Georgia State University ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University English Dissertations Department of English 8-7-2007 Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contests and Competition Marc Pietrzykowski Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss Part of the English Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Pietrzykowski, Marc, "Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contests and Competition." Dissertation, Georgia State University, 2007. https://scholarworks.gsu.edu/english_diss/21 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of English at ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Dissertations by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks @ Georgia State University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contest and Competition by Marc Pietrzykowski Under the Direction of Dr. George Pullman ABSTRACT This dissertation attempts to trace the shifting relationship between the fields of Rhetoric and Poetry in Western culture by focusing on poetry contests and competitions during several different historical eras. In order to examine how the distinction between the two fields is contingent on a variety of local factors, this study makes use of research in contemporary cognitive neuroscience, particularly work in categorization and cognitive linguistics, to emphasize the provisional nature of conceptual thought; that is, on the type of mental activity that gives rise to conceptualizations such as “Rhetoric” and “Poetry.” The final portions of the research attempt to use some modeling techniques derived from cognitive linguistics as invention strategies for producing stylistically idiosyncratic academic knowledge, and for examining the relationship between the stylistic markers we associate with each of the two aforementioned fields. INDEX WORDS: Dissertation, Rhetoric, Composition, Poetry, Poetics, Contest, Debate, Competition, Stylistics, Cognitive Linguistics, Conceptual Blending, Cognitive Science, Categorization, History. 1 Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contest and Competition by Marc Pietrzykowski A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In the College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University 2007 1 Copyright by Marc Pietrzykowski 2007 2 Winning, Losing, and Changing the Rules: The Rhetoric of Poetry Contest and Competition by Marc Pietrzykowski Major Professor: Dr. George Pullman Committee: Dr. Marti Singer Dr. Lyneé Gaillet Electronic Version Approved: Office of Graduate Studies College of Arts and Sciences Georgia State University August 2007 iv3 This dissertation is dedicated to my wife. v4 TABLE OF CONTENTS TITLE PAGE.......................................................................................................................... i COPYRIGHT PAGE ............................................................................................................. ii APPROVAL PAGE.............................................................................................................. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS...................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................v CHAPTERS 1. Preface.........................................................................................................................1 2. Introduction...............................................................................................................12 3. Poetic Contest and Competition in Ancient Greece .................................................37 4. Poetic Contest in the Second Sophistic.....................................................................68 5. Poetic Contest and the Augustan Age.....................................................................100 6. The Romantic Movement in English Poetry, or, Is There Any Good Way to Argue Against Self-Love? .................................................................................................130 7. Jackals Snarling Over a Dried-up Well, or, Contemporary Poetry in the U.S. ......151 8. The Narrow Road to Nowhere, or, My Journey Across A Kitchen Table Full of Rhetoric and Composition..................................................................................189 9. Postscript...................................................................................................................217 WORKS CITED .................................................................................................................222 vi 5 LIST OF FIGURES Fig. 1: The Wine-Dark Sea ......................................................................................................37 Fig 2.: Rhapsodic Victory........................................................................................................41 Fig 3.: Man is the Dream of a Shadow ....................................................................................50 Fig. 4: The Showpiece Orator..................................................................................................71 Fig. 5: A Neural Circuit ...........................................................................................................91 Fig. 6: Accentual-Syllabic Meter...........................................................................................103 Fig. 7: Romanticism as a Blend .............................................................................................134 Fig. 8: An Academic Haibun .................................................................................................200 1 Preface In reviewing some other recent dissertations published in the field of Rhetoric and Composition (Boozer, Ferstle, Kemp, Marquez, Stahlnecker, Vie, et. al.), I found that most of them began with a story of some kind. These stories were sometimes personal (Boozer, Ferstle, Marquez, Stahlnecker), sometimes cited from other sources (Kemp) and still others were journalistic (Vie), but all appeared to serve the same function: to set the “scene” for the reader, much as playwright might describe the setting of a scene before the characters are introduced, except that the “characters” in a dissertation are ideas. And as is the case with a play, if the scene is not well- established before the action begins, the audience will struggle to understand why the characters are speaking and behaving the way they are. So, my own story begins this way: I am a student in the PhD program at Georgia State University in Atlanta, GA, I have written a dissertation, and I would like to introduce the audience to its main characters. Rhetoric and Poetics My first goal in writing a dissertation is to prove a mastery of the sort of scholarly tools a successful PhD candidate will use: research, writing, analysis and interpretation, and knowledge of the discipline. The discipline I am part of, Rhetoric and Composition, is a comparatively new one, having only existed formally since the first meeting of the Conference of College 2 Composition and Communication in 1949 1, but which also has established itself as part of the significantly longer tradition of the discipline of Rhetoric. Part of the ongoing process of disciplinary definition thus involves doing historical research, and my dissertation is, for the most part, a historical study of the field. I have chosen to study a particular aspect of this history that is, I believe, largely under-examined at this point: the shifting role played by Poetics, which was considered one of the sub-disciplines of Rhetoric until fairly recently. Part of the process of disciplinary definition that Rhetoric and Composition has undergone within English Departments has included avoiding subject matter that other English scholars address, such as Literature and, to a lesser extent, Creative Writing 2. Given departmental politics and the general need to get along with co-workers, keeping to one’s scholarly “turf” makes a great deal of sense, but it also can lead to scholarship that is specialized to the point of solipsism; also, in as much as Rhetoric and Composition is concerned with writing, disallowing research into a significant aspect of written production—that is, the production of poetic effect in writing—does a disservice to the subject, to the discipline, and, as I hope to argue, to English Studies in general. Each of the different disciplinary areas within English studies brings different ways of constructing knowledge to the field, and I believe that increased collaboration between all three is necessary if English studies is to thrive and not be reduced to a service department for other disciplines. In my dissertation, then, I hope to explore some of the ways that the relationship between Rhetoric and Poetics has been conceptualized in the Western tradition, and I also hope to illustrate how different stylistic and organizational strategies in academic research can affect the way knowledge is constructed by using some of these strategies in my research. For example, the 1 Formal authorization occurred during the National Council of Teachers of English conference that year. 2 See Bishop, Bizzarro, Ingham, Mayers et. al. Also, Maureen Goggin has written a useful