective on rhetoric (or at least attempts to clarify the epistemological and ideological underpinnings that shape his rhetorical stance). Corder essentially constructs a history of rhetoric studies as a means to craft an argument about the future shape and direction of the discipline. In particular, this historical vision of the rhetorical tradition calls for an expansion and extension of studies in rhetoric through a restored discussion of the classics, a reconsideration of the rhetorical canons (particularly invention and style) and their changes and uses that over the millennia, and a reconsideration of rhetoric as the central element of education.

Along with a short preface, the text is divided into seven chapters. Even a quick glance at the table of contents, noting the title of each chapter, shows how Corder begins with a concept—in this case, rhetoric—and then proceeds to build upon and enlarge the scope of his discussion of the topic in the subsequent chapters. For example, in the first chapter, “Urgencies and Possibilities in Rhetorical Study, with Some Account of Its

Range,” Corder introduces the topic of rhetoric and identifies some of the potential directions that such study might take, including a forecast of some of the concepts that he explores in greater detail in later chapters. Chapter three, “On the Preservation and

Extension of Rhetoric,” illustrates Corder’s emphasis not only on the value of existing 65

knowledge of rhetorical theory but on expanding the range of rhetorical study currently available to scholars in the discipline. Chapters four and five: “Rhetoric in the

Classroom” and “Rhetoric in the Curriculum,” respectively, demonstrates Corder’s commitment to a study of rhetoric as the cornerstone of both classroom and curricular pedagogies. The seventh and closing chapter, “Certain Maxims and Questions, with No

Conclusion to be Found,” indicates that while the book itself has ended, the questions that are raised within its pages concerning the study of rhetoric are never-ending.

A close, detailed analysis of Uses of Rhetoric, though it is a crucial component of any thorough investigation of Corder’s work, is, I think, unnecessary to include at the present moment. No doubt such an exhaustive examination would illuminate rich insight into the underpinnings of Corder’s writings. However, I would like to save that analysis for another time (maybe even another section of this dissertation) and, instead, identify several broader features of the text’s subject and structure that provide a means to discuss some of his later writings, particularly those he published over the next decade.

The first feature I have already mentioned in discussing the book’s table of contents is the process of sequence that Corder observes both in what he writes and how he writes. That is, he specifically calls for the importance of and attention to the notion of sequence in discourse on knowledge, language, and argumentation, and he structures these claims according to observable, sequential stages within his own writing. Thus, for example, in a discussion of the five canons of rhetoric, Corder discusses sequence in relation to style, claiming, “We have already seen that rhetoric, though it is built in sequences and indeed seems to assume a necessary sequentiality, nevertheless doubles 66

back and forth upon itself; style, thus, is both an end and a beginning, a character of finished writing and a source for the writer at the beginning” (32).

The sequence in Corder’s writing is marked by an enlargement, a moving outward, reaching beyond, yet in such a way as to enable a continued connection to a core idea or concept. The metaphor of concentric circles, as in the rings of water that emerge from a pebble that has just landed in a pond, provides the best model for describing the sequence embodied in Corder’s writing, rather than a linear or uni- directional sequence. Corder’s writing even shows evidence of an aggregating, building sequence within the individual chapters themselves, as well as individual paragraphs— even sentences. A paragraph that demonstrates a typical example of Corder’s sequential prose occurs in the first chapter. In his discussion of rhetoric’s viability for modern scholars, Corder writes,

We begin to understand that rhetoric has, at least at particular times in the past, offered a subject matter, sometimes quite intricate and systematic, sometimes confined to its own time, sometimes exploitable in our own. We begin to understand that rhetoric offers usable methods of investigation, as it is inextricably involved with epistemology. We begin to understand that the art is a way of thinking and a way of opening up other ways of thinking, that it is a means of entering on decent study of how we speak and write and may do so better [. . .]. We’ve begun to learn, in other words, that rhetoric is clearly not dead. (8-9)

Here, also, is evidence of another feature of Corder’s prose that I will discuss in more detail at a later time—repetition. In this moment, his use of the repeating, parallel sentence structure enables him to offer a carefully sequenced set of claims, each one building upon the one that precedes it, but his use of repetition shows up in other ways and serves other purposes elsewhere. More significantly, he makes a direct argument for 67

rhetoric’s importance in enabling a sequenced process of knowing, learning, and speaking—that rhetoric in itself is a sequence of concerns, a means for structuring language and organizing knowledge. Further proof of Corder’s adherence to the concept of sequence is his discussion of classical Greek education, particularly exercises in rhetoric. He argues that

they are sequences, graduated from simple to more complex, and expansive in the sense that each is intended to provide means not previously given, to open more options to the student; they are prescriptive, but only in the early exercises, where patterns are often provided for the young students to follow; and they depend upon the student’s reading for subject matter. (33)

Corder stresses the “expansive” orientation that defines sequence as an ordered process that enables students to enlarge their understanding of an idea or subject. Thus, the type of sequence that Corder observes in his reading of classical rhetoricians and that he practices in his own writing functions as the means to widen the range of possibilities, not as a way to prescribe a particular order of things or to define a specific process for learning or using language. He develops his discussion of sequence over the next several pages, even noting some pedagogical pitfalls. Corder explains,

Such sequences of exercises, obviously, had great merit; at their best they formed an effective graduation that steadily expanded the range of possibilities for the student. But to be sure, they were also abused. Often, as many have pointed out, they became artificial and rigid, irrelevant to a real world’s need for discourse, and all too often, merely showcases for finery and fireworks. The frequent failure of such sequences, however, does not seem inherent in the sequential system, as we will see. (37)

I could include far more discussion here on Corder’s treatment of sequence both as a rhetorical concept and writing strategy, including more consideration of the discussions 68

and theorists that inform his perspective, but, for now, it is sufficient to establish that he highly valued sequence, one that is based on the theories and philosophies of classical rhetoric and one that provides a means to investigate uses of language.

The second feature of Uses of Rhetoric that becomes relevant in a discussion of his writings later in the decade relates to Corder’s subject matter. In the decade before,

Corder is making a transition, augmenting his study of literature by bringing some of the general concerns of rhetoric to bare on his analysis of literary texts. However, in the early 1970s, Corder begins to gravitate toward more specific discussions of rhetoric, and the seeds of these discussions are quite evident in Uses of Rhetoric. First, Corder establishes his fundamental interest in classical rhetoric, particularly the theories of

Aristotle and ethos. Second, Corder establishes his overarching concern with the work of education. The majority of writing Corder produced in the years immediately following Uses of Rhetoric largely involves these two broad concepts: ethos and education. However, in this earlier text, he carefully lays out the details of his thinking and learning, illuminating the research and reading that informs his perspective on classical rhetoric and education.

Consequently, Corder’s way of bringing the theories of other scholars (and which scholars he chooses to invoke) into his own discussion marks a third of feature of

Uses of Rhetoric that, like the first two, is evident in his later writings as well. In addition, Corder makes use of an extensive range of discourse genres and contexts as examples or illustrations within his writing. There seems to be no limit to Corder’s range of inventive resources (which is a quality he values in discourse of others); he 69

draws on the writings of classical figures in rhetoric such as Aristotle, Cicero,

Quintilian, or modern scholars like Kenneth Burke, Richard Weaver, and James

Kinneavy. He discusses the work of literary and cultural critics across hundreds of years, from Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift to Northrop Frye and Wayne Booth, and looks to the philosophical and psychological theories of John Locke, David Hume, or Adam Smith. Likewise, his examples include classical text fragments, British

Restoration-era comedies, poetry, biblical scripture, well-known speeches, and modern film and television artifacts, and academic writings from seasoned scholars and young students (among many others).

In the absence of a more lengthy and detailed analysis of Uses of Rhetoric, I will use the three major features I have identified above as a framework for discussing three articles that he wrote later in the decade. First, I hope to show how Corder makes use of sequence in the writing of these texts and how that sequence not only reflects the theoretical perspective he offers in Uses of Rhetoric but also enables him to make the specific argument(s) within each article. Second, I seek to illuminate one of the two discussion threads that Corder establishes in Uses of Rhetoric. Earlier I mentioned the two broad areas of discussion that Corder devotes the most attention to during the

1970s: ethos and education. Thus my analysis in the remainder of this chapter will focus primarily on his writings about ethos. I will return to his writings on education during this era, as well as throughout his career, in Chapter 5, which is devoted entirely to a discussion of Corderian pedagogical approaches. Third, I explore Corder’s use of other 70

scholars’ work within his writing, pointing to his method of engaging the voices of others as a means for him to create a space for his own assertions. 71

II. “Ethical Argument in Amos”

In the first article that he published after Uses of Rhetoric, Corder continues to explore a subject on which he has already begun to focus extensively—ethos. Yet, because the text, “Ethical Argument in Amos,” was not published within the realm of typical English studies scholarship, people working in the discipline of rhetoric and composition have in all likelihood never encountered the article, not at the time of its publication, nor over the years since. However, an analysis of this text becomes germane not only for my own, more local urgency in tracing a path of Corder’s thinking throughout his published writings but also in the larger context of current scholarship on rhetorical education and writing pedagogy. While his audience is largely comprised of scholars of religion, specifically Christianity, the perspective that Corder crafts in the article demonstrates the rich potential for interdisciplinary connections created through a discussion of rhetoric as an analytical approach for language study. Yet, before I continue with a specific discussion of Corder’s piece “Ethical Argument in Amos,” I would like to first offer several comments about The Cresset itself.

The full title, The Cresset: A Review of Literature, the Arts, and Public Affairs, suggests a range of interdisciplinary possibilities and, yet, obscures the Christianity-based context from which most of the writing that historically has appeared in the journal illustrates. Produced at Valparaiso University, a Lutheran, four-year, liberal arts institution in Valparaiso, Indiana, The Cresset seems to embody the same character as the school that publishes it. That is, the school fosters a progressive, multiperspectival, liberal arts curriculum, while it is firmly rooted within a Christian-Lutheran tradition; the journal 72

produces a wide range of topics and disciplinary perspectives (and genres), while it maintains a commitment to Christian-related scholarship. Volumes are divided according to a Christian seasonal timeline: “Advent,” “Lent,” “Easter,” and “Trinity,” and the current issue features articles such as “How I Came to Love (and Hate) Country Music, by Tom Willadsen, and “Do Good Poems Have Greater Ethical Weight Than Bad

Poems?” by James Owens. Also among these writings are overtly religious topics: “Free

Jazz and the Freedom of the Christian,” by J. D. Buhl; “Pop Culture: Looking for Baby

Jesus under the Trash,” by Christian Scharen; “Being Lutheran: Where is Jesus?” by Paul

Gregory Alms (The Cresset Online). The journal’s identity might best be summarized in the editor’s language regarding The Cresset audience:

Our readership is educated, most with some church connection, most frequently Lutheran. Articles should be aimed at general readers interested in religious matters. The Cresset is not a theological journal, but a journal addressing matters of import to those with some degree of theological interest and commitment. Authors are encouraged to reflect upon the religious implications of their subject. (The Cresset Online)

It seems as though The Cresset has maintained an inherently interdisciplinary perspective both in the early 1970s when Corder’s piece was published as well as in recent decades and today. And, given the subject of Corder’s article—a rhetorical analysis of Amos and the biblical translations written in English about him—the journal provides a venue for

Corder’s article that might not have been open in more purely rhetorical or literary criticism journals, or in theology or other religious studies publications. Yet Corder demonstrates a clear connection between these disciplines by illuminating the innate 73

intersections inherent in and initiated by a discussion of rhetoric, particularly when it becomes a means to investigate and understand our uses of language.

While Amos is undoubtedly the focus of the article—as indicated in both the title and opening sentence (and this might be the sole reason it was selected for publication)—

Corder is ultimately concerned with how an analysis of Amos enables him to craft a discussion about ethical argument, as means to talk about ethos. Therefore, in the opening paragraph, Corder establishes his intention immediately; he seeks to use a discussion of

Amos “as a means of inquiring into an issue of our own time” (6). Corder suggests that an analysis of an ancient scriptural text has rich potential helping us to understand our uses of language today, because the

source of many, perhaps all, of the most perplexing and perturbing of our problems lies deeper than bedrock, embedded in the nature and making of discourse. Scripture offers many entries into the making of discourse, many cardinal directions and questions about how we shall speak to each other. (6)

While he lays the groundwork for what becomes an Aristotelian rhetorical analysis of

Amos, specifically a discussion of the character and ethos of Amos himself, Corder makes no mention of the terms “rhetoric” or “ethos” in the first portion of the article.

Instead, he poses several questions for the reader to consider within a broader context of language use, beyond academic scholarship. Corder explains,

Amos offers an excellent opportunity to get at the issue I have mentioned but not named. In a strange land a man sings the Lord’s song; in a smooth season a man preaches hard words—and continues to be heard. Just here is the first question I wish to speak to: Why has he been heard, even if not always by multitudes? What is there specifically in his words worth listening to? If the question is answerable, as I believe it surely must be, then perhaps I can turn to a second question and ask what therefrom is usable to 74

the tuning of our own voices? How shall we find voices? How, indeed, shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? (6)

Corder’s concern here with ethos is abundantly clear to any scholar of rhetoric, but his questions also illustrate a desire to make the concerns of rhetoric relevant and significant to a much larger audience. Corder asks his readers to question both what makes one’s words worth being heard as well as what makes our own voices worth the same?

In the next paragraph, Corder continues to explain the relevance and usefulness of

Amos as a way to understand uses of language today, yet he shifts the focus from the text to himself, enabling the audience to observe him as the author for a moment, and providing a space for him to enact the theory he eventually attributes to Amos later in the article. In other words, after he asks the audience to consider what makes someone’s voice worth listening to, he demonstrates those qualities of ethical argument that he names and explains later in his rhetorical analysis of Amos, but continues without any overt discussion of rhetoric, apparently seeking to distinguish himself—if for only a moment—from purely academic discussions. Corder asserts,

But I cannot know Amos in the way it is known to the theologian, to the antiquarian, to the historian of religion, and so must respond as a layman. I do not have the languages or the history or the sophistication in textual study to examine the provenance of the work. I must depend on a translated version. I do not know the critical and historical studies of Amos, and if I did, I would not be able to discriminate among them. Yet if I, or others, cannot know Amos in these ways; it is possible for us to know the speaker of an Englished version, and to know what he says in that version. Since it was an Englished version, in all likelihood, that first won our ears, it seems a valid and potentially useful enterprise to examine the translation, under the aspect of my earlier question: Why do we listen? “I was no prophet,” Amos says, “neither was I a prophet’s son; but I was an herdman, and a gatherer of sycamore fruit.” Why, then, have we listened? Why has he been worth our hearing? (6) 75

Highlighting the ever growing number of television, radio, and advertising voices surrounding us on a near constant basis, Corder wonders “how we will find someone to listen to us amidst a landslide of noise, a whirring of words” (6). Again, he reminds his audience to consider the text of Amos, “Yet we have heard his voice. What gave his voice worth? This is a question we seldom ask ourselves and of our own puny voices” (6).

Corder responds to the questions he has just posed:

One reason that we don’t listen is that we often miscalculate our own capacities, thinking that because we have the right to speak, we also have the right to be heard. All we have to do is be sincere; then our natural voice can say all things, and all men will listen. But not even perfect sincerity gives us a voice worth hearing. Another reason we don’t ask ourselves this question (What gives a voice worth?) is that we sometimes think it is hopeless, and so give little trust to language. When we use words, the meanings of those words, we conclude, have accumulated through all the experiences of our lives, gathering so rich a texture of meaning that it sometimes seems that no one can possibly understand us fully. (6)

Corder continues to remain outside of any specific theoretical discussion of rhetoric; he uses no particular terms or rhetorical jargon, but urges his readers to think about the uses of language within the larger context of human existence. However, his perspective on language and rhetoric, specifically how he defines the concepts of language and rhetoric, shapes the claims he makes in the next paragraph:

But it is still possible to use language to create communion. It is not easy. It never was. It exacts of us the energy, the grace, the wisdom to enlarge and ennoble our own voices, and there is no one who will or can tell us how, precisely, this may be done. But even if our problems will not be solved for us, we may yet be lessoned by the great voices of the past. Of these, the voice of Amos is one. (6-7)

Up to this point in the text, Corder has established the subject of the article, the character and text of Amos, and he has posed two significant questions for his readers: What gives someone’s voice worth and what gives our own voice worth? He also has suggested that an analysis of the language of Amos might provide some insight into such questions, yet he has not explained a methodology for conducting such an investigation. Thus, in the same spirit that “we may yet be lessoned by the great voices of the past,” Corder turns to classical rhetoric, explaining,

In rhetoric texts of antiquity, those of Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, and others, it is common to find considerable attention given to the matter of how a statement gets to an audience. Many of the texts report on three basic approaches. First under the rubric of pathos, or pathetic argument, or emotional argument, they note to the audience itself, if the speaker sets out to appeal to his hearer’s emotions. All of us are familiar with emotional arguments, and so there is little need to say anything about the method except to remark that, much as it is abused, it is not inherently reprehensible. Under the rubric logos, or logical argument, they note that a statement may reach and catch an audience if it tracks decently from first premises in a logical demonstration. (7)

Here, while he has moved into the specific rhetorical analysis discussion of the text of

Amos, Corder carefully defines two of the three significant components of Aristotelian rhetorical analysis—pathos and logos—in a way to suggest that he is introducing these concepts to his readers, providing them a first encounter with these terms. However, he saves his explanation of ethos until the following paragraph, in which he uses his discussion of Amos as a means to talk about ethical argument, emphasizing a distinction from the emotional and logical appeals he mentions in the preceding paragraph.

But the voice of Amos, I think, moves in neither direction of these ways. The ancient texts cite a third mode of argument under the rubric ethos, or ethical argument. “The character of the speaker,” 77

Aristotle says, “is a cause of persuasion when the speech is so uttered as to make him worthy of belief.” This trust, we should remember, is not dependent upon antecedent knowledge of the speaker, but rather upon his worth as he emerges in the speech. All that can save sentences, Robert Frost once said, “is the speaking tone of voice somehow entangled in the words.” (7)

I think it is worth noting how Corder emphasizes ethos as a quality that resides purely within the text, that the “character of the speaker” is created within and throughout the language, a point that he emphasizes in his reference to Robert Frost. Thus, Corder arrives at a definition of ethos:

Ethical argument appears to be contingent upon a presence emerging in discourse, the real voice of a genuine personality that becomes understandable to us as a style, a characteristic way of moving through and among experiences. The presence cannot be defined for general purposes; it can be observed in its particular manifestations. (7)

One such manifestation is evident in Corder’s own language earlier in the article, in the moment I highlighted earlier in which Corder shifts the audience’s attention from the text of Amos to himself as the author, revealing his own limited perspective as a laymen in the study of scriptural texts. Another manifestation, according to Corder, is evident in the language of Amos, and he asserts,“The book of Amos is an ethical argument. What the speaker is emerges in what he says and in the way he says it, and what we hear arouses a response in us (not always articulated) for certain observable qualities,” and, for Corder, those observable qualities demonstrate ethos when they “may be seen to acquire strength and wisdom in the act of speaking” (7).

In his analysis of ethical argument in Amos, Corder observes three ways in which the ethos of Amos emerges within the text: “He is, first, specific, thorough, painstaking, 78

and appropriate in his linguistic grasp of the experiences he gathers into discourse.

Second, he owns and guarantees what he is talking about. Third, he extends certain necessary ministries to us” (7). Next, Corder investigates several passages from Amos, providing a closereading and analysis of a number of lines from the text, pointing to spots in the language that demonstrate the tenets of ethical argument that Corder attributes to

Amos:

He does not, as is our common practice today, simply shout his primary assertion at his audience, expecting that the vigor of his shouting will demonstrate the truth of his assertion. Instead, he sets out, painstakingly, to make himself clear, to make himself known. He brings his history to his argument; he has been in the past, and has explored it—and he knows and can name the specific sins of the peoples—and he takes his audience with him from his observations to his conclusions. He speaks with great care to be understood. (8)

Corder observes one more quality in the language of Amos, a feature that connects with the power of Amos to guarantee his words, and that is the ability to think and speak beyond his current situation. Corder explains, “What guarantees the words of Amos is the moving, commanding capacity to transcend the moment, to be sure, but he sees elsewhere as clearly as he sees here, and he can see as far ahead and he can see behind” (8). Even with the knowledge that Amos is a prophet of God, Corder argues that the audience gains a trust in Amos only while in the presence of his language, “that his discourse creates its own authority; his words are self-authenticating” (8). Corder adds,

Here, particularly, I wish to suggest that he gains his authority and his audience by a space-full and time-full argument. A space-full argument, it looks there as well as here. [. . .] Space is gathered in the argument of Amos, and the words are full of time. He has seen the past, but he also has a keen and compelling sense of futurity. (8) 79

This section marks the strongest connection to Corder’s discussion in Uses of Rhetoric, particularly his philosophy on the spaciousness of rhetoric as a foundational element of his linguistic and analytical perspective—a subject that he continues to grapple with his entire career. That Corder attributes the strong ethos of Amos to concepts of space and time is compelling, especially because he distinguishes the character of Amos and his use of ethical argument from the concept of authority, which is specifically significant in this case, as some consider the words of Amos to be endowed by God, which would grant him and his language ultimate authority.

Corder ends the article by turning his attention again to his own audience: “What is it that we learn from the ethical presence that is Amos? Amos is specific, thorough, painstaking, and appropriate—and so may we be. Amos owns and guarantees his words—and so may we” (9). Corder makes a comment in the closing paragraph that not only enables him to make a claim about ethical argument in Amos but also reveals an important quality of Corder’s own ethos in his later writings: “He is patient, patient to learn, and patient to speak, knowing that he will sometimes be misunderstood, or not heard, yet patient to keep talking. He has learned to think little of himself.” Evidence of this self-effacing perspective becomes a prominent part of Corder’s later writings, and it is clear that he sees a lesson in Amos for all of us.

And so we learn finally from Amos that if, when we speak, our words issue from a spirit of forbearing, care, and patience, then even if our words appear only to pronounce doom on our brothers, they can yet, as in the paradigm of Amos, be healing and liberating words. (9)

To my knowledge, no scholars in rhetoric and composition have cited or made use of

Corder’s discussion of ethos here. For my own purposes in tracing the trajectory of

Corder’s philosophical perspective, it reveals early evidence of his emerging theory of ethos. However, it also offers a rich example of an Aristotelian analysis, one that shows both the enabling and investigative possibilities offered through a discussion of rhetoric. 81

III. “Efficient Ethos in Shane, with a Proposal for Discriminating

Among Kinds of Ethos”

Corder’s analysis in this article is quite similar to his work on “Ethical Argument in

Amos” in that, again, he draws on the tenets of classical rhetoric—particularly discussions of ethos—as a means to understand and to discuss the appeal of a given set of discourse. Here, Corder offers an analysis of Jack Schaefer’s novel Shane (1949).

