Wikibooks: Historical Rhetorics/Van den Berg, Sara, and Thomas M. Walsh, eds. Language, Culture and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J.

Van den Berg Sara and Thomas M. Walsh eds. Language Culture and Identity The Legacy of Walter J. Ong S.J. New York NY Hampton Press 2011. Print. This text is a collection of presentations from the 2005 conference “ Language Culture and Identity The Legacy of Walter Ong S.J. Within the Introduction van den Berg and Walsh defend “… the contradictory misinterpretations of Ong s ideas that he was a primitivist or on the contrary that he posited a great divide between oral and print cultures that left oral cultures behind have new importance in an era of globalization …” (2). The essays throughout the collection hold this perspective (i.e. arguing against interpretations of Ong as Platonist) two perspectives in particular examined below suggest that (1) “the multiple histories of rhetoric Ramism and Early Modern vernacular oralities and literacies call for revisionism in our use of Ong’s work particularly … Ramism … [because] Ong doesn’t present Ramism as a relentless march toward logic dialectic and monochromatic method …[because] Ramism was not entirely a decay of dialogue … (Swearingen cited in van den Berg and Walsh 43) and that (2) a just assessment of Ong s scholarship should begin with the fact that his approach is dialectical in the sense that he works with and through oppositions understanding their mediations … that his dialectics should not be confused with the monologic of Aristotle or Ramus” (Strate cited in van den Berg and Walsh 161). Swearingen’s and Strate’s arguments are discussed in more detail below. Chapter Two “Vernacular Homiletics and Hermeneutics Ong on Ramus Milton and Wesley” (C. Jan Swearingen) Annotation Swearingen traces the relationships among rhetoric homiletics and hermeneutics to argue the paradox that despite Ramus’ emphasis upon dialectic monologue forms and “silent” dichotomies vernacular oralities literatures and poetics burgeoned. She asks “During the periods that surround Ramism and the Renaissance how were rhetoric preaching and ...