Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in Ordinary Language Criticism

by Walter Jost

Overview

In Rhetorical Investigations Walter Jost juxtaposes problems and questions in philosophy and literature, using rhetoric as the middle term and common ground between them. Drawing on the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and Stanley Cavell, among others, Jost joins a small band of contemporary literary critics who are rethinking theory beyond the apriorism of much poststructuralism and its built-in reading against the grain. By elaborating an "ordinary language criticism" stabilized in grammatical and rhetorical possibilities of language rather than in empirical actualities, Jost shows how literary critics at all levels, from the undergraduate to the sophisticated theorist, "pose" as they read, trying out "performances" of the words as claims to self-knowledge as well as cultural critique.

In the second half of the book, Jost examines the "low modernist" poetry of Robert Frost, finding in Frost’s work a "scene of instruction" through which underappreciated resources for criticism can be recovered in the traditions of rhetoric, hermeneutics, pragmatism, and ordinary language philosophy.

Rhetorical Investigations promises no convenient methods and no simple answers to questions of meaning in literature; instead, it proposes a criticism whose origins are the natural language we all speak and whose value rests on illuminating our language games in poetry, philosophy, and everyday life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780813922492
Publisher:	University of Virginia Press
Publication date:	04/30/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 1.25(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Walter Jost, Professor of English at the University of Virginia, is the author of Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman and has coedited several books, most recently (with Wendy Olmsted) A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	ix
	List of Abbreviations	xi
	Introduction	1
Book I.	Rhetoric: An Advanced Primer	25
1	Dialectic as Dialogue: The Order of the Ordinary	27
2	Rhetorical Invention: Notes toward an American Low Modernism	61
3	Grammatical Judgment: It All Depends on What You Mean by "Home"	94
4	Logical Proof: Perspicuous Representations	122
Book II.	Four Beginnings for a Book on Robert Frost	157
5	Lessons in the Conversation That We Are: "The Death of the Hired Man" (Invention)	159
6	Naming Being in "West-Running Brook": (Judgment as Acknowledgment)	183
7	Giving Evidence and Making Evident: Civility and Madness in "Snow" (Proof)	217
8	Ordinary Language Brought to Grief: "Home Burial" (Dialogue in Disorder and Doubt)	243
Appendix	Frost Poems Discussed	271
	Notes	299
	Index	339

What People are Saying About This

"This is a book that should be read by everyone who cares about rhetorical inquiry, or about the importance of ordinary language, or about the neglected importance of the works of Robert Frost. With an impressive knowledge of contemporary philosophy, Jost has found the right way of tying fancy ideas to the ways we think and talk and write in the 'everyday' world. His analyses of major poems by Robert Frost are by far the best I have read." -- Wayne Booth, author of The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction

Rita FelskiUniversity of Virginia

For those of us who are growing weary of interrogating, unmasking, and subverting, Walter Jost points the way to a different kind of thinking. Rhetorical Investigations is an eloquent manifesto for a style of criticism attentive to the rich resources of ordinary language and everyday life. Jost's arguments are rigorously made and always illuminating.

Anthony CascardiUniversity of CaliforniaBerkeley

"When it comes to rhetoric and the question of its potential role in literary-philosophical analysis, I can hardly think of a more insightful book than this. It is accomplished, distinguished, and makes a genuine contribution to many different fields of thought.

Anthony Cascardi

"When it comes to rhetoric and the question of its potential role in literary-philosophical analysis, I can hardly think of a more insightful book than this. It is accomplished, distinguished, and makes a genuine contribution to many different fields of thought.

Wayne Booth

This is a book that should be read by everyone who cares about rhetorical inquiry, or about the importance of ordinary language, or about the neglected importance of the works of Robert Frost. With an impressive knowledge of contemporary philosophy, Jost has found the right way of tying fancy ideas to the ways we think and talk and write in the 'everyday' world. His analyses of major poems by Robert Frost are by far the best I have read.

Rita Felski

For those of us who are growing weary of interrogating, unmasking, and subverting, Walter Jost points the way to a different kind of thinking. Rhetorical Investigations is an eloquent manifesto for a style of criticism attentive to the rich resources of ordinary language and everyday life. Jost's arguments are rigorously made and always illuminating.

Editorial Reviews

This is a book that should be read by everyone who cares about rhetorical inquiry, or about the importance of ordinary language, or about the neglected importance of the works of Robert Frost. With an impressive knowledge of contemporary philosophy, Jost has found the right way of tying fancy ideas to the ways we think and talk and write in the 'everyday' world. His analyses of major poems by Robert Frost are by far the best I have read.

Wayne Booth

For those of us who are growing weary of interrogating, unmasking, and subverting, Walter Jost points the way to a different kind of thinking. Rhetorical Investigations is an eloquent manifesto for a style of criticism attentive to the rich resources of ordinary language and everyday life. Jost's arguments are rigorously made and always illuminating.

Rita Felski

"When it comes to rhetoric and the question of its potential role in literary-philosophical analysis, I can hardly think of a more insightful book than this. It is accomplished, distinguished, and makes a genuine contribution to many different fields of thought.

Anthony Cascardi

"When it comes to rhetoric and the question of its potential role in literary-philosophical analysis, I can hardly think of a more insightful book than this. It is accomplished, distinguished, and makes a genuine contribution to many different fields of thought. "—Anthony CascardiUniversity of CaliforniaBerkeley, author of The Subject of Modernity

"For those of us who are growing weary of interrogating, unmasking, and subverting, Walter Jost points the way to a different kind of thinking. Rhetorical Investigations is an eloquent manifesto for a style of criticism attentive to the rich resources of ordinary language and everyday life. Jost's arguments are rigorously made and always illuminating. "—Rita FelskiUniversity of Virginia, author of Literature After Feminism

"This is a book that should be read by everyone who cares about rhetorical inquiry, or about the importance of ordinary language, or about the neglected importance of the works of Robert Frost. With an impressive knowledge of contemporary philosophy, Jost has found the right way of tying fancy ideas to the ways we think and talk and write in the 'everyday' world. His analyses of major poems by Robert Frost are by far the best I have read. "—Wayne Booth, author of The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction

From the Publisher

For those of us who are growing weary of interrogating, unmasking, and subverting, Walter Jost points the way to a different kind of thinking. Rhetorical Investigations is an eloquent manifesto for a style of criticism attentive to the rich resources of ordinary language and everyday life. Jost's arguments are rigorously made and always illuminating.

Rita FelskiUniversity of Virginia

"When it comes to rhetoric and the question of its potential role in literary-philosophical analysis, I can hardly think of a more insightful book than this. It is accomplished, distinguished, and makes a genuine contribution to many different fields of thought.

Anthony CascardiUniversity of CaliforniaBerkeley