Although his audience in this case is likely more familiar with scholarly discussions of rhetoric—the article appears in Communication Quarterly, based in the discipline of speech and communication studies—Corder seeks to illuminate a fairly unexplored area—the rhetorical analysis of literary texts. In the article’s abstract, Corder explains:

Though rhetoric is not often used as a means of thinking about other things, rhetorical canons and relationships can, for example, provide a way of describing the nature of the hero. A description of the hero so devised, in turn, provide a starting place in the exploration of different kinds of ethos. The hero in Shane makes a perfect economy fully utilizing his inventive world, he is capable of all the structures and styles it makes possible, though he cannot go into a new world. He is an efficient ethos, as distinct from other tentatively-identified types, the gratifying ethos, the functional ethos, and the generative ethos. (28)

Corder makes his purpose in the article abundantly clear from the beginning—he intends to offer an analysis of the main character, already deemed a heroic figure in existing literary criticism, and to provide a discussion of how ethical appeal or ethical argument might be used to understand the character of Shane as a heroic figure, particularly when that discussion is connected with the canons of rhetoric. Corder argues that the

“relationships among invention, disposition, and elocution within a given context provide one way of understanding characters caught with that context. This is true, I think 82

whether one is talking about individuals, archetypal figures, or the concept of ethos itself” (28). Thus, Corder further clarifies the purpose of his study:

I want to propose as an example that the rhetorical canons and relationships, if not tied solely and irrevocably to their own perpetuation, provide a way of describing the nature of the hero. [. . .] I want to use this description of the hero, with Shane as the specimen, for a starting place in the exploration of different kinds of ethos. (28)

Yet Corder complicates his discussion of ethos further, by expressing a concern not just about the presence of ethos within the text or through the character development of Shane as the hero, but a call to distinguish among the various types of ethical appeal that might be observed within the text. Corder suggests, “If we are to learn more about ethos, it seems clear, we must learn more about how to distinguish among different kinds of ethos, and refrain from supposing that ethos always emerges to us in the same way” (30). Based on his analysis of the novel, observing the character development of Shane, Corder uses the canons of rhetoric—that is, he uses the vocabulary of inventio, dispositio, and elocutio (invention, arrangement, and style)—as the means to understand and to craft a discussion about different ethical appeals present with the text of Shane. In the process he introduces four categories for distinguishing among types of ethos: “efficient,”

“gratifying,” “functional,” and “generative” (I will define these terms later). He focuses his discussion on “efficient” ethos, attributing this quality to the hero, Shane, explaining,

In this hero there is a perfect economical balance. Inventio is equal to disposition and elocution; disposition and elocution are equal to invention. This hero appropriates and owns all that is in his inventive world, and he can make all the structures and styles that his inventive world will generate. He uses his world fully. His invention makes fully possible a range of structures and styles, and 83

his not tied to or limited by any one of them. Beowulf, I think, is such a hero. Shane is another. (29)

Corder offers a number of specific quotations from the original text of Shane as the means to illustrate the “efficient ethos,” the perfect balance and use of inventive, arrangement, and stylistic resources that he attributes to Shane as a character. He also points to the comments of others who have written critical analyses of Shane, such as in the analysis of the film version offered by Peter Homans in “Puritanism Revisited: An

Analysis of the Contemporary Screen-Image Western” (Studies in Public

Communication, 1961)—not because these scholars discuss rhetoric or ethos, but because they are looking at the concept of hero from a different perspective that enables Corder to make a connection to rhetoric.

It is worthwhile, I think, to return for a moment to his earlier text, “Ethical

Argument in Amos.” In his discussion of Amos, Corder was most concerned with how ethos is established within the text, and he discovers that Amos’ ethos is a quality that emerges within the text, a character that is revealed through the discourse itself.

However, now, in “Efficient Ethos in Shane,” Corder has taken his discussion of ethos one step further, by seeking to distinguish among the various kinds of ethos or ethical appeals that emerge within the language of a text. Even the titles of these two articles help to illustrate the point I am trying to make here—“Ethical Argument” (in Amos) vs.

“Efficient Ethos” (in Shane) suggest a deepening or enlargement of the same concept. In the former, Corder is concerned with the presence of ethos within the text and how that ethos is established within the language; in the latter, Corder is focused on distinguishing between various forms of ethos that can take shape within a text. I also want to make a 84

comment about the text artifacts in both articles, the discourse that provides Corder’s examples. The fact that one is a biblical text and the other is a twentieth-century novel is compelling; he analyzes a scriptural prophet in the first and he examines a literary figure, the hero, in the second. Above all else, I think, Corder’s choice of texts within the two contexts illustrates a significant feature of Corderian philosophy—all human discourse is the concern of rhetoric—and, therefore, any text provides ripe material for analysis.

Corder explains this inclusive perspective early in Uses of Rhetoric:

rhetoric provides means—often simply good questions—from its store of traditional methods that let us into various kinds of study, sometimes providing new insight, sometimes providing new light for existing insights. These traditional if sometimes unused capacities of the art, if we use them in addressing a variety of discourse, help to demonstrate the range of rhetoric’s uses. (9)

Emphasizing its use within a range of contexts as one of rhetoric’s strongest features,

Corder demonstrates this reality by covering an array of discourse contexts and language artifacts in his rhetorical analyses—evidenced in these two articles alone. However,

Corder builds upon both of these discussions in his next writing on ethos, “Varieties of

Ethical Argument, with Some Significance of the Study of Ethos in the Teaching of

Composition,” which appeared in Freshman English News, a newsletter-turned academic journal (later named Composition Studies) published at Texas Christian University.

As the title suggests, Corder maintains his focus on observing different types of ethical argument, and he continues to use the categories of ethos he introduces in

“Efficient Ethos in Shane” (dramatic, functional, gratifying, efficient, and generative), but, in this instance, his discussion centers on the last category—generative ethos. He also covers an even wider range of text examples as well, revisiting some of his earlier 85

writings—for example, he borrows substantial portions of his language in both “Ethical

Argument in Amos” and “Efficient Ethos in Shane,” within the text of this new article, but he supplements those analyses with additional examples of and discussions about texts artifacts including the Gettysburg Address, Alexander Pope’s “An Essay on

Criticism,” Samuel Johnson’s Rambler No. 154, Oliver Goldsmith’s “The Deserted

Village,” and the fourteenth chapter of Corinthians I. He even connects his discussion to current events of the era, highlighting the public concern over credibility vs. truth precipitated by the Watergate scandal of the mid-1970s. 86

IV. “Varieties of Ethical Argument, with Some Account of the

Significance of Ethos in the Teaching of Composition”

In nearly the same fashion he opens the earlier two articles, Corder begins this essay by revealing his intention and purpose of his discussion within the text, claiming

“I’m interested in the nature of ethos and ethical appeal, then, on the possibility that understanding this feature of discourse will explain accords and rebuttals where knowledge of logical arguments and emotional appeals will not” (1). And, as in the earlier examples, there is clear evidence of a sequential process that Corder uses to both investigate and write about these texts:

In the first section, I want to try to account for what brings me to ethos as a subject. The second section will record a minor exploration of other approaches to the nature of ethos and of ethical argument. The third section introduces the primary problem: since all discourse may be taken as ethical discourse, then talking about ethos and ethical argument means taking on the hopeless task of talking about all discourse without any means of differentiation. The section closes with particular instances of ethos which suggest that differentiation is possible. Section four, then, proposes a scheme of classification and explores some examples. Section five amplifies the discussion as a base for suggesting a model for communicating and for outlining a conception of commodious speech. At the last, section six wants to show what bearing all this has upon the teaching of composition. (1)

One significant point that Corder makes in the introduction, one that shows further evidence of his desire to explore ethos in different discourse situations and texts, is that there is little that can be generalized in a discussion of ethos, asserting that the

manifestation of character or ethos in discourse, together with the origin, nature, and consequence of this process, compels attention for many reasons, both private and public. I cannot account in any 87

single or simple way for focusing on this particular feature of rhetorical study. I can give some partial explanations. (1)

He later adds,

[s]ince ethical argument appears to be contingent upon a presence emerging in discourse, the real voice of genuine personality, it may be that the mode cannot be defined or described for general purposes and that we must content ourselves with observations of its particular manifestations. (4)

Corder’s insistence on covering not just one text, but a range of texts within an argument becomes understandable, because ethos (in whatever form) is observable and emerges in different ways in various rhetorical situations. Consequently, he asserts,

I understand that the form and manner in which any single ethos emerges in discourse has to be determined by examination of the discourse and its necessary contexts. But I believe that it is urgent for us to understand the incidence of ethos—we must learn over and over again, after all, how to compose ourselves and our world—and I believe that we can be aided in our understanding if we can learn to make some general and unbinding distinctions. (14)

Here, Corder is identifying his reason for including language from previous analyses of ethos—he is revisiting his thought process on these texts (and revealing that process to his readers), and he is revising and clarifying his understanding of ethos along the way.

Starting with the notion of “ethical argument” nearly a decade before, he is able to craft an emerging argument about “ethos,” which later evolves in a discussion of “generative ethos.” Corder defines his notion of generative ethos in the follow way:

This, I think, is a form of ethos that we need both to hear in others and to make ourselves. [. . .] “generative ethos” is always in the process of making itself and of liberating hearers to make themselves. In this form of ethos there is always more coming. It is never over, never wholly fenced into the past. It is never over, 88

never wholly fenced into the past. It is a speaking out from history into history. (14)

Later in the text, he discusses an additional feature of generative ethos, a speaker’s capacity to open space and time through language, and he cites the texts he examines as evidence of “their demonstratable extension in space and time. The ethos in each in one way or another opens the borders of the discourse to hold extraordinary space and time”

(20).

A substantial portion of the “Varieties of Ethical Argument” is primary text analysis; Corder selects portions of discourse from the range of sources I have already mentioned and illuminates evidence of his theory of generative ethos. In the last section, I mentioned that he borrows portions of the other two articles and integrates them into the language of this essay, but, in fact, the majority of both articles—word for word, paragraph by paragraph—are included wholly within the text of this article, with only minor changes to accommodate transitions and integration into the newer text.

At first, I was shocked to see pages of text, taken verbatim from his earlier publications, right there in the middle of this article, mostly because of the prevailing attitude in academic scholarship practices of not submitting manuscripts to more than one journal. However, he specifies that these portions of his text were taken from earlier publications in the notes section, and, ultimately, he expands his arguments about these texts greatly, because his discussion and interpretation of these texts goes beyond his original analysis of them in the earlier publications, particularly when he connects them with the other analysis he offers with the article. 89

The following excerpt from “Varieties of Ethical Argument” is a series of paragraphs in which Corder synthesizes his theory of generative ethos with the various texts he has been discussing throughout the article. I am including the entire excerpt, because it demonstrates, I think, a useful demonstration of the major features of Corder’s approach I have been grappling with in my discussion in this chapter. This excerpt illustrates his use of sequence, building on concept on another, always enlarging the range of his investigation, and it shows Corder’s own adeptness in integrating a range of concerns, texts, as well as the voices of other critics into his writing. In this section

Corder is noting the qualities of generative ethos that he has observed in his analyses, carefully explaining how his perspective is informed by and departs from the theoretical perspectives offered by these other scholars. Corder writes,

The speaker in the Gettysburg Address makes space enough for all to come into the future he is summoning them to create. The speaker in “The Deserted Village” distances himself from the village, largely ridding himself of self-interest, and as he does so begins to see the village so well that he can also see its future—so accurately, I might add, that two hundred years later we are still trying to correct problems he identified. The speaker in ”An Essay on Criticism” creates extensive dimensions for himself by the riskiness of his endeavor: freeing himself of systems, he opens his discourse toward wholeness. The speaker in Rambler No. 154 grows as he speaks. As Walker Percy puts it, “a sentence entails a world for both utterer and receiver,” and the Rambler speaker creates a world spacious enough to house his antagonists, modifying his own world and future in the process. The speaker in Amos makes a world full of time and space, getting far beyond tribal boundaries and seeing what consequence looks like as it works itself out in the future. Each of them is a steward, not an owner, of space and time. This incipient understanding of ”generative ethos” creates some dissatisfaction with the still common conception of communication as the clear acceptabnce by a receiver of a message effectively transmitted by a sender. This radio model of 90

communication has, to be sure, figured centrally in many provocative studies of language; the sender-message-receiver (encoder-message-decoder) model gives an enabling language that has made it possible for students to explore communication in successful ways, as readers of Kinneavy’s A Theory of Discourse, for example, will know. But the model has severe limitations. It does not provide a useful means of understanding ethical appeal. It is, though useful, an inaccurate description of the language process. Implicit in the model is the notion that the message is separate from the speaker, that it leaves the speaker and reaches the hearer. But Walter Ong argues that “all words projected from a speaker remain, as has been seen, somehow interior to him, being an invitation to another person, another interior, to share the speaker’s interior, an invitation to enter in, not to regard from the outside.” Our words never leave us; the message is not separate from the speaker. When I speak, I must use words that are in the public domain. The jangly meaning accumulations of others reverberate in the words, though I may fail to use them or choose not to use them. A speaker manifests his universe in his words; his words are his universe, and its shape is in the words whether or not he understands and controls, whether or not we listen and see. “To say that we speak in order to communicate,” Paul van Buren writes, “is to abstract a tiny section of the use of words and call that the whole.” With language, he continues, we “fashion (or accept from others) the world about us. The only world we have is the one we can speak of. The world is ours, therefore, as we speak of it.” To consider communication then, not as a radio system but as an invitation gives us what may be a better conception and , not coincidentally, a better accounting of what “generative ethos” does: communication seen as an invitation brings a hearer (guest) into a world that he or she can live in, that has living space and time. What frequently stands in the way of communication is some violation of space or time or both. We believe that the flood of language around us often blocks human correspondence; if that is so, it is not just because language at floodtide is all too often careless and sometimes corrupt, but also because the volume crowds our living space and our time, sometimes generating frenetic speed, sometimes a paralysis. We understand, too, that communication is often blocked because, as Geoffrey Wagner has mentioned, “we are, in short, our own enchained listeners.” We may hear ourselves, not another; the other’s words may act only as a trigger to release our own, unlocking not the other’s meaning, but one we already possessed. When this happens, we are bound in 91

space, caught tightly in our own province. Specialized languages— slang, cult tongues, professional jargons, and the like—stand in the way of communication because they bind space, the specialized language of the speaker prohibiting entry by a hearer into the speaker’s discursive universe. Forms of utterance that I might call Pavlov language—clichés, some cultural commonplaces, conversational forms that we use instead of thinking—are the speaker’s violation of his or her own space and time, evidence of failure to explore and to know his or her own world. The languages of television and other mass media crowd our time and hurry our responses, or stop our responses entirely. The languages of confrontation set space against space, universe against universe, and cannot wait for meditation time. Many episodes of failed communication and many instances of communication never attempted are consequences of some violation of space or time or both. Ethos is generative and fruitful when the time and space stewarded by the speaker give free room for another to live in. [. . .] “Generative ethos” is commodious. The self-authenticating language of such an ethos issues and invitation into a commodious universe. What makes that possible is its extension in space and time. (20-21)

Corder’s language in this section represents a thoroughly fleshed out and clear sequence of concerns that have evolved over the course of several years of writing and thinking.

While Corder is painstakingly careful to identify his thesis early in his writing, his most concrete articulation of it usually happens toward the end of his writing, as in the above excerpt. And, in this instance, there is clear evidence of an inductive investigative process that not only began at the beginning of the present article, but years before in other writing contexts as well.

By the end of this exhaustive discussion of varieties of ethical argument, having covered numerous examples of discourse and considered the perspectives of other theorists on the subject, Corder is still left with an incomplete task—to discuss a subject that he includes in the title of the article, one that is arguably of the greatest importance to 92

his readers, freshman composition. Corder addresses this fact nearly comically, asking,

“What does all this have to do with freshman composition? Must I now, having come this far in this direction, break off, stop, and whiz off in another direction to find some way of connecting myself with composition?” (21). The answer to the question is “NO,” because the next words from Corder offer one of the most radical perspectives on the freshman composition course, a viewpoint that enables Corder to stay exactly where he has arrived in his discussion of ethos—all human discourse is ethical discourse; no text or language is outside of the rhetorical concern of ethos. Corder very boldly asserts,

Everything is connected with freshman composition. The course is not a service course to other disciplines in the university. All other disciplines in the university provide service courses to freshman composition. All other courses are inventive resources, structural arrangements, or stylistic displays of varying uses in the central human activity, language-making. (21)

Thus, having connected the activity of language-making to the work of freshman composition students to the work of any rhetorical analysis of discourse, Corder adds,

But there are more specific connections, I think, between the study of ethos and the teaching of composition. Some are important for localized and practical purposes. Others, I believe, have a continuing importance. And I hope there are values in the study of ethos for the teaching of composition that I have not had wit enough to see. (21)

Among the connections he mentions very briefly before concluding the article are one or two worth noting here. First, he suggests that “the study of ethos suggests, quite simply, some interesting and useful writing for students to do—the creation of dramatic ethos, for example, and the imitation of the language of an ethos not their own,” and he proposes one form of such an exercise, asking students “to write what some actual fictional 93

personage would say in some new context. What would Johnny Carson say if he were interviewing inhabitants of a shelter for battered wives? What would J. Alfred Prufrock say if he were visiting a sick friend in the hospital? How would Howard Cosell talk about pornography? (22). Of course, there are many, if not more, similar examples for exploration in our own time. The second piece of advice that seems worth mentioning is directed toward writing instructors, and he argues that “the study of the forms of ethos I have mentioned might one day remind us to look at ourselves as teachers of composition and to examine the kind of ethos we present to our students” (22). Corder never misses an opportunity to remind scholars and teachers to turn a critical eye toward themselves, as they are critical and teach others to be critical of the world.

After Corder is finished with dispensing his advice to teachers of freshman composition, giving them ways to think about the vast discussion of ethos he has just presented and, somehow, integrating that discussion into their classrooms, he closes the article in a surprising way—he gives a personal account of attending a music concert in which his daughter was performing at her high school. Until this moment in the article,

Corder has never mentioned anything about himself, his life, his family, but to close the essay in this way seems to be quite a dramatic shift when compared with the text that precedes it. However, this concluding section does not deviate from the overall thesis of the article, from Corder’s overriding concern with ethos; in fact, his language here illustrates yet another context (an instance of discourse) that Corder adds to the larger discussion of ethos he has created throughout the article. Also, the conclusion shows evidence of a concept Corder visits in Uses of Rhetoric—that the study of rhetoric is the 94

paradigm of an examined life (whether one is discussing Aristotle or a high school music concert). Corder recounts,

Last spring I went to a concert at our daughter’s high school. From where we sat, we could just see our daughter with her violin. Fathers being what they are, she being lovely and the music sweet, I found myself welling over. Among other things, I thought, “How can any other outside the family know her and love her so, not being joint members as we are of her whole history?” I wanted to answer, “No one can.” But then I remembered that there is such a thing as love between a young woman and a young man who did not participate in her whole history. And that let me think that it is possible for any of us—if the stars are right and we work to make ourselves human—to enfold another whose history we have not shared. In this act of enfolding, the speaker becomes through speech; the speaker’s identity is always to be saved, to emerge as an ethos to the other, whose identity is also to be cherished. Then they may speak, each holding the other wholly in mind. (22)

Despite the dozens of lines of text Corder had analyzed and discussed for his study in this article, and the pages of philosophy he had read of other scholars, Corder demonstrates perhaps the most relevant and useful ways for us to use rhetoric as a means to understand ourselves as human beings.

During the 1970s Corder shows clear movement from purely literary criticism

(and the role literature my play within the teaching of composition) to a more pointed discussion of rhetorical theory and history. His emphasis on classical rhetoric, particularly his interest in Aristotelian rhetoric and theories of ethos, as well as his concern for the place of rhetoric in developing educational curricula, develop throughout the decade and serve as the basis for his writings over the next two decades. 95

In the next chapter, I look to work that Corder produced during the 1980s, and I trace the development of his rhetorical perspective on ethos, education, and the uses of rhetoric beyond the university community. 96

ARRANGEMENT: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1980s

Arrangement (Dispositio) The possibility of existing structures being employed is seldom considered; the assumption is—and it is a natural assumption in some ways—that every subject must find its wholly unique structure. (Uses of Rhetoric 136) In the first two chapters, I examined samples of Corder’s work from two early eras of his career. I explored his dissertation as a graduate student of literature and several of his earliest writings as a junior faculty member in the English Department at Texas

Christian University—spanning a period from roughly the mid-1950s through the end of the 1960s. I investigated several of Corder’s writings produced during the 1970s, including the publication of his first monograph, Uses of Rhetoric (1971), as well as some of his research on and theories about ethos. In the present chapter, I continue along the same chronological path and investigate texts that Corder produced during the following decade, and as I think about Corder’s writings of the 1980s, placing them into context with his earlier work, it appears as though he has continued to develop and expand upon the essential concerns he establishes in his earliest writings.

During the 1950s Corder is a graduate student of British Literature, with a tangential interest in rhetoric, because he identifies the inherent connection between classical Greek theories of comedy and his own discussion of the context and audience of

British Restoration-era comedy in his dissertation. He joins the English Department at

Texas Christian University in the early 1960s as an assistant professor of literature, which included the teaching of composition, an era in which he continued to explore the usefulness of rhetoric in literary criticism while maintaining his interest in seventeenth- 97

and eighteenth-century writers and beginning to examine rhetoric’s connection to the teaching of composition. Thus, the texts that I examine in the first chapter—his dissertation on Restoration comedy criticism; his articles on Jonathan Swift and John

Dryden in College English (1961) and PMLA (1967), respectively; and his book for freshmen composition, Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Language and Its Uses (Random

House, 1965)—show evidence of an evolving thread of discussion that begins even with

Corder’s work as a young student and grows alongside his professional development as well. During these early years he casts the shortest net, in terms of the steps that he takes beyond literary criticism yet manages to create a space for himself to read and think about rhetoric, which becomes all the more evident early in the next decade.

Corder’s first book, Uses of Rhetoric (1971), established his primary focus upon discussions of rhetoric, which is evident in his writing throughout the 1970s, but Uses of

Rhetoric also forms a framework for Corder to maintain his existing knowledge of British literature, his store of knowledge on rhetorical theory, and his practice of bringing both subjects to the teaching of composition as well as to initiate connections of rhetoric with research in other disciplines, particularly those that concern language analysis

(linguistics, philosophy, history, theology, social sciences, and media studies)—Corder also adds references to a growing number of writers outside of the academic community.

