Rhetorical Literary Ethics and Lyric Narrative: Robert Frost's“ Home Burial”

Abstract

Rhetorical literary ethics are part and parcel of the larger rhetorical interchange between authors and audiences offered by literary texts; in this respect, ethics are an intrinsic part of (rhetorical) form. More specifically,this rhetorical ethics attends to the interactions among the ethical dimensions of the telling and those of the told as well as to the ethical positions the author invites the audience to adopt and those the audience brings with them. Demonstrating the usefulness of this approach to Robert Frost's wrenching lyric narrative “Home Burial” provides a response to Charles Altieri's challenge that the dominant approaches to literary ethics are limited because they privilege texts, especially narratives, ultimately committed to judicious rationality. The response offers an account of the rhetorical dynamics of lyric narrative in general and of the rhetorical and ethical dynamics of “Home Burial” in particular.

The construction of ideal reader in German and Finnish text-books for literacy education

“…The construction of the ideal reader should be powerful enough to convince the reader; s/he should believe that the competing ideologies embedded in the text and in its contexts are resolved if the reader adopts the offered, dominant position (Mills, 1995). The concept of 'ideal reader' bears a resemblance to the concepts of 'authorial audience' by Phelan (2004) or 'implied reader' by Chatman (1988) that have been created for the purpose of analyzing reader positions when reading fiction. With these approaches, in the reading process, the 'flesh and blood readers' are assumed to achieve these positions.…”

“…With these approaches, in the reading process, the 'flesh and blood readers' are assumed to achieve these positions. In the analysis of narrative texts, these positions are also regarded as platforms for embedded moral and ideological goals (Phelan, 2004). In an empirical study by Macken-Horarik (2003), the written responses of actual readers have been found to closely parallel the author's construction of the ideal reader.…”

“…The term 'ideal reader' refers to a certain reading position that is created by the author(s) through various linguistic and visual means in the text. In the process of reading, the 'flesh and blood reader' is led into the position of the ideal reader through the guidance of the author (Kress, 1985;Phelan, 2004). Although textbooks are partly written for the teacher, the direct target is the pupil.…”

On the Meeting of the Moral and the Aesthetic in Literary Education

“…Additionally, there are various different layers in a story, and morality appears in all of them in different manners. This idea, proposed by Phelan (), opens up the range of possible moral features that a reader might pay attention to if she is to fully understand the literary work. In his words,

the doubled communicative situation of fictional narration […] somebody telling us that somebody is telling somebody else that something happened – is itself a layered ethical situation.

…”

“…Any character's action has an ethical dimension, and any narrator's treatment of the events will inevitably convey certain attitudes toward the subject matter and the audience, attitudes that, among other things, indicate his or her sense of responsibility to and regard for the audience. Similarly, the author's treatment of the narrator and of the authorial audience will indicate something of his or her ethical commitments (Phelan, , p. 632).…”