Using Historical Rhetoric in the First Year Composition Classroom

Goal the First:

“TRUE eloquence I find to be none but the serious and hearty love of truth; and that whose mind soever is fully possessed with a fervent desire to know good things, and with the dearest charity to infuse the knowle dge of them into others, when such a man would speak, his words, by what I can express, like so many nimble and airy servitors, trip about him at command and in well-ordered files, as he would wish, fall aptly into their own places.”

(Milton, An Apology for a Pamphlet)

Goal the Second:

Loving Truth:

“I looked, and saw him open the book, and read therein; and, as he read, he wept, and trembled; and, not being able longer to contain, he brake out with a lamentable cry, saying, ‘What shall I do?’” (Bunyan, Pilgrim’s Progress)

Teaching Rhetoric

“It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed. Let the despot govern by terror his brutalized subjects; he is right, as a despot. Subdue by terror the enemies of liberty, and you will be right, as founders of the Republic. The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime? And is the thunderbolt not destined to strike the heads of the proud?”

(Robespierre, Terror and Virtue) An English depiction of the French Revolution

Being Heard:

Martin Luther King, Jr, Detroit, 1964

Examples

Individual tutoring English 103

Creative writing and audience Critical argument essay Visual Analysis

English 104 “Clusters.” The Showcase for Student

Writing

Conclusions

Goals Create a lineage of authorship that reveals

students as active writers on modern crises with historical precedent.

Historical rhetoric as a way to gain critical distance and an understanding of rhetoric.

Use this lineage to see writing as an act of social significance that can and has changed society (being heard).