Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture

by Walter J. Ong

Overview

This collection of essays by Walter J. Ong focuses on the complex and dynamic relationship between verbal performance and cultural evolution. By studying the history of rhetoric and related arts from classical antiquity through the age of romanticism to the modern period, Ong both illuminates the past and helps explain late-twentieth-century modes of expression.

Elegantly written and wide ranging, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology traces the evolution of devices used to store, retrieve, and communicate knowledge. Ong discusses diverse topics including memory as art, associationist critical theory, the close relationship between romanticism and technology, and the popular culture of the 1970s. This book also contains essays about Tudor writings in English on rhetoric and literary theory, the study of Latin as a Renaissance puberty rite, Ramism in the classroom and in commerce, Jonathan Swift's notion of the mind, and John Stuart Mill's politics.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801406454
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	10/31/1971
Pages:	362
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.19(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Walter J. Ong (1912-2003) taught at Saint Louis University for thirty years. His many books include Orality and Literacy, Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology; Interfaces of the Word; and Fighting for Life, the latter three from Cornell.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

1 Rhetoric and the Origins of Consciousness 1

2 Oral Residue in Tudor Prose Style 23

3 Tudor Writings on Rhetoric, Poetic, and Literary Theory 48

4 Memory as Art 104

5 Latin Language Study as a Renaissance Puberty Rite 113

6 Ramist Classroom Procedure and the Nature of Reality 142

7 Ramist Method and the Commercial Mind 165

8 Swift on the Mind: Satire in a Closed Field 190

9 Psyche and the Geometers: Associationist Critical Theory 213

10 J. S. Mill's Pariah Poet 237

11 Romantic Difference and the Poetics of Technology 255

12 The Literate Orality of Popular Culture Today 284

13 Crisis and Understanding in the Humanities 304

Index 337