At home here and abroad the rhetoric of presence and narratives of place

Author

William C. Doyle, University of Tennessee

Date of Award

12-2008

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

English

Major Professor

Michael L. Keene

Abstract

Successful nature and travel writing evokes a sense of place, allowing a reader to "see" what he or she has not yet seen or cannot witness. This success depends on a writer's facility with the rhetoric of presence, the ability to develop language that evokes unseen, or as yet unimagined, places. My dissertation analyzes the specific ways that contemporary narratives of place develop presence. While critics have examined presence in narrative nonfiction (Anderson, Winterowd), travel writing (Pratt, O'Loughlin), speech (Mader), and material rhetoric (Jorgensen-Earp, Gross), few--if any--have offered book-length studies on the importance of the rhetoric of presence in place-based narrative nonfiction. This project argues that presence is a central figure in place-based narratives, integral not just for calling forth unseen or as-yet-imagined places but also for developing an author's ethical position.Chapter One links the rhetoric of presence to Chaim Perelman and Olbrecths-Tyteca's theory of presence, Quintilian's theory of enargeia, and Chris Anderson's analysis of creative nonfiction. In Chapter Two, I examine Richard Nelson's The Island Within to describe and analyze the catalog of techniques that bioregionalists use to develop the rhetoric of presence. In Chapter Three, I scrutinize work by Pico Iyer to explore whether "global soul" rootlessness necessitates a modified rhetoric of presence. The chapter also examines travel writers' ethical responsibility. Chapter Four considers narrative framing in creative nonfiction and discusses the ways that a writer's presence within a text can facilitate the recreation of material presence.Chapter Five examines writing about Antarctica in order to answer the following question: How does the rhetoric of presence change to accommodate the peculiar nature of extreme environments in ways that allow readers to experience these places? Additionally, this chapter considers how Antarctic tourism brochures use verbal and visual rhetorics of presence. Chapter Six argues for continued examination of the ways creative nonfiction uses the rhetoric of presence, calls for the continued inclusion of nonfiction narratives of place within composition classes, discusses several class assignments linked to the rhetoric of presence, and offers suggestions for further research.

Recommended Citation

Doyle, William C., "At home here and abroad the rhetoric of presence and narratives of place. " PhD diss., University of Tennessee, 2008.
https://trace.tennessee.edu/utk_graddiss/6010