Discussion Questions for January 28
1. On a piece of paper, in pen or pencil—not to be handed in but used for class discussion:
a. What does it mean “to
change your mind.”
i. Briefly sketch out an example of a time when you changed your mind.
ii. The following may or may not be the asking for the same things. If they
make you add or change anything, we’ll note that too.
1. Did someone make you do it?
2. Did they use language?
3. Did they use “an argument”?
b. What does it mean “to identify with” someone or something?
i. Briefly sketch out an example.
ii. Briefly analyze it: was it person related? Language related?
iii. Was someone else involved?
2. Aristotle: Rhetoric
is both an art and a techne, useful (“applied”) and theoretical.
It can seen as a talent you are born with, and also something that can be taught
and that you can get better at.
a. What else do you know about “rhetoric”?
THE FOLLOWING questions are optional for 485 students.
3. In what ways does the following poem enact "the dancing of an attitude"? What sitution(s) does it size up or attitudinally name? How is it a strategic or stylized answer to a question posed by its situation(s)?
AND/OR: discuss any aspect of its form (after considering the kinds of form discussed by Burke in his Lexicon.).
(It's best if you compose and save your response in a word processor, then cut
and paste it into the discussion forum box).
Sonnet 73
That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin'd choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou seest the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death's second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see'st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consumed with that which it was nourish'd by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere lo.