Class Five

Journal:

(10 minutes)

In Eh 123 and 124, you learned about Ethos, Pathos, and Logos. For the first ten minutes today, I would like you to first define what these concepts are to me, and then I would like you to tell me how you imagine how ethos-based or pathos-based or logos-based approaches to literature may be different from one another.

Journal:

(10 minutes)

Come up with a group statement on what the potential value of these different approaches may be when you are trying to make a literary argument. What might an exclusively  ethos-based, pathos-based, or logos based approach to story like “The Untold Lie” look like? What role would a discussion of character play in such arguments? What role would a discussion of setting play?

Mini-Lecture:

(10 minutes)

One of the most frustrating things people who know nothing about literature say is that “Literature has no meaning.” What they usually mean — but do not know to say — is that they can find no evident meaning in literature that corresponds with their own personal rhetorical predispositions. That is to say, there is nothing in the literature that immediately appeals to them….

There are many ways to approach literature. One way to approach it is to begin by asking questions. The answers we come up with will depend heavily on the rhetoric we use to articulate our answers.

We might write these questions down and then categorize them under the general registers of ethos, pathos, and logos, and then we might attempt to answer them with ethos-based, pathos-based, or logos-based responses.

Mini-lecture in action

(10 minutes )

Let’s look at our work for today, can be identify the ethos, pathos, and logos in our individual paragraphs: how might we characterize these paragraphs? Do they evince distinct kinds of rhetoric? If so, how does this rhetoric contribute to the overall message we are trying to communicate?

Advertisement