What’s Helen to Gorgias?

One of the challenges of reading Gorgias’ “Encomium of Helen” is working out why he takes the trouble to defend the reputation of a fictional character: it’s a bit like someone standing up to celebrate Scrooge or pour scorn upon Santa Claus.

Reread Gorgias (link), then consider the following:

1. When King says repeatedly “Now is the time…. Now is the time….” we get the sense that he was responding to an audience that thought now was not the time to address the longstanding legacy of slavery. Similarly when King says “We cannot be satisfied…. We cannot be satisfied….” he’s writing for people who thought that Black Americans should be satisfied with the progress made so far. By a similar logic, what beliefs about Helen, would you guess, is Gorgias responding to? In your answer, point to a specific passage in his speech.
2. Based on Bernard Evslin’s summary of Helen’s life (Gods, Demigods and Demons, pp 89-91) give a brief summary of the argument you’d make for Helen’s innocence before present-day jury.
3. What sort of precedent does Gorgias set in ¶6 of his speech, when he speaks of the power of fate in human affairs? Do subsequent ¶s make this precedent better or worse? To put it another way, if we agree with Gorgias that Helen should go free, how might that reasoning impact our future legal decisions?

Answer ONE of these questions in a short ¶ and post it in the comments below. Please reload the page before posting, so your answer doesn’t simply duplicate someone else’s answer.

Oral Eloquence

This assignment makes a start on Unit 2.

For class today we’ll be looking at two famous speeches. The first is Martin Luther King’s speech on the National Mall during the 1963 March on Washington. The second is a rhetorical exercise written by Gorgias, perhaps the most famous rhetorician of Classical Athens.

1. Watch MLK deliver his speech — or, better, close your eyes and listen. The speech runs about 17 minutes. Don’t take notes, but do pay attention to his words (link to the text of his speech). Immediately afterward, write down as many phrases, metaphors and ideas as you can remember. Bring these scribbles to class.
2. Read Gorgias’ “Encomium of Helen” If this link doesn’t work, look for Gorgias’ encomium among the readings posted on the Lecture class’s Blackboard site. As you read, think about what it shares in common with King’s famous speech. Try reading one of Gorgias’ paragraphs aloud using King’s slow, sententious style.

In considering similarities and contrasts between these speeches, think about how they sound, how they approach their topics, and (not least) their occasions: what the speakers were trying to accomplish.

For each of the following rhetorical devices, highlight a passage in both speeches (you should have no trouble finding the text of MLK’s “I Have a Dream” speech online).

• Metaphor
• Isocolon
• Antithesis
• Homeoteleuton

Finally post several of the passages you highlighted under the appropriate rhetorical device. (Reload this page before you post, so you can make sure you post a passage that no one else has posted.)

Essay Draft Due

Turn in your essay draft on the draft assignment page. Instructions at the bottom of that page.

Prep for Class

Check out this survey on using Argument vs. Background sources. We’ll discuss in class.

Classes Remote

To facilitate draft discussion, I’m shifting all classes remote for today.

Peer Review Prompts

1. Introduction
2. Evidence
3. Deepening Structure

Is Justice a Shared Fiction?

During Rhetoric Lecture, , via this special Zoom link.

Reading: Harari, Chapters 6 and 8.

In recent classes, we’ve read roughly the first third of Yuval Noah Harari’s Sapiens, in which he argues that large-scale human organizations depend on shared fictions. Because everyone buys into these myths, mere acquaintances—even strangers—can engage in trade, collaborate on projects, and simply socialize. Looked at from this angle, the concept of justice is itself a shared fiction, one that helps resolve disagreements by identifying who’s right and who’s wrong, channelling outrage in ways that reaffirm rather than trample the social contract.

Yet even as Harari helps us understand how an ancient Babylonian thought he was doing right in owning another human being, Harari’s model would seem to deprive us of the capacity to judge that Babylonian as wrong in his thinking—or (more pressing) to judge a 19th century American slaveowner. In Ch 8, Harari suggests that all social hierarchies are in one way or another “unjust”, but on what grounds does he make this judgement? Two chapters earlier, didn’t he assert that there is no way to escape the “prison walls” of an imagined order?

