English 680V: Visual Rhetoric in a Technological Age (Purdue)

Excellent bibliography and terrific annotations, Nathaniel. I like how you've both represented the works carefully and found in them elements that serve your purposes.

A few notes:

I was intrigued by this one:

McKenna, Stephen. “Advertising as Epideictic Rhetoric.”

Made me think of the magical incantation of advertising, along Covino-esque lines, such that an ad doesn't merely (re)present but conjures value and invokes subjectivity ("identify with this and we will be identical!"). An ad endows presence. The Onion massages that into all sorts of funny things when it creates ads for ridiculous products, tapping that tendency for the epideictic to reify its object (if someone is praising you, you've already arrived as praiseworthy, of sorts).

And this one:

Sullivan, Dale L. “The Epideictic Character of Rhetorical Criticism.”

You make some smart connections to visual concreteness, which I think will help you ally the visual and verbal forms of epideictic.

We already talked about Burke's War and Cultural Life piece on the "Road to Victory." Here's a link to a short piece on that and that gives some background:

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/dblakesley/burke/victory.html

and then the extension

http://www.cla.purdue.edu/dblakesley/burke/roadnotes.html

Keep up the good work!

Dave