Herbert A. Wichelns at the Discipline's Centennial Mark: Re-Reading a Prospectus for Rhetoric As an Independent Discipline

Abstract

At the discipline's centennial mark, Wichlens' clarion call for a new discipline based on his essay “The Literary Criticism of Rhetoric,” is still open to commentary and at different junctions in the discipline's history the essay has been re-issued and commented on. In my essay I go back to Wichelns' specific instructions to argue that what he advocated was a focus on rhetoric's effects, despite attempts to suggest otherwise. I also read Wichlens' other prominent work—the consideration of Ralph Waldo Emerson's rhetoric–to argue for the case of effects. The issue of rhetoric's effects, I contend, is central to understanding Wichelns' as well as the later controversy over it when Wichelns' student, Edwin Black, sought to move the practice of rhetorical criticism to consider the merit of textual criticism in place of effects. The larger issue of what Wichelns sought to accomplish speaks to the heart of the discipline and the instrumental role rhetoric plays in the public sphere.

Keywords:

• Herbert Wichelns
• Edwin Black
• Ralph Waldo Emerson
• rhetoric
• effects

Notes

[1] Research Report, Quarterly Journal of Public Speaking, Volume 1 (July 1915), 196.

[2] Herbert Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” in Donald C. Bryant, ed. The Rhetorical Idiom: Essays in Rhetoric, Oratory, Language, and Drama (New York: Russell & Russell, 1966), 23.

[3] Herbert Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” in Donald C. Bryant, ed. The Rhetorical Idiom: Essays in Rhetoric, Oratory, Language, and Drama (New York: Russell & Russell, 1966), 5.

[4] Thomas Benson has noted that oratorical criticism was alive and well in the late 19th century and that the English part of the discipline sought to be divorced from the oratorical part and not the other way around. See, Thomas Benson, “The Cornell School of Rhetoric Idiom and Institution,” Communication Quarterly 51 (2003): 1–56.

[5] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 6.

[6] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 7.

[7] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 6.

[8] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 16.

[9] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 16.

[10] Davis W. Houck, “Of ‘Very Few Men’ with ‘Unusual Gifts’ and ‘Acute Sensitivity’: Whither Wichelns, Black and Zarefsky?” in Amos Kiewe and Davis W. Houck, eds. The Effects of Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Effects: Past, Present and Future (Columbia: South Carolina University Press, forthcoming).

[11] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 17.

[12] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 18.

[13] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 23.

[14] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 25.

[15] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 26–27.

[16] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 33.

[17] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 35.

[18] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 36.

[19] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 39.

[20] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 39.

[21] Wichelns, “The Literary Criticism of Oratory,” 41.

[22] Herbert A. Wichelns, “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in William Norwood Brigance, ed. A History and Criticism of American Public Address. Volume II (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1943), 501.

[23] Herbert A. Wichelns, “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in William Norwood Brigance, ed. A History and Criticism of American Public Address. Volume II (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1943), 504.

[24] Herbert A. Wichelns, “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in William Norwood Brigance, ed. A History and Criticism of American Public Address. Volume II (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1943), 513.

[25] Herbert A. Wichelns, “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in William Norwood Brigance, ed. A History and Criticism of American Public Address. Volume II (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1943), 518.

[26] Herbert A. Wichelns, “Ralph Waldo Emerson,” in William Norwood Brigance, ed. A History and Criticism of American Public Address. Volume II (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1943), 524.

[27] Donald Bryant, Rhetorical Dimensions in Criticism (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1973), 27 (emphases in the original).

[28] James Jasinski and Jennifer R. Mercieca, “Analyzing Constitutive Rhetorics The Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions and the ‘Principles of '98’,” in Shawn J. Parry-Giles and J. Michael Hogan, ed. The Handbook of Rhetoric and Public Address, Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell 2010, 313.

[29] Carroll Arnold, “Herbert August Wichelns (1894–1973),” The Southern Speech Communication Journal 47 (1982), 127.

[30] Carroll Arnold, “Herbert August Wichelns (1894–1973),” The Southern Speech Communication Journal 47 (1982), p. 128.