In preparation for the first in our series of Team Forums, read chapters 6 and 8 in Harari, then post either:

• your answer to this philosophical quandary,
• an insight of your own, applying Harari to the world we live in, OR
• a question that you’d like for Team D faculty to address during the forum.

We will be reading your posts the morning of the Team Forum, so to aim to submit yours by 6am, .

Straddling the Divide: Orality v. Literacy in Ancient Greece

Reading: David Abram, Ch 4 from The Spell of the Sensuous.
If this link doesn’t work, look for Ong’s essay among the readings posted on the Lecture class’s Blackboard site.

Writing: Choose one idea from Abram that strikes you as particularly insightful or counterintuitive. In two ¶s, present this idea to your reader and explore its implications. Just as in the last HW, the challenge is to ensure that your second ¶ does something different from the first, making it meaningfully distinct. Doing so may be a bit harder this time, since both ¶s draw from the same source, but consider the following possibilities: (1) move from confusion to understanding, (2) move from one step to the next in a logical argument, (3) move from certainty to new doubt. (Here’s a longer list of possibilities: link.)

Paste your two-¶ sequence into the comments below. (Once again, make sure to skip an extra line between ¶s so they look good on this website.)

Using Sources
With the essay draft due early next week, we should talk tomorrow about methods of using sources. It’s a complicated question, since we have four distinct ways of using a source. Here’s a quick survey to get our conversation started in class tomorrow: link. The survey should take you just 5 minutes.

Setting Idea Sources in Relation

Reading/Viewing:

• the opening pages from of Ch 3 of Walter Ong’s “Orality and Literacy.”
  If this link doesn’t work, look for Ong’s essay among the readings posted on the Lecture class’s Blackboard site.
• Harari, Ch 7.
• Matt Parker, “What was the first (known) maths mistake?”

The goal of today’s writing assignment is to present the ideas of two authors in meaningful relationship to one another. From the three sources listed above, choose two that strike you as having “something to say” to one another. I encourage you to think of idea sources as characters, identifying each text with the author who created it. So when two idea sources encounter one another in the space of your brain, how do they get along? Are they allies? Enemies?

I’m giving you TWO paragraphs to present your thoughts on these sources. The first ¶ should focus our attention on a curious idea from one of the sources (Author A). The second ¶ then brings in the second source (Author B), but note that this can be done in any of a number of ways:

• Author B objects to the account given by author A in the prior ¶.
• Author B offers a deeper explanation of a phenomenon described by Author A.
• Author B offers a curious example of a broader phenomenon described by Author A.
• etc.

Try to keep your ¶s short. Make sure to include both authors as characters, using phrases like “Harari suggests,” “Ong argues,” etc.). Try to express each author’s idea in clear, vivid language. And, finally, give a clear signal at the top of ¶2 as to Author B’s relationship to Author A’s idea: agree, disagree, complicate, challenge, etc.

Post your response in the comments below. Note that in posting HW on this website, you should make sure that there are two carriage returns between your ¶s. Formatting your response this way will make them show up as separate ¶s, each with a first-line indent.

In Class

“Once upon a time, as a walk through the woods was taking place on the part of Little Red Riding Hood, the Wolf’s jump out from behind a tree occurred, causing her fright.”

What's wrong with this sentence?

Looking Ahead to Essay One

Essay one asks you to work independently from the readings we’re doing in class, writing a short analytical essay on Columbus’ objectives during his discovery of the new world. Take a few minutes to read the Synthesis—Draft assignment, linked at top right. I’ll set aside the last 15 minutes of class for questions about this assignment.

A Pre-Agricultural Outlook

Read James Suzman, “ Sympathy for a Desert Dog ” on the NYTimes website. (Or download as .pdf, you have trouble getting access). Suzman’s essay turns on what to make of the terrible suffering inflicted on a dog by village children.