By this point Corder was an experienced professor, now with tenure in the English

Department, and he was taking on administrative duties as Director of Composition and

Head of the English Department. As Corder’s own professional context was expanding outward, so were the subjects and concerns in his writing during the same time period— 98

thus, his writing tends to look at the broader concerns of English studies that in his estimation, should include literary and rhetorical criticism among other sources of knowledge.

During the 1980s Corder’s work still shows clear evidence of and connections to all of the subjects and concerns of his earlier works, but moves into other areas as well; he explores rhetoric’s connection to education in the broader context of liberal arts curricula, the purpose of university education, the research and writing practices of professionals across various disciplines—humanities and sciences (except he would argue such categorical distinctions are unnecessary). Corder also gains a concern for how those working in the discipline of rhetoric studies might reach not only scholars in other academic areas but audiences beyond the scholarly community. Also at this time,

Corder’s work included administrative obligations beyond the English Department as he was appointed Associate Dean of the College of Humanities for several years early in the decade.

The four texts that I have selected to discuss in this chapter provide a way to observe the major theoretical threads and significant rhetorical concepts that Corder writes about both before and during this era, but they also show evidence of his own professional work that begins in English studies and moves outward to the larger concerns of the university community and society in general. I begin with a short overview of an article that Corder wrote early in the decade—“Rhetoric and Literary

Study: Some Lines of Inquiry” (College Composition and Communication, 1981), because I think it helps to frame a discussion of his writing over the next several years. 99

Here Corder synthesizes perspectives on rhetoric and English studies that he had been grappling with during the previous two decades. For example, he explores the validity of rhetoric as a investigative tool, as a research methodology for language analysis; he discusses the disciplinary status of literary criticism and rhetorical criticism under the umbrella of English studies; and he establishes a clear connection between rhetoric and education, not only making claims for rhetoric’s connection to the teaching of composition but also arguing for the uses of rhetoric within the pedagogical practices of all disciplines. Next, I look at three articles in more detail: “From Rhetoric to Grace:

Propositions 55-81 About Rhetoric, Propositions 1-54 and 82 et seq. Being as Yet

Unstated; or, Getting from the Classroom to the World” (Rhetoric Society Quarterly,

1984); “Argument As Emergence, Rhetoric As Love” (Rhetoric Review, 1985); and “A

New Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Taken as a Version of Modern Rhetoric”

(Pre/Text,1984).

Corder’s discussion of psychoanalysis in the last article—and his argument that a consideration of rhetoric might be useful in such discourse—is similar in approach to some of his work of the previous decade, particularly in his desire to insert rhetoric into discussions not often (if ever) associated with studies of rhetoric. The same might be said of Corder’s writing in “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” in which he constructs a perspective on argument itself and attempts to speak an inclusive language for audiences both within and beyond the university community. In “From Rhetoric to

Grace,” Corder renews the sense of urgency for rhetorical studies that he first talked about in Uses of Rhetoric fifteen years prior—and more recently in “Rhetoric and 100

Literary Study: Some Lines of Inquiry”. While lauding the work of other scholars in the discipline of rhetoric and composition since the 1960s, Corder maintains his insistence that there is still much work to be done, and he demonstrates possible ways to move the questions and concerns of rhetoric from English studies to other fields and beyond the university. 101

I. “Rhetoric and Literary Study: Some Lines of Inquiry”

One way that Corder seeks to move rhetoric beyond English studies lies in his proposal to structure a liberal arts undergraduate curriculum based upon rhetoric as the conceptual framework, which is an idea that he initially explores in Uses of Rhetoric. Ten years later, he again offers rhetoric as a means to construct a sequence of undergraduate studies and subjects in “Rhetoric and Literary Study: Some Lines of Inquiry.” Here

Corder has yet another opportunity to synthesize some of the arguments, and even some of his examples, from earlier writings. And, as suggested in the title, Corder is examining the theoretical and professional relationship between rhetoric and literature. Corder states:

I hope rhetoricians and literary students will push to learn what the terminologies and methodologies of rhetoric will show us about literary texts. All human discourse comes from somewhere, takes some shape, manifests itself as a style, occurs in some context, and has some consequence. To explore these characteristics of discourse is surely the work of both rhetorician and literary student. The divisions and sub-divisions of rhetorical study offer an almost endlessly varied set of entries into literary study. We want to know where at text comes from, how its author or his characters think, and why they think as they do. We want to know how an author or his characters emerge to readers, by what means of argument they display themselves and make themselves known. These are inquiries proper not just to literary criticism, but also to rhetorical invention. (14)

Concerned with attitudes among his students and colleagues that rhetoric and literature studies represent separate realms of language criticism, Corder suggests that taken together the two offer rich possibility for text analysis and interpretation. And, he points to evidence of such potential connections in his writings of the previous decades, 102

revisiting some of the same examples and texts he had examined in these earlier works.

Corder argues,

Thinking through rhetoric, I’m trying to suggest, is a way of learning about literary texts. It matters to the understanding of Dryden’s Religio Laici, to recognize that the poem is essentially judicial, not epideictic or deliberative, and we risk misunderstanding both the poem and Dryden if we don’t attend to the structure of the poem’s argument, so that we know when the speaker in the poem is making which argument against which antagonist. It matters to the understanding of Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village to know when the speaker leaves off what begins as an ethical argument and begins, instead, to develop a fill emotional argument. We can learn more about the speaker in Tennyson’s “Ulysses”—and appreciate him a little more readily—if we understand why he makes the wrong kind of argument and what kind of argument it is. The young speaker in Pope’s An Essay on Criticism is daring and successful; he takes on the literary establishment and wins. We would prize him the more, I think, and perhaps learn some things for our own uses, if we took pains to watch the way he argues, to learn how he manages—persuasively to attach pride without becoming prideful himself. (15)

When I reached the end of this reading this passage again, for the purpose of analyzing and discussing it here, I noticed that the examples he mentions, while in almost a laundry-list form here, represents condensed versions of more detailed discussions in earlier works. For example, he mentions the usefulness of rhetoric in understanding

Dryden’s poem, Religio Laici, but he offers no elaboration on the connection here; however, anyone familiar with Corder’s PMLA article from the late 1960s—“Rhetoric and Meaning in Religio Laici” (1967)—would be reminded of his more specific arguments about Dryden’s poem (see Chapter 1). Corder also spends time offering more detailed arguments about Goldsmith’s The Deserted Village and Pope’s An Essay on

Criticism in his book Uses of Rhetoric, among other early texts such as his freshmen composition text, Rhetoric: A Text-Reader on Languages and Its Uses (1964). 103

Another compelling feature of the article is that in addition to suggesting that rhetorical theory should inform literary (or any kind of language) criticism, Corder proposes that rhetoric should form the basis for an entire college curriculum structure.

Corder explains:

I hope together we can learn to use rhetoric as an organizing agency for literary and other kinds of study and as an agency for curriculum design. For example, can’t we learn to manage courses in a curriculum better if we learn to discriminate among them and to recognize that some courses are most valuable as inventive resources, some as displays of structures, and some as means of acquiring enabling styles? Can’t we, in fact, usefully appropriate rhetoric to organize whole curricula, either within single disciplines or across disciplines? Think, for example, of a curriculum organized in these stages, where each stage may represent either a single course or a group of courses. (19)

Corder’s belief that a study of rhetoric itself should form the basis of an undergraduate curriculum shows clearly his perspective that rhetoric also provides a means to acquire, create, and organize knowledge—independent of a given subject. Thus, in an article he wrote three years later for Rhetoric Society Quarterly, “From Rhetoric to Grace,”(1984),

Corder offers rhetoric as a bridge connecting the work of scholars in rhetoric with scholars in other disciplines, opening one more way to extend rhetoric’s potential beyond

English classrooms, into the work of the university and beyond the scholarly community.

104

II. “From Rhetoric to Grace: Propositions 55-81 About Rhetoric, Propositions 1-54 and

82 et seq. Being as Yet Unstated; or, Getting from the Classroom to the World”

“From Rhetoric to Grace” embodies further evidence of Corder’s desire to enlarge the scope of rhetoric studies, while he continues to draw on his initial interest in and concern with classical rhetoric—primarily the first three canons (invention, structure/arrangement, and style), and Corder uses rhetoric as a method of language analysis, a means of organizing knowledge, as well as a pedagogical tool. When viewed in context with his other writings of the same era, “From Rhetoric to Grace” reveals some interesting connections that help to illuminate the overall development of Corder’s rhetorical perspective, which becomes particularly evident in “Argument as Emergence,

Rhetoric as Love,” published the following year in Rhetoric Review. That is, he extends the argument he makes in the former by enacting that argument in the latter, and the resulting combination offers a rich view into one moment of the longer trajectory of

Corder’s emerging rhetorical theory. Thus, the plea that Corder makes about broadening the scope of rhetoric, and the propositions that Corder considers to enable such a possibility, in “From Rhetoric to Grace” serve as a theoretical framework that Corder uses to explore an even more specific concept within rhetoric—argumentation—in

“Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love.”

Because I hope to show that Corder situates his discussion in “From Rhetoric to

Grace” as a framework that informs his writing in “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as

Love, I first offer an analysis of “From Rhetoric to Grace” first, and I examine

“Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” in the next section. However, I would like 105

to add that both articles exist wholly on their own as commentary about rhetoric; in other words, it is not necessary to read one before the other—or even to read both—to make sense of Corder’s argument in either one.

As is often the case when observing the writings of Jim Corder, the title of this piece—“From Rhetoric to Grace: Propositions 55-81 About Rhetoric, Propositions 1-54 and 82 et seq. Being as Yet Unstated; or, Getting from the Classroom to the World”— offers readers a clear forecast for what they are about to encounter in the article that follows. Here, Corder demonstrates in the title, and then in the opening paragraph, he seeks to move a discussion of rhetoric outward from a strictly scholarly interest— primarily within departments of English—to the broader concerns of other disciplines as well as to those beyond the university community. The title also unveils the essential structure of the article; Corder provides a numbered list (albeit out-of-sequence) of

“propositions” about rhetoric, while accounting for the possibility that some propositions have not yet been articulated, and offers rhetoric (the methods, vocabulary, and concerns of rhetoric studies) as a means to engage in public discourse concerning language and its uses.

Corder opens the first paragraph by exploring the concept of “discipline” and the work that takes place “in any discipline—not just rhetoric,” and he posits:

All disciplines, to be sure, begin in life with our observations and questions. As these observations and questions begin to cluster and we begin to find methods of inquiry, what had been common begins to become uncommon until what a discipline holds becomes accessible only to those in the discipline. Then we begin to find it hard to take what had started in life back toward life, and the discipline we choose is the rhetoric we speak. (15)

106

I think it is worth pointing out here that Corder’s insistence on rhetoric’s usefulness as an investigative and epistemological tool has grown to include a pointed discussion of fields outside of English studies. His earlier works showed more evidence of Corder’s plea for rhetoric’s value specifically within English departments— in the context of teaching literature and first-year composition specifically. Rather than arguing for rhetoric’s legitimacy within his own discipline of English studies, Corder seeks to demonstrate the usefulness of rhetoric to a much broader audience. However, Corder does not desire to devalue or to delegitimize the specialized work expertise of the various disciplines that comprise the university, explaining that

disciplines, of course, have their own demands that are just and worthy and that ought to be met: getting started, learning the appropriate alphabet, going on, gaining access to a field, including its nooks and crannies, perhaps ultimately finding a way to say something new, or something old in a revealing way, perhaps enabling students to make our own work obsolete. I don’t in any way intend to deny the worth and beauty of the disciplinary way. I want, instead, to suggest that the worth and beauty extend beyond the limits we often keep. (15)

Instead, Corder attempts to make the disciplinary and scholarly work done at universities more accessible not only to scholars in other fields within the university but also to the public, and (as is so often the case) he uses the vocabulary of rhetoric to construct his claim:

Any discipline is a rhetoric, to some extent a closed system with its own inventive, structural, and stylistic forms. As a consequence, those outside have trouble learning the vitality and worth of a discipline as a way of taking the world. Even those in disciplines relatively close, as in the instance of linguistics and literature, have trouble understanding each other’s way with words. A citizen, then, may not ever be able to recognize and to appropriate the beauty and significance of our disciplinary work. (15) 107

Corder’s effort to make the concerns of rhetoric relevant not only to scholars within related fields in the humanities, for example, but beyond to other fields in the academic community as well as outside of the university, echoes his earlier arguments in both

“Rhetoric and Literary Study: Some Lines of Inquiry” and his earlier writings. However,

Corder acknowledges the difficulty in making such connections between the work of rhetoric scholars and those in other disciplines, and this effort becomes more cumbersome when attempting to take a discussion of rhetoric beyond the university community.

Because of its rich, long history, the study of rhetoric has produced an enormous number of terms, theories, and methods of analysis, ranging from Western classical models of persuasion to medieval and Renaissance notions of style, figures, schemes, and tropes, and to twentieth-century discussion on argumentation. Also, because the study of rhetoric assumes a dual-function (i.e., a language art and an investigative method), the effort to demonstrate rhetoric’s usefulness to any audience outside of the discipline becomes all the more complicated and, according to Corder, all the more risky. As a result, it becomes a difficult challenge to make scholars in other disciplines aware of our rich history and cognizant of the uses of rhetoric not only in the specialized work of rhetoric and composition professionals but also in the work of every scholar. Corder reveals,

What I want here, then, is to do two things at once, a perilous undertaking since I may not be able to do either singly. I want to propose that we must, more often than we do, take our disciplines toward the citizen’s world, and I want to illustrate the possibility of doing that by examining some propositions that take rhetoric 108

toward the world, perhaps learning more about rhetoric along the way. (16)

Yet in his proposal, Corder continues to maintain his assumption that the enabling capacities a study of rhetoric affords also offers an opportunity for the discipline itself to change and grow as a necessary result of enlarging rhetoric’s scope beyond the concerns of our own discipline and the academic community. One way of adding to the disciplinary knowledge of rhetoric, specifically to the specialized terminology that has evolved over the last couple millennia, is discovering new ways and new words to articulate theories of rhetoric. Corder explains,

I don’t have a cornfield and cotton patch vocabulary that will explain to all and sundry the niceties of rhetoric and its vocabulary. I do want, where possible, to try to convert the terms of the discipline I keep trying to learn into terms more readily recognizable to all of us citizens and significant for us in the problems, pleasures, and perils of daily life. That does not inevitably entail simplification. (16)

The fact that Corder uses the word “citizens” in his statements above is further evidence of his wish to make the concerns of rhetoric accessible to all people, not just those with specialized degrees and training in rhetorical theory or other discipline, especially because Corder adds that such terms are “significant for us in the problems, pleasures, and perils of daily life.” Thus, Corder sees rhetoric as a useful tool not only in the realm of scholarly inquiry but, perhaps, more importantly, in our day-to-day lives as human beings. And he sees the study of rhetoric itself, the ethical concerns that arise and the questions that emerge from a study of rhetoric, as the means for those of us inside of the discipline to attempt to speak to those beyond the confines of our profession—but only if 109

we assume an accommodating perspective on rhetoric and how it informs the shape and purpose of the rhetoric and compositions studies. Corder argues,

I mean seeing the discipline as a manifestation of life, which thereby reveals life as the discipline allows it to be revealed. I mean recognizing that the discipline, whatever it is, is life and is for life, not for itself alone, but ultimately a way of showing us how to know and be in life. (17)

After Corder establishes the importance of bringing rhetoric into a discussion of our lives outside of academia, he provides his readers with a list of propositions—that he promises in the article’s title—and that provides the means to realize Corder’s vision of rhetoric’s usefulness outside of purely scholarly pursuits. Similarly, in his suggestions, which appear in a nonsequential, unordered, numbered list, Corder attempts to articulate the concerns of rhetoric, while using terms that would be more accessible to either an audience outside of rhetoric studies or an audience beyond the university community entirely. However, before he begins to observe and discuss his list of various propositions, Corder stops.

Corder pauses to clarify a couple of things for his readers, including insight into his unusual numbering scheme for the list of propositions, but more significantly, to affirm his assertion of rhetoric’s usefulness in all areas of life and to establish rhetoric’s relevance in any analysis of language. Corder states:

Two matters should be mentioned before I commence with my propositions. First, I assume that the study of rhetoric includes the study of all forms of discourse. The reach of rhetoric is farther than public speaking or non-fiction prose. Rhetoric is about more than persuasion; it is about all forms, whether the goal be to name things, to persuade, to explain, to show, to make thoughts, to bring ourselves into consciousness, to arrest things into company and hold them in our minds, to solicit companionship for the way 110

ahead, to forestall death, or whatever. Second, I do not mean my title to suggest a frivolous approach to my subject, or to suggest that is frivolous to try to get from rhetoric to life. I think we can get from rhetoric to propositions about knowing and being in life. I do not, however, think I know how to do so except in a limited way; hence I cannot start at the beginning, and I dare not presume to close. (17)

In total, Corder offers twenty-seven propositions, numbered 55-81, and each one represents a short, declarative statement about language that Corder expands in the paragraphs that accompany each proposition. They all contain some pearl of wisdom, some piece of knowledge or observation that Corder has made regarding human language and experience, and in an ideal world, I might provide an analysis and discussion of all twenty-seven. However, such an extensive examination and explanation is not necessary—at least not in the present moment for the purpose of this chapter.

Instead, I would like to illustrate a specific connection between Corder’s propositions in this piece and the perspective he provides in “Argument as Emergence,

Rhetoric as Love,” published one year later. This connection is evident, I think, in the language of several propositions, because they establish the essential elements of

Corder’s discussion in “Argument as Emergence . . . .” Thus I focus my analysis here on this selection of propositions, not because I believe they are more brilliant or illuminating than the others but because they provide a framework for analyzing Corder’s rhetorical perspective in the later article. I choose to discuss propositions 56, 57, 71, 72, and 74 which, taken together, create the following list.

56. A statement always carries its history with it. 57. If the history of statements isn’t apparent to us as hearers, then we have to go and find it. 111

71. Because a statement always carries its history with it, the selfhood of the speaker will ultimately be revealed in the statement. (See Proposition 56). 72. Character revealed in language can carry us beyond ourselves. 74. Love precedes disagreement.

I list the propositions separately from Corder’s subsequent explanation of each one because of a pattern I noticed when considering the statements on their own terms.

Especially in the first four, there is a clear thread of development between the statements, an ironically sequential set of notions, the one before informing the basis for the one after it. Even without the benefit of his comments on these statements, Corder creates an observable argument through his arrangement of each proposition—one that is observable even when viewing just the partial list. While the last statement itself, “Love precedes disagreement,” may not appear to be readily connected to the propositions listed above it, when placed in context with Corder’s subsequent explanation of it and the earlier statements, it becomes clear that Corder is constructing carefully a progressive rhetorical perspective, and he arrives at the notion of “love” as a extension of his discussion of ethos, as character revealed in language, as the means to transcend oneself—to reach toward another. Thus, “love” becomes a metaphor for Corder to articulate a way to think about argumentation, one that enables speakers and hearers to regard the other fully, to recognize the other’s history, and to realize the other through language. I would like to return for a moment to the five propositional statements I listed above, and discuss some of the commentary that Corder offers for each.

He uses the canons of rhetoric as a vocabulary to inform his explanation of roughly the first half of the twenty-seven propositions, and he devotes the most time and 112

attention to the first canon, invention. As in his earlier discussions of classical Greek and

Roman rhetorics, particularly in Uses of Rhetoric, Corder uses the canons as a vehicle to discuss a broader issue of language use, and he points to classical discussions of invention as a process to examine uses of argument in context, specifically to Aristotle’s notion of the speaker’s capacity to discover the available means to persuade an audience.

Therefore, in the first few propositions, including the ones I have identified above, he discusses the history that always accompanies a statement in terms of rhetorical invention. For example, Corder states,

Whether consciously or not, we always station ourselves somewhere when we use language. That means that what rhetoricians call invention always occurs. Invention may occur in a conscious, deliberate way, but it will occur, even if at some subterranean level. (17)

He argues that viewing our uses of language in this way helps to demonstrate rhetoric’s usefulness in a vast number of contexts, helping us to see that “what rhetoric—and education itself—wants to achieve is a growing awareness in us of the history that is our luggage” (17). He continues to discuss rhetoric, particularly the process of invention, as a means to inquire into our uses of language, as an instructive tool, adding, “Education exists to expand our resources and to increase our capacities, this to help us change what we are able to say” (18). Corder also discusses some of his propositions using both the canons of style and invention to create his larger statement about general uses of language. He explains:

We all generally hear ourselves better than we hear anyone else. We sometimes kidnap another person’s words and make them mean what we them to mean. In rhetorical terms, we might say that sometimes the perceiver of a structure and style does not perceive 113

their inventive origin, but instead substitutes his or her own. [. . .] I think we can sometimes hear new messages, but probably requires the speaker of a new message to lay his or her inventive world and inventive processes wholly open to us. (20)

What is interesting to me in the passages I have just discussed is how Corder both relies on and does not rely on the vocabulary of rhetoric to make his arguments. He first points to an issue of language use, and then he invokes rhetoric as a way to articulate a way to think about or examine that issue. In propositions 71 and 72, Corder extends his concern with the history that accompanies any use of language in his discussion of Aristotelian rhetoric, emphasizing the concept of ethos as a means to understand the historical context that shapes our uses of language. Corder suggests:

Sooner or later, willfully or accidentally or unknowingly, we reveal ourselves in our language. Since it’s going to happen anyway, we probably ought to give some mind to how we reveal ourselves and what we reveal. Aristotle mentions three kinds of presentations, the logical (logos), the emotional (pathos), and the ethical (ethos). Of the last, he says it is probably the most compelling means of bonding between a speaker and a hearer. It seems likely that it is the only means of bonding between two people who live in different universes. (22)

The perspective on ethos that Corder offers here is unique, especially when compared with his earlier writings on the subject. Ethos is one of the first rhetorical concepts that

Corder writes about during the 1960s and 1970s—in fact, ethos offers the focal point for much of his writing throughout his career—and his definition of ethos in this article marks a significant moment in the overall development of his rhetorical theory. Corder has long been concerned with how the character of a speaker is revealed through language, using Aristotle’s notion of ethos to explore the ethical arguments of Amos,

Jonathan Swift, and Dryden, among others. Yet he extends his concern for how the 114

character of the speaker is revealed through language to include a more specific consideration of the listener or audience. In the above excerpt, Corder uses the word

“bond” twice in describing the relationship between speaker and listener, suggesting a kind of connection between the two that is far more personal than his previous discussions of ethos suggest (see Chapter 1). Emphasizing the centrality of ethos, especially in context with Aristotle’s other artistic proofs or appeals, logos and pathos,

Corder states:

We cannot hear another person’s logic if we do not live in his or her world; logic is not logic unless all involved assent to it as logic. Logic, then, will not account for all accords that may exist among us. The same may be said for emotional appeals. Most accords, I’d suggest, arise from the response of hearers to the ethos, or character, of a speaker. [ . . . ] Logic is chancy, emotional values vary wildly, and no single rhetoric can bind us all together. (22-23).

