Pressing the Seed: Thoreau's Rhetorical Strategies

Thoreau has often been praised for his skillful shaping of sentences and correspondingly criticized for the discontinuity in his longer works. This study explores the question of pace in Thoreau's prose--how that pace is achieved and how it relates to our rhetorical expectations as readers. To analyze the shifting tones in Thoreau's writing, especially his more literary nature writing, I have singled out four common stances that he takes toward his material, depending on whether he emphasizes the story (a dramatic strategy), the storyteller (a narrative strategy), the setting or symbolic import of the story (a poetic strategy), or the moral of the story (an expository strategy).

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2014

Author dc:creator

• Payne, William Donald

• Literature, American

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(UMI)AAI8026569

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/66338