Write and submit via the comments a one-¶ response to one of the following prompts:

1. Sum up the logic of Suzman’s essay for an unfamiliar reader. What lesson does he draw from the story of this dog?
2. Give a hostile critique of Suzman’s conclusions, written for someone who’s just finished reading Suzman’s article. Since you only have 1 ¶, try to focus attention on what you see as the critical flaw in his argument.
3. Writing for someone familiar with both authors, set Suzman’s thinking in proper relation to Harari’s idea that we organize our experience in relation to an “Imagined Order.” If Suzman and Harari are in agreement, write a ¶ summing up their thinking, noting differences of approach or terminology, but emphasizing their shared vision. If they are in disagreement, write a ¶ noting similarities in their thinking or terminology but emphasizing the core difference.

Post your response below under the appropriate heading.

MLA Source Citation

In 2016 the Modern Language Association revised their widely used style guide for source citation. You probably learned MLA citation in high school, but you may have learned the old method—or you may be using EasyBib without really understanding what you’re doing. Blindly following a machine’s prompts is likely to get you into trouble. As computer tech people say about the danger of relying on algorithms without understanding them, “Garbage in, garbage out.”

For a refresher, you can consult this video tutorial on MLA citation: link. For future reference, the Purdue University writing lab has an excellent online resource for source citation. Go check it out now, and if you like what you see, make a bookmark so you can come back later.

Practice Quiz: I’ve designed a quiz so you can test your mastery of MLA style, available on Blackboard here. After completing the quiz, be sure to click the link to see how you did, and where you went wrong. This quiz counts for completion only, but the quiz next Friday will be scored for mastery.

What Makes Us Human?

In his book Sapiens, Yuval Noah Harari advances an interesting proposition as to what allowed Homo sapiens to out-compete Neanderthals and other close relatives, spread across the globe, and eventually become the world’s dominant life form. In Harari’s account, the crucial difference between sapiens and neanderthalensis wasn’t brain size or even language, but the capacity to invent and share fictions.

Reading: Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind, selections as follows:

• Chapter 2, in full
• Ch 5, first two sections (“History’s Biggest Fraud” and “The Luxury Trap”)
• Ch 6, in full

As you finish each of these chapters from Harari’s book, go back and make a brief list of two or three key points you want to remember from that chapter. Note a page # and a 2-3 word quote to help you find that passage later on in the book. Be brief, not copious: ideally, ALL your notes from these three chapters should fit on one side of a piece of paper.

Then, take a minimum one-hour break so your brain can absorb what you’ve learned (eat a meal or work on something else). Then skim back through your notes to identify ONE key idea that you find compelling—something that you might want to share with a friend.

Writing: a short paragraph presenting one of Harari’s key ideas in your own words to someone well educated but unfamiliar with Harari. Your ¶ should start with a sentence that highlights the idea you’re covering, using Harari’s keyterm and a page range. Quote sparingly or not at all.

Publish your ¶ in the comments below.

For class: Bring your paper notes from Harari to class for my inspection.

Introductions

For class, please watch or listen to “How to Think Like Shakespeare,” a speech made in 2016 by Scott Newstok, a professor of Renaissance literature, to greet the incoming 2020 freshman class at Rhodes College in Tennessee. If you prefer reading, you can access the text of his speech here.

Write a brief (1-¶) response to ONE of the following prompts and post it as a “Reply” under the appropriate heading in the comments below:

• Newstock delivered this speech to the 2020 class during the Convocation ceremony in August 2016. Name and briefly discuss how Newstock framed his speech to that particular occasion.
• What moment in this speech spoke most powerfully to you, and why?
• Orators often appeal to facts and reason. When does Newstock do this most powerfully, and why is such an appeal a good one at that moment in his speech?
• Orators often appeal to emotion. When does Newstock do this most powerfully, and why is such an appeal a good one at that moment in his speech?
• Orators sometimes appeal to their personal authority. Does Newstock do this? If so, is it effective? If not, why not?

You do NOT need to register on this website to post a response.