Textbook Presentations—Some Ideas for You

1. Basic publication information.

2. Information about the author, if available, and his or her institutional affiliation. (Gertrude Buck wrote textbooks—so “her” is appropriate here.)

3. How might your textbook figure in the Connors narrative about the rise of writing instruction in the 19^th century and the affinity for exercise- and drill-based pedagogy? In Royster’s history? In Johnson’s history of parlor rhetorics?

4. How is rhetoric defined in your textbook? (Audience, purpose, and context may appear without the term “rhetoric” attached or the term “rhetoric” may appear in another guise.)

5. What counts as “invention”?  Invention is the heart of the classical curriculum. What are students asked to do that creates meaning rather than rearranges it (managerial rhetoric)? That “finds” arguments rather than reproducing them? Or is invention essentially absent?

6. Does the term “composition” appear? In what context?

7. What rationale or telos for learning to write is expressed?

8. What does the table of contents with its hierarchical structure tell you about rhetoric and writing priorities?

9. Is oral discourse diminished? Or confined? Is its place different from the place of writing? Or is it absent?

10. How does the author address the student? Who appears to be speaking (whose voice)? How much social distance is created by the author’s voice? How are authority structures figured?  Enoch, for example, claims that Lydia Maria Child presents herself as the angel of mercy—that mother figure.

11.What other voices are present (say, via readings or examples)? Again Enoch champions Child’s inclusion of diverse voices in her assembled readings.

12.What are students asked to do that may be derived from the classical tradition?

13.What cultural assumptions about race, class, gender, sexual orientation, or disability—and the relation of each to language--govern the writing?

5.What issues in contemporaneous 19^th c. public discourse find their way into the texts? An example would be the Alford debate discussed by Connors. It may be difficult to tell w/o research, but the technique of situating a textbook within the imperatives of public discourse is important to note. You can easily see this done in our contemporary textbooks, which are loaded with popular/public discourse and imagery.