I'm going to be trying to speak up because today
we have a an issue with microphone. So if
you can't hear, just you know, raise your
hand anyway, we are pleased to welcome you here for
this afternoon's event. Uh actually the 14th in the
series of the visible scholarship unity. Uh, we
in the library, we were pleased to see this
program grow and expand. Uh a little later on
top will be sharing some of the new features that
were added as we go forward. Uh I want
to just take a moment just to cite some of
the colleagues who assist in there, you know,
preparation of this research series. Um We have Bruce
Obenhaus, our government information specialists who does the
logistics and help to set up. Lori Lee the
departmental Secretary, research and instructional services, she does
the refreshments. And Neal Henshaw is our classroom
manager, he does uh technology. We also have
uh Robert Sebek, who is our webmaster who
prepares the material that goes online. So
these are the colleagues that, you know, we
all work together, you know, uh putting these
together and we hope that going forward we can continue
to improve the presentation for your enjoyment. And now
I will turn it over to tom who speak a
little more about the program and introduced today, Speaker
Corinne. Thank you. Yeah, once you mentioned
this has been going on for a number of rounds
now and I really welcomed the chance to recognize and
celebrate faculty scholarship after it's been completed. And we've
done this with the publication of books as we're doing
today. We just parents with articles also with performance
and so on. Um what we're trying to implement
now is a celebration of scholarship at its inception stage
as much earlier on. Um so just last week
, with the support of the Tyler Walters, university
libraries and Gene Robinson, the College of Global Action
Human Sciences, we have a program of many grants
um to support faculty research, um that would involve
either the use of library materials either from this library
or another library and collaborations with library. Um So
you should have received the guidelines on the verge of
your tenure track faculty in the College of Global Human
Sciences. Uh This is a pilot program um in
the conditions of applying for getting um one of these
many grants that you agreed to take part in the
visible scholarship initiative in some form, either when you
have completed the research, we hope not 10 or
15 years later that sometimes they have to write books
uh sooner than that or in a work in progress
and methods discussion something else. And so I think
is less they suggested as we move forward with this
with this initiative, um we want to keep doing
what we're doing in terms of recognizing um completed scholarship
, but also look for new ways to just uh
discuss and spread and disseminate this research that at other
stages. So I'm always open to suggestion recommendation,
so I'm very pleased to turn it over now to
current and I'm not going to try and pronounce the
title of her book, but I will let her
do that. All right, thank you tom.
Okay, so um you're gonna have to bear with
me because we're without amplification and I'm nursing a cold
, so I'll do my best to do your best
, we'll get there. Um Thanks for coming today
. Thanks to Leslie and Tom for their help in
making this happen. Um I'm uh I'm really glad
I'm here and I'm very nervous to try and um
present hundreds of pages in 15 minutes, but let's
make it happen. So I'm here by uh,
today to share some highlights about my first single authored
book. Um the title is Not Here, this
is just uh, the main idea. I'm going
to try to convey the title of set book,
which I'll pass around is Uncle Hamza, still some
Plato's graduation, Double Missile Missile Since wasn't, it's
a parallel study of two french renaissance poets with a
rhetorical concept of the springboard and I'll tell you a
little bit more about it. So, uh,
this book, written in french was published in North
America, believe it or not? It is now
um re it was reprinted with the French Publishing House
. Uh, so before trying to give you the
gist of it today, I'd like to sum up
how it first came to light uh, two or
three years ago, and how the idea first came
about, which would be a good 12 years ago
. This 771 page book in French with occasional Latin
and Greek um which you can pass around if you're
interested is a two headed Beast and was conceived of
as a dipstick, a two parter. So that's
two books in one and even three with the rhetorical
companion that serves as 100 plus page introduction. For
this reason, some reviewers have joked about what a
good deal it is, but I assure you it
was not funny at first spending half of my tenure
track years sending them manuscript around because it was actually
initially rejected. Um for what was little more than
discrimination on weight, I was asked to cut it
in half or go home. I did go home
teared up. I did, I did cry some
, you know me, I did held strong resubmitted
to another Excellent University Press that ended up accepting it
with very few revisions. Thanks to external reviewers who
understood the deep unity of the project. In spite
of its crazy span and volume. The press was
then hit by the financial crisis in 2009, The
contract put on hold reapproved in 2010 and the publication
date became December 2011. And then as a final
stage, Entre Diesel was reported, reported this year
2013. My tenure year after the collection moved to
a long established publishing house in paris. So I
meant to share the meandering path, the small odyssey
it took for the book to come to light,
partly because it has become the norm, it seems
for scholarship in so called niche fields um, and
in languages other than english or with an audience not
counted in millions or even thousands for that matter.
