RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric. Rhetoric’s Pragmatism : : Essays in Rhetorical Hermeneutics / / Steven Mailloux.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Penn State University Press Complete eBook-Package 2017
• VerfasserIn: Mailloux, Steven,
• Place / Publishing House: University Park, PA : : Penn State University Press, , [2017]; ©2017
• Year of Publication: 2017
• Language: English
• Series: RSA Series in Transdisciplinary Rhetoric ; 4
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (248 p.)

For over thirty years, Steven Mailloux has championed and advanced the field of rhetorical hermeneutics, a historically and theoretically informed approach to textual interpretation. This volume collects fourteen of his most recent influential essays on the methodology, plus an interview.Following from the proposition that rhetorical hermeneutics uses rhetoric to practice theory by doing history, this book examines a diverse range of texts from literature, history, law, religion, and cultural studies. Through four sections, Mailloux explores the theoretical writings of Heidegger, Burke, and Rorty, among others; Jesuit educational treatises; and products of popular culture such as Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran and Star Trek: The Next Generation. In doing so, he shows how rhetorical perspectives and pragmatist traditions work together as two mutually supportive modes of understanding, and he demonstrates how the combination of rhetoric and interpretation works both in theory and in practice. Theoretically, rhetorical hermeneutics can be understood as a form of neopragmatism. Practically, it focuses on the production, circulation, and reception of written and performed communication.A thought-provoking collection from a preeminent literary critic and rhetorician, Rhetoric’s Pragmatism assesses the practice and value of rhetorical hermeneutics today and the directions in which it might head. Scholars and students of rhetoric and communication studies, critical theory, literature, law, religion, and American studies will find Mailloux’s arguments enlightening and essential.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part I -- 1. From Segregated Schools to Dimpled Chads: Rhetorical Hermeneutics and the Suasive Work of Th eory in Legal Interpretation -- 2. Euro- American Rhetorical Pragmatism: Democratic Deliberation and Purposeful Mediation -- 3. Humanist Controversies and Rhetorical Humanism -- 4. Rhetorical Pragmatism and Histories of New Media: Rorty on Dreyfus on Kierkegaard on the Internet -- Part II -- 5. Making Comparisons: First Contact, Ethnocentrism, and Cross- Cultural Communication -- 6. Enactment History, Jesuit Practices, and Rhetorical Hermeneutics -- 7. Jesuit Comparative Th eorhetoric -- Part III -- 8. Hermeneutics, Deconstruction, Allegory -- 9. Theotropic Logology -- 10. Jesuit Eloquentia Perfecta and Th eotropic Logology -- 11. Rhetorical Ways of Proceeding: Eloquentia Perfecta in U.S. Jesuit Colleges -- Part IV -- 12. Judging and Hoping: Rhetorical Effects of Reading about Reading -- 13. Narrative as Embodied Intensities: Th e Eloquence of Travel in Nineteenth- Century Rome -- 14. Conversation with Keith Gilyard -- 15. Political Th eology in Douglass and Melville -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index