It is general knowledge that John Milton, when he came to Cambridge, chose not to proceed into the official ministry of the church, but to dedicate his life instead to the calling of literature. If, indeed, Milton rejected the official ministry of the church, after completing the education leading to it, choosing to teach through poetry rather…

John Milton presented a wide spectrum of materials and ideas illuminating the literary landscape like a rainbow which critics and authors have been discussing for centuries. One example of the multiple layers of meaning in Milton's poems is found in Sonnet XIX, which can be useful for both forensic discussion as well as for composition…

This paper first discusses the ways in which Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech demonstrates some of the fundamental principles that should be used to teach rhetorical criticism, and then offers a microscopic, intrinsic criticism of the speech. The paper's four sections (1) review the nature of written speech texts; (2) discuss…

Designed for students with little or no background in classical literature, this book introduces the Greek and Roman myths of creation, myths of the gods, Greek sagas and local legends, and presents contemporary theories about the myths. Drawing on Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Vergil, and others, the book provides many translations and paraphrases of…

This paper analyzes Robert Epstein's Academy Award winning documentary "Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt," which consciously employs a binary rhetoric, a "common" method, by which to read the complex narrativity of the Names Project Quilt (the quilt memorial to AIDS victims). The paper addresses the inherently rhetorical…

David Bleich, in his analysis of Toni Morrison's "Beloved," is representative of theorists and practitioners who misrepresent feminism and women's issues. In his essay, "Reading from Inside the Outside of One's Community," Bleich converts a book about the strength and dignity of an African-American woman into a male-bashing…

"The Ring Toss," a gum-print six-by-eight-inch photograph produced in 1899 and first published in 1903, has become one of photographer Clarence White's most noted images. It is an example of soft focus, or fuzzy pictorialism, a type of American art photography most practiced around the turn of the century. This analysis of the photograph…

This collection of some of the critical works of a lauded contemporary poet, Kenneth Koch, gathers together poems, articles and interviews which are about poetry--Koch's critical work has mainly taken the form of poems about poetry (including parodies) and books about teaching the writing of poetry to schoolchildren. Focused on the practical…

Chicana literary authors are sometimes thought to occupy the edges of two "texts," their own culture and the Anglo-American hegemony, where they are oppressed and marginalized by sexism and racism. In these margins, however, Chicana authors can dismantle stereotypes and construct new and empowering images of self. As an example of this…

In recent years a new event called "Interpretation Analysis" has appeared at certain forensic events. The objective is for the student, through analysis and performance, to study a piece of literature and to communicate his or her understanding of that literature to a specific audience. Perhaps there is room within the established…

In the past decade, contest persuasive speaking has become a product that student competitors produce and perform. A perversion of the contest formula has removed the element of persuasion from the formula. Competition rules suggest that a student's purposes in participating in forensics events should include inspiring, reinforcing, or changing…

Given a choice of one argument, most Cross Examination Debate Association (CEDA) competitors would choose the nuclear war scenario, which attempts to capitalize on apocalyptism. A three-stage methodology can be applied to apocalyptic appeals. First is an application of the concept of universal audience, composed of all reasonable and competent…

Resuscitating Charles Darwin's language from historians' emphatic denigration of the written word serves as an example to demonstrate what the English discipline can accomplish in recovering cultural heritage. Michael Ghiselin, an evolutionary anatomist, suggests that scholars must concentrate on the ideas, not the language, Darwin employed. Yet…

This paper discusses the ideas of Conrad Fiedler, a 19th century German philosopher of art, concerning art criticism, or the judging of works of visual art. In addition to a brief biography of Conrad Fiedler, the paper's main subject is Fiedler's ideas on art criticism as expressed in his book "On Judging Works of Visual Art" (1876,…

Rudolph Arnheim combined his knowledge of psychology with a love of art and interest in the artist. This paper describes his deep contact with the work of art in all of his endeavors and his almost single-handed establishment of a psychology of art movement in the United States. Rudolph Arnheim focussed his effort in writing and research rather…