Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges

Studies in Writing and Rhetoric

by James A. Berlin

Defining a rhetoric as a social invention arising out of a particular time, place, and set of circumstances, Berlin notes that “no rhetoric—not Plato’s or Aris­totle’s or Quintilian’s or Perelman’s—is permanent.” At any given time several rhetorics vie for supremacy, with each attracting adherents representing vari­ous views of reality expressed through a rhetoric.

 

Traditionally rhetoric has been seen as based on four interacting elements: “re­ality, writer or speaker, audience, and language.” As emphasis shifts from one element to another, or as the interaction between elements changes, or as the def­initions of the elements change, rhetoric changes. This alters prevailing views on such important questions as what is ap­pearance, what is reality.

 

In this interpretive study Berlin classi­fies the three 19th-century rhetorics as classical, psychological-epistemological, and romantic, a uniquely American development growing out of the transcen­dental movement. In each case studying the rhetoric provides insight into society and the beliefs of the people.

Genres: Education, Academic

128 pages, Paperback

First published April 30, 1984

Reviews

[Colin Payton]

Painfully biased. I refuse to ever write history with such shameless favoritism: he generalizes and dismisses 150 years of academics and all their books and all their nuance in favor of piecing together Emerson's journals and sporadic quotations from Scott. How much do you have to hate your own heritage to ignore volumes of explicit rhetorical theory and then argue the superiority of people who had no impact (specifically on composition and rhetoric) in their own time? He pardons Scott for publishing a current-traditional textbook because of vague market pressures, but skewers everyone else for anything that teaches grammatical correctness. Also, the ridiculous and persistent need to place rhetoric — and only one type of rhetoric — at the center of metaphysics was embarrassing. To Berlin, if two people don't talk about a tree falling in the forest, then the tree, the forest, and the earth that house them don't exist.

Finally...sigh...his definitions for current-traditional rhetoric are unclear: he relies so heavily on politically skewed jargon (positivism, faculty psychology, mechanistic scientism) that he doesn't clearly define this important term (that scholars since toss about as a condemnation of anything pre-Peter Elbow). So unclear were these terms that even he had moments where the bad rhetoric was confused with the good rhetoric. E.g., he lambasts Blair, Campbell, and Whatley for "arguing from the perspective of a mechanistic epistemology" which emphasizes "the concrete term over the abstract since it is closer to actual sensory experience, the basis of all knowledge" (71). This, to Berlin, is very bad. Yet, betraying a bias toward the tabula rosa and the noble savage, Berlin later praises Fred Newton Scott for embracing the language of children, saying "the child's language is concrete and specific, but the school requires that he perform in the area of the abstract" (79). Berlin then argues that "what is needed is the dialectical interplay of the concrete and abstract: the sensory impression — the strength of the child — with the abstract organizing principles taught in schools." So, when scientists are concrete, reflecting sense impressions empirically, it's bad, but when children are concrete, somehow magically imbued with divine vocabulary, it's good.

Two stars because, like a Wikipedia article, the collection of primary and secondary sources is extremely convenient.

[Catherine Siemann]

A useful overview of the background of composition studies in the rise of the American university. For the non-specialist (I'm a literature Ph.D. now trying to catch up on the comp/rhet end of things), more examples of the sorts of rhetorics Berlin is discussing would have been useful; later in the text he talks about certain current (to the 1980s, when he is writing) texts and methodology and clearly assumes the reader will know what he's referring to -- a bit more explanatory material would be useful. (The material appears neither in the footnotes nor the bibliography.) Overall, though, quite enlightening.

[Lance]

Though this is a important book for the history of composition and gives a nice overview of different rhetorics emerging from 19th Century America, I have to say I found myself a bit disappointed. Perhaps I am simply expecting too much from Berlin these days. From the perspective of the 21st century, there are a lot of problems with how Berlin constructs his narrative, particularly within nationalist lines. The subtext of the book seems to be the development of a "distinctly American" rhetoric . . . which I have to say is the least useful way of conceptualizing rhetoric for me. Even so, his concept of "noetic fields," reminiscent of Foucault's ideas about discurse, could be useful . . . though again, a bit disappointing in their illusionary staticity.

That being said, Berlin's contextualizing of Emerson is quite interesting and makes me want to read Emerson again from a rhetorical point of view. Also giving prominence to the voices of Fred Newton Scott and Gertrude Buck was an important move for the development of rhetoric and composition in the last few decades.