Belletristic and Modernist Views

CCR 747: Authorship StudiesFebruary 12, 2013

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Genius

• Solitary

• Originary

• Proprietary

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the natural

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What counts as Belletristic when it comes to rhetorical

theory?

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In the 18th century, Scottish rhetoricians Hugh Blair, Adam Smith, and George Campbell were intrigued more by the ways in which discourse appealed to an audience’s taste and sense of propriety than by its reasoning. To explore the rhetorical dimensions of aesthetic influence, Blair, Smith, and Campbell looked to 17th century views of beauty, novelty, and “the Sublime.” ... Warnick explains how the influence of French belletrists effected a shift in emphasis from neoclassical invention to aesthetics, thereby altering the traditional five-canon model of rhetoric and initiating a revised conception of rhetoric in the modern period.

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Sharon CrowleyFriday, February 15, 13

What happens when we assume that successful composition depends upon genius, and that genius is natural and therefore cannot be taught?

(Crowley, 51)

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3-stage model of 19c inventional processes

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1. Storing the mind with knowledge

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2. Genius (natural ability)

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3. Method

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Genung: grades of invention (53)

• originative invention

• reproductive invention

• methodizing invention

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These mental habits keep the mind “in the attitude of constant interrogation” and insure that writers become habituated to “sternly thinking the vagueness and obscurity out of a subject”; moreover, the habits will develop “a real strength of mind and true moral courage” in those who practice them. In short, better thinkers are better people. (54)

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1856-1939

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The opposite of play is not what is serious but what is real. ... The creative writer does the same as a child at play. He creates a fantasy which he takes very seriously -- that is, which he invests with large amounts of emotion -- while separating it sharply from reality. (25)

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imagination

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1888-1965

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tradition

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Tradition is a matter of much wider significance. It cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour. It involves, in the first place, the historical sense, which we may call nearly indispensable to anyone who would continue to be a poet beyond his twenty-fifth year; and the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence. (37)

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Seth:

1. Is the “historical sense”—and, by extension, the collaborative sense—of writing in fact its own authorial construction? Is the first writerly invention the invention of our place as a writer amongst other writers, past and present? “No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone.”

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