Corder’s argument about the primacy of ethos not only echoes Aristotle’s own theory of ethical argument in the Rhetoric but enlarges it, and the perspective Corder offers on ethos, via his listing of and commentary on these propositions, provides the theoretical basis for his discussion in “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” as well as offers a forecast of his language and thesis in that article. Corder states,

Ethos is what there is for us in our speaking, and ethos is never completely achieved. It is always emerging, and it can reach us without offering gratification if it speaks a commodious language, creating a world full of space and time that will hold our diversities. Most failures of communication result from some violation of space and time, and most of our speaking is tribal talk. But there is more to us than that. We can speak a commodious language, and we can hear a commodious language. (22-23) Thus when we reach Proposition 74, “Love precedes disagreement,” having considered the preceding propositions and discussion of each, it is clear that Corder’s concept of 115

“love” is a metaphor that describes a kind of bond between a speaker and listener made possible through ethos. For example, Corder explains:

I can disagree with a speaker’s argument, but I must first win through to some knowledge of what lies behind the argument, the premises, the values, inventions that inform it. I must first hold the speaker wholly in mind, letting him or her realize whatever self can be realized, even though I may regret the self and the statement that emerge. I should not condemn or disagree until I’m first moved to love and accept. (I recognize that there are times when we must resist and act quickly in the face of tyranny or monstrosity.) (24)

The capacity to explore the inventive world of a speaker or to reveal that inventive world to a listener becomes the subject of Corder’s discussion in the remaining of the article, and he attempts to extend his demonstration of rhetoric’s far reach use even further. He does so to enlarge the means available to him for examining language, that is to use an even wider vocabulary to make the arguments he wishes to present all the more relevant to a broader audience. Corder informs the reader that he intends to “to talk about non- secular matters in a secular way” (25). Such a move embodies Corder’s belief that the speaker must seek to unveil himself or herself as wholly as possible to the listener, to open up the inventive world of the speaker for the listener to enter. He reveals:

I am not a theologian. I am neither an astute nor a particularly regular student of Scripture. I am a student of rhetoric, and I want to learn about rhetoric (and perhaps about other things in the process) by finding out how far it reaches into the places of our lives. Wherever it reaches, I’m convinced, it helps toward the description and explanation of the things we think and face. (25)

As in his analysis of Amos years prior, Corder wishes to join a conversation that rests largely outside of the university community—for sure beyond the typical research 116

interest of English scholars—by using his knowledge of rhetoric to explore a specific use of language. For example, Corder posits,

We cannot be God speaking all into being throughout history, but it is possible—if the stars are right and we work to make ourselves human—to enfold another whose history we have not shared. In this act of enfolding, the speaker becomes through the speech, to emerge as an ethos to the other, whose identity must also be cherished. Then we may speak to another, each holding the other wholly in mind. [ . . . ] Invention is a name for a great miracle—the attempt to unbind time, to loosen the capacities of the past, the present, and the future into our speaking. This copiousness is not just a personal communication from the God one names; it is abundant knowledge for all. It is eternally there, a plentitude for all. (26)

In this passage Corder reiterates several concepts he discusses earlier in the text (and elsewhere), but he relies on a different context (set of terms) to articulate these ideas. He reveals language as humanity’s evidence of itself and rhetoric as a tool for understanding the functions of language in our relationships with others. However, I do not offer a specific analysis of this latter part of the text, largely because I think it is more useful to discuss Corder’s writing in the next publication “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as

Love.”

He continues to enlarge his discussions of language and rhetoric, reaching outward to audiences who are not imbued in rhetorical theory, in an article he publishes the following year, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love.” However, in addition to his discussion of the canons of rhetoric (he continues to emphasize invention and style), he extends the notion of Aristotle’s theory of ethos by exploring the history of our statements and focusing on the metaphor of narrative—the stories that we use to understand our histories and those of others—as a means to continue the discussion of the 117

propositions he establishes in the earlier article, particularly his emphasis on the concepts of love and emergence: “We speak ourselves into existence and toward others by virtue of ethos, the character being revealed in our speaking” (25).

Corder’s language in the above passages echoes language that he invokes in the writing of his next article, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” but he broadens his use of the metaphor of “love” that he introduces in “From Rhetoric To Grace,” to include the concept of “narrative” as a means to explore the notion of ethos he develops in the first piece. 118

III. “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love.”

Reading “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” for the first time marked my introduction to Jim W. Corder, and all that I have read of Corder’s since that first meeting always brings me back to thinking about this piece. It is one of his more well- known writings—perhaps because it was published in the fourth volume of Rhetoric

Review, during a time when the journal itself was emerging within the discipline of rhetoric and composition. The article was also included by editors Theresa Enos and

Stuart C. Brown in Professing the New Rhetorics: A Source Book, in the “The New

Rhetorics: Commentary and Application” section. When asked by those who have never encountered Corder to suggest a place to start reading, I am usually suggesting the title,

“Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” before they have finished the question.

I have argued often—in the dissertation proposal and preface (and in more than one seminar paper)—that “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” offers the most succinct and explicit view of Corder’s rhetorical theory. In my early thinking and drafting of the third chapter, I thought of the article as a cornerstone, a foundation for structuring my analysis and discussion of Corder’s writings during the 1980s. I believed that my thorough familiarity with the text—the fact that I had read it countless times over the last decade and had shared it with many of my own students—would enable me to see clear connections with his other writings of the same period, texts that I have come to know through closer analysis only in recent months. Even while drafting the first two chapters—that is, the process of describing Corder’s earliest writings and observing the evolution of his perspective on rhetoric—I envisioned myself to be on a kind of 119

metaphorical path that would inevitably lead me to a landmark in Corder’s career, because I believed “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” to be the most developed and thoroughly fleshed out treatment of rhetoric that Corder had published to date. And, as I have observed in numerous instances in Corder’s early writings where he touches on concepts that he discusses more thoroughly in “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as

Love”—even without seeing the specific connections in between the years just yet—I trusted that eventually I would uncover a way to demonstrate that this article really revealed both a cumulative and straightforward view of Corder’s rhetorical theory. Now, however, I am not so sure.

First (and this is difficult to say), I am not sure that “Argument as Emergence,

Rhetoric as Love” offers such a total and ultimate view of Corder’s perspective on rhetoric—or not in the ways that I have always assumed it does. This is not to say that I find the article to be any less brilliant or useful or representative of Corder’s best work, but in its relationship to his other writings, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” no longer exists as the text that most embodies Corderian rhetoric—at least in my estimation, for right now anyway. Maybe it is just nostalgia that causes me to place undue significance on this particular text, especially given the stores of Corder’s writings that I have read (and those that are still waiting to be read) beyond the introduction to him ten years earlier. Nevertheless, I have come to view the text differently, and, thus, my use of the text will necessarily change. The most significant different I notice is the connections I see between his discussion in “From Rhetoric to Grace” and his discussion in this article. 120

Second, I am not sure that “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” provides the most useful language for locating definition(s) of Corderian rhetoric—that is, identifying places in Corder’s writings where he defines or claims a definition of rhetoric.

In my earlier attempts to offer concrete evidence of Corder’s definition(s) of rhetoric, I have looked first to “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love.” Of course, there is always an formidable challenge involved, when I try to extract a line from Corder’s writing, knowingly taking his words out of one context in the hope that I can make sense of his language in another context. I usually settle on one or two passages that seem to be short enough to constitute an appropriate block quotation, yet long enough to capture some of the spirit embodied in his language. In the opening paragraph of “Argument as

Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” Corder claims,

Each of us forms conceptions of the world, its institutions, its public, private, wide, or local histories, and each of us is the narrative that shows our living in and through the conceptions that are always being formed as the tales of our lives take shape. [. . .] There is only our making, sometimes by design, sometimes not. None of us lives without a history; each of us is a narrative. We’re always standing some place in our lives, and there is always a tale of how we came to stand there, though few of us have marked carefully the dimensions of the place where we are or kept time with the tale of how we came to be there. (16)

While this passage does not represent a definition of rhetoric per se—in fact there is no mention of the word “rhetoric”—it demonstrates Corder laying some groundwork that will be necessary to understand his discussion of argumentation and rhetoric later in the article. That is, he is constructing the parameters around and conditions for the uses of language; he is describing the context that necessitates the uses of rhetoric. It also shows evidence of his perspective in “From Rhetoric to Grace,” where he attempts to show the 121

usefulness of a rhetorical perspective or methodology in language analysis, particularly in argument analysis. He continues on the following page:

When we use language, some choices have already been made and others must be made. Our narratives, which include our pasts, accompany us and exist in our statements and exercise their influence whether or not we are aware of the influence. Before we speak, we have lived; when we speak, we must continually choose because our mouths will not say two words simultaneously. Whether consciously or not, we always station ourselves somewhere in our narratives when we use language. (17)

When considered together, these two passages form the basis of Corder’s discussion of argument and rhetoric in the article, and they show the epistemological assumptions— i.e., his essential philosophy of language as socially constructed and context-bound—that inform his discussion of narrative, the central metaphor that Corder uses to guide his readers to regard argument as emergence and rhetoric as love. Corder continues,

The choosing we do to make our narratives (whether or not we are aware of the nature of our choosing) also makes our narratives into arguments. The narratives we tell (ourselves) create and define the worlds in which we hold our beliefs. Our narratives are the evidence we have of ourselves and of our convictions. Argument, then, is not something we make outside ourselves; argument is what we are. Each of us is an argument. We always live in, through, around, over, and under argument. All the choices we’ve made, accidentally, or, I should go on to say, sets of congruent arguments, or in some instances, sets of conflicting arguments. (18)

To this point in the article (beyond one comment about the “rhetorician” late in the third paragraph), Corder has not talked about nor attempted to define the term “rhetoric” itself.

Incidentally—or maybe not—Corder has not discussed anyone’s work in the field of rhetoric and composition. Given the context of the article—that it is published in Rhetoric

Review, a journal that maintains a strong commitment to the unity of rhetoric and 122

composition—and even the title suggesting that the term rhetoric should be a central concern of Corder’s discussion, readers might be curious about his choice to reference, for example, a New York Times book review by novelist A. G. Mojtabai or an article by fiction-writer, E. L. Doctorow, in the last volume of the American Review, neither of which discusses rhetoric and neither of which emerges from conventional academic discourse venues. In fact, the first time Corder actually uses the word “rhetoric”—about half-way through the article—he is making a connection to another scholar outside of the discipline, psychologist Carl Rogers. Corder explains,

A contending narrative, I’d suggest, is a threat more consequential than Carl Rogers has shown us. [. . .] Rogers had earlier applied his thinking more directly to rhetoric, announcing his belief that a sense of threat usually blocks successful communication. As he put it, “the major barrier to mutual interpersonal communication is our very natural tendency to judge, to evaluate, to approve or disapprove, the statement of the other person.” [. . .] If we refrain from evaluating and instead “listen with understanding,” according to Rogers, we will “see the expressed idea and attitude from the other person’s point of view…sense how it feels to him…achieve his frame of reference in regard to the thing he is talking about.” (19-20)

Of course, Corder is not the first person to suggest a connection between the theories of

Carl Rogers and rhetoric, and he points to prior discussions of Rogerian argument within the discipline of rhetoric and composition. For example, during the 1970s, editors Young,

Becker, and Pike reprinted Rogers’ paper, “Communication: Its Blocking and Its

Facilitation,” in their well-know text, Rhetoric: Discovery and Change (1979); Andrea

Lunsford makes a specific connection between classical theories of argument and

Rogerian argumentation in “Aristotelian vs. Rogerian Argument: A Reassessment” published in College Composition and Communication. However, he does suggest that 123

Rogers’ perspective is more productive within a therapist-patient model, where (in rhetorical terms) both the speaker and audience have established a common desire to communicate or to understand the other, and less useful in broader discussions of argument, where there are most often no prior-established common agenda between the speaker and audience.

Corder extends Aristotle’s concept, however, to involve the audience’s capacity to discover the speaker’s available means of persuasion. Likewise, Corder’s discussions of generative ethos are informed by this extension because of his concern with a speaker’s capacity to know and to reveal her process of invention, to generate the space for the audience to be present with the speaker and to explore her inventive world.

More importantly, when viewed in context with the article that Corder wrote just prior to this piece, “From Rhetoric to Grace,” it becomes clear that Corder’s choice to discuss argument in terms of “narrative,” a metaphor that has clear connection to uses and analysis of language beyond rhetoric studies is evidence of his desire to make rhetoric relevant in understanding of our broader uses of language as human beings.

Corder demonstrates yet another way in which he can extend the concerns of rhetoric, particularly the canons of invention and style. In a Pre/Text article he wrote three years later, he provides an overview of psychoanalysis theory using the vocabulary of rhetoric as the vehicle, and he shows one possibility for theories of rhetoric to become useful in conversations between disciplines—in this case psychology and English studies. 124

IV. “A New Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Taken as a

Version of Modern Rhetoric”

“A New Introduction to Psychoanalysis, Taken as a Modern Version of Rhetoric” further illustrates Corder’s desire to demonstrate rhetoric’s potential to make connections with and to become useful in the scholarly discourse of other disciplines as well as outside of the academy. He addresses this general concern early in the article explaining,

Rhetorical study suggests useful approaches to subjects not ordinarily associate with rhetoric. I don’t suggest that rhetoric can always do in other fields what their own methodologies have not yet made possible. Rhetoric will not invariably solve problems outside its own territory, but is useful, and looks on toward becoming more useful (142).

Later in the article, Corder clarifies his specific concern for the uses of rhetoric in the discussion of psychoanalysis in a paragraph that also shows evidence of Corder’s spacious notion of rhetoric as an enabling agent. After a lengthy consideration of various theoretical perspectives on language, psychology, rhetoric, Corder again pauses:

“Enough. I expect I’ve talked long enough about originating thoughts. I should get to what I came for” (159). Next, he proclaims:

Let’s loosen the dimensions of psychoanalysis and let it become as wide-ranging, as pervasive as rhetoric, let it become rhetoric. Let the divisions of rhetoric and their relationships become stages of psychoanalytical investigation and understanding. Let rhetoric stretch psychoanalysis beyond its usual reaches. Let rhetoric provide new descriptions of symptoms. Let rhetoric generate a new taxonomy of mental illness. Let rhetoric suggest new theories. (159)

He explains the process of creating the article’s title, revealing that Thomas Szasz’s work

The Myth of Psychology, specifically in his term “iatrology,” had initially provided an 125

idea for the title, but Corder felt that the medial context surrounding Szasz’s discussion of

“healing words” did not embody the approach he wanted to explore in the article.

Corder’s explanation of the title also enables him to position himself in relation to the work of Sigmund Freud, indicating that “I wanted even any distant association with

Freud’s work that I could attain.” (139). Corder makes no further mention of Freud within the article—not surprisingly, after that comment—but I was curious about this small note on Freud that Corder places so early in the introduction. From what little I know about Freud’s reputation in the field of psychology (I must add that my knowledge in this area has been informed more from conversations with friends studying psychology than from any sort of formal research or reading on the subject), he is not highly regarded by modern scholars of psychology—despite Freud’s notoriety in popular culture.

Perhaps, then, Corder seeks to establish legitimacy among a particular segment of psychology scholars, although I would argue that they are not his primary audience in this article—mostly because of where it is published, Pre/Text, a journal based in English studies. However, given that Corder’s overall argument in the article suggests a way to connect the disciplinary discussions of psychology and English studies, he is addressing scholars in both disciplines simultaneously.

Yet he maintains a strong voice throughout these paragraphs as well, evidenced largely by his use of the first person pronoun and his insistence that he—and by default, the reader—make necessary (and frequent) stops along the way, in phrases such as, “I have not yet begun, but I want to stop and come at things in another way so that I can sneak up on what may be my subject from another direction” (142). 126

The article is broken into sections, each one introduced with a comment or two about what Corder hopes to say in those parts. For example, in the third paragraph, he states, “Words celebrate life; they cast magic spells. I want to linger a moment over these qualities of words. Doing so, I believe, may help to make sense of other things I want to say later” (139).

What follows is essentially what Corder says he is going to do—he lingers over several observations, statements, assumptions about language use, ones that might be most familiar to audiences within English studies. However, Corder begins with a biblical reference: “The first thing we did when we came into creation was to try naming its parts.

Even if we lost all else in Eden, even if there was no Eden, we have had the words to name things, and when we call the words to mind, we can cherish all the parts of that

Eden of the mind. We can keep life, treasure it, and never lose it, for we have words”

(140). He cites a poem by Loren Eiseley, “The Cabin,” and points to the work of Gloria

Emerson (Winners and Losers) and Leslie Silko (Ceremony), which all, in Corder’s estimation, teach us “that we can save the names of things and say them well, and then we’ll remember the provinces we’ve lived in and remember what happened there” (140).

He also includes some of his own perspective on language, comments that have appeared in his other writings of the era and much earlier (e.g., Uses of Rhetoric). Corder explains,

“We are not bound to a single way of speaking unless we deceive ourselves or succumb to prisons of the mind. Words will let us say contrary things, we let us speak in opposition, will let us speak in various tongues, will let us speak ambiguities, even mysteries. We have the liberty to be ourselves, to speak ourselves into existence, come 127

what may. In referring to language as “magic, spell-casting words,” Corder instructs readers:

Think of the spells that have taught us what to seek, that have taught us what happiness is and where it might be found. [. . .] Think what we learned about the indomitablity of the human spirit from that simple spell, “Kilroy was here.” Think of the lesson of calm courage set out by that spell, ‘Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.’ Think how we learned from Lincoln at Gettysburg the possibility of one day binding people together. [. . .] Think of what we learned from Huck Finn about the sanctity of the human soul when he decided, “All right, then, I’ll go to Hell.” [. . .] Think what we learned about the possibility that gentleness and strength could go hand in hand when we read about that season that Boo Radley came out. (141)

What I think is the most noteworthy about Corder’s discussion in the early part of the article is that he establishes a broad overview of language concerns, but he does not cite linguistic theory nor does he offer philosophies of language to frame his perspective.

Instead, he points to several works of literature—fiction, even—and to well-known uses of language in recent history to frame his discussion. Such a move accomplishes two possible purposes for Corder. First, he is able to illustrate his belief that bringing together concepts and discussions not often associated with one another can yield new insight and understanding about them. Second, he is able to maintain his layman status as a scholar of psychoanalysis, drawing from his readings and experiences in English studies as a means to identify parallel concerns with psychoanalysts concerning the uses of language.

Likewise, he points to famous examples of language that would be familiar especially to those outside of the academic community as well (e.g., his biblical analogy, Abraham

Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech, and the first radio transmission from the lunar landing module.) 128

After establishing some of these fundamental assumptions about language—or what we have learned from the various writers and examples on language and its uses—

Corder, again, pauses to take a new turn in his discussion: “I have not yet begun, but I want to stop and come at things in another way so that I can sneak up on what may be my subject from another direction. What I want to talk about later will make a little more sense, I think, if I sketch out its origins and reveal something about the habits of mind that led me to this essay. One set of interests I have entertained for some time is the possible uses of rhetorical language to describe some mental disorders, include schizophrenia” (142).

Echoing claims that he makes in other writings as well, Corder seeks to apply theories of rhetoric as a means to explore a given text or use of language—in this instance, the discussion of several psychological disorders. That is, Corder uses the offices or canons of rhetoric to describe abnormal mental conditions, suggesting that

“every utterance belongs to, exists in, issues from, and reveals a rhetorical universe.

Every utterance comes from somewhere (its inventive origin), emerges as a structure, and manifests itself as a style. All of the features of utterance—invention, structure, and style—cycle, reciprocate, and occur simultaneously. Each of us is a gathering place for a host of rhetorical universes. Some of them we share with others, indeed with whole cultures; some of them we inhabit alone, and some of them we occupy without knowing that we do so. Each of us is a busy corner where multiple rhetorical universes intersect.

Ordinarily, we keep some consonance among these multiple universes, and hold order and relation among them. But not always. Sometimes the traffic within a single rhetorical 129

universe stalls; sometimes the traffic from one universe collides with that from another”

(142).

Next Corder offers nine brief descriptions of different instances of psychological disorders, using the first three canons of rhetoric, invention, structure/arrangement, and style as the means to describe each one. Thus, in his first example Corder describes a person who is both unable to speak and perpetually repeats a series of physical motions.

Corder explains that the patient “is trapped in a structure, unable to realize himself through a style. In rhetorical terms his circumstances might be described by saying that structure has obliterated invention and style. He cannot reach back to know the origins of the structure he is trapped in, and he cannot reach forward to speak” (142-43). In the third list item, Corder states, “The form of hysteria known as dissociate reaction is an instance of blockage in invention, where the victim refuses conflicts by refusing to come out into structure and style.” Corder explains in the fourth that “[a]mnesia, an extreme form of dissociate reaction, is a reversal of the circumstances I just mentioned. The amnesiac can still perform (usually) in structure and style, but is caught there, unable to penetrate his or her invention” (143).

Corder concludes the list by returning to a concept he mentions earlier— schizophrenia, one of the psychological disorders that had created his initial interest in exploring the connections that might exist between rhetoric studies and psychoanalysis.

Corder clarifies the connection by describing schizophrenia via rhetorical vocabulary, and asserts:

Instances of traffic colliding as it tries to cross from one rhetorical universe into another are sometimes dramatic, as in acute 130

undifferentiated schizophrenia. This state is known in an often severe disordering of the thought process, in frequent interruption of the flow of ideas, in apparent illogicality, in the occurrence of strange words and coinages, and in hallucinations. These forms of apparent disorder can be described with rhetorical terms. The disorders associated with acute undifferentiated schizophrenia appear to occur when crossovers and collisions take place between universes, or when slippages or leakages occur from one universe to another, when the ‘normal’ sequences of one universe mix in those of another. (144-45)

At the end of this statement, Corder places the first of two endnotes that accompany the article, in which he offers a lengthy commentary (for those readers interested enough to read the Notes section at the back) on the theories and scholars he consults in his research on psychology, psychoanalysis, and schizophrenia specifically. His language in the Notes section is a mixture of argument and dense bibliographic information, because in addition to naming the numerous sources he has perused, he points to specific ways in which those sources become useful to him in his present discussion. He cites the problems over categorizing or classifying various manifestations of schizophrenic disorders, pointing to a lengthy list of books and articles emerging from the work of psychoanalysts. For example, Corder notes:

When specialists in the field do not agree in descriptions or terms, it may seem idle to expect any way of describing disorders, including schizophrenia, to be useful. Still, I think the notion of multiple discursive universes existing within a person, usually in some kind of consonance with or toleration for each other, but sometimes mixing, leaking from one to another, or crossing from one to another, offers a way to understanding some features of disorder, including schizophrenia. Kraepelin’s account of attention loss of confusion in the train of thought, and of incomprehensible gibberish among schizophrenics corresponds easily enough, I think, to the conception I am proposing. When universes collide, mix, and cross over, then attention is diverted, thought is confused. Bleuler’s focusing on the disturbance of associations as the central 131

system of schizophrenia suggests an effect I’ve tried to describe, a mixing of ideas from different worlds. See the discussion of Kraepelin’s Dementia Praecox and Paraphrenia and Bleuler’s Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias in Loren J. Chapman and Jean P. Chapman, Disordered Thought in Schizophrenia (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1973), and see Manfred Blueler, The Schizophrenic Disorders (New Haven: Yale UP, 1978). (168)

Here Corder reveals the background of his reading, shows his audience those theories and scholars that inform his discussion, but he relegates his discussion of these sources to the

Notes section only—that is, he never refers to Kraepelin or Bleuler within the body of his essay.

