Vernacular Eloquence

ISBN-13: 9780199782505 / Angielski / Twarda / 2012 / 456 str.

Peter Elbow

Opis

Since the publication of his groundbreaking books Writing Without Teachers and Writing with Power, Peter Elbow has revolutionized how people think about writing. Now, in Vernacular Eloquence, he makes a vital new contribution to both practice and theory. The core idea is simple: we can enlist virtues from the language activity most people find easiest-speaking-for the language activity most people find hardest-writing. Speech, with its spontaneity, naturalness of expression, and fluidity of thought, has many overlooked linguistic and rhetorical merits. Through several easy to employ techniques, writers can marshal this "wisdom of the tongue" to produce stronger, clearer, more natural writing.

This simple idea, it turns out, has deep repercussions. Our culture of literacy, Elbow argues, functions as though it were a plot against the spoken voice, the human body, vernacular language, and those without privilege-making it harder than necessary to write with comfort or power. Giving speech a central role in writing overturns many empty preconceptions. It causes readers to think critically about the relationship between speech, writing, and our notion of literacy. Developing the political implications behind Elbow's previous books, Vernacular Eloquence makes a compelling case that strengthening writing and democratizing it go hand in hand.

Recenzje

it is written in [the author's] wonderfully approachable, affable voice; it emphasizes the need to indulge one's own impetus when writing, to pour oneself into "freewrites" ... The book is organized in a unique and purposeful manner ... Highly recommended.

O autorze

Peter Elbow is Professor of English Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst where he also directed the Writing Program from 1996 until 2000. He is the author of Writing Without Teachers (Oxford UP 1973), Writing With Power (Oxford UP 1981), Embracing Contraries (Oxford UP, 1986), Everyone Can Write (Oxford UP, 2000), and Being A Writer (McGraw-Hill, 2002).