The General and the Specific

Nick Flynn's The Ticking is the Bomb  and "Exposure" by Philip Gourevitch and Errol Morris approach the torture at Abu Ghraib in two distinct ways as described in Bill Nichols' Introduction to Documentary. Flynn's text operates mostly as a Social Issue Documentary. He is drawing parallels between the events at Abu Ghraib and his personal life by …

Starting Out with a Bang (Or Not)

Nick Flynn's memoir, The Ticking is the Bomb carefully examines the role of photography in ethical memorialization through both his personal life and the hidden-and-revealed instance of the Abu Ghraib photographs. As such, light is an important motif in the book. This is why it is very interesting that the beginning of the book is full …

Going Out Strong

Conclusions, among the Greeks called epiligoi, are tripartite, consisting of the Summing Up, Amplification and Appeal to Pity. - Rhetorica ad Herennium (Lanham 173) Sarah Burns, no doubt accepting the greek origins of the word "Epilogue" chose to construct hers in a way that allowed her true to the classical model. At the end of chapter 6, …

Counter Reposte

"Arguing isn't communication, its noise." Tony Gaskins Sarah Burns' book The Central Park Five exemplifies a misappropriated reading of Gaskins' words. For Burns, arguing her view of the Central Park Jogger case isn't communicating what she means to the reader; it is presenting her reader with the cacophony of voices surrounding the case in such a way that …

The Internal and External Gaze

One of the beauties of rhetorical analysis is the diversity of gaze. There are multiple ways of examining the same event/situation/individual and the perspective through which it is examined alters the perceived reality of the subject itself. From a rhetorical standpoint, this is primarily a function of, as Bill Nichols describes them, the divisions of …

Intertextuality – The Intricate Tapestry of Literature

When we think of an author, the stereotypical image that comes to mind is that of a recluse, cut off from the rest of the world, trying to invoke the Muses into endowing zir with inspiration. What we do not realize is that this image is inherently flawed as it assumes that creative inspiration comes …

Preface

ABSTRACT The common perception of authors as loners who refrain from any social interaction and prefer to wallow in their loneliness, looking to the Muses for creative inspiration is an exaggerated fallacy and based in the false perception that creative work involves the writing of a text ex nihilo. On the contrary, creativity is the …

Final Project Proposal

In revisiting all three of my papers recently, I happened to discover a common element in the three, a sort-of unstated argument that ran under the surface with all three and a thread that connected them into one. In my final project, I would like to unravel that thread and weave it into its own …

Coming Full Circle

Hypertext has been perceived as a shiny new form of literature that has the potential to revolutionize the way we tell stories as a culture and has been approached with trepidation lest it disrupt our carefully conceived notions of what literature is. However, the disruption caused by hypertext has not been the disruption caused by …

Interactivity and Conversation

This is the application of "Hypertext:Of Mouse and Man" from Sven Birkerts' book The Gutenberg Elegies to hypertextual, particularly Interactive Fiction, works. For Sven Birkerts, hypertext is the ultimate desruptiion to the relationship between an author and a reader.  In his opinion, "the reader goes to the work to be subjected to the creative will of …