February 23, 2011

In the Phaedrus, Plato defines rhetoric as “the art of enchanting the soul.” I wonder if Edgar Allen Poe draws from this in his essay The Poetic Principle. There he writes, “I need scarcely observe that a poem deserves its title only inasmuch as it excites, by elevating the soul.” Poe, very clearly, argues that […]

The ability to speak exactly is intimately related to the ability to know exactly. Wendell Berry, “Imagination in Place” This is why I believe thinking is a practice in rhetoric, if not the first stage in a complete exercise of this art.