At this moment in the article, Corder makes an assertion that might be difficult for his audience to embrace—that is, of course, assuming they have made it this far in

Corder’s discussion. Corder asserts that psychoanalysts, even physicians in general, should be historians of rhetoric. He states:

This cosmos of rhetorical orbitings is the hunting ground for analysts. Invention, structure, and style are never lost. They remain, though they may at times, when the past seems to close or the future seems to close or when worlds mix, slide off into the depths we cannot easily reach. All rhetorical universes are still present. The debris of all our generations is around us and in us. Full worlds, barren worlds, lonesome worlds circle about us and in us, and they are ours to explain. For this reason, it is necessary that the analyst become a historian of rhetorical universes. (148) Corder concludes this section with another plea for the usefulness of applying rhetoric to discussions not often (if ever) associated with concerns of rhetoric. Corder argues that when

[y]ou look outside the discipline of rhetoric along the lines of vision provided by rhetoric, you sometimes see only old things in new ways. That, of course, can have great worth. The penicillin- producing mold had been grown, kept, and observed in more than 132

one laboratory before someone decided to look at it in a new way. Often, when you look along rhetorical lines toward other things, you only satisfy your curiosity. Once in a while, perhaps, you seem something new. Often, too, you discover that rhetoric—our chief occupation—quite unsurprisingly allows you to talk usefully about human concerns not otherwise thought to be connected to rhetoric” (148-149).

Yet, again, Corder seeks to remind the reader of his own limited perspective—at least in terms of a in-depth knowledge of scholarship in the discipline of psychology or in the medical field in general. Corder explains:

I have no credentials in the practice of medicine or of any form of analysis and therapy. However, what I learn about the work of those who do sometimes—certainly not always—translates for me into certain rhetorical practices. I cannot pretend that I have made a thorough catalog of the most striking or pertinent practices of physicians. Neither can I claim that I have a thorough catalog of rhetorical equivalences. I don’t know enough to catalog all medical practices, and I doubt there are rhetorical equivalences for all. Some equivalences do occur, I think, and I want to cite some that seem particularly interesting, perhaps even provocative. Equivalences should not surprise us. We already know that physician have to be good historians; I am suggesting now that they must also be good rhetoricians, whether or not they use the title. The various arts I mean to mention—medicine, psychiatry, psychoanalysis, rhetoric—have some common roots in the sometimes rocky, sometimes blessed ground of human communication. (149-150)

That much said, I’ll hurry on to add that there is far more deeply buried that we can customarily get to, a grammar of the soul—or call it a biorhetoric, the genetic markings that come from the time before each of us was born, or a rhetorical imperative, an unspoken, perhaps unrecognized, but nevertheless real theory of communication that informs everything each of us says. A Rhetoric assumes a view of the world and of human nature, and each of us assumes a rhetoric. Each of us is a rhetorician, and each is obliged to be constantly writing a modern rhetoric. Often as not, we don’t. Most rhetorics have not explored the world they assume, the world they rise from. Most rhetorics have accepted a 133

worldview, or some set of views, and rhetorics are still being written and lived in one world that belong over in another world. I want to suggest that each of us must search to know which worlds reciprocate with his or her rhetoric. We should come to each other as rhetoricians in the company of our view of things, knowing and declaring our origins, claims, and imperatives, revealing our inventive resources to ourselves and to others recognizing what our structures and styles signify. We have to keep on examining and keep on proclaiming the circumstances of our own existence and way of speaking. (140-141)

I included these two long passages here because I think I would destroy them in any attempt to summarize or paraphrase them , and I want to illustrate how Corder moves through his discussion, using the canons of rhetoric, for example, to move through the various sections of his statements; he demonstrates how useful such a rhetorical vocabulary and theoretical perspective can be in understanding the uses of language in the context of psychotherapy. This article represents one of Corder’s most detailed attempts to insert a discussion of rhetoric where it might not be expected. He has shown evidence of doing such analyses in his earlier works, but those discussions have most often been associated with disciplines in the Humanities, even if the scope extended past the English Department.

In the first three chapters of this dissertation, I have explored selected texts from throughout Corder’s career, attempting to synthesize a discussion of the major theoretical threads he develops as a scholar of rhetoric. In the next chapter, however, I focus on one longer piece, Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, on the of the last texts that Corder wrote before dying in the late 1990s. I chose to look at this piece in greater detail, because the text offers a culminating view of the rhetorical theory Corder has been developing for more than thirty years. 134

The book exists as a record of Corder’s research process and investigation of a soldier who died in Texas during the late nineteenth century, enabling Corder to grapple with many of the language concerns (and how rhetoric might be useful in understanding them) he has addressed for years. 135

MEMORY: SELECTED WRITINGS FROM THE 1990s Memory (Memoria) And we should question memory: it’s never accurate. The brain does not simply receive and store information about people, places, and events; it is a creator of memory. [. . . ] We make what we remember. (Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne 15-16) In 1993 the University of Georgia Press published Jim W. Corder’s last monograph, Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, a short text in which the reader is invited to join Corder both in uncovering and constructing the history of a soldier who died in

Texas just before the Mexican War. Corder discovered Lieutenant Chadbourne sometime during the mid-1980s, while reading a roadside historical marker that described Fort

Chadbourne on rural Highway 277 in west Texas. After some research Corder learned that Fort Chadbourne had been named for Lieutenant Theodore Lincoln Chadbourne, a young officer assigned to the 8th Infantry Regiment of General Zachary Taylor’s army. A native of Maine and the eldest of nine children, Chadbourne graduated from West Point in 1843—the same year as Ulysses S. Grant—and he died three years later in the battle of Resaca de la Palma, near Brownsville, Texas, on May 9, 1846.

Corder is intrigued immediately by Lieutenant Chadbourne; thus his initial curiosity in Lieutenant Chadbourne starts as a personal journey. He seeks answers to some questions that are uniquely his own: Why is Fort Chadbourne named for him?

What is his background, his education? Where is his family? How exactly did he die in battle? Corder writes, “He was still twenty-three when he died that day. Twenty-three years doesn’t give a fellow much time to compile records or build diaries or get into history books,” making his search both alluring and challenging (Hunting Lieutenant 136

Chadbourne 2). On seeing Chadbourne’s sword and partial uniform on display at a museum in Fort Concho, Corder writes,

I have stood before that case and wondered how it was with him. I have wondered how and when his family came to know that he had been killed. [. . .] It must be unspeakably hard for a family. But harder, I expect, to be a young man, probably hot that May 9, 1846, maybe dirty, maybe scared, certainly dead at twenty-three. (6)

This passage shows evidence that—at least in the beginning—Corder’s quest for information about Lt. Chadbourne grows out of personal interest, from his own curiosity.

Corder does not set out to conduct research on Lieutenant Chadbourne for the deliberate purpose of gathering data to publish an article on the subject. However, his own desire to learn more about Lt. Chadbourne inevitably produces a context that enables Corder to grapple with several theoretical strands—revisiting rhetorical concepts such as ethos and invention from his earlier writings—while exploring some new territory in the realm of poststructuralist and postmodern perspectives on the relationship among authors, texts, and audiences, as well as the role of memory in historical research and the processes of knowledge production. Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne is in itself a culmination of a decade-long project in which Corder unfolds the process of his research and shares his thinking with his readers along the way. Therefore, Corder’s purpose in the book is twofold: he seeks both to learn about the life of Lt. Chadbourne for himself, motivated by his own personal curiosity, as well as to craft an argument about the work of history- writing, informed by his prior study and writing on theories of rhetoric.

Corder’s quest for more information about Chadbourne leads him to the city of

San Angelo, where he discovers a small museum (at Fort Concho) that displays several of 137

Chadbourne’s belongings as well as the library for the Tom Green County Historical

Association, which houses an archive of artifacts collected by Susan Miles, a deceased local historian who had researched Lt. Chadbourne several decades prior. Susan Miles becomes a central figure in Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, and Corder spends a significant portion of the text discussing the artifacts she had collected—Chadbourne’s weapon, some of his personal letters, and her own correspondence with surviving members of Chadbourne’s family, libraries and historical associations in New England as well as the US War Department. Corder writes:

Susan Miles of San Angelo did all the work. She was looking for Lieutenant Chadbourne before I knew who he was. She almost found him. She raised him, if not from the dead, at least from the anonymous. [. . .] I don’t know what she saw. I can’t see through her eyes. I know her, but I don’t know her and never will. But I can follow the tracks she left. (28-29)

Corder’s substantial attention on Susan Miles and her research is compelling for several reasons. First, Corder’s search for Lieutenant Chadbourne precipitates a search for Susan

Miles as well, because her perspective informs so much of the evidence Corder has to investigate. He pours over pages of correspondence Miles had compiled, noting the months and years between responses and the tenacity that Miles exhibits in her notes and references. Corder had access only to letters that Miles had received—not the ones she had written—and deduced that Miles had most likely mailed them as originals, leaving no copies available (37). Yet, in the letters of response, the writers often make explicit reference to Miles’ letter, its date, and accompanying request for information or inquiry about Lieutenant T. L. Chadbourne. 138

Roughly thirty pages of Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne are reproductions of various correspondence that Susan Miles had preserved in the archive at the Tom Green

Historical Society library. These letters provide the contents of chapter nine, “The Tracks

They Left,” and chapter ten, “Backtracking,” and Corder presents them to his own readers in the same order in which he encounters them in Miles’ box of archive files.

Readers, along with Corder, see the answers to questions that Miles had posed to the War

Department, asking for records or documents of his military service and his death in battle; Corder’s audience learns about a trunk believed to belong to Lt. Chadbourne, passed down through the generations, according to one family member’s letter. We even learn about the cost to make photostats of records from the National Archives in

Washington, DC, in a letter addressed to Susan Miles from the War Records Branch office.

Second, Corder’s discussion of Susan Miles, her research and his detailed descriptions of her notes and correspondence create an opportunity for him to comment on the process (work) of historical research, whether hers, his own, or of anyone else who seeks to know something about the past. Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne is as much about Miles’ hunt for Chadbourne as it is about Corder’s search for him. Susan Miles becomes alive to Corder through the words she left in the same way that Chadbourne’s real presence emerges in the writings that he left. Yet anything Corder can know about

Lieutenant Chadbourne or about Susan Miles can be found only in their writings, in the language they recorded, in the letters and notes they composed while alive that now exist long after they have died. Corder is also deliberately attentive in noting the names of 139

specific people who helped him in any capacity with his research of Lt. Chadbourne.

Most often he lists each person’s name along with notes about the artifact or tip or new piece of information that Corder locates, and he includes these people in his discussion, as is evident in the following excerpt:

On Tuesday, August 4, 1987, I called Fort Concho. I’m sorry that I don’t know who answered. Maybe she was a receptionist or other staff member. When I sort of explained—which was all I could do—what I thought I was trying to learn, she reckoned that I needed to talk to Wayne Daniel, the librarian and archivist at Fort Concho. When it turned out that he was out on the grounds of the post, digging out what was left of a foundation, she reckoned that I needed to talk to Kathleen Roland, the curator of collections. She was in and I talked to her, but she disclaimed any special knowledge of the Chadbourne artifacts and told me that it was all owed to Susan Miles and that I should talk to Katherine Waring, of the Tom Green County Historical Society, who could tell me about Susan Miles. I hadn’t expected Miss Miles, but I called Katherine Waring and made an appointment to see her on Saturday, August 8, 1987. (29-30)

When I first read this passage, and others like it throughout the book, I was curious about his insistence to include the specific names of people (some of whom he spoke to only via phone), even his willingness to admit not remembering some of their names and his tendency to repeat names. I think Corder calls our attention to these people, especially figures like Susan Miles, because without the connection he makes to each of these individuals, Corder’s research would not be possible. Also, his focus on these people shows his attempt to establish their realness as much as Lieutenant Chadbourne—or even

Corder’s own ability to present a real self within the text.

His research, while a personal inquiry, necessitates work with a range of people, negotiations among a number of scholars and nonscholars, both living and deceased. He 140

reminds us that all learning and knowledge production is both personal and collaborative, no matter how many authors’ names are attributed to a published work. By highlighting the research of Susan Miles (who had no formal training in historical research) and showing his readers examples of her work, Corder is recovering her contribution to existing historical knowledge and establishing the usefulness of her perspective for scholars now, including himself. Corder writes:

I didn’t know Miss Miles then and don’t know her now, but I thought I had begun to sense her, to catch a trace of her. Most of us, I expect, have known someone a little like her—a school teacher, perhaps, or a Sunday school teacher, or someone mistakenly dismissed as a mere “club woman.” Such women—at least, I’m convinced, those in the American South and West—may not have cleared and plowed the fields, but they did create and keep the culture, sometimes as teachers but always as movers, people who made and kept history without being acknowledged by history. (Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne 2)

Susan Miles had archived two boxes full of files containing research on Lt. Chadbourne.

During the decades following her research, Corder had been the only person to request access to the archive kept at the Tom Green County Historical Library. Miles had gathered a significant number of materials; specifically, she had obtained personal and professional letters written by Lt. Chadbourne himself, in addition to numerous examples of inquiry and correspondence relating to Chadbourne’s family or military career.

Corder’s reflections on these letters and documents lead to philosophical questions concerning language, epistemology, and the role that memory plays in the recording of human experience and the production of discourse, knowledge, and history.

In the first chapter, “Perhaps I Will Never Find Him,” Corder begins with an explanation of the little spiral notebooks that he always carries around to record bits of information 141

from grocery lists to academic citation information. He was going through a drawer of old notebooks when he came across a page with the following lines: “In the battle of the

9th, the 8th regiment lost, in Lieutenant Chadbourne, a promising young officer, who fell in the manful discharge of duty” (1). Corder admits that at the time he could not remember where he found them, who wrote them, or why he had written them down in the first place. Over the next few pages, Corder begins to piece together an account of his initial interest in Lt. Chadbourne, including a few short pieces he had written about him already. However, when Corder moves into chapter three, “But Sometimes When I

Look, I Don’t See,” he surprises the reader with “But that—what I’ve just written—was two years or so ago, and it’s wrong in some important ways” (7).

Admitting to his own misreading or misinterpretation of his earlier research is a move most scholars would fear to make in their own writing, because it implies that he is vulnerable—heaven forbid if we make (and, even worse, admit to) a mistake in an academic publication. Corder models his own rhetorical theory, grounded in generative ethos, of a gentle form of persuasion through offering his thoughts to the reader, and he implicitly argues for a different approach to academic writing. In chapter four, “Memory and History,” he focuses on the memory of his first visit to the Fort Concho museum and his observation of Chadbourne’s sword, belt, and tunic that hang in a display case.

Corder then recounts that during a later visit, and upon further inspection, he notices something that he had overlooked previously. Corder explains,

I relied too much on my own observation, especially on my memory of my own observation. I said that his tunic hangs in a glass case with his sword and sword belt. The sword is there, and the sword belt, with the neat bullet hole in the strap that comes 142

down from the right shoulder to the left waist. The tunic is not there. I glanced and trusted my glance, and then trusted my memory of the glance. Over the headless bust that holds the sword belt there is no tunic, only anonymous dark blue cloth. I went back later and saw that I had not seen. (8)

In the opening chapters of the book, Corder still uses his original description of the case displaying Chadbourne’s sword—that lists the tunic along with the sword and the strap with the bullet hole—even though the audience now learns that the description they had just read several pages prior is inaccurate. Moreover, Corder now calls attention to his error as the subject of his discussion in the present chapter, which takes him further into reflections on and questions about memory—and he expresses these thoughts and ideas as though he were in an ongoing dialogue with his readers:

Why was I astonished when I found that I was wrong? Why was I so late to learn the fallibility of my memory? I had known all along that some people, places, events, things didn’t get into my memory, but if things did get into memory, I thought they were there accurately. But that’s never actually been the case. People, places, events, things never did “get into” my memory, as though into a file. I created them and located them to fit whatever story I was telling of myself. But surely I know what I saw? Sometimes surely. But sometimes I didn’t see what I thought I saw, and then in the telling misremembered both what I saw and whatever I may have seen. Sometimes I saw what I thought I saw and whatever I may have seen. Sometimes I saw what I didn’t know I saw and so had no way of telling. I have known for a long time that memory fails, but I guess I knew that only conventionally, not tellingly, and I guess I didn’t know that memory would fail when I told of sacred moments and places. (9)

Here Corder explores his own emotional investment in his search for clues about the existence of Lt. Chadbourne, revealing to his readers the situated, subjective position of the historical researcher. Corder shares his thoughts with his readers, laying bare his thinking about his research—his search—for Lt. Chadbourne, because he hopes to 143

embody a perspective on academic work that connects to the essential concerns of all scholars and researchers. Corder explains,

We trust ourselves, trust memory, trust what we call study to get history right. Often we’re wrong. Maybe mostly. I thought I would be the first to hunt Lieutenant Chadbourne. I wasn’t. I thought I knew that his tunic was there in the case with his sword belt at Fort Concho. I was wrong. (18)

Corder’s style in the preceding passages, particularly how he addresses his readers, demonstrates several qualities that others have observed in Corder’s writing, particularly the ethos that he generates within the text and his engagement with the audience. Keith

D. Miller notes, “Throughout Corder’s writings, gestures of self-questioning and self- deprecation generate an ethos of humility and, hence, of apparent trustworthiness,” and

“Corder’s modest, often fumbling persona invites readers to join him in puzzling over issues: he challenges us, in effect, to pick up our own sets of ropes and plot our routes as we join him in scaling rhetorical cliffs” (Selected Essays 18). Corder presents his thinking in such a way that provides room for his readers to consider the same questions—not in terms of Lt. Chadbourne specifically (obviously)—but in the context of their own subject positions. Corder reminds us that memory is as important for us as it is unreliable, and he gives us permission—by way of example—to recognize our tendency to trust memory even when it fail us. Corder asks,

When memory fails, do I fail? Memory is the tale we tell of ourselves; it is the selves we keep constructing in our continuing narratives. We can’t deny memory, can we, without feeling the cold on our backs, the shivers in our shoulders? Have I told myself wrongly, constructed the wrong self? If I didn’t see what I thought I saw and then misremembered it all in the telling, have I lost my existence? (10) 144

These excerpts also illustrate Corder’s “gestures of self-questioning and self- depreciation” that according to Miller generates an ethos of humility. This trustworthiness that Corder establishes throughout the text offers readers an invitation into a nonthreatening space, an opportunity to reflect on their own experience with and understanding of memory—particularly in the realm of scholarly inquiry.

The passages I have selected from Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne so far, beyond illustrating the concepts that I already discuss in the preceding pages, also embody qualities of the overall style and approach Corder takes throughout the entire book. He asks more questions than he provides answers. More often than not, whatever answers he finds leads him to new questions to ponder. Such an approach is typical of Corder, as he is often (if not always) concerned with rhetoric’s function to enlarge our capacities to know and to reflect and to build time into our research and writing practices, spending long moments exploring our own inventive universes and those of others. The narrative, first-person style that embodies so much of Corder’s writings is intensely present throughout the book. A mixture of primary documents and first-person reflection that includes bits of—and sometimes long excerpts from—language of various texts (some scholarly and some not) comprise the majority of book, in addition to a short notes section and a handful of illustrations (drawn by Corder himself).

When viewed in the context of his earlier writings, Hunting Lieutenant

Chadbourne shows Corder speaking to a larger audience—or a greater number of audiences. One example is that he speaks directly to himself more attentively than he does in other writings. While nearly all of Corder’s writings include first-person, 145

narrative-style prose that draw on assorted stories and life experiences—and he often addresses the audience as we—he focuses more on I in Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, which creates the tone of a diary or memoir, especially because Corder spends so much time thinking out loud in the text. During his research—and throughout the book—

Corder struggles with Chadbourne’s letters, and he makes his train of thought on the subject quite transparent to readers, but essentially he is having a conversation with himself:

Ms. Waring allowed me to photocopy the letters. I brought the copies home, but I didn’t read them, I wanted to save them. I didn’t want the thing to be finished before it was begun. If, when I read the letters, I learned that I had been wrong here and there, I would correct myself. If the letters turned out to be trivial, they mattered because they existed, and the life mattered because it was. History is not out there; it’s in here, where I am. I wanted to save the letters for the last because I wanted to believe that he was in them, that he was there. Almost from the start, of course, I also knew that I might never find him. But I have been looking. (146-47)

Yet, in the midst of this personal discussion, there is still room made for readers to reflect on similar concerns, as though that moment in the text represents Corder’s turn to speak in an already-ongoing conversation with his readers. Corder’s audiences have shifted greatly throughout his career, but most often they have been scholars, reading his work in blind peer-reviewed academic publications (e.g., teachers of composition or literature; scholars of rhetoric or philosophy; education and pedagogy specialists).

Because the book was published by the University of Georgia Press, he maintains his scholarly audience, but in a much broader way, not just within defined disciplinary fields. However, Corder articulates his arguments in Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne through stylistic and structural moves that resist typical conventions of academic writing. 146

As a result, despite its richness and depth, the book does not seem much like academic discourse to the scholars who review it, instead appearing to many as creative nonfiction, memoir, personal essay—just not academic writing.

Nevertheless, a study and analysis of the book reviews of Hunting Lieutenant

Chadbourne might shed light on interpreting the arguments that Corder makes, in large part based on advice that I take from Corder himself. Early in the fourth chapter,

“Memory and History,” while he explores various responses and reviews to the book The

Drowned and the Saved, by Primo Levi, Corder pauses for the following parenthetical aside, just a quick check with the audience:

(Do you inquire why I cite reviews rather than the books reviewed? Because I am interested in how people react to the recorded memories of other people.) 15

I had not noticed this particular strategy until he pointed it out to me. Maybe Corder realized this might happen with some readers—hence his decision to include the aside— but with his opening question, he also covers the possibility of those who actually notice.

