Romancing Rhetorics: Social Expressivist Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing
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Romancing Rhetorics shows how expressivism is historically related to romanticism and interprets this connection in a positive light. It historicizes and then theorizes some of the primary texts in the romantic/expressivist tradition of language study and production. The book connects William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Matthew Arnold, John Stuart Mill, and John Dewey, among others, with contemporary compositionists such as Donald Murray, Ann Berthoff, James Britton, and Peter Elbow. Using the history of romanticism, the author shows how expressivism relates to social construction and argues that reclaiming a romantic heritage enriches contemporary composition theories. By historicizing the expressivist tradition and connecting the texts of both the romantic poets and Mill, Arnold, and Dewey with education in their times and ours, Romancing Rhetorics demands a reconsideration of the expressivist composition theories that have been berated and misunderstood for the past few years. This book is the first to re-examine our understanding of what it means to be romantic, while connecting that new understanding to both education in general and writing instruction in particular. It does not ignore or simplify the current arguments condemning expressivism, but devotes considerable thought to the summary of and response to critics of expressivism. Romancing Rhetorics is an important book for scholars, theorists, practitioners of composition, and graduate students. Those devoted to the academic discourse, social constructivism/social-epistemic approach to teaching and scholarship will find Romancing Rhetorics inspiring reading.
PrefaceAcknowledgmentsIntroductionCh. 1Whose Categories Are These Anyway?1Ch. 2The Dead Romantics Society: The Call for Educational Change17Ch. 3The Imagination for the Classroom38Ch. 4Vital Links: Discovery, Perception, Experience, and Reflection55Ch. 5Toward a Social-Expressivism: Misreadings and Rereadings of Expressivism Past and Present91Ch. 6Women in the Writing Classroom: Feminism, Romanticism, and Social-expressivist Rhetorics125Ch. 7A Note on Expressivist Rhetorics and Culturally Diverse Classrooms: "The Weight of Too Much Liberty"150Notes162Conclusion163Bibliography167Index179
