| LITR 5738: Literature of Space & Exploration |
|
Sample Student Research Review 2002
Greenfield, Bruce.
"The Rhetoric of British and American Narratives of
Exploration." Dalhousie
Review 65.1 (Spring 1985): 56-65
February 5, 2002, Literature of Exploration, John Eberhart (notes: John Granahan)
“There
is no need for rhetoric to know the facts at all…”
-- Socrates in Plato’s Gorgias
Rhetoric
is
persuasiveness…speaking from an angled
perspective…has mostly a negative connotation…it is “language that has
transgressed the limits of representation and substituted its own forms
for the forms of reality.” In
short, assertions are made for purposes of persuading some audience. 1
Major
point of the article:
Narrators of exploration
sometimes adopt “rhetorical strategies” to satisfy the reading public and
employers. Look for a
"form" of exploration writing: the journey out, the triumphal
discovery, and the return home to those who will value the effort.
Reading narratives is rewarding when we focus on rhetorical strategies:
adapting the truth to persuade other cultures and interest groups.
Organization
of the article:
| Greenfield
examines the British exploration
Hearn had to “translate” the North American Indian experience
into a European “discovery.” Their motive was trade. |
Their motive was to find land for “Americans” to settle.
That made the cultural “strategy” even harder. |
Highlights
of the research...identifying some rhetorical strategies:
explorer's cultural superiority justifies all; misrepresentation of potential
economic gains; misleading descriptions of other people and culture; ignoring or
exaggerating facts to appeal to a wide readership.
The first-person, eye-witness style gave the public what they wanted, and
publishers knew this was the most profitable style.
Through rhetoric, writers resisted letting facts “transform the terms
of their errands.”
|
What they tell you: |
What's really going on: |
| A
land of "elegant galleries, parapets adorned with statuary, columns
and pedestals..." |
We
saw a canyon and some rocks. |
| "The
most beautiful objects in nature"..."never yet been seen by
civilized man..." |
A
waterfall or river, previously only seen by "Indians" and
"Frenchmen" -- ugh. |
| This
particular valley is "the only desirable situation for
settlement..." |
The
land is already covered with farms and people.
Keep movin' pardner. |
| It's
"American destiny..." |
We'll
need to uproot local cultures. |
| The
land is "innocent of human associations"..."waiting to be
discovered." |
Indians
have been here for ages, in fact, we relied on them for food, horses,
and directions. |
| We
reached the mouth of the Coppermine River; you might say I
“discovered” it! |
The
Indians were going that way anyway, and we went with them.
They had plenty of food for all of us. |
| I
erected a mark at the river’s mouth and took possession of the coast
for the Company |
This
place is way too far away; there is no copper; and no navigable harbor. |
| Self-sufficient
Indians don’t need to trade with Hudson’s Bay company, so they're
“unambitious and indolent.” |
Indians
are very clever at catching enough deer to satisfy all their needs.
They’re smart. |
| I
see a "timeless, essential America that has been unrealized until
my arrival..." |
I
am able to look past centuries of Indian history as if it never
happened. |
How
this article relates to Pym and the Scott Antarctic Expedition:
It's
tempting to quickly judge that Pym has no “rhetorical tension,” as it
is fantasy fiction for entertainment. But
if we are sensitive to these strategies, we can find good imitations of them
(with help from Scott Peeples2) in Pym's race and colonial encounter
with the Tsalalians:
·
Peters,
who was called a half-breed Indian, is now "white" in
comparison to the savages.
·
The
savages are brawny with woolly hair, thick clumsy lips, and childish mannerisms.
·
In the
tradition of European and American imperialism, the crew of the Jane Guy
clearly intends to exploit the Tsalalians.
·
The
"high degree of order" with which the Tsalalians conduct traded should
have tipped Pym off to their intelligence and organizational ability, but
ethnocentrism and greed blinded him to such a possibility."
·
When the
natives engineer a landslide, Pym changes his opinion of them from
"ignorant" to "treacherous."
·
The
natives were smart enough to know that their way of life was being threatened
and knew they would be slaughtered
in an open battle.
The
Cherry-Garrard and Scott narratives don't seem to wrestle with rhetorical
strategies, as the serious scientific errands and brutal realities of these
events require no rhetorical translation.
_______________________________________________________
1)
Fish, Stanley. “Rhetoric.”
Critical Terms for Literary Studies.”
Ed. Frank Lentricchia and Thomas McLaughlin.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995.
203-222.
2)
Peeples, Scott. "Black
and White and Re(a)d All Over: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym."
Edgar Allan Poe Revisited. New
York: Twayne Publishers, 1998.
_______________________________________________________________________
Discussion:
Is this type of rhetoric a property of "exploration
literature," or is twisting the truth to our advantage a necessity of
everyday life? In business (e.g.,
Enron annual reports)? Foreign
policy? Exploration of space?
Religion?
Notes on Discussion in Class (taken by John Granahan
and John Eberhart):
- Sonia: rhetoric part of everyday life -- remember George Orwell's "double-speak."
- JohnE: was there a tendency to cover up failure on space missions? Samantha and Rex: sometimes it was the "other way around," i.e., focusing too much on the negative, e.g., Hubble Telescope.
- Kelly: Houston School District claims 7% dropout rate, but observations indicate much higher. What's up with that?
- Tara: Texas A&M projected itself as a "top 10" university; later found USN&WR rating showed them as top 10 in only one field. She was mad for a year.
- Samantha: Don't think things were always this way. (Her mother's generation felt government didn't tell all for out own good.) JohnE: the 60s took care of that.
- Sonia: Much more information out there now; more media; people are better informed.
- Dr White: we process truth through stories.
- James: everybody's version of "truth" is different. Everyone has an agenda or point of view that colors his views.
- JohnE: Pym is seen by some critics as an allegory of illusion, misrepresentation, deception, and outright cruelty by people who believe themselves to be totally justified. This unfolds to A. Pym as a "world view" of unreal and unknowable mystery without purpose or logic. Do the terms "reality" or "truth" depend on what's happening inside each individual's mind? Tennyson's "Ulysses" speaks of following "knowledge, like a sinking star, Beyond the utmost bound of human thought." Sounds a lot like Pym's white shrouded figure, doesn't it?