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Rhetorical Power / Steven Mailloux.

By: Material type: TextTextPublisher: Ithaca, NY : Cornell University Press, [2018]Copyright date: 1989Description: 1 online resource (204 p.)Content type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9781501728426
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 801/.95 20
LOC classification:
  • PN81 .M38 1989
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources:
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- PART ONE. Rhetoric and Interpretation -- 1 Rhetorical Hermeneutics -- 2 The Institutional Rhetoric of Literary Criticism -- PART Two. Cultural History and Huckleberry Finn -- 3 Rhetorical Production and Ideological Performance -- 4 Cultural Reception and Social Practices -- PART THREE. Neo-Pragmatism and the Politics of Interpretation -- 5 Rhetoric, Theory, and Politics -- 6 Truth or Consequences -- Conclusion. The ABM Treaty Interpretation Dispute -- Index
Summary: In this provocative and forcefully written book, Steven Mailloux takes issue with the validity of a number of distinctions commonly made in contemporary literary theory and cultural studies—distinctions between theory and history, reader and text, truth and ideology, aesthetics and politics.Mailloux first presents the case for a rhetorical hermeneutics and against foundationalist theories of interpretation. Doing hermeneutic theory, he argues, entails doing rhetorical history. By means of a detailed analysis of reader-response criticism, he highlights the connections between institutional politics and the interpretive rhetoric of academic literary criticism.Mailloux then uses Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an exemplary text. Relating Mark Twain's rhetoric to the cultural politics of post-Reconstruction debates about racist ideology, he places his reader-oriented interpretation within the rhetorical history of controversies over the meaning and value of Huckleberry Finn. Finally, in a far-ranging study of cultural reception, he juxtaposes the twentieth-century concern about the topic of race in Huckleberry Finn with the nineteenth-century audience's very different concerns about juvenile delinquency and the "bad-boy boom." In the final part of the book, Mailloux restates his critique of foundationalist hermeneutics through readings of Ken Kesey, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Richard Rorty, and he concludes by examining the role of rhetoric and theory in a congressional dispute over the Reagan administration's reinterpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.Rhetorical Power will be welcomed by readers in literary theory and American studies, as well as in such fields as speech communication, the sociology of culture, and social and intellectual history, and by others interested in the politics of persuasion.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9781501728426

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- PART ONE. Rhetoric and Interpretation -- 1 Rhetorical Hermeneutics -- 2 The Institutional Rhetoric of Literary Criticism -- PART Two. Cultural History and Huckleberry Finn -- 3 Rhetorical Production and Ideological Performance -- 4 Cultural Reception and Social Practices -- PART THREE. Neo-Pragmatism and the Politics of Interpretation -- 5 Rhetoric, Theory, and Politics -- 6 Truth or Consequences -- Conclusion. The ABM Treaty Interpretation Dispute -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

In this provocative and forcefully written book, Steven Mailloux takes issue with the validity of a number of distinctions commonly made in contemporary literary theory and cultural studies—distinctions between theory and history, reader and text, truth and ideology, aesthetics and politics.Mailloux first presents the case for a rhetorical hermeneutics and against foundationalist theories of interpretation. Doing hermeneutic theory, he argues, entails doing rhetorical history. By means of a detailed analysis of reader-response criticism, he highlights the connections between institutional politics and the interpretive rhetoric of academic literary criticism.Mailloux then uses Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as an exemplary text. Relating Mark Twain's rhetoric to the cultural politics of post-Reconstruction debates about racist ideology, he places his reader-oriented interpretation within the rhetorical history of controversies over the meaning and value of Huckleberry Finn. Finally, in a far-ranging study of cultural reception, he juxtaposes the twentieth-century concern about the topic of race in Huckleberry Finn with the nineteenth-century audience's very different concerns about juvenile delinquency and the "bad-boy boom." In the final part of the book, Mailloux restates his critique of foundationalist hermeneutics through readings of Ken Kesey, Michel Foucault, Edward Said, and Richard Rorty, and he concludes by examining the role of rhetoric and theory in a congressional dispute over the Reagan administration's reinterpretation of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.Rhetorical Power will be welcomed by readers in literary theory and American studies, as well as in such fields as speech communication, the sociology of culture, and social and intellectual history, and by others interested in the politics of persuasion.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 26. Aug 2024)