Rhetorical Analysis: Towards a Tropology of Reading

Author(s): Marie-Rose Logan

Source: New Literary History, Vol. 9, No. 3, Rhetoric I: Rhetorical Analyses (Spring, 1978),
pp. 619-625
Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/468459
Accessed: 22-04-2016 08:12 UTC

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 Rhetorical Analysis:
Towards a Tropology of Reading
Marie-Rose Logan

W E ALL KNOW that Western linguistics originates in Greek

philosophy. This parentage is proclaimed everywhere. Our
linguistic terminology is made largely of Greek terms
which were adopted either directly or in their Latin translation. Yet,
the interest in language displayed very early on by Greek thinkers was
exclusively philosophical."' This rather blunt statement of Ben-
veniste, insofar as it implies the historical preeminence of the
philosophical discourse, also raises the question of the autonomy of
linguistic discourse. Entrenched in a vocabulary borrowed from
another discipline, i.e., from philosophy, linguistics unfolds, accord-
ing to Benveniste, as a "science du langage" and as a "science des
langues."2 In spite of divergences of opinion which often separate
them, most American and European linguists would not contest Ben-
veniste's acknowledgment of a debt to the Greek language and to
Greek philosophy. For instance, Noam Chomsky, who apprehends
linguistic theory from a mentalistic rather than speculative point of
view, has occasionally called for a watchfulness whose roots are to be
found in the philosophical strategy set forth by the Greek
philosophers and, more precisely, by Plato. In his investigation of
criteria applicable to a generative grammar, Chomsky phrases the
following concern: "In short, we must be careful not to overlook the
fact that surface similarities may hide underlying distinctions of a
fundamental nature, and that it may be necessary to guide and draw
out the speaker's intuition in perhaps fairly subtle ways before we can
determine what is the actual character of his knowledge of his lan-
guage or of anything else. Neither point is new (the former is a com-
monplace of traditional linguistic theory and analytic philosophy; the
latter is as old as Plato's Meno): both are often overlooked."3
In order to guide and draw out the speaker's intuition, Socrates
resorts to the dialectical or argumentative mode. Dialectics is pre-
sented in the Phaedrus as being superior to Rhetoric: Socrates tells
Phaedrus that the dialectical mode consists in an art of thinking
through which the art of speaking, rhetoric, is to be grounded.4 In the
Art of Rhetoric and in the Poetics, Aristotle presents a reflection on

Copyright? 1978 by New Literary History, The University of Virginia

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 620 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

language which is far more coherent and systematic than that of Plato.
Yet, like Plato, Aristotle takes the position that proficiency in the art
of speaking is to be obtained through mastery of the art of reasoning.
Since the treatises of Aristotle on rhetoric and on poetics contributed,
in large measure, to the development of literary exegesis and literary
theory, one can say that the discipline today called literary criticism
remains anchored in the philosophical framework which shaped its
origins. Just as Benveniste could safely establish the lineage of linguis-
tic terminology, so one can trace the vocabulary of criticism back to
the Greek thinkers.
Rhetoric constitutes a significant link in this etymological chain, for
throughout the history of its use, this term has carried philosophical
connotations over into the areas of the history of ideas, of linguistics,
of literary exegesis, and of literary theory. At the beginning of his
course on rhetoric, Nietzsche feels the need to operate a pragmatic
distinction between rhetoric as a system of tropes and rhetoric as the
skill of persuasion and eloquence. If Nietzsche dismisses the latter in
favor of the former, it is because he intends to concentrate on the
philosophical epistemology of tropes.5 Nietzsche's questioning of the
epistemology of tropes has been extended by Jacques Derrida's and
Paul de Man's deconstruction of tropes.6 And this deconstructive en-
terprise ought to be viewed not only in the light of a philosophical
tradition but also in that of rhetoric (understood as the study of tropes
and figures) and of the stylistics which characterizes linguistic and
formalistic trends of criticism. For, indeed, such critics as Jakobson,
Todorov, Barthes, Genette, Greimas, and Riffaterre have all contri-
buted in one way or another to the elaboration of a refined theory of
rhetoric which could be termed a sophisticated epistemology of
rhetoric.' If this new epistemology has given way to a deconstructive
strategy, it has also raised the question of the boundaries of rhetoric.
For instance, in "La Rhetorique restreinte," Gerard Genette wonders
if a rhetoric based on the study of tropological and figurative struc-
tures is not always a "restricted rhetoric." Turning back to Aristotle,
he writes: "The rhetoric of Aristotle did not need to be general (even
less 'generalized'): it was [general] to such an extent, through the
breadth of its aim, that a theory of figures did not yet deserve any
special mention: there are only a few pages on comparison and
metaphor, in one book (out of three) which is devoted to style and
composition-an exiguous territory, an out of the way canton, lost in
the immensity of an Empire."s
If a reflection on rhetoric unmistakably brings us back to the
philosophical web in which the concept originated, could the same
thing be said about rhetorical analysis? Yes and no. Yes, insofar as the