Still, I am left realizing that while Corder writes a chapter on memory and history, recording his own memories along the way and revealing the mess and the inaccuracy and uncertainty in the process, he also points to the interest and value of other people’s recorded memories—not only invoking the importance of their memories in particular but also revealing the value of his own recorded memories in general. 147

I. Book Reviews of Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne

In the remainder of this chapter, I turn to the reviews written of Hunting

Lieutenant Chadbourne as a way to illuminate the rhetorical approach and arguments that

Corder crafts in the text. When Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne was published in 1993, a number of critics were challenged to interpret the short text, and over the next two years more than ten reviews of the book appeared in various historical research journals. No journals in rhetoric and composition reviewed it; in fact, no English studies journal ever reviewed it.

As I study these reviews and try to understand the polarized perspectives that these critics exhibit in their writing about Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, one particular concept keeps floating to the front of my mind: genre—particularly the genre of academic writing (if one exists). It appears as though each reviewer’s critique of Hunting

Lieutenant Chadbourne relies the most on how he classifies the genre of the text itself and then measuring it against the existing criteria of that particular genre. For example, those reviewers who see the text as an autobiographical narrative find that Corder’s personal voice and memoir style in the book is an indicative and exemplary model of that genre. However, for reviewers who read the text as an historical research study find that those same qualities—personal voice and memoir style—prevent the work from being a solid contribution to historical scholarship because such an approach violates expected historical research and methodologies.

Keith D. Miller speaks specifically to concept of genre in his essay, “The

Radical, Feminist Rhetoric of Jim Corder.” Miller explains, “Corder constantly 148

torpedoes genre distinctions between personal essays and scholarship, occasionally bemoaning others’ failure to blend the expressive with the intellectual” (60). Miller adds:

Corder once told me: “All taxonomies leak.” But instead of constructing a better ship with tighter compartments, he places dynamite into the leaking holes of every available taxonomy and genre category. Exploding cargo-holds disorients readers by disrupting their expectations, which hinge on the stability of well- defined genres. (63)

Miller specifically highlights Corder’s defiance of genre expectations within Hunting

Lieutenant Chadbourne, suggesting that “he fuses autobiography, postmodern rhetoric, and nineteenth-century American historiography” (62). The resulting concoction of mixed modes and blended genres makes the book as much of a history of Lt.

Chadbourne as it is Corder’s argument against conventional academic discourse, particularly in the realm of historical research. Miller suggests that “to raid different genres and disciplines is to argue indirectly by prodding readers to ask: ‘What is going on?’” (64). That is, Corder wishes to challenge the ways that scholars conceive of and write about knowledge and history, and Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne embodies both his critique and his argument for an alternative approach, one that “invite[s] a reader to share his process of contemplating and weighing. Just as he patiently explores a problem, he implicitly argues, so should a reader” (64).

However, particularly because he eschews pre-established genre structures,

“Corder generates momentum by creating the impression of thinking aloud,” which allows him to subvert “standard academic discourse by creating a sense of puzzling over a problem with a reader instead of handing her solutions” (Miller 60, 62). Corder transgresses traditional notions of academic style, methods of research, and forms of 149

argument while he enacts a different approach to scholarly writing. Miller describes

Corder’s view on academic discourse in a way that points to Corder’s desire to resist prevailing academic communication practices while embodying another perspective

(attitude) on academic inquiry:

He seems to whisper to readers: You think that academic writing is neutral and impersonal, but I'll show you that it's deeply personal. You assume that scholars love to display knowledge, but I'll openly confess ignorance. You believe academics prize consistency, but I'll directly and repeatedly contradict myself. (70)

To say it another way, Corder’s language unveils as much about the author’s perspective on writing it as it uncovers the subject he is writing.

Because Corder’s writing precipitated disparate reviews among scholars, I situate my analysis within the context of contemporary academic discourse practices, using the concept of genre or, more accurately, the genre function as a means to discover a reason why Jim Corder’s work has been interpreted and understood and often dismissed, particularly in the book reviews written about Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne.

My purpose in analyzing these reviews is not an attempt to fit Corder’s work within a particular genre framework; nor is it an effort to categorize his style according to given criteria or to enrich or expand theories of genre criticism. Instead I turn to scholars such as Carolyn R. Miller and Anis Bawarshi and their discussions of genre and the genre function, respectively, to analyze the reviews of Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne. My assumption is that the genre function is a recursive process that establishes the conventional expectations shaping discourse practices—that is, the genre function is inherently rhetorical. Within the realm of academic discourse, the available means of 150

persuasion for scholars—as writers and readers—are thus regulated by the genre function, and then perpetuated by convention.

Jim Corder’s rhetorical impact within the academic community has been determined largely by the genre function, limiting the impression that his writings have made both inside and outside of the discipline and stifling the potential for his writings to contribute to broader scholarly discussions. In “Genre as Social Action,” Carolyn R.

Miller offers one of the clearer arguments for a rhetorical perspective on genre, particularly within academic discourse. Rather than defining genre as a system of categories and taxonomies for organizing discourse types, she argues that “an understanding of genre can help account for the way we encounter, interpret, react to, and create particular texts” (151). Anis Bawarshi in “The Genre Function,” extends Carolyn

Miller’s discussion, adding that her approach to genre also illuminates “the linguistic, sociological, and psychological assumptions underlying and shaping these texts” (335).

Thus Bawarshi complicates her rhetorical characterization of genre because he points to the author-audience-subject relationship and “the role that genre plays in the constitution not only of texts but of their contexts, including the identities of those who write them and those who are represented within them” (335).

Bawarshi and Miller’s discussion perspective become germane in the analysis of reviews about Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, as a means of understanding the rhetorical situation surrounding its publication. Exploring the relationship among Corder, his academic audience, and the context of academic inquiry and production shows that the genre function within academic discourse practices provide scholars with the means 151

“to recognize, enact, and reproduce various social practices, relations, and identities. We are all ‘authors’ and ‘writers’ alike, subject to the genre function” (Bawarshi 339).

Viewed through the lens of Miller’s piece, as well as Bawarshi’s, Corder’s discussion interrogates the discursive, socially constructed, ideologically bound, historically situated set of conventions that establish the assumptions and expectations associated with and embodied by the genre of academic discourse. Therefore these two perspectives provide a useful framework for isolating Corder’s uses of genre and determining how these genre distinctions function rhetorically not only in the overall structure and content of Hunting for Lieutenant Chadbourne but also in Corder’s capacity to persuade other scholars in the academic community.

As I have said earlier in the discussion, Corder makes very plain his philosophical and existential perspectives on language, knowledge acquisition, and scholarship. He relates those concepts specifically to history and how we remember it, record it, tell it to ourselves and each other—particularly as scholars. On the surface, these moves would describe the writing of many who have earned fame and notoriety among scholars. So, I am still left with my original question: Why has Corder been so dismissed or misunderstood by other scholars, both in the discipline of rhetoric and composition and in other fields? And, in what way does the genre function influence the scholars who reviewed Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne? In the introduction to their edited collection of Corder’s writings, Keith D. Miller and James S. Baumlin offer an answer that seems to point to genre or the genre function as determining factor in how scholars receive Corder’s writing: 152

Some readers may have underestimated him, because his work appeared at times too simple: eschewing jargon, he preferred to mask his complex thought in a colloquial idiom. Some may have dismissed him for the opposite reason, because his work resisted summary and seemed too complicated. And others may have balked at his constant, presumptuous tactic of transgressing the sacrosanct barriers separating disciplines, methods, and genres. (2)

I think the key point in Miller and Baumlin’s assessment of these various reactions to

Corder is the implicitness of the genre function. Perhaps people’s reaction to Hunting

Lieutenant Chadbourne is based on the fact that they just do not know what to do with him, where to put him in relation to the rest of their own discipline or academia in general. Among the reviews I analyzed, the majority of critics speak of a similar difficulty: What kind of book is it? Yet some people see the lack of categorization potential as a redeeming quality of the book. For instance, on the book’s dust jacket, Pat

C. Hoy claims: It works as a textbook, as a novel, as a philosophical and philological treatise, as the only history book that is fit to read. It cuts through more b. s. (with elegance) than anything I’ve read in twenty years.” However, in his review of the book, historian James McCaffrey directly states, “The basic information in Hunting Lieutenant

Chadbourne would make a very interesting journal article or conference paper, but as a book, it fails” (601). I think the stark contrast between these two viewpoints derive entirely from the genre function, given that McCaffrey names other genre contexts in which the text might be more successful. McCaffrey adds, “One result is a good look at the life of West Point cadets of the early 1840s. Unfortunately this is one of only a few bright spots in an otherwise tedious work” (601). Whereas Hoy sees the blend of 153

approaches that Corder embodies in the text as one of its defining qualities, McCaffrey finds Corder’s work to be laborious, and unnecessarily convoluted.

Other historians make similar claims as McCaffrey, seeing Corder’s attempt to construct an historical perspective on Lt. Chadbourne through a process of reflection, meditation, and repetition as distracting or detrimental to the book’s success as an historical research, particularly because he does not demonstrate traditional historical research methodology. Scott Casper explains, “Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne lacks elements that the historian expects. Long extracts from letters, memoirs, and other sources appear with scant analysis; documentation is sketchy (a brief biographical note lists sources consulted); and an index would have been useful”

(271). Kent Gramm also points to Corder’s work as a personal essay—not as the result of historical research—“His book is a first-person narrative of his search, written as a personal essay rather than as a historical monograph” (239). And, like McCaffrey, he points to another genre category for Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne: “This book is itself postmodern in subsuming historical investigation under a personal narrative, and it is accordingly self-conscious”; Gramm concludes, “In the growing subgenre of the historical personal essay, this book deserves notice for its suggestive handling of fundamental issues” (240). Based on the comments of these two reviewers, it becomes clear that the success of Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne depends on its genre classification, particularly whether it is considered historical research or some other kind of writing. Edward Ranson observes:

The hunt for Lieutenant Chadbourne has not thrown up any new information about the causes, course or consequences of the 154

Mexican War of 1846-8, but as the story of one man’s desire, almost obsession, to find out about someone in the past it has a certain fascination. (450)

History scholar James Rice also recognizes that “Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne is as much the story of Corder’s quest as it is of Chadbourne’s brief life, and it is as much a meditation on alienation from and connection with the past as it is a work of history”

(116). However, he does not wish to classify the book as a history, because it involves so much of the personal perspective of the author. Ironically, Rice argues, “Hunting

Lieutenant Chadbourne cannot be labeled as ‘history,’ but it speaks to the concerns of professional historians and antiquarians alike” (117). I find it interesting that Rice would recommend the book to professional historians, but bemoans the fact that the work is in itself not a history. And Scott Casper says essentially the same:

“But historians will not be Corder’s principal audience, and adopting the historian’s methods was not his aim. Indeed by refusing to adopt them he challenges the reader, historian or not, to reconsider his own assumptions about what ‘history’ means” (271-72).

Yet not every history scholar reads Corder’s work in exactly the same way; others view Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne as significantly useful to the work of historical scholars, specifically because he offers “a fascination exploration of the historical method” and makes “a valuable contribution to the study of the philosophy of history”

(Carlson 92). Bruce Dinges lauds Corder’s approach in the work, pointing out its importance to history scholars, and argues that

Corder leaves readers with much to ponder about the nature of history and the meaning of the past: how do we use sources to reconstruct a life and time? What is the role of memory and how can we tell when it leads us astray? Do texts convey an author’s 155

meaning or do we interpret them to suit ourselves? And, when all is said and done, what pieces of history forever elude our grasp? Any historian worth his or her salt has wrestled with these questions. (688)

In Journal of the West, Erik Carlson speaks of the book’s relevance to the work of history researchers, regardless of how the books is categorized in terms of genre, and writes that

Jim W. Corder’s Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne is a monograph on the philosophy of history. Though the topic concerns Western history, the book is rather a thought piece on the use of the historical method. Corder [. . .] uses the short life of Lieutenant Theodore Lincoln Chadbourne [. . .] to examine the intricacies of historical methodology. (92)

Thus Carlson interprets Corder’s transgression of traditional historical research methods and writing conventions as his way of critiquing those very practices—not as failing to demonstrate them appropriately. Michael Hill echoes Carlson’s perspective in his review, arguing that Corder’s “quest for information constitutes a series of mediations on the essential unknowablity of the past, a reverie on the capriciousness of historical research”

(139). Philip Parotti notices a similar approach in Corder’s writing and the book:

One finds splendid essays on memory, history, epistemology, literary theory, and biography, essays which test our abilities to recreate, remember, and know, essays which push the limits of such capacities right up to the heroic edge of the unknown and the unknowable. (102-03)

It seems as though some history scholars are comfortable with Corder’s attempt to push the envelope and to critique conventional research practices, both in history and in other disciplines, while others take issue with is style, both in his methods and writing style.

For example, Michael Hill explains: “The data is presented to the reader just as it came to Corder, which means that much of it is repetitious. The process with its attendant 156

frustrations and complications is laid plain” without making a judgment in one way or another about Corder’s choice to do so. However, other scholars receive Corder’s writing style quite negatively. James McCaffrey explains:

The author spends a considerable amount of time trying to learn the exact details of Lt. Chadbourne’s death by reproducing several sometimes conflicting first-hand accounts of the battle of Resaca de la Palma and then restating much of what he has just quoted. (601)

Kent Gramm offers a similar concern in his review:

At times, however, the style and organization are too self- conscious, and the repetitions of observations, phrases, sentences, even full texts of letters, eventually become irritating. The book interestingly recounts the processes of investigation by Corder and another researcher, though at times in too great detail and at too great length. (240)

In one of my favorite passages from the reviews, Ralph Wooster explains,

“Unfortunately, the rambling, loosely organized and often repetitious narrative frequently detracts from the story. More careful editing would have improved the volume” (6).

Wooster sees Corder’s stylistic moves as mistakes—as lazy or sloppy editing—as the other scholars imply in the above excerpts.

All of these reviews—which come from history journals—offer an interesting perspective on Corder’s writing in Hunting Lieutenant Chadbourne, specifically in terms of genre and the genre function. Most negative criticism focuses on Corder’s lack of adherence to certain expectations for history writing; most positive criticism focuses on the same concerns, observing that because Corder breaks these genre expectations, he is able to critique them and allow his readers the same possibility. 157

DELIVERY: A CORDERIAN PEDAGOGY IN COMPOSITION

Delivery (Actio) [Rhetoric] extends beyond craft to speak to us in many ways. Because it does, because it is not just information, nor merely a collection of craft-building exercises, but also a lively and provocative means of organizing experiences, it belongs in the center of concern where curricula are planned and enacted. (Uses of Rhetoric 149) The first four chapters enabled me to identify elements of Corderian rhetoric and to synthesize these various concepts as they emerged in his writings across several decades. In chapter one and chapter two, I trace Corder’s discovery of rhetoric in the context of literary criticism and his gravitation toward classical rhetoric and the rhetorical canons in general (primarily invention) and Aristotelian ethos in particular. In chapter three, I cover Corder’s extended treatment of rhetoric as the informing basis for the teaching of writing, theories of argumentation, and the means to extend the questions and concerns of rhetorical study into other academic disciplines and beyond scholarly audiences. In chapter four I focus on his last monograph, Hunting Lieutenant

Chadbourne, an historical narrative in which Corder grapples again with theories of rhetorical invention and ethos in his discussion about the research process, while he simultaneously embodies much of the theory he articulates in his earlier writings and speaks to academic and non-academic audiences. Finally, the last chapter affords an opportunity to consider ways that Corderian rhetoric might inform pedagogy, particularly

(although not exclusively) in the teaching of rhetoric and writing within graduate and undergraduate classes.

Corder’s work deeply informs all of my teaching. Any pedagogical choice I make.

Every teaching approach I embody. Whichever classroom practice I value. Whether or 158

not I focus on him specifically. However, over the past year, I taught two courses in which I deliberately engage a Corderian rhetorical pedagogy, and I use a specific selection of Corder’s writing as a theoretical lens to design the content and assignments of both courses. I include Corder’s writings as required reading materials for both classes as well. The first course, an undergraduate advanced composition class, I taught during the spring 2009 semester. The second course, a graduate modern rhetorical theories seminar, I cotaught in apprenticeship with Professor Theresa J. Enos during the fall 2009 semester.

I considered neither course as a formal research site, where I intend to study the students as subjects of Corderian rhetorical pedagogy, and I did not collect samples of their writing for later analysis. Instead I hoped to engage students in a study of and conversation about writing that is framed by Corder’s perspective on rhetorical theory studies and academic research methods and scholarly discourse practices. In researching and writing the first four chapters, I spent considerable time mulling over various pieces of Corder’s writings on my own, and I sought to bring the theoretical issues and questions that Corder raises into discussion with students in the advanced writing class, as well as in the graduate seminar. Therefore, the purpose here in discussing my approach in these courses is not to report on data that I have collected, measured, or interpreted in a formal research study; my goal is to demonstrate possible ways to connect Corder’s rhetorical theories with undergraduate and graduate pedagogy in rhetoric and composition studies, by showing how Corderian rhetoric informs the curriculum design for specific courses.

Corder’s essential argument that rhetoric functions as an organizing principle and method 159

of inquiry that is relevant to any research question or scholarly investigation establishes the basic theoretical assumption that shapes the work in both courses.

However, in this chapter, I choose to focus primarily on the undergraduate course,

Advanced Composition, for several reasons. First, the undergraduate course is more structured, because it is one of several different upper-level writing courses offered in the university’s writing program, with specific goals already established in the official course catalog for undergraduate studies. Second, the undergraduate course provides a focus on advanced writing, which freed me from having to negotiate the established curriculum in first-year composition theory specifically and to move beyond the universally required course designed largely for young, inexperienced college freshmen. Instead these students are farther along in their studies; overall, they represent a range of disciplinary backgrounds in the humanities and sciences, and they elect to take the course as a part of their major, whether in English or another field. Third, the undergraduate course offers a chance for me to discuss several types of writing assignments from the class, highlighting specific concepts that emerge when engaging a Corderian rhetorical lens in the analysis of various discourse artifacts and genres.

In the graduate course, the writing assignments are less structured (three short response papers throughout the semester and a final seminar paper at the end of the semester), and the parameters for the writing assignments are much less specific. Each student gravitates toward one or more theoretical threads they glean from reading

Corder’s work and crafts a unique approach to writing about Corder in connection to broader issues or concerns of the profession and discipline of rhetoric and composition. 160

Unlike the undergraduate course, the writing assignments are not designed or based specifically on Corder’s writing or his rhetorical perspective in the graduate course.

Rather, Corder’s writing functions as both the theoretical lens and the object of study, and all student writing focuses on the work of Jim Corder. In the undergraduate course,

Corder’s writing serves as the springboard to move beyond him as the object of study.

I provide a specific discussion of the undergraduate course in this chapter, largely because there are specific course materials and assignments that I can point to as embodying the Corderian approach I hope to illustrate. Also, because I include a much smaller sample of Corder’s writing in the undergraduate class, I have a manageable number of texts to drawn upon now in illustrating my use of these texts in the course. In the graduate course, students read over 75 percent of Corder’s published works (literally hundreds of pages), and the ultimate goal of the course is to explore Corder’s rhetoric as an example of modern rhetorical theory of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. The majority of class discussions and student writing focuses on interpreting and understanding Corder’s rhetoric, rather than using Corderian rhetoric as a basis to initiate other kinds of research and analysis. However, the undergraduate course establishes a situation to invoke Corder’s writing as the informing theoretical rationale to explore the uses of rhetoric in the research and discourse practices of other scholars writing in other contexts as well. The Advanced Composition course provides an environment to enact, to apply, and to initiate a concrete discussion of the same questions and concerns that Corder raises in his writings—the same rhetorical theories and critical perspectives that I explore in the previous chapters—making my discussion of it now 161

more relevant in the broader framework of the dissertation, especially because most of

Corder’s writing on rhetoric and pedagogy emerge from discussions about undergraduate education and in the context of the liberal arts tradition. 162

I. Advanced Composition—Rhetorics of Scholarship

The official university catalog offers the following description for Advanced

Composition: “Study of genre and rhetorical situation; advanced practice in expository writing.” While the wording is specific in some ways—genre, rhetoric, and expository writing are given particular notice—the phrasing of the course description is vague (and perhaps purposefully so). Such flexibility allows individual instructors room to develop at least some of the course content according to their own areas of expertise and theoretical orientations. And such is the case with my desire to bring Corder’s perspective into a discussion of academic discourse practices and research writing conventions, to connect

Corder’s theoretical approach with a study of rhetorics of scholarship, academic argumentation, and modes of knowledge production. Interpreting the course description via Corder, I designed a sequence of writing assignments and in-class discussions about the research methods and writing practices of scholars across the broader, global intellectual community. Specifically, students use Corderian rhetoric as a lens to analyze a range of scholarly publications, including research articles, book reviews, and academic essays. Genre, rhetorical situation (i.e., observing the relationships among authors, audiences, and texts), and Aristotelian rhetoric (i.e., noting the structure, logic, and presentation of arguments and the ways that authors emerge to their audiences—ethos) provide the critical vocabulary for class discussion and the tools for rhetorical analysis and for the writing that students produce in the course.

A Corderian approach in the teaching of Advanced Composition foregrounds the notion of rhetorical inquiry from the beginning, one that enables and encourages students 163

to observe how communication and research practices work in different parts of the university and in various communities around the globe. In addition, because Corder’s perspective perpetually seeks to connect rhetoric with discussions and audiences outside of the discipline and beyond the academic community, Advanced Composition provides a context to consider theories of language in other disciplines and to explore perspectives on language produced within other contexts such as the public sphere.

In the sections that follow, I explain the theoretical rationale of the Advanced

Composition curriculum, pointing to the specific texts that I select from Corder’s writing to form the foundation of the course and describe how I incorporate these same texts into the course reading materials. Next I discuss several literary and linguistic perspectives I use to broaden the number of rhetorical tools available for rhetorical analysis and writing in the course. Then I describe the course theme, a topic that establishes a common connection among the text artifacts and provides a frame of reference for rhetorical analysis, particularly when viewed through a Corderian lens. Last I offer examples of class discussion questions and writing assignment prompts that illustrate specific instances of how Corder’s theoretical perspective shapes the curriculum design of

Advanced Composition. 164

II. Advanced Composition: A Corderian Theoretical Rationale

The design of Advanced Composition works within the constraints of the prescribed curriculum of the university’s writing program while it draws on the theories of Jim Corder, particularly his writings about higher-education pedagogy, the liberal arts tradition, and academic research and discourse practices. I invoke Corder’s repeated assertion that the study of rhetoric provides a means to understand uses of language, a capacity to distinguish among different forms of language or various modes of discourse within a range of contexts, and a heuristic to discover how language constructs knowledge and reinforces cultural ideologies and practices.

