Revisioning traditions through rhetoric: studies in Gertrude Buck's social theory of discourse

Abstract

In response to the movements for revisioning the scope of American rhetorical theory, this study surveys the major works of Gertrude Buck, a turn-of-the-century rhetorician and English professor at Vassar College. Beginning with Buck's 1890 articles to reform English education, the seven chapters comprise a collection of essays exploring Buck's vision for a progressive society based on a rhetorical theory that combines Plato's rhetoric and the Sophists'. As depicted in the conflict between Plato and the Sophists, discourse serves as a model for society in conflict. In theory and in practice, Buck's resulting social theory of discourse is to achieve two social goals: social harmony and the society's moral and intellectual advancement. Directly addressing the problem of change, Buck, who may or may not typify women's scholarship in turn-of-the-century America, offers an additional means to chart conflicts and disagreements in the period's intellectual and social life. Her own discourse theory goes far in recognizing such conflicts and in resolving them under the rubric of "social" discourse. Chapter 1 outlines Buck's participation in the 1890s reform movement and introduces her early explanations of discourse. Chapter 2 continues this analysis, looking specifically at the role of sophistic and Platonic language in her rhetorical theory. Chapter 3 explores the conflict between the sophistic (homo rhetoricus) and the Platonic (homo seriosus) in her own rhetoric, specifically in her book The Metaphor: A Study in the Psychology of Rhetoric. Chapter 4 is the first of three chapters analyzing how Buck's major themes (progressiveness, functionalism, and organicism) and motifs (embryonic ideas, biological growth, and organic life) extend her social rhetoric to her textbooks. This chapter specifically looks at Buck's grammatical theory in a textbook coauthored with Fred Newton Scott. Chapter 5 surveys her textbooks on expository and argumentative writing and clarifies how the use of gender images both aid and threaten social discourse. Chapter 6 provides an overview of her textbook on narrative writing, coauthored with Elisabeth Woodbridge Morris, and suggests how this textbook and her other texts reflect the struggle of scholarly women seeking admittance to a wider intellectual community. Finally, chapter 7 analyzes Buck's prose and poetry, accentuating her theory of literary criticism as an extension of her social discourse theory and comparing her views of a literary text with those of Marxist, reader-response, and postmodern theorists.