Modern writers, modernist problems: A rhetorical hermeneutic approach to the discourses of Anglo-American modernism

Modern Writers, Modernist Problems broadly initiates a re-reading of Anglo-American Modernism through the hermeneutics of contemporary rhetorical theory. Through this project, I am attempting to address relevant questions in the fields of both writing studies and literary studies that, when considered together, are poised to challenge our present valuations of rhetorical discourse. The rhetorical theory invoked in this study is grounded in the language philosophy of Donald Davidson, whose revisions of the basic communication model promote rhetoric as knowledge gained through experiencing and interacting with the discourses that affect other human beings. I believe that we find similar descriptions of rhetorical interaction circulating in the undercurrents of Modernism. By recovering the connections between contemporary and early twentieth-century accounts of rhetoric and communication, we find, I believe that we as modern writers are significantly affected by the discourses that mattered to many Modernists. My dissertation traces the discourses of rhetoric through literary and nonliterary texts of three Modernist writers: T.S. Eliot, Virginia Woolf, and Zora Neale Hurston. I am convinced that these Modernist writers share with modern students many of the same challenges and expectations, including the need for sophisticated rhetorical skills to negotiate among the dominant discourses of society. Ultimately, the analytical project undertaken in this dissertation suggests that the adaptable, sophisticated, intersubjective rhetoric that we find in the literature of Anglo-American Modernisms provides a useful and timely starting point for initiating discussion about the direction of current and future rhetorical training and literacy instruction. The five chapters comprising this project bring together modern theories of rhetoric and Modernist textual strategies in order to inquire about ways that the rhetorical practices of Modernist writers and modern students may productively influence one another.