ENGL50253

Prerequisite: Junior or senior standing, permission of instructor. This course examines the emergence of rhetoric in Antiquity and traces the impact of classical rhetoric up to the Middle Ages. A substantial amount of the course is devoted to learning about the relationship between oral and written discourse, the impact of literacy, and the adaptability of systems of communication to technology and society. The implications of such phenomena are examined in different periods in an effort to develop an historical perspective about the relationship between cognition and expression within cultural conditions. Student cannot receive credit for WRIT 55273 and ENGL 50253.