History of Rhetoric

We had a broad overview of where our educational traditions came from. Learning how to speak and present thoughts well is at the forefront of all communication from academia right down to everyday relations. We must take into account what our audience has in mind while we are addressing them but ultimately how well we persuade them has more to do with what they can relate to. It is the reader's interpretation and not our meaning that they come away with. In Channing's A Writer's Preparation he discusses theory of property"The germ or element of thought, once common property, is no longer in its simple state. It is appropriated by being modified, colored, combined with other substances and capable of peculiar application after being subjected to this hidden transmutation." (pg.30). This transmutation is performed in the comprehension of the reader, their revelations while reading it (where it brought new insight and new perspective on old experience/knowledge). Discussing literature and criticism is thought to bring new depths to comprehension. Traveling further into life's experiences naturally brings new depth to comprehension. Likewise new revelations bring to depth. But it is how an individual assimilates the newness and makes it their own that brings vitality to any piece of literature or criticism. It is the reader's awestruck enthusiasm or vehement distaste that shapes the work and, more importantly, what beliefs and understanding they went into the work with that gives it meaning. The more readers that respond pathetically to a work, the more the number of readers will be drawn to it, the more meanings for it will increase, the more there is to discuss. Of course there will always be new revelations to be pulled from a single text because each person is unique and will read and comprehend in their own manner and build upon what they already know and build again when they know more. I bring you to a story Sancho Panza told Don Quixote: Panza had had two brothers who had a taste for good wine. A king in a nearby kingdom was having a wedding, had heard of these two brothers' expertise, and decided to call upon them to tell him if the wine he had ordered, having thought it to be excellent, was indeed excellent. One brother arrived before the other and the impatient king told him to go ahead and try the wine and say what he thought of it. The first brother tried it and deemed it to be a great vintage that his guests would enjoy; but he told the king that he detected a hint of iron in the wine. The king was angered by this absurd assertion and had the first brother hauled off and hanged. The second brother then arrived, not knowing of his brother's fate, and in tasting the wine also called it a great vintage. But he told the king that he detected a leather taste in the wine. The king now thinks neither brother is credible, in fact crazy, and calles for the hanging of brother number two. He goes on to serve the wine at the wedding celebration. Once everyone had drank to their heart's content and the wine barrel had been emptied, attention was called to a small item at the bottom of the barrel--the was an iron key hanging on a leather strap. The brothers had detected something inside the wine that wasn't of the wine but still existed within. This is what discussion ultimately strives for--to find what truths can be revealed. But each reader will find their own truth when they go searching. It is whether it can be seen by others that gives credibility.