Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Washington, 2000. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 57-65).

Taking as its starting point the ut pictura poesis tradition of artistic theory, this dissertation examines how the poets and dramatists of the English Renaissance transformed mimetic strategies originally developed in the fields of art and architecture into unprecedented literary topoi and figures in their own right. The project focuses primarily on the practice of linear perspective, which simulates visual experience by subordinating abstract space to the artificial logic of the “vanishing point.” It demonstrates how English writers developed the initial idea of linear perspective as an artificially arranged, delimited point of view into a body of descriptive practices that constitute what I term “perspectival metaphysics.” Experiments in perspectival metaphysics in the works of Edmund Spenser, William Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, and Andrew Marvell reveal the assumptions that underlie normative vision, and vision’s relationship to subjective experience and its interpretation. Vanishing Points concludes that the rhetorical strategies of spatial description developed by early modern English writers are an integral part of the broader epistemological shift from renaissance humanism to the increasingly complex modes of scientific and philosophical rationalism that characterized the European seventeenth century. / English

The purpose of this dissertation is a socio-rhetorical exploration of the development and function of the narrative of Noah and the Flood in Sibylline Oracles 1-2. As such, it entails three major emphases: (1) a 21st century western methodology (socio-rhetorical analysis) which is used to examine, on the one hand, (2) a diverse body of Judeo-Christian (but guised as Greco-Roman) literature (the Sibylline Oracles) that emerged primarily during the Second Temple period, and on the other, (3) how a traditional and textual resource (the Genesis flood narrative) has been developed and used within this body of literature to further the particular rhetorical purpose of the Sibyl. Thus, throughout the course of this dissertation, a contribution will be made to the scholarship on each of these three aspects in a number of innovative ways. First, a contribution will be made to the ongoing development of socio-rhetorical analysis, and in particular, as to how it pertains to our understanding of rhetorolects (rhetorical discourse types). Based on our analysis of the discourse and major rhetorical topoi of Sibylline Oracles 1-2 in relation to the topoi of other similar ancient Mediterranean discourses, it will be suggested that the current socio-rhetorical understanding of rhetorolects should be broadened to better reflect not only early Christian discourse, but the discourse of the entire ancient Mediterranean generally. For early Christians enacted their own discourse through reconfiguration of other rhetorical discourses from other Mediterranean cultures. This is especially clear in the Sibylline Oracles, which seems to be an interweaving of various Jewish, Christian, Greco-Roman, and possibly even Gnostic and Babylonian threads of discourse. In particular, we will affirm the insight in early explorations of socio-rhetorical analysis that the early Christian rhetorical discourses described by Vernon K. Robbins are primarily specific localizations of more general ancient Mediterranean discourse types. The case in point for this dissertation concerns both the similarities and differences between the discourses to which the Sibylline Oracles are most often compared---Judeo-Christian apocalyptic discourse and Greco-Roman Sibylline discourse (in addition to the discourse of Greco-Roman oracles generally)---both of which seem to exhibit the same array of major rhetorical topoi, while articulating these topoi in remarkably different ways. Second, the implications of this discussion for future development of the sociorhetorical understanding of rhetorolects are immediately apparent in exploring the Sibylline books as rhetorical productions. It will be demonstrated that a socio-rhetorical approach is able to offer fresh insight into a number of long-debated questions concerning the Sibylline Oracles and their contemporary literary environment. To this end, it will be suggested that what we find in Sibylline Oracles 1-2 (and the Sibylline Oracles generally) is a unique blending of two specific localizations of mantic discourse---namely Judeo-Christian apocalyptic discourse and Greco-Roman oracular discourse. These two localizations blend together to create a discourse that was truly unique among the variegated discourses of the ancient Mediterranean. Significantly, this remarkable blending of these two specific localizations of mantic discourse revitalized the character of the Sibyl by incorporating her into the biblical tradition of prophets. Third, and finally, one of the rhetorical resources that contributed to this transformation was the Noah-Flood narrative---a rhetorical resource that, while permeating the majority of the Sibylline books, is used most extensively in Sibylline Oracles 1-2. Within the discourses of the Second Temple period, the flood narrative as a topographically and topologically rich rhetorical resource appears to have been of greatest interest to two very different sets of authors: (a) the writers of priestly rhetorolect, who saw within the flood narrative a compelling resource that could give legitimacy to their argument for the 364-day calendar and its accompanying implications for religious feasts and festivals, as well as the establishment of pre-Mosaic precedents for various legal prescriptions and priestly responsibilities; and (b) the writers of apocalyptic rhetorolect, who saw within the flood narrative the authoritative typological resources necessary to give credence to their own prophecies of cataclysmic destruction and global re-creation. Significantly, the writers of Sibylline Oracles 1-2 seem to draw upon most fully and contribute to this apocalyptic trajectory. However, unlike a number of apocalyptic texts that seem to blend both priestly and apocalyptic rhetorolects (e.g. the Enoch Astronomical book), the writers of Sibylline Oracles 1-2 actually subordinate the elements of priestly rhetorolect within the flood narrative by eliminating them completely. They appear to do so in order to emphasize the elements of apocalyptic rhetorolect that more usefully contribute to their mantic agenda. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

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This thesis examines two causes of writer's block developed during the revision stage of the composing process: instructors' unexplained notations and unwanted voice alterations within students' texts. The study examines the emotions students experience caused by instructors' actions which Nelson and Rose say contribute to temporary and even permanent cases of writer's block. After exemplifying the connection between emotions and writer's block, the remainder of the study focuses on finding solutions to these causes of writer's block. As a result of my research, I discovered the primary solution is communication between instructors and students.

The construction of critically literate students must be paramount among goals in the freshman composition classroom. The approach for constructing critical readers positioned in this thesis employs conceptualizing both the complexity of a text and the importance of comprehending the context within which a text is both read and written. It utilizes the rhetorical feature of irony.

The Lectures on Faith, important since 1834 to the theology of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, are of disputed authorship. In an attempt to ascribe the lectures to their true author from five possible candidates, Joseph Smith, Sidney Rigdon, Parley P. Pratt, Oliver Cowdery, and W. W. Phelps, the use of 738 function and other words in the lectures was compared with the use of the same words in known writings of the candidates.The study showed that Sidney Rigdon's use of function words corresponded very closely with that in Lectures One and Seven, and fairly well with Two, Three, Four, and Six. Joseph Smith's use of function words matched closely those in Lecture Five, with some evidence of his having co-authored or edited Two, Three, Four, and Six.

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