Literature And Rhetoric Analysis

Throughout human history, literature has evolved to enclose an abundance of genres, ranging from a variety of different types of nonfictional to fictional pieces. Although the changes in literature date back to the earliest of our civilization, people have come to realize that it's not the type of literature that affects us, but the content itself and the way it is presented. The competence of authors to effectively persuade their audiences stems from their ability to present several arguments that can align with the writer’s point of view. Even with the effective use of these persuasive elements, the conflict of perspective between authors and their success narrows down to more distinct details. Through the various perspectives of literature

Plato, a greek philosopher and friend of Socrates,stresses his perspective on why certain literature can be hurtful to a society in The Republic. Through his essay, Plato’s study in philosophy saw it to be an opposition to both poetry and rhetoric. One ironic thing about Plato’s The Republic is its relentless hostility towards poetry, despite Plato’s fame coming from his own poems. In The Republic, Plato stresses two main points on the effects of poetry within a society. One focus is how poetry triggers certain emotional responses that can be hurtful to society because it leads to irrationality, while another focus is the mistaken nature of poetry overall. These points revolve around his past admiration of Homer and his supporters. Plato’s realistic approach of literature through the use of essentially only one character, Homer, allows for the reader to focus on one task. This is effective because the reader is able to develop Plato’s point of view, without the burden of reflecting upon other non-significant details. Through Plato’s attack on Homer, he addresses his remarks as the “praisers of Homer who say that this poet educated Greece,

In the first chapter of Frye’s book , The Educated Imagination, Frye analyses three different stages of language use, the role of imagination in literature, and why people come to use figurative language. Throughout his “twenty-five years” of studying and teaching literature, Northrop immediately uses his role in society to influence the dependency the reader can have on his knowledge of literature. Although this dependency can potentially lead to questions being asked and answered, Frye even says himself that these questions concerning connections between literature and life “are not only the hardest to answer, but most important to ask, so I’m going to raise them and try to suggest what my present answers are.” This reveals the complex nature of the role of literature in life, and how his answers aren’t right, but have considered a lot of thinking. Frye’s ability to organize his thoughts by asking two questions and answering them correspondingly throughout the chapter not only allows the reader to keep track with their own subsequent ideas, but also lessens the overall complexity of the subject. Two main points that Frye focuses on in the chapter is split by the two key questions asked: “What is the relation English as the mother tongue to English as a literature?” and “What is the place of the imagination that literature