It is important to note that Corder’s notion of rhetoric is more spacious than the definitions often offered in contemporary scholarship in rhetoric studies, which becomes clear even in his fundamental assumption that rhetoric itself provides a way to engage broader ways of knowing and using language, and this commodious perspective is evident throughout most of his writings, particularly in those moments when he comes the closest to offering a definition of rhetoric. In “From Rhetoric into Other Studies,”

Corder echoes language from some earlier writings in his claims for the enabling quality of rhetoric to craft and critique language. He defines rhetoric by pointing to its pedagogical function, and he proposes an undergraduate curriculum based on Greek and

Roman classical theories of rhetoric. Early in the essay, Corder suggests the great potential of applying classical theories of rhetoric to a general discussion of language when he uses the five canons of rhetoric as a metaphorical structure to construct a basic philosophy of language. Corder writes: 165

All statements come from somewhere, however knowable or undiscoverable, emerge as structures and styles, however deliberate or accidental, and occur on some occasion for some audience, however untimely, however small. Any line of inquiry, any field of interest, any subject matter, then, can be taken as a rhetoric or as a set of rhetorics. That, I think, makes it reasonable and possible to use the vocabulary of rhetoric to discuss any human interest. (95)

Corder’s choice to make use of the canons in this manner is compelling because his audience does not require prior knowledge of classical rhetoric to understand his meaning in this passage; his readers need only to consider their prior experiences with language in the most general terms. And, for audience members who bring a knowledge base of

Aristotelian rhetoric to their reading, Corder offers a perspective on classical rhetoric that reveals its usefulness to those outside the discipline, beyond the realm of rhetoric historians and rhetorical analysis.

Corder extends his application of classical rhetorical theory in his proposal for a curriculum structured over the ancient canons of rhetoric: invention, style, arrangement, memory, and delivery. In an essay that he wrote a decade earlier, “Rhetoric and Literary

Study: Some Lines of Inquiry,” Corder describes his rational to use the canons of rhetoric as a model for distinguishing among different types of courses within a curriculum. For example, Corder draws on three canons—invention, arrangement, and style—to describe certain course elements, explaining that “some courses are most valuable as inventive resources, some as displays of structures, and some as means of acquiring enabling styles” (19).

In the more recent essay, Corder proposes an entire curriculum based on a study of rhetoric and derived specifically from the five canons of rhetoric. He explains his 166

reason for invoking rhetoric in such a significant way, as the result of a series of questions that he ponders and presents to readers:

What might happen if, for a moment, we abandoned our largely canonical—that is departmental and disciplinary—curricula? If we let curricula become rhetorics overtly, rather than remaining covert rhetorics, as they largely do now? If we left off supposing that any single set of texts is authority and left off pretending that we can “cover” any subject? If we imagined, not a canonical, but a conceptual set of curricula? (100)

Because he establishes the subject of rhetoric itself as the course of this hypothetical curriculum, Corder demonstrates the possibilities for intellectual enlargement enabled through the study of rhetoric. His words are revolutionary! After all, he is suggesting the near complete dismantling of the present academic institutional structure, and he openly accuses scholars—himself included—of “pretending” in their work. Meanwhile, he seems merely to be tossing out ideas for his readers; as though he is just brainstorming or even ranting a little, he adeptly constructs a radical rhetorical pedagogy. Yet there remains both space and flexibility within his vision to accommodate an infinite number of subjects, theoretical perspectives, and avenues for further inquiry, particularly because he emphasizes the need for a conceptual rather than canonical curricular model .

Ironically, Corder uses the five canons of rhetoric to create ,“not a canonical, but a conceptual” curriculum—but I am confident that Corder is aware of this little linguistic pun in the midst of his discussion because it reveals how our use of language often is marked with contradiction. More importantly, Corder answers the questions he posits earlier, with a curriculum that he divides into seven progressive stages of learning, each stage incorporating one or more of the canons of rhetoric, and offering the possibility for 167

one or two or many courses to comprise each stage. Starting with canons of invention and style, and progressing through the other canons, Corder follows the same sequence that

Aristotle outlines in his treatment of the five canons, which also provides the logic for how the stages are ordered and numbered. The result is a list of seven distinct stages, each with its own title:

1. World Views and Informing Premises; 2. Modes of Thinking in Human Discourse; 3. Uses of the Past; 4. Relationships and Distances in Discourse; 5. Structures in Human Thought, Discourse and Art; 6. Style and Identity; and 7. Occasions in Human Discourse. (101)

Overall, the stages are arranged by increasing levels of development—each stage building on the concepts introduced or revisited in the previous one—a progressive sequence much (if not entirely) like the Progymnasmata. Corder explains that “the first four stages are amplifications and explorations in invention, the fifth is given to structure, the sixth to style, and the last to audiences and occasions,” creating a nonprescriptive scheme that “predicts a cumulative effect and calls for connections, and it is flexible”

(101).

While the Advanced Composition curriculum design draws on elements of all seven stages of learning, most of the theoretical perspective is based on the fifth, sixth, and seventh stages, primarily because of issues that emerge in the analysis of genre in academic writing and the opportunity for students to gain a critical perspective on various manifestations of language use, specifically within the scholarly research community. 168

Corder does not use the word “genre” specifically, but he speaks to the concerns of genre analysis in his discussion of the fifth stage of learning, which attempts to

reach some understanding of structures as diverse as epic, tragedy, comedy, satire, novelistic forms, electronic forms, referential forms, including scientific, historical, and social texts, expressive forms, from lyrics to advertising , and persuasive forms, including didactic poetry, oratory, sermons, advertising. (101)

Corder continues, adding that the sixth stage “inquire[s] about the nature of diverse styles and explore[s] the ways in which assumptions, worldviews, modes of thinking, uses of the past, relationships, and structures manifest themselves in styles,” and that the seventh stage “concentrates on understanding diverse occasions for discourse and performance”

(101).

It might appear that Corder’s language in these selections is too vague and abstract, without the aid of a specific context or situation to engage Corder’s point of view; however he sticks closely to the canons of rhetoric and their meanings to offer the explanation of each stage of learning. One interesting aspect of Corder’s treatment of the canons of rhetoric is evident in his discussion of memory—or, actually, the lack of such a discussion. Instead Corder focuses on a related, more relevant, category—audiences and occasions. Traditional concerns of memory involve spoken language in historical contexts with few communication technologies or abundant mechanisms for recording language. Of course Corder grapples extensively with the concept of memory in more complicated ways in other writings (see chapter four), but in his discussion of the canons as an organizing structure for educational curricula, Corder instead discusses issues of audience and occasions. 169

Over the course of the seven stages of learning, Corder connects the canons of rhetoric in the same progressive mode as Aristotle, but he complicates the structure by highlighting the cyclical—reciprocal, recursive—relationships that connect the seven stages to each other. In other words, he shows how each stage perpetually remains connected to and built upon the stages before and after it, making questions such as: How might style or arrangement inform invention—just as invention influences style and arrangement? or How might a change in structure affect the inventive resources available to an author? The seven stages of Corder’s curriculum show the interconnected elements of each level, and his description of each stage reflects his desire to demonstrate not just the inherent relationship among the canons of rhetoric, but the usefulness of rhetoric in curriculum design. Rhetorical analysis provides the means to analyze various uses of language, and Corder explains that “through the study of selected works from diverse fields, from written works of antiquity to electronic forms of today, we might explore the ways in which premises and assumptions and philosophies inform and shape discourse”

(101).

In the curriculum design of Advanced Composition, I incorporated elements of

Corder’s stages of learning within the discussion and writing assignments, and I focused on different stages at different points during the semester. The overall goal of the course is to provide students with an opportunity to explore, analyze, and practice various modes of academic writing; and Corder’s rhetorical perspective, specifically his use of the canons of rhetoric, provides a model to design a course that interrogates the research 170

processes of scholars, investigates their modes of communication, and observe their ways of recording, preserving, and increasing knowledge.

Two articles, “From Rhetoric Into Other Studies” and “Rhetoric and Literary

Study: Some Lines of Inquiry,” provide the overall framework and rhetorical perspective for the course design of Advanced Composition. However, I draw on three more essays – two that Corder cowrote with rhetoric scholar James S. Baumlin during the 1980s— to identify specific rhetorical concerns and issues facing scholars, particularly in the realm of research and publication practices. The two collaborative pieces, “Opinion Is, of

Course, Bad; Research, on the Other Hand, Is Quite Good: The Tyranny (or Is It Myth?) of Methodology” and “Lamentations for—and Hopes against—Authority in Education” are published in education journals.

The former functions as evidence of Corder’s treatment of rhetoric as a spacious philosophy of language, a means to observe the inherently synecdochic, incomplete nature of discourse, specifically within practices of knowledge-making and history- writing situated within and shaped by individual—and often overlapping—narratives that determine the boundaries of language use within the scholarly research community. The latter provides a rhetorical situation for conducting analysis and composing arguments in reading and writing assignments, one that advocates a tentative notion of truth while it resists traditional uses of genre conventions and rejects restrictive research methodologies and discourse practices that limit the potential of academic scholarship.

The third essay, “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love,” published in one of the first volumes of Rhetoric Review, offers perhaps the most definitive definition of 171

rhetoric and a clear view of Corder’s writing style because he offers a unique perspective on argument, the uses of narrative, and rhetoric as a metaphor for love. He violates expected genre conventions of academic writing—he uses first person, he questions his authority, he talks about academic topics in non-academic ways, he repeats himself, he embeds extensive block quotations from the words of others in his writing.

During the first week of class, while discussing the course syllabus and other required introductions, I describe the theoretical rationale informing the course, including my desire to engage the rhetorical perspective of Jim W. Corder specifically. I highlight

Corder’s observation that “literary works are intersections where traffic crosses from many rhetorical universes—those of the author, his age, his contemporaries, his forbears, his created characters, and those of readers then and since” (“Rhetoric and Literary

Study”15). Rhetorical analysis provides the primary methodology for exploring a range of texts and authors throughout the semester. I assigned the three articles I discuss in the above section during the first week as well, emphasizing Corder’s perspective on genre and academic writing, his critique of scholarly research and publication practices, and his belief that rhetorical analysis can inform language study in any context (See Appendix

B).

To accompany Corder’s perspective in these first two articles, I include his well- known essay “Argument as Emergence, Rhetoric as Love” because it provides such a useful a model of academic writing that seeks to subvert traditional notions of genre and to challenge conventional expectation of acceptable academic discourse practices. Also,

Corder’s discussion of narrative provides one more rhetorical element for students to 172

consider in their examination of scholarly writing, specifically connecting concepts like argument and narrative to discussions of rhetoric and ethos, and he establishes the importance of exploring the language of our own narratives as we attempt to understand the languages of others who embody their own narratives. Corder writes that our

“narratives, which include our pasts, accompany us and exist in our statements and exercise their influence whether or not we are aware of the influence” (17). Placing narrative (See Appendix A) in the context of genre and rhetorical situation presents a unique opportunity for students to observe how scholars draw on available inventive resources (See Appendix B) to establish ethos in their writings as well as the chance to explore the ethos present in their own writing and to become aware of how to convey their ideas about the world as they perceive it to others (See Appendix C).

After establishing the critical research lens for analysis in the course, and isolating specific theoretical concerns—Corder’s rhetorical perspective and theories borrowed from primarily genre and register theory—students have a framework to begin a systematic study of academic discourse practices in the US and abroad. While there are numerous topics that could easily offer a wide range of texts and artifacts for analysis, one object of study stands above the rest, particularly in terms of the sheer volume of writing that has emerged over the last decade on the subject—critical perspectives on

Harry Potter (See Appendix A). The books themselves—as well as the growing number of critical essays in the academy and the array of writings emerging from mainstream media about the novels—provide a useful starting place for close textual analysis and a 173

solid introduction to academic discourse and how writing practices are shaped within the scholarly research community.

My choice of theoretical perspectives (lenses), including both Corder’s writings as well as scholarship in other disciplines, as well as my decision to focus on a study of academic writings about the Harry Potter novels, illustrates a Corderian pedagogy.

Because so many scholars have written about the Harry Potter phenomenon across all academic disciplines, Corder’s vision of rhetoric as a research methodology relevant in any field provides a useful structure for examining writings within different academic contexts (See Appendix B). And, because all of the authors are writing about the Harry

Potter novels (or some result or product of the Harry Potter “phenomenon”, there is a consistent theme that connects all of the course readings, enabling students to explore how scholars in specific disciplines research and produce new knowledge through their writing.

Thus, in general, I designed the Advanced Composition curriculum to introduce students to scholarly inquiry and writing within the university community, to develop their awareness of academic discourse, and to improve their ability to read and write at the college level. This course design emphasizes Corder’s rhetorical perspective on academic inquiry—that is, writing to discover, create, and communicate meaning—and to explore the rhetorical contexts and inventive resources available to scholars in different disciplines. Students study a variety of texts and discourses from both the public sphere and the academic community (See Appendix D), and they add their own voices to these same conversations through their own research and writing (See Appendix E). 174

Using Corder’s rhetorical perspective, in addition to several theoretical perspectives on the genre function emerging from the field of linguistics, the Advanced Composition curriculum asks students to consider how the Harry Potter books have been able to capture audiences all the way from literary scholars to middle-school children (and even younger!), and it challenges them to gain a keen insight about the differences between academic and public discourse. In addition, students examine questions such as: How does the concept of academic inquiry shape and influence writing with the university community? How is writing from within the public sphere different or similar? (See

Appendix C). Specifically, how do scholars read and write about the Harry Potter novels

(See Appendix D) and how do their writings compare with the articles of journalists or popular authors writing about Harry Potter? The rich connections and ideas evident in the

Harry Potter novels as well as in the subsequent writings about the books provide almost endless potential for academic inquiry and exploration.

In the next section, I explore several theoretical frameworks emerging outside of the discipline of rhetoric and composition, particularly in the field of linguistics, that offer particularly useful perspectives in studying the rhetoric of academic discourse, specifically in terms of Harry Potter scholarship. 175

III. Advanced Composition: Extensions in Genre and Literary Theories

I have had two opportunities to explore linguistic theory in my graduate studies: a seminar in semiotics and language and a seminar in linguistics and literature. While I learned that semiotic theory is not solely under the ownership of the discipline of linguistics—and, in fact, that many scholars make the exact opposite claim—the majority of concepts that I encountered during that course were largely informed by linguistic perspectives. And the course in linguistics and literature, which began with an introduction to linguistics, pragmatics, and discourse analysis, has given me a second shot at negotiating linguistic theory and how it might inform my own work in rhetoric and composition. The linguistic approaches that resonate the loudest with me are those that appear inherently rhetorical, that is, those linguistic approaches that illuminate the contextual and ideological underpinnings of a text and emphasize the relationship between the audience and a text (i.e., the effects or perception of a text).

Genre and register theory has emerged as the most useful linguistic frameworks for enriching and complicating not only discussions about the rhetoric of academic writing in general but on the analysis of scholarship on Harry Potter in particular.

Because I have structured the Advanced Composition curriculum to facilitate rhetorical analysis of both academic and public discourse about the novels, genre and register theory provides a framework that enables students to form a coherent analysis of texts across multiple genres and to make comparisons and draw conclusions about the rhetorical strategies unique to each context. 176

In his discussion of the concept of genre, John Swales begins with a caveat:

“Genre is a term which [. . .] one approaches with some trepidation [. . .]. The word is highly attractive—but extremely slippery” (33). For me the slipperiness is what makes studying genre compelling, specifically in the context of academic discourse. Not surprisingly, Swales points out that genre analysis has been a hard pill to swallow for linguists because of its elusive, complicating rather than simplifying features. Generally, theorists in linguistics strive to narrow, isolate, categorize, label, describe, and explain language from a microlevel perspective; rhetoricians, on the other hand, investigate language from a macrolevel point of view. Perhaps, then, the reason that genre analysis is so appealing for me to draw on in the course design is that it involves an exploration of language from a global rather than local orientation. Couture’s treatment of genre and register, as summarized by Swales, seems to echo a similar perspective: “Registers impose constraints at the linguistic levels of vocabulary and syntax, whereas genre constraints operate at the level of discourse” (41).

Not surprisingly, Swales indicates that register has been a long-established concept in the field of linguistics, and genre has been viewed predominantly as an

“appendage [of register] found to be necessary as a result of important studies of text structure” (41). Swales’ identification of “important studies of text structure” refers to the social context and ideological underpinnings that influence and shape texts, notions that are essential parts of a discussion of genre and register—and rhetoric, too. Yet the concept that emerges for rhetoricians as the most salient feature of genre analysis—not only from Swales’ perspective but also from Eggins and Martin’s—is how a discussion 177

of both genre and register necessarily involves a consideration of linguistic choice. In their plea for a systematic methodology for register and genre analysis, Eggins and

Martinargue that such an approach “must provide an account of how situational and cultural context are expressed systematically in language choices” (237). Therefore because genre analysis integrates a discussion of social context and model of linguistic choices, the resulting theoretical framework provides a useful heuristic and vocabulary to inform and complicate a discussion of rhetoric.

Eggins and Martin also stress that “each text appears to carry with it some influences from the context in which it was produced. Context, we could say, gets ‘into’ text by influencing the words and structures that text-producers use” (231). The connection to context, and the social values that inform that context, makes genre analysis so useful in rhetorical analysis, especially when that analysis involves various forms of texts from different rhetorical situations, but surround the same topic—in my class, using writings about Harry Potter. Therefore, according to Eggins and Martin,

“Register and register are the technical concepts employed to explain the meaning and function of variation between text” (234). Employing register analysis theory in the

ENG306 course gives students a way to explain the “meaning and function of variation between texts” such as the variation between a critical discussion among academics and a more general discussion for a popular audience. That is, students look at the social context of each genre and ask questions like: what do academics value and discuss about the Harry Potter novels compared with editorials or book reviews found in mainstream 178

magazines and newspapers? How is the language similar or different in the two contexts?

How is the text organized, and how long is the text? Who is the audience?

Eggins and Martin’s treatment of the terms associated with register: “field,”

“tenor,” and “mode,” provide students with a vocabulary to described features they discover within, between, and outside of the texts they are analyzing (233). Students puzzle over the complicated relationships between authors and readers, and the ideological influences that affect both the production and reception of the Harry Potter novels and the texts that have emerged in their wake. In most cases, the “field” is the same across each text because all of the discourse is about some aspect of Harry Potter, but students tease out the subtle distinctions found by examining “tenor” (the connections between the participants in the discourse such as author and audience) and “mode” (the material form the discourse takes on such as a website or printed journal article). Eggins and Martin’s references to concepts like “Textual Formality,” “Expression of Attitude,” and “Assumed knowledge” illuminate specific elements evident within the texts that enable students to discern even finer distinctions among textual features (231).

Genre analysis is particularly relevant in the Advanced Composition course because it provides a way into understanding academic discourse. An approach that focuses on genre enables a unique framework for examining multiple texts from multiple perspectives; therefore, students gain a critical insight into academic discourse as they are expected to learn this style in order to be successful college graduates. Genre analysis facilitates a discussion of the difference between form and function: why does academic 179

discourse look as it does? What defines discourse as “academic”? What function does academic discourse serve?

Even introducing the theoretical concept of genre analysis itself encourages students to think about the ideologically laden, socially constructed nature of all texts.

And, perhaps more importantly, the scholarly discussions such as those provided by

Swales and Eggins and Martin illustrate a unique example of academic inquiry. For example, one of the major tasks for scholars in genre analysis is to continually revise and revisit working definitions of the word “genre”—much like rhetoricians constantly trying to define the elusive term “rhetoric.” These theoretical discussions help define for students the idea of writing to complicate and discover new ways of knowing.

In the following section, I return to Corder’s rhetorical perspective on academic inquiry, and I demonstrate how the linguistic concepts of the genre function in particular enhances a rhetorical analysis of writings in a range of academic disciplines, especially when those writings discuss a common subject—in this case, the Harry Potter novels and the writings that have emerged both inside and outside of the academic community about the Harry Potter phenomenon. 180

IV. Advanced Composition—Analytical Methods and Writing Prompts

In “Studying Rhetoric and Teaching School,” Corder offers a corrective to an essential theme often bemoans—a condition among scholars in which we “create false divisions among ourselves, we don’t talk across the boundaries of our disciplines and departments, and [w]e divide ourselves into parts, and then each part or discipline cherishes itself as the only or at least the best source of truth” (23). Beginning with

Corder’s discussion about the arbitrary divisions existing among academic discipline, students explore discourse around a common artifact that facilitates a multiperspectival, interdisciplinary analysis of scholarly writing practices as well as a consideration of the genre conventions, research methodologies, and rhetorical strategies embodied in these academic conversations (See Appendix B).

Genre analysis theory provide one part of the glue that holds together a discussion of the rhetoric of Harry Potter (i.e., the rhetoric of all discourse about the novels) because it provides a language and vocabulary that illuminates the social context and linguistic choices made by each author in each text and rhetorical situation. A discussion of genre and register offers a method of comparing diverse texts and contexts—discerning their similarities and differences—while also emphasizing the interconnected relationships between seemingly separate genres as well as the power of genre to shape discourse and vice versa. Genre analysis offers students a way to navigate the rhetorical dimensions of texts that represent different cultural and ideological functions, yet cover a similar topic.

Likewise, genre analysis offers students in my Harry Potter course a method for 181

rhetorical analysis of academic essays and public writings—in a number of different forms such as websites, print documents, and television commercials.

The following passages represent four texts taken from the course readings. The first two excerpts explore the Christian, religious perspective on the Harry Potter novels; the second two excerpts examine gender issues, relating primarily to the character of

Hermione Granger. For both topics, there is one text taken from an academic publication and one text taken from the public sphere. Genre and register theory becomes germane in this analysis, because these excerpts represent discussions about the same topic, yet they emerge from different genres. In other words, the “field” is the same in both cases, but the “tenor” and “mode” change depending on the genre or rhetorical situation.

