I've taken classes in rhetoric, but the way I think of it in my head is probably somewhere between the first and second ones -- like, primarily the tools of persuasion, but also in a more general sense as how you speak and present yourself to an audience.
*grins* Actually, I bet you would do it much more interestingly than all the ancient Romans in my anthology of hugeness!
(Actually, all those texts were fun, in their own way, but they seemed to suffer from the fact that none of the rhetorical arts they were explaining made any sense at all in the English translation and required you to know Latin.)
God I KNOW. I just started rereading Mansfield Park for my english novel class, and I know by December I am going to wish that a) she existed and b) wouldn't be dead right now anyway just so I CAN PUNCH HER RIGHT IN THE FACE.
Seriously, I love Jane Austen, but Mansfield Park suffers from the problem where all the likable characters are bad and all the good characters are insufferable prigs.
Yeah, I mean, I seem to remember liking Edmund all right? But, gah. Fanny Price just blows. Especially when you compare her to Elizabeth Bennet. I mean, I get that Austen couldn't write the exact same character in every single book, but... WHY NOT?
Seriously! Elizabeth Bennet is worth eight gazillion Fanny Prices. Or even, like, you look at Anne Elliot in Persuasion, and she's a) nice and good and sweet and b) undervalued and unappreciated by her family blah blah blah -- and yet? I LIKE her. No reason to punch her in the face at all!
Edmund is mostly good when he is around Mary Crawford. Whom we should hate because she is bitchy about her relatives and tells dirty jokes.
(...Possibly part of the reason I don't like Mansfield Park is how it forces me to the realization of how Jane Austen would have disapproved of me. Hee.)
You know, I didn't remember liking Anne Elliot much, but I reread Persuasion this summer and I actually really did! I think she has a spine in a weird way - like, she's stubborn in a quiet way, and she's more adult than Fanny Price. WHO JUST SUCKS.
Heee. Well, uh, some people like it! I mean, even the worst Jane Austen is better than tons and tons of other stuff, you know? This happens to be my least favorite of hers, but there's still interesting stuff in it.
In the context I'm thinking of, it was clearly framed as an insult, but there really wasn't any more to it than the word "rhetoric" -- which is why the poll question, because my associations with the word are not at all insulting, and it was thus amusing.
Ahhh, it was a question on definitions. Is a Zebra a black horse with white stripes or a white horse with black stripes? ::wry grin:: My answer would be, "yes".
You know, I first read Mansfield Park a long time ago, after reading all the other completed Austen novels, and I was completely exasperated with Fanny. But I read it again about a year ago, and I was surprised -- while I wouldn't say I like her or would want to hang out with her, I think she was admirable, and I think she actually did show a lot of backbone. She had a very clear and firm idea of morality, and she devoted herself to those ideas, even in the face of a lot of unpleasantness. She also had a very clear and I think demanding sense of duty, and she held herself to that standard even at a lot of personal cost. I think it's hard to like her, because she's not at all in the modern style of a heroine -- she's not witty or quick, like Elizabeth Bennett, and doing your duty is not necessarily seen as a big virtue now, at least when your duty as you see it isn't to do something huge and outwardly noble. It took me a while to warm to her, but I do admire her.
Sigh. You're right, of course -- she really does make some hard choices, and she has to stand up for herself when everyone wishes she would just give in already. I don't know why it doesn't make me like her! I mean, I went into this reading with an open mind, hoping that I would discover her great qualities this time, and ... no. She has all these characteristics I normally love in characters, and yet I cannot see her as anything but Queen of the Passive Aggressive Martyr Mouses. Bah.
I was really conflicted between 'brilliant hetcest' (a huge kink for me) and 'young queer Fraser' (which I just generally adore). Damn radio buttons instead of ticky boxes.
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"Rhetoric is the art of discovering the available means of persuasion in the given case." - my man Aristotle
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I, um, can go on about this, just warning you.
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(Actually, all those texts were fun, in their own way, but they seemed to suffer from the fact that none of the rhetorical arts they were explaining made any sense at all in the English translation and required you to know Latin.)
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Seriously, I love Jane Austen, but Mansfield Park suffers from the problem where all the likable characters are bad and all the good characters are insufferable prigs.
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Edmund is mostly good when he is around Mary Crawford. Whom we should hate because she is bitchy about her relatives and tells dirty jokes.
(...Possibly part of the reason I don't like Mansfield Park is how it forces me to the realization of how Jane Austen would have disapproved of me. Hee.)
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I wonder if repeating that 300 times would count as my next essay for this class!
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Dude, I need to read that soon. Don't tell me such things! *hides from literature*
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...comments in a good or a bad way?
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