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TOWARDS A TROPOLOGY OF READING 621

adjectival form bears the same connotations as the noun. No, insofar
as rhetorical analysis determines, in the context of modern linguistic
criticism, an elucidation of a given text according to the tropological
and figurative devices it entails. In other terms, the philosophical
implications once attached to the term-in Aristotle's Organon,
analysis was synonymous with formal logic-have become practically
uncritically accepted. On a larger scale, a thorough investigation of
the concept of "rhetorical analysis" would, however, have to take into
account the ambivalence which has marked the history of rhetoric and
therefore has seeped into our understanding of "rhetorical analysis."
Indeed, except for the theoretical essays of Ann Banfield and Kieran
Egan, the papers included in this issue of New Literary History focus on
specific texts. Rhetorical analysis, in most essays, occurs in conjunction
with other textual modes of analysis, notably thematic and psy-
choanalytical. Rhetorical analysis, in this context, unfolds as a mode of
reading which accounts not only for the separate elements of the text
but also for their combination. In other terms, rhetorical analysis opens
onto rhetorical synthesis.9
Victor Brombert's "Les Travailleurs de la mer: Hugo's Poem of Ef-
facement" illustrates this move from rhetorical analysis to rhetorical
synthesis. Proceeding from a thematic study of metaphorical images
such as the effacement of writing and the deconstruction of the Book,
Brombert goes on to show how Hugo asserts both the priority of the
self and the text's adequation to the reality it represents. The global
world view of Hugo's Les Travailleurs de la mer points thus to a preemi-
nence of meaning over chaos and nihilism. Brombert treats this work
as a prose poem rather than as a novel. Yet Hugo himself excelled in
the art of "the great classical novel."10 Therefore, Brombert's insight
could conceivably be further extended. Hugo "the supreme author"
asserts his "modernity" when he challenges an acknowledged literary
form from within its boundaries. If such a reading of Hugo "the
deconstructor" renders him akin to Harold Bloom's "strong poets," it
also inscribes him in the chain of literary history-which is precisely
one of Brombert's concerns.
In "The Rhetoric of Friendship in Montaigne's Essais," Barry Wel-
ler analyzes the articulation in language of a discourse centered on
friendship. The Lacanian process of identification of the self through
the other is operative in the elaboration of a complex "grammar of the
self." Weller's enterprise is, in some sense, supplemented by Peter
Brooks's elucidation of language and monstrosity in Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein. Here too the function of the subject's relation to itself as
other is stressed. Yet whereas Weller comes to terms with the issue of
the nature of literary language, Brooks elaborates a thematic of lan-

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 622 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

