Our second essay focuses on the research question, "How does writing and/or print change rhetoric?" Any topic that responds to that question and focuses on a text from the medieval, renaissance, or enlightenment eras is fair game.
Here are several possibilities:
1. An analysis of the question itself--an essay that provides an overview and analysis of the ways writing and/or print has changed rhetoric.
2. An analysis of a single text, discussing how that text demonstrates the changes that print has wrought on rhetoric.
3. An examination of the phenomenon of print itself, probably starting with Elizabeth Eisenstein's The Printing Press as an Agent of Change and considering print as a historical/cultural phenomenon.
4. "How to read a speech," exploring the necessity of teaching people to read print texts expressively (to supply, in other words, part of the text's meaning in delivering it). There is a relationship to reader-response theory involved in this topic, as well.
5. The canon of Delivery, with a particular focus on print vs oral delivery.
6. An analysis of how a person's relationship to a text changes between oral and print texts.
These topics are not the only ones you might explore. Again, any topic that engages the research question and uses text(s) from this section of the course is fine.
Step One: Develop a draft of your essay and bring it to class for peer review on Tuesday, October 18.
Step Two:
Use the feedback from class to revise your draft. Final draft due in class on Tuesday, October 25. Post it, as well, on your blog and post the link to it as a comment to this blog entry.
