Blog Post 2

“Among its more appealing features are the interviews with writers and historians like Shelby Foote and Barbara Fields, who provide the background information and interpretation necessary to transform battles, speeches, and letters from dry historical data into a human drama of characters, intentions, and limitations.” (Keith Grant-Davie 1) The ability to turn dry historical data into a vivid and colorful depiction, through writing, is an art form in-itself. Shelby Foote and Barbara Fields were able to explain these rhetorical situations brilliantly and made it possible to explain these events to an even deeper extent. I believe its safe to say this is a desired ability among many writers, including myself. This form of rhetoric does not persuade through argument but through being able to connect the reader on different levels that in turn makes a dry, fact based analysis, turn into a rich story that any reader can emerge themselves in and understand the text on a deeper level.  

“Philosophical rhetoric is primarily concerned with the exploratory construction of knowledge. The philosophical rhetor is less concerned with the composition of a particular text than with exploring ways of knowing and defining a subject.” (Covino & Jolliffe 7). This sheds light on Philosophical rhetoric because instead of looking at the composition of the text this style of rhetoric goes deeper and looks at the composition in a different way, philosophically.  It would be interesting to go further into this philosophical rhetoric and explore the different possibilities that could arise from looking through this lens.

Both these styles, Shelby Foote/Barbara Fields style and the Philosophical rhetoric style, take a typical text that has a normal face value and turns them inside out. Also, producing a more lively and energetic feel that conveys points across differently then if the text were stated more simply. In other words, rhetoric: “Its most well-known definition came from Aristotle, who called it "the art of finding [seeing] the available means of persuasion. More simply, rhetoric includes the study and the use of language with persuasive effect, but definitions abound.” (Wikipedia). This is obviously a strong tool to learn and every writer should strive for the ability to be able to do this, as it truly separates great writers from average writers.