guage as speech. Both essays show, however, that if Lacan has often
exploited literary texts in an illustrative manner, the determining
function he assigns to language authorizes a reformulation or expan-
sion of the concept of "rhetorical analysis."
Although he does not dwell on the psychoanalytical implications of
his reading, Jean-Pierre Vernant, through a close examination of the
historical and rhetorical structures of Oedipus Rex, confronts us with
an Oedipus who is more Lacanian than Freudian. Indeed, in a letter
to Fliess, Freud stresses that the Oedipus myth illustrates an order of
fatality which is corroborated by the inevitability of the father-son
conflict." Since the unfolding of tragedy historically preceded the
philosophical gesture of Plato and Aristotle, its deciphering brings
forth a message on mankind which lies both outside and inside the
boundaries of the philosophical discourse. Oedipus Rex occupies a
privileged place in this deciphering, since this play witnessed a dis-
placement of the problem of the ambiguity in man. From the careful
examination of stylistic procedures and of etymologies which have
remained uncritically accepted, Vernant reveals an Oedipus who is,
not unlike Frankenstein, a monster and a riddle without an answer. In
the words of Jacques Lacan, Oedipus is "an essential knot in speech
[un noeud central dans la parole]."12 In other terms, the displacement
which took place in the play of Sophocles is still central in the ques-
tion, "Who am I?"
Although W. Thomas MacCary explicitly alludes to a Freudian
typology, his handling of psychoanalytical devices is more illustrative
than speculative. This gesture is perfectly legitimate insofar as Mac-
Cary concerns himself more directly with comedy as a genre than with
the decipherment of the internal configuration of the text which he
examines, Shakespeare's Comedy of Errors. MacCary writes, "Insofar as
comedy can revive memory traces of childhood experiences, this com-
edy takes us back to the pre-Oedipal stage when we first emerged as
creatures conscious of our difference." This statement raises two
theoretical questions not treated by MacCary. Is the ability to revive
childhood memories a function of the text or a function of the reader?
And if it is a function of the text, to what extent is this ability the
privilege of comedy? Childhood memories belong to the reader's re-
pertoire. Therefore, the ability to revive them depends essentially on
the unique and complex interplay between text and reader. One might
thus assume that such an interplay arises in relationship not only to
comedy but also to all literary texts. In fact, MacCary himself acknowl-
edges that tragedy as well as comedy requires the identification be-
tween audience and protagonist.
MacCary's interpretive scheme is echoed by Berel Lang's analysis of

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TOWARDS A TROPOLOGY OF READING 623

King Lear. Lang views the entire play as a metaphor for Lear-dying in
which progressive assimilation between Lear and the audience takes
place. For both MacCary and Lang, literary discourse is consequently
an object of reflection which can be treated as a fact which produces
consequences, as a means, as an end. Hence, one might presume that
the frame of mind of the spectator/reader will modify strongly the
effect produced by the discourse.
In a sense, Stanley Meltzoff's "Rhetoric, Semiotics, and Linguistics
Look at the Strolling Actresses of Hogarth" reiterates a similar process
insofar as Meltzoff formulates his own brands of rhetoric, semiotics,
and linguistics in order to apply each of these "codes" to the work of
Hogarth which he examines. His final point is that only a broader
concept of pictorial rhetoric could account for the polysemia inherent
in Hogarth's work.13 In many ways, these three essays define the
interplay between text and reader by privileging reader over text or,
more specifically, the act of reading over the intrinsic specificity-i.e.,
the literarity-of the text.
Although such a mode of criticism risks leading to arbitrary or
subjective readings because it does not offer the guarantee of
methodological criteria, it at least has the merit of bringing up the
issue of "reading," which has long been denied in American for-
malism. In fact, the "art of reading" might very well become, in the
foreseeable future, one of the meeting grounds between Anglo-
American and Continental criticism. This trend might be illustrated
by two examples. On the one hand, Geoffrey Hartman has suggested
in The Fate of Reading that "the movement sparked by Jakobson, for
example, though based on modern psychology and linguistics, can
still be linked to the prescriptive criticism of the rhetorical schools
from Antiquity on, which established a store of 'devices' to regulate
the character and assure the success of the work of art.""14 On the
other hand, Michel Charles, in Rhitorique de la lecture, envisages that
this persuasive mode is inherent in the text itself. To acknowledge this
mode leads us to revise our understanding of the concept of rhetoric:
"Rhetoric, reconsidered as an 'art of questioning'-or as an 'art of
reading' . . . does not prejudge the discourse it takes into considera-
tion. It is a priori a discourse among others; like others, it seeks to be
'accepted.' "15 Since Charles's enterprise obviously derives from
methodological criteria elaborated by rhetoricians and practitioners
of stylistics like Genette, Barthes, or Riffaterre, it implies that his
"rhetoric of reading" unfolds within the boundaries of the text's
literarity.
The prescriptive rules of criticism to which Hartman alludes were
in part elaborated by medieval theologians. The didactic vocabulary

