A Blog for the Community of Rhetoric 10, The Rhetoric of Argument, "What Is Compelling?" taking place in Summer Session A, 2009, at the University of California at Berkeley.
Sunday, May 31, 2009
Checking In
How are you guys finding the reading this weekend? Any preliminary problems, questions, flights of fancy, provocations?
While reading Hecuba, I am enjoying contemplating the connection between the evidence of "metis" (cunning, cleverness) in the actions and words of Hecuba and Hecuba's own appeal to the power and priority of persuasion through words. Then she ultimately makes use of this skill to persuade Agamemnon to condemn Polymestor, while Polymestor continually appeals to his physical strength as the means to defeat her.
Also, I am interested in the ongoing use of images of the mother-child bond through words like succor, breast, and nurse that occurs in many exchanges, especially when that imagery does not particularly fit a scene. The mother-child relation is, obviously, at the forefront of the story, but it also permeates it, I think, in unexpected ways. (I would give some page numbers here to let you see this for yourself but I don't know if our formatting will correspond.)
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ReplyDeleteWhile reading Hecuba, I am enjoying contemplating the connection between the evidence of "metis" (cunning, cleverness) in the actions and words of Hecuba and Hecuba's own appeal to the power and priority of persuasion through words. Then she ultimately makes use of this skill to persuade Agamemnon to condemn Polymestor, while Polymestor continually appeals to his physical strength as the means to defeat her.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I am interested in the ongoing use of images of the mother-child bond through words like succor, breast, and nurse that occurs in many exchanges, especially when that imagery does not particularly fit a scene. The mother-child relation is, obviously, at the forefront of the story, but it also permeates it, I think, in unexpected ways. (I would give some page numbers here to let you see this for yourself but I don't know if our formatting will correspond.)