Vom kreativen Schreiben zur Rhetorik und Kulturtheorie. Übungen für die rechte und die linke Hand

Abstract

Literature draws on poetic thinking. It is impossible to transfer the “whole” meaning of a drama, a novel or a poem into literary theory and its classificatory language. If we substitute metalanguage for reading, philology, alas, soon turns into a dreary business. But there are ways of teaching theory which are both more pleasant and more effective.

I suggest a number of exercises through which heavy concepts such as metonymy are introduced in a light-handed way. Students would write, observe, comment and discuss their own texts, thus discovering that rhetoric is everywhere. They would then read with more pleasure and they might understand that form and content cannot be separated: to write and to read is to produce and to perceive textual, social and aesthetic energy. Ancient teachers of rhetoric were well aware of this. – Following the “simple” method of creative, yet well-guided writing, students of philology might improve their own writing skills and increase their awareness of the hidden rhetoric in all cultural order.