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 624 NEW LITERARY HISTORY

which they devised to account for literary elements in Scripture was

progressively applied to secular works. To simplify somewhat grossly,
one might say that the abuse of this vocabulary, coupled with the
Humanists' oratorical gloss, led to the equivocal and often pejorative
connotations which the term rhetoric, i.e., persuasion, acquired along
the centuries. In this respect, Hartman's and Charles's rehabilitation
of rhetoric as a mode of persuasion is not a step backwards.
In France at least, this rehabilitation will most probably continue to
take place under the caution of methodological patterns derived from
the human sciences (especially from linguistics, anthropology, and
psychoanalysis). In America, it is perhaps in the work of poets like
John Ashbery that the most explicit questioning of rhetorical practice
may be found. For instance, in the opening lines of "Grand Galop,"
Ashbery writes, "All things are mention of themselves / And the
names which stem from them branch out to other referents."16 These
lines acknowledge that the writing process is itself rhetorical, i.e.,
tropological. Hence, the text sets up its own rhetorical analysis which
is, in turn, troped by the reader. The reader's rhetorical practice
reappropriates rhetorical creativity.
This entanglement brings us back to the Greek web: for, indeed,
before Plato and Aristotle, at the moment of the emergence of the
Greek language, the Greek verb eiro-from which rhetoric and its
cognates derive-presumably meant (1) to knot, to entwine, and (2) to
say, to utter.
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY

NOTES

1 Emile Benveniste, Problimes de linguistique generale (Paris, 1966), p. 19.

2 Ibid.
3 Noam Chomsky, Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), p. 24.
4 A more comprehensive discussion of the complex issue of the relationship between
dialectics and rhetoric should include the full passage mentioned above in the Phaedrus,
266d-269d, the Sophist, 253e, and the Republic, 534e, as well as the Gorgias and the
Meno. For a complete overview of the rhetorical mode as an argumentative mode, see
Chaim Perelman and L. Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumenta-
tion, tr. John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (Notre Dame, 1969), pp. 35-40.
5 For a treatment of Nietzsche's concept of rhetoric and its impact on the relationship
between literature and philosophy, see Paul de Man, "Action and Identity in
Nietzsche," in Graphesis: Perspectives on Literature and Philosophy, Yale French Studies, No.
52 (1975), pp. 16-30.
6 In "White Mythology," New Literary History, 5 (Winter 1974), 4-94, Jacques Derrida
dwells on metaphor as a philosopheme. Such a revival of rhetoric as a philosophical
concept is echoed in the work of Paul de Man quoted above and in de Man's "Semiology
and Rhetoric," Diacritics, 3 (Fall 1973), 27-33.
7 Literary language is apprehended by these critics from a descriptive and prescrip-

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 TOWARDS A TROPOLOGY OF READING 625

tive mode. In their view, rhetorics and hermeneutics stand at opposite poles. See, for
instance, the special issue on "Rhetorique et Hermeneutique" of Poitique, 23 (1975).
8 Gerard Genette, "La Rhetorique restreinte," in Figures III (Paris, 1972), p. 21.
9 Isocrates (Encomium on Helen, 210b) and Aristotle (Poetics, 6, 6) use the word synthesis
to mean the combination of elements in an oratorical, literary, or poetic work.
10 On the tradition of the "great classical novel," see Edward Said, Beginnings: Inten-
tion and Method (New York, 1975), esp. pp. 81-100.
11 Sigmund Freud, The Origins of Psychoanalysis: Letters to W. Fliess (New York, 1954),
p. 223.
12 This problematic is developed in Jacques Lacan, Le Moi dans la theorie de Freud et
dans la technique de la psychanalyse (Paris, 1978).
13 For a contrasting application of semiotics to a similar work of art, see Louis Marin,
"A propos d'un carton de LeBrun: le tableau d'histoire ou la denegation de I'rnoncia-
tion," Centro internazionale di semiotica e di linguistica: Documents de travail et pri-publications,
No. 41, Ser. F (Feb. 1975).
14 Geoffrey Hartman, The Fate of Reading (Chicago, 1975), p. 273.
15 Michel Charles, Rhitorique de la lecture (Paris, 1977), p. 79.
16 John Ashbery, Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror (New York, 1976), p. 14.

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