The previews on this page are intended to help guide your reading and prepare you for class discussions. The postscripts are meant to emphasize and follow up on some of the points raised in class lectures and discussions. Though not a substitute for your own note-taking, the notes on this page should be especially helpful when it comes time to study for the midterm and final exams. We'll begin our analysis of Joan Didion's essay with particular attention to what might be called her stylistic tics. We'll also conclude our brief survey of the history of rhetoric by looking at some of the major figures and movements from the 18th century to the present.
Writing is a form of imposture.
I am not at all sure I am anything like the person I seem to a reader. The man on paper is always a more admirable character than his creator, who is a miserable creature of nose colds, minor compromises, and sudden flights into nobility. . . . I suppose readers who feel friendly toward someone whose work they like seldom realize that they are drawn more toward a set of aspirations than toward a human being. Chief among these methods is one that might simply be called extension , whereby the narrator projects his values and experiences on others through generalizations that tacitly implicate his readers. This strategy of implicating the reader through extension is simply a way of inviting identification without appearing to impose it.