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February 09, 2005
Tracing Narratives (Take 2)
My project will focus on identifying the metaphors used to describe Composition as people write histories about the field. To paraphrase Hayden White, how we write about the history of Composition is as important as what we write about it. Central to this project are the following questions:
• What are the metaphors used in describing the history of Composition?
• Do writers adopt certain narrative styles that coincide with the metaphors they choose?
• Have we reached a self-reflexive (ironic) phase in Composition?
• How do these compare to the metaphors being used to describe the similar discipline of Speech Communication?
At the foundation of this project I will assume two basic narrative structures: lament and revel, that can be seen in the larger structures of Romance, Tragedy, Epic, and Satire identified by White. If possible, I would like to select representative texts that either lament or revel in the history of the field. I hope to identify the larger structures written onto these histories through an analysis of the metaphors used, very similar to Hayden White’s method for demonstrating the larger narrative emplotment of histories, and thereby lay open the writer’s attitudes and interests in telling history from a certain vantage.
The main problem I will encounter in this project is text selection. I foresee the project working one of two ways.
A) Identifying whether or not Composition has entered a self-reflexive phase and, if so, selecting a canonical history from before and a canonical history from after the movement. The goal here would be to examine the shift and try to ascertain what effect an ironic trope has on how the history of Composition is told.
B) Instead of working from book length texts, visit past issues of CCC and see if it is possible to codify distinctions in the way histories were written in certain eras. The goal here would be to identify major shifts in how the history of Composition was perceived and try to identify the cultural environments informing those perceptions.
(note: for the purposes of this proposal, metonymy and synecdoche are considered included when I write metaphor).
Please help me pick texts. I’m rather lost when it comes to that.
Posted by trobryan at February 9, 2005 08:56 PM
Comments
Ty, would you like response to/suggestions about this proposal, or are you going with the wiki idea?
Posted by: senioritis at February 12, 2005 07:31 AM
As the Wiki project doesn't seem to do the things you are asking us to do for the course, it seems that I'm on this one.
I feel like I'm in need of a great deal of guidance. I'm leaning toward the idea of focusing research on the flagship journal of the field, CCC, and analyzing it for the ways in which contributors write about the history of the field. If I can isolate trends across given time periods, I could then focus on a representative example from each trend. Or, if there is a doozie of a shift in the ways histories are told, focusing on the shift and looking at the exigences that brought it about.
Posted by: TR at February 12, 2005 10:32 AM
As it's presently formulated, I'm ill equipped to help you with this project, because I have no suggestions about texts for tracing the history of a discipline other than comp studies. But your project should focus on comp studies, and I can help you with that. As for the history of speech comm.: that should be a subordinate part of the project. Perhaps, like others in 611, you'll have that larger task in mind but use your 611 project to pursue just one part of it. You might, if you wish, leave the speech comm. comparison for work you do after this course, and use your project in this course to research one part of your larger task—the part about comp history. Let me know if you're interested in that; if so, we can start to work to figure out the texts that you might best consult.
Posted by: senioritis at February 12, 2005 11:15 AM