Semisensical ramblings by David W. Rick
“I believe that the fantastic is an area of literature that is heavily dependent on the dialectic between author and reader for the construction of a sense of wonder, that it is a fiction of consensual construction of belief. This expectation is historical, subject to historical change, and is not unique to fantasy. Wayne C. […]
“Radical phantasy begins with the great and uncompromising refusal of conventional wisdom, a refusal that has always identified the countercultural magician, even when (as Agrippa demonstrates) the world believed in magic.” –William A. Covino Key Terms: Generative magic, Arresting magic, Phantasy William Covino’s 1994 work, Magic, Rhetoric, and Literacy: An Eccentric History of the Composing […]
“Throughout the inhabited world, in all times and under every circumstance, myths of man have flourished; and they have been the living inspiration of whatever else may have appeared out of the activities of the human body and mind. It would not be too much to say that myth is the secret opening through which […]
“Truth in art is not the discovery of facts, not an addition to human knowledge in the scientific sense of the word. It is, rather, the exercise of human propriety, the formulation of symbols which rigidify our sense of poise and rhythm. Artistic truth is the externalization of taste.” –Kenneth Burke Key Terms: Syllogistic progression, […]
“As [an author] writes, he creates not simply an ideal, impersonal ‘man in general,’ but an implied version of ‘himself’ that is different from the implied authors we meet in other men’s works. To some novelists it has seemed, indeed, that they were discovering or creating themselves as they wrote.” –Wayne C. Booth Key Terms: Implied […]
“American meritocracy is validated and sustained by the deep-rooted belief in equal opportunity. But can we really say that kinds like those I taught have equal access to America’s educational resources? Consider not only the economic and political barriers they face, but the fact, too, that judgments about their ability are made at a very […]
“It is a part which, though it will be the most difficult to myself, from the necessity of examining a vast diversity of opinions, will yet perhaps afford the least pleasure to my readers, since it admits merely of a dry exposition of rules. In other parts, I have endeavored to introduce some little embellishment, […]
“Oratory is the art of enchanting the soul, and therefore he who would be an orator has to learn the differences of human souls—they are so many and of such a nature, and from them come the differences between man and man.” — Socrates in Plato, Phaedrus I have abandoned my questions for these texts, […]
“This renegade line of thought values rhetoric not as ‘formulaic discourse’ or pure technique, but rather as the activity of learning and wondering; a process that eschews the constraints of a singular ‘purpose or end or stance’ and cultivates instead a ‘suppleness of mind’ well-suited to address continuously evolving social contexts.” — T. R. Johnson […]
“Teachers and students (leadership and people), co-intent on reality, are both Subjects, not only in the task of unveiling that reality, and thereby coming to know it critically, but in the task of re-creating that knowledge. As they attain this knowledge of reality through common reflection and action, they discover themselves as permanent re-creators. In […]