112th Annual Conference - Riverside Convention Center, California
Friday, October 31 - Sunday, November 2, 2014

This page is about the 2014 conference. For 2015 conference info, go to PAMLA 2015.

Rhetorical Approaches to Literature II

Session Chair: 
Jazmine Wells, Texas Christian University
Time: 
Session 3: Friday 2:00-3:30pm
Location: 
RCC Raincross F
Topic Area: 
Rhetorical Approaches to Literature

Presenters/Papers:

  1. On Saying Something: The Value of Bold Writing in the Prose Styles of Johnson and Chesterton

    Brandon Schneeberger, Kansas State University
    Both GK Chesterton and Samuel Johnson wrote in a bold style due to their beliefs founded in objective truth. The two writers use the rhetorical devices of irony, wit, and paradox to create bold, yet humorous, claims, which at first appear far-fetched but on closer examination prove true. Though the prose style of each writer looks different at face value, they both use parallelism and antithesis to create these bold statements that are humorous, yet thought-provoking.

  2. Embracing Ambiguity: YA Literature and the Rehabilitation of Psychic Restlessness

    Chandra Howard, University of California at Riverside
    This paper applies Gloria E. Anzaldúa’s theoretical framework of border consciousness to young adult literature as a call to recuperate historical erasures through ambiguous perspectives and psychic fractures.

  3. Kenneth Burke and the Poetics of Pure Persuasion

    Tom Jesse, University of Wisconsin - La Crosse
    Kenneth Burke’s vague definitions of “pure persuasion” in A Rhetoric of Motives (1950) have long been the source of confusion over his self-described “meta-rhetoric.” This paper argues that the experimental practices of the 20th and 21st century avant-garde poetry provide significant new insight into one of Burke’s most misunderstood rhetorical concepts.
Session Cancelled: 
No