Excerpt 1 Christianity and Harry Potter: An Academic Perspective

The Harry Potter books are based on an occult world-view which is potentially as effective and certainly as much based on “reality” as a Christian world-view is; [. . .] that the Christian world-view and the occult Harry Potter world-view consequently cannot coexist. [. . .] If it is to be argued, for example, that the Harry Potter books should be read as symbolically playing with the same concerns as, say, The Bible read also as a symbolic text, then the conditionality on faith becomes immaterial. To see The Bible as bearing symbolic meanings, and to make that the basis of assessing the symbolic meanings of other texts, is a process that may appeal especially to the religious but does not require any a priori and exclusionary faith. Such a method attests to no more than the “reality” of symbolic connotations in any text, literary or religious, and recognizes the social and political significance that is allocated to texts in different contexts. In such a methodology the kid of excess of significance that some believers may attribute to a religious text, and the truth of the values that believers may discern within it, are no more than that religious text’s social and political effect; at any rate those of other faiths, and even the unreligious, may engage with such a critical approach without being excluded. But there hasn’t been much systematic criticism of the Harry Potter books along these lines. (Gupta 74) 182

Excerpt 2 Christianity and Harry Potter: A Public Discourse Perspective

Plyming loves Harry too. The evangelical Anglican parish minister takes the hocus-pocus out of Hogwarts witchcraft and wizardry by finding that the stories are really about character, friendship and the choices between good and evil. "Many Christians have a false understanding of what Harry Potter is about, often through not having read the books," he says. "The same trigger words are used as with astrology and Tarot cards. But go below the surface, and the books are not about witchcraft at all." [. . .] John Smith, the alliance's U.K. director, says, "As Christians we should avoid the knee-jerk reaction of rejecting this piece of fantasy literature. Neither should we ignore the potential dangers of the stories as an unintended apologetic for the occult, particularly among children." He described some of the Harry Potter toys and games as an even greater concern because they tended to "trivialize the occult" and could "encourage children to explore the type of magic which goes beyond the harmless card trick." [. . .] He added: "Christians must look carefully at the burgeoning interest in the supernatural which characterizes Harry Potter's world. For too long we have been embarrassed to give the supernatural core of the Gospel its central place in our proclamation and practice." (Pulford)

Excerpt 3 Gender and Harry Potter: An Academic Perspective

Mendlesohn’s essay in this volume is a detailed analysis of the structure of authority in the Harry Potter books. She concludes that [. . .] “they embody inherently conservative and hierarchical notions of authority clothed in evangelistic mythopoeic fantasy.” According to most radical and contemporary feminists, ‘the feminist notion of social order [is one] free from hierarchy and [are] inherently anti-feminist ideals.’ There must be a caveat to this statement in that not all feminists see hierarchy as specifically male. However, radical-cultural feminists, postmodern feminists, multicultural and global feminists, and ecofeminists would most likely agree with this characterization of male structure. Clearly the administration of Hogwarts is hierarchical and neither Hermione nor any other females have the greatest power or prestige in the story. Because Mendlesohn’s analysis is thorough and because the structure of authority at Hogwarts is visibly anti-feminist, I will not consider the structure of authority itself but rather will focus on how much license Hermione and other females have within the confines of this structure. Are they completely subjugated to the patriarchic structure, or do they have some room to develop their 183

own interests and standards, to ‘be themselves’?” (Dresang 225- 26).

Excerpt 4 Gender and Harry Potter: A Public Discourse Perspective

Harry's fictional realm of magic and wizardry perfectly mirrors the conventional assumption that men do and should run the world. From the beginning of the first Potter book, it is boys and men, wizards and sorcerers, who catch our attention by dominating the scenes and determining the action. Harry, of course, plays the lead. In his epic struggle with the forces of darkness -- the evil wizard Voldemort and his male supporters -- Harry is supported by the dignified wizard Dumbledore and a colorful cast of male characters. Girls, when they are not downright silly or unlikable, are helpers, enablers and instruments. No girl is brilliantly heroic the way Harry is, no woman is experienced and wise like Professor Dumbledore. [. . .] The only female authority figure is beady-eyed, thin-lipped Minerva McGonagall, professor of transfiguration and deputy headmistress of Hogwart's. Stern instead of charismatic, she is described as eyeing her students like "a wrathful eagle." McGonagall is Dumbledore's right hand and she defers to him in every respect. Whereas he has the wisdom to see beyond rules and the power to disregard them, McGonagall is bound by them and enforces them strictly. Although she makes a great effort to keep her feelings under control, in a situation of crisis she loses herself in emotions because she lacks Dumbledore's vision of the bigger picture. (Schoefer).

It is clear from comparing each pair of texts that the shape and function of the text is influenced by the genre from which the texts emerge. For example, in the two excerpts that discuss Christian perspectives on Harry Potter, it is clear that the academic article assumed much prior knowledge on the part of the reader and assumes that the reader is interested in methodological approaches to analyzing religious texts. There is also a specialized, sophisticated use of language throughout the excerpt. On the other hand, the public discourse excerpt assumes little prior knowledge on the part of the reader and incorporates simple, ordinary language. When comparing the two pieces, it is evident that 184

the “field” (topic) is more or less the same, but the “tenor” (relationship between the author and audience) and the “mode” ( the material structure the text takes) differs in each context or genre. Of course, when analyzing the whole texts, students can discern more subtle difference among the “field,” “tenor,” and “mode.”

The same analysis approach can be applied to the second two excerpts that look at gender and the role of women in the Harry Potter books. The academic article assumes an enormous amount of specialized knowledge in feminist theory to understand the text. The public discourse article takes a more informal, conversational tone and interprets the gender issues surrounding the Harry Potter novels in much simpler fashion. Looking at these various examples of discourse, students can begin to see the inherent features of academic discourse—a structure they are supposedly responsible for learning anyway— and explore the motivations and reasons behind what the “tenor” and “mode” indicate in each example and why text appears differently in each genre, depending on ideological and rhetorical influences.

This is just one small example of the kinds analysis that is possible in an

Advanced Composition curriculum, with the discussion of Harry Potter informed by a linguistic and rhetorical perspective, particularly the theories of Jim Corder. The analysis of the four texts above would constitute one lesson plan and would enable the students to analyze different genres in terms of “field,” “tenor,” and “mode,” in other contexts as well.

A specific focus on recent scholarship of and public discourse about the literary phenomenon and popular culture institution, Harry Potter, and his creator, J. K. Rowling, 185

create the opportunity for simultaneous analysis of and contribution to a rich academic discussion, and Corderian rhetoric provides the analytical orientation both for critique and composition of arguments within the context of this world-wide intellectual discussion.

The notion of studying the writing conventions across various academic disciplines and even outside the university community is not new, however using

Corder’s theories of rhetoric, particularly in how a study of rhetoric might shape scholarly inquiry, provides a unique approach in the teaching of Advanced Composition.

Thus students are encouraged to consider the full context for each writer they encounter and to explore not just how scholars research and write in various disciplines, but to investigate why they write as they do as well. In other words, students use the canons of rhetoric, starting with invention, to build an understanding of the resources and writing strategies available to individuals working within various academic contexts, and students move through the other canons such as style and arrangement to gain insight into how each author shapes his or her research questions and methods of inquiry as well as how writers use discourse conventions and stylistic moves to establish ethos and to craft a convincing claim or advance a particular argument. 186

CONCLUSION

Because Corder’s body of work is so vast and mostly unexplored, I have carved out a lifetime of future work and research for myself. I have already spent considerable time tracking down out-of-print books and articles, unpublished manuscripts, textbooks, and pieces he wrote for journals outside of English studies, and this project marks the beginning of my attempt to demonstrate not only the viability of Corder’s rhetorical perspective but also the value in reading his large body of knowledge and applying his theories in the current work of the discipline of rhetoric and composition. However, the analysis I provide in this dissertation starts a discussion about some of his well known texts (and some of his lesser-known works), but I have scarcely scratched the surface of the potential research that exists to be done on Corder’s writing. My hope is that with the theoretical perspective I have traced in this dissertation—tracking Corder’s evolving rhetorical theory on classical rhetoric, ethos, composition pedagogy, and the usefulness of rhetorical study in a broad range of contexts, including the teaching of writing and rhetoric—future scholars will have a starting place to initiate other theoretical uses or applications of Corder’s rhetorical perspective. I also hope that the theoretical perspective

I have demonstrated in the analysis of Corder’s writing across his lifetime reveals that his work was never completed and always in progress, that he never changed the trajectory he began early in his career, but always enlarged and enriched his ever-evolving perspective.

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APPENDIX A: PERSONAL NARRATIVE ESSAY

What is your experience with Harry Potter?

First as books, but now as movies, video games, and a multitude of toys and kitsch, Harry Potter has become an significant feature of modern popular culture. From authors of pastiche versions of the stories to people calling for removal of Harry Potter books from school bookshelves, it seems everyone has something to say about some aspect of the novels.

Where does your own understanding of the Harry Potter literary phenomenon fall on that spectrum? Are you an avid fan? Have you deliberately avoided any and everything related to Harry Potter? Are you ambivalent about the whole phenomenon—no extreme opinion either way? It is important for you to develop the clearest view possible of your own understanding of the Harry Potter phenomenon and, especially, to know how your perspective fits into the larger context of academic and public discussions about the novels. Having this critical awareness of yourself in relation to the larger academic community of writers is crucial for you to be successful in this course. If you have never given a second thought to Harry Potter, then get ready for some serious consideration of these novels; if you believe you are already knowledgeable about Harry Potter, then think again—one could spend a lifetime researching the vast amount of writing and discussion available on Harry Potter and still never cover it all.

Thus, as a means to begin thinking about your knowledge of Harry Potter, compose a short essay (five or six paragraphs) in which you describe the current state of your experience with the Harry Potter novels. Consider the following questions as guidelines for writing about the perspective you have right now on/about Harry Potter. You are not required to answer all of the questions (or even a specific number of them)— use the questions as a springboard into your crafting your essay.

When did you first hear of Harry Potter? Which books (if any) have you read? Where did you read them—at school? On your own? With a parent or family member? Did you read the books yourself? Did you listen to the stories read aloud? Both? Have you been disallowed to read the novels by parents or teachers? Have you been forced to read the novels by parents or teachers? Have you viewed one or more of the Harry Potter films? If so, which ones? Did you see the films before or after reading the books? If so, how has viewing the films affected your perspective on Harry Potter?

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APPENDIX B: OPINION, FACT, AND AUTHORITY

Jim W. Corder, and James S. Baumlin. “Opinion Is, of Course, Bad; Research, on the Other Hand, Is Quite Good: The Tyranny (or Is It Myth?) of Methodology.” Journal of Higher Education 58.4 (Jul/Aug 1987): 463-69.

Professors Jim Corder and James Baumlin write this article in response to a call for papers they received announcing a conference on teaching practices at their university, and they begin their discussion by pointing to the text contained within the invitation:

A paper should report on specific scientific research, include a description of research methodology, present generalizable findings, and reflect the author’s knowledge of previously published work pertinent to the paper’s subject. Papers offering opinion, rather than conclusions derived from research, are discouraged (excerpt: conference brochure).

Corder and Baumlin argue (thesis):

The statement seems entirely right and proper. None of us, we trust, would repudiate the precision, assurance, value, even elegance of good research done well. We believe, however, that in calling for such papers in such a way for a conference on the improvement of university teaching, the brochure itself reveals a source of common disorders in teaching. We linger over this brochure because it occasions our concern. It is not unique but typical in its expectations for papers: similar criteria can be found lurking in other calls for conference papers, in journal policies, in refereed guidelines. And the stipulations the brochure places upon papers may be taken both as cause and as symptom of problems universities now face. The passage quoted carries a view of research and, by extension, of teaching that is sometimes appropriate and often acceptable—but that also fosters authoritarian assumptions while resting on misapprehensions about the nature of fact, opinion, and knowledge itself. (464)

And, they observe that:

• We hide or rename our opinions, turning them into objective, reliable facts through a presumably authenticating “research methodology.” Thus interpretation becomes our reality, and epistemology yields to the imagined certainties of a stable, accessible, knowable being or ontology. (465-66)

• We yearn for certainty and come to lust, therefore, for authority. Waiting for authoritative vision and power, we can only, by methodologies we pretend are precise and reliable, “discover” and “transmit” what is “out there”; we do not 189

imagine what we create ourselves and our knowledge. (466)

• We have often wanted to think of texts, for example, as well-crafted final products. Whether we were reading a literary text or a scholarly/critical text, we have wanted to think them definitive. The mode of scholarly writing that has prevailed through most of this century sought both to be and to seem definitive. (467)

And, they argue:

• The distinction between “research” and “opinion” is a source of dogma and professional foolishness. Opinion can be silly, trivial, evil. Opinion is also conclusion derived from research, derived from sustained thought. As opinion derives from research, research is opinion: research is interpretation. (465)

• We are still in progress, still, as the rhetorician would say, in process, in a realm of invention. We are not finished, not authorities. We are making knowledge as we go, sharing it when we can, recognizing that it is incomplete and must remain so. Things don’t stay fixed.(469)

Corder’s and Baumlin’s hope for the profession lies in:

• Ridding ourselves of the naïve epistemology that thinks things can be fixed, and that attempts to purge thought of its subjectivity; • Discovering that our seemingly unmediated, wordless apprehensions of the world are in fact expressions of interpretive models, bound within and enabled by language; • Repudiating the tyranny of certain models over our conception of fact and knowledge, in rejecting the singular, univocal, eternal “authority” of canons, and in learning to rejoice over what we can learn to be: provisional self-makers, provisional world-makers. (469)

Key Terms/Vocabulary --Identify the following terms and define how the authors use them in the article:

Research Methodology Subjective vs. Objective Epistemology Ontology 190

APPENDIX C: CONCEPTS IN INQUIRY PARADIGMS

Emig, Janet. “Inquiry Paradigms and Writing.” College Composition and Communication 33.1 (Feb. 1982): 64-75.

In order to shed some additional light on how academic arguments are constructed, we will look at a foundational notion, inquiry paradigms, to help us understand how scholars approach the subjects they study and how they articulate their findings. Our task this semester then is to examine the inquiry paradigms of Harry Potter scholarship in order to understand the academic arguments embodied by them more clearly. Emig’s article provides us with some basic terminology.

Inquiry a systematic investigation; Emig suggests that the term inquiry is a more inclusive than the term research: “The generic term of research suffers from conceptual synecdoche in that, for many, the part has become mistaken for the whole: the single species of empirical research is treated as the entire genus” (64).

Paradigm an explanatory matrix; Emig draws on Thomas Kuhn’s definition of the term in his book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970). In very simplistic terms, we could say that both Creationism and Evolution are paradigms, albeit only the latter is accepted as a scientific paradigm.

Inquiry Paradigm an explanatory matrix for any systematic investigation of phenomena in any discipline. Emig notes as important that there “is not necessarily a one-to-one correspondence between a given academic discipline and a given inquiry paradigm. Within a single academic field or discipline, there can be several, even many, inquiry paradigms active and working, as there can be several, even many, academic disciplines deploying a single inquiry paradigm. Inquiry paradigms are informed by what Emig calls a Governing Gaze a specific, “steady way of perceiving actuality” (65), which in turn is governed by our expectations, experiences, hypotheses, schemes, and constructs.

Emig posits that there are no more than three of these governing gazes:

• The positivistic gaze—also defined as conventional inquiry, classical research, empirical research, experimental research, pure research. Positivism was advanced by Auguste Comte and Emil Durkheim for the social sciences. Positivists examine only the phenomena but not the context in which they exist. Their goal is to claim universality, or at least generalizability, of their conclusions. 191

• The phenomenological gaze—the diametric opposite of positivism. For the phenomenologist, the field or context of the phenomenon must not only be acknowledged but become part of the inquiry.

• The transactional/constructivist gaze—it lies in the territory between the first two; for the constructivist, the focus is on the type and nature of the transactions between the phenomenon and the context.

Emig further explains that in positivistic inquiry, “the position of the observer is defined as outside and independent of the observed phenomenon, while in phenomenology the perspective of the observer is intertwined with the phenomenon, which does not have objective characteristics independent of the observer’s perspective and methods” (Mishler, quoted in Emig 67).

Another difference between positivists and the phenomenologists is that the former believe that there is a one-to-one Correspondence between phenomenon and interpretation. The latter, on the other hand, see and consider a multitude of equally valid descriptions and interpretations. Inquirers develop and use theories as a way to express tentatively what they have observed.

In other words, a theory is a result of the inquiry and not the starting point. In our case theories of meaning are particular important. Most of the scholars examining the Harry Potter phenomenon are concerned with questions of where meaning resides.

For example:

• Meaning resides in the text—literary interpretation • Meaning resides in the context— sociological/ideological studies • Meaning resides in the reader—reader-response studies • Meaning resides in the transaction of these three— cultural studies

According to Emig, any mature inquiry paradigm requires an appropriate methodology— a way to generate appropriate data. The appropriateness of a methodology is determined by the inquiry. Any dissonance between the methodology and the intent or content of the inquiry can create problems; therefore, researchers/scholars have to be careful to match their methodology to their inquiry.

To do so they must consider the indigenous logic of their methodology. Emig explains that an indigenous logic is one so inextricably associated with the total mode of inquiry that the two cannot be considered separately. (72)

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For instance:

• Empirical inquiries—relational or correlational logics, based on comparison/ contrast or cause/effect, which simply establish a relation or demonstrate unequivocal outcomes • Phenomenological inquiries—naturalistic logics, based on intense, detailed observation of a phenomenon in order to establish a critical perspective of the field/context.

Methodologies and their logics are grounded in intellectual traditions. According to Emig “the presence of an explicit or of at least a tacit intellectual tradition is requisite for a full and self-respecting inquiry paradigm, as acknowledgement of that tradition is requisite for any self-respecting paradigm inhabitant” (71). In other words scholars must be aware of and acknowledge the primary sources of their perspective, because these define the inquiry. Emig explains: “To seek confirmation from Plato obviously marks a very different inquiry from one that cites, instead, Chomsky.” 193

APPENDIX D: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF TWO ARTICLES

A. Amanda Cockrell – “Harry Potter and the Witch Hunters” B. Aaron Schwabach – “Harry Potter and the Unforgiveable Curses”

In her edited collection, Harry Potter’s World: Multidisciplinary Critical Perspectives, Dr. Elizabeth E. Heilman describes four academic lenses that inform research and writing about Harry Potter. As Daniel Nexon and Iver B. Neumann also demonstrate these lenses offer multiple ways for academic professionals to analyze any given text. J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books provide the objects of study for all of many scholars from diverse disciplines; however, different writers, guided by the questions of their own disciplines, illuminate a slightly different perspective on the HP books (and on the phenomenon created by their publication).

Your first paper will develop in three steps.

• First, you will familiarize yourself with the theoretical frameworks summarized by Heilman, especially Cultural Studies in its various incarnations as described by Nexon and Neumann. • Second, you will select one of the two articles that will serve as the basis of your descriptive analysis; the other article will serve as a second, comparative element. • Third, you will write an essay in which you present the findings of your close reading of both articles.

As a result of your close reading and detailed observations, you should gain a solid understanding of how your target article represents—or fits into—the analytical framework from which it emerges. That is, in your close reading you must strive to identify the fundamental assumptions inherent and the research questions that guide arguments in different disciplines.

A thorough comparative analysis isolates similarities and differences evident in both the critical lenses themselves as well as the articles that exemplify the theories defined by those lenses.

For example,

• by defining the methods of a theoretical approach, you can examine the article you chose as evidence of those methods. • by identifying the research questions, you can discover the purpose and values implicit within that framework.

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The insight you gain from such examinations will enable you to make claims about how your chosen articles embody the goals or reflect the values determined by the disciplines they represent and the critical lenses they aim to employ.

Here are some questions to think about as you dissect the critical lenses and articles.

What criteria define each theoretical approach? Which academic disciplines apply this research approach? What artifact(s) do the scholars focus on in their research? What artifact(s) do the scholars “focus off” (that is, avoid) in their research? What methods do the scholars use to collect data or evidence for their research? What is the nature of their data as a result of their methods? What knowledge do the scholars seek to gain with their research? What knowledge do the scholars seek to communicate through their research? How might their research be used by others, inside or outside their own academic discipline?

What is the rhetorical situation for each article? Who is the author? What do you learn about him or her? What motivated the author to write the article? What is the author’s purpose or intended effect? Who is the author’s primary audience?

What are the specific characteristics of each article? What is the thesis? Where is it located? What are the major lines of argument that support the thesis? What unique terminology or jargon does the author use? What is the tone the author establishes? What other works does the author cite? What system for citation does the author use?

Your final paper should be around 5-7 pages. All the usual format requirements apply; i.e. double-space your paper, use a reasonable font (Times New Roman 12 pt, Arial 11 pt, or anything comparable to that) and use 1” margins all around . Let me know, if you have any questions.

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APPENDIX E: COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THREE ARTICLES

Choose the three texts from the online Harry Potter Bibliography.

For this second paper, we will still stick with close reading and analysis of source/primary texts, but we will complicate the matter a bit. During the last few weeks, we discussed new concepts that will enrich the discussion of the texts you have chosen for this paper and help assess the contributions your sources make to the discussions of and about Harry Potter.

In our discussions we have examined concepts such as inquiry paradigms, terministic screens and methodology, all of which constitute some of the multiple filters through which scholars (and readers) perceive the world and articulate those perceptions. Let me put all of that in a systematic order that can guide you through the reading and analysis of your sources and the formulation of a thesis for your paper.

We can all agree that our knowledge work (consumption, production, and dissemination of knowledge) is influenced by a variety of filters which we acquire through living life in general and becoming educated in particular. Burke calls these filters terministic screens. Let’s categorize these screens as follows:

• Personal—our backgrounds, life experiences, values and beliefs, and the general knowledge we acquire in K-14 education (Kindergarten through the first 2 years of college) • Disciplinary—the knowledge, values, and norms we acquire in higher education (during the last 2 years of college, in graduate school, and in our professional lives.) For academics this includes the specialized knowledge of their disciplines, their knowledge and understanding of the history of their discipline (epistemology) and their knowledge and application of the inquiry paradigms of their discipline. • Professional—the knowledge, values, and norms of our professional communities. For academics that includes the understanding that they must publish the fruits of their intellectual labor in respected journals and through selective and competitive publishers, and that they must abide by conventions and standards of both their disciplines and the larger academic community.

Your task in this paper is to identify how these terministic screens shape the three texts you have chosen for this paper. I would like to offer three central questions your paper should answer:

. Do the authors seem to be aware of their own screens or not? . Do they comply with or strain against them? . Do they employ those screens to set themselves apart from their readers or to connect with them? 196

Examine each of your sources separately to answer these questions. But also examine the three articles as a set. There are some additional questions that can guide your examinations:

If you have chosen three sources on the same topic from different disciplines, you might want to examine how the authors, given their individual disciplines/specialties, construct their arguments.

. Do their inquiry paradigms and methodologies differ? . Does the evidence they offer in support of their claims differ? . How do their perspectives on the same issue or topic differ?

If you have chosen three sources from the same discipline but on different topics, you might examine what this set of sources can tell you about the discipline.

. Is there a preferred inquiry paradigm and methodology? . Is there a specific way the authors chose and present their evidence? . Are their perspectives similar despite their different topics?

Finally consider what the sources have to offer to their readers, both separately and as a group. Based on your answers to the questions above, are the authors successful in expanding the readers’ understanding of their subject as it relates to Harry Potter? Of their disciplines or fields of study? 197

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