Lauer than Bombs
::Anguished Sob:: I don’t think Morrissey will ever forgive me for that awful pun.
I want everyone to believe me that I wrote the following comment on p. 27 of Lauer’s essay:
For "rhetoric," read "comp"
I want you to believe me because honest I picked this up before p. 44: "The very term rhetoric was replaced with composition, which was devoted to practice and criticism." [Italics in original]
Okay, Jeff you win: We’ve been reading all this hoo-ha about rhet in order to see how it became comp, and how our discipline has been shaped over the years. ::Sigh:: In the interests of accuracy, here is the note I added on 44:
Dang it!
So noted because I thought I was pretty hot shite picking up the whole rhet=comp thing and then she has to go spell it out for everyone. Yeesh.
Anyway, I don’t really like this Lauer piece, but I did draw from it the following insight. It’s not a breakthrough for most of you folks, but it was a minor revolution for me. The (near) universal behind Lauer’s history of rhetoric and rhetorical pedagogy is this: in the majority of examples offered, rhetoric is the study or the art of how one makes an argument. And, as I suggested in an earlier post about "meta-discourse," that is something we can teach. Or at least try to.
By the way, I think–I’m not sure–the above pic is the cover to the UK edition of the book Saint Morrissey.
Oh, and for those of you not into the Smiths:
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First of all: shame on you.
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Second: The Smiths have a compilation called Louder than Bombs. Hence today’s crappy pun.
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If you haven’t heard the Smiths, get thee to a music retailer and procure some forthwith. I think a good place to start is the singles collection, but most fans agree that The Queen is Dead is their best album. I demur in favor of the final album, Strangeways Here We Come, which was also the favorite of Morrissey and Marr.
