Demetrius, Deinotes, and Burkean Identification at the University of Chicago

Abstract

Peripatetic critic Demetrius has received little attention in rhetorical scholarship, but at the University of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s, the use of On Style sparked debate among the English faculty, whose neo-Aristotelianism significantly articulated departmental direction. This tension centered on the use of the “forcible” style, and the subsequent debate gave rise to a faction of Chicago faculty who were sympathetic to the “New Rhetoric” of Kenneth Burke, who lectured there in 1949. This article demonstrates the significance of institutional context in the creation of critical positions, that these positions are often rhetorical responses to administrative, pedagogical, and political problems.

Notes

¹I thank RR reviewers Richard Enos and David Fleming for their thoughtful, extensive, and rigorous review of this manuscript.

²I also thank the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library and the Special Collections of Penn State University Archives for their assistance in the location of and permission for the publication of this research.