And scholarship not necessarily adorned with sparkling buzzwords or bankable
potential. Um, as I see a few are
junior colleagues here today and even students, I just
meant to tell them to play the game to get
published, but not to compromise to the point of
losing, selling their soul. That would have been
the case for me. Pretty much had I turned
the manuscript into two separate entities or cut out the
extended close readings that make it unique. Uh and
juicy or so I hear those are reviewers words.
So what about the original impulse? How did the
idea come about? That monster I produced is actually
built as a dipstick that compares the works of two
of the three greatest of all french renaissance poets.
The way the project originated and developed revolves around three
life changing encounters. Uh We all have those sorts
of stories, Shows, dating back from 1999 2000
and 2002. Um Here they are, one mentor
. Uh Professor Cooley Twin on the left. You
got me acquainted with the liveliness and subtlety of morrow's
verse. Another Francis, Goya, and this picture
is so him. It makes me happy Posses.
Garcia told me, taught me everything about classical oratory
and the intense dialogue poets engaged in the 16th engaged
in in the 16th century, trying to legitimate and
distinguish their art, both with and against rhetoric and
my last mentor and favorite mentor. Although I shouldn't
say that francois cognac Helped me turn my intuitions into
a broad ranging thesis connecting literary issues with ethical and
metaphysical debates stirred on the backdrop of the waning of
humanism, the rise of the reformation and the crisis
of the French monarchy between 1515 and 1560. So
what is the book about? In a nutshell?
In um so the corpus, in the classical tradition
? Plain style refers to one of three rhetorical genres
arranged in an accepted hierarchy, plain style medium.
The names vary and the high or grand style,
the lowest and least ornate of all discursive modes and
oratory Plain style is supposed to sound direct and subtle
, deceptively simple in opposition to the lofty, high
style expected in tragedy, forensic eloquence or epic poetry
revived in renaissance times. Thanks to Erasmus, among
other christian humanists, plain style unexpectedly entered french poetry
with claim Omaha on the left, whose poetry explicitly
uh whose poetry combines high spirit digest with spiritual notes
. And that was very arresting at first. And
before I embarked on this journey, the scholarship,
there were really two families of scholars, you know
, marco, the christian um protestant or proto protestant
poets, uh and morrow the court jester, um
the lewd and lascivious poetry producer. And it's it's
as though we were talking about a completely schizophrenic artist
um uh contemporary of Maho, the Prince of Poets
, explicitly acknowledged him as an expert in plain style
. So in latin genus, Emily josh and Bill
also appropriated this rhetorical mode, albeit in a more
occasional and conflicted matter. The parallel examination I conducted
reveals that these two poets separated by important generational differences
, both reinvent, reinvented and legitimated poetic interpretations of
plain style. They each do so based on a
generative principle, namely Grace for my hope and virtue
for double producing gracious humility or promoting it. And
a virtuous humbling acts is what their bodies of work
respectively, strived for those beautiful and daring innovations happen
um in a specific historical contacts, that, of
the french renaissance. So, the question that drove
my research in the beginning was how and why was
plain style revived near the end of the value a
dynasty in France. And I'll show you the monarchs
concerns. So Francis, the first in english um
was Moscow's chief patrons and Henry's second due bills.
So how is it revived at a time when lyricism
precisely tended to issue prosaic discourse and simplicity at a
time when poetry aimed for more grandiose achievements, meaning
primarily uh epic poetry and poets were under great pressure
to exalt rulers. So, as an aside,
um, oh, underscore that both poets also addressed
the king's sister, uh the king. So Francis
, first sister was named Margaret, and so was
Henry the second. So Magaly Donovan Magda France,
our chief patrons, and also appear as the addressee
when the poets were unsure that would capture the ear
of the king. A partial answer to the question
of how and why. Plain style was unexpectedly re
appropriated in a certain brand of french poetry concerns the
singular pleasure and power, the efficacy asthma and double
would put it the seamless seduction of plain style as
the style of the ethos or at those if you
want them and go with a pronunciation closer to greek
uh ethos is a rhetorical term that means both character
, a projected moral posture in discourse and a pension
for moderate rhetoric. Such discrete efficacy of the ethos
implies rhetorical expertise in us. This Iranian rhetoric in
particular a certain ethical positioning and cultural and ideological context
that favored plain styles literary revival. And here I
wish I would have time to talk about Evangelicalism,
Galligan is um um uh two movements related to um
the reformation and how the church of France could position
itself relative to it, and also changes in courtly
manners and civility. Um And uh the seminal book
in this respect is Castiglione is Book of the Courtier
. Er So I'll try and and Get off script
for five minutes to summarize that background for your rhetorical
and historical, Socio historical. Um so authorities on
rhetoric um that both my poets and their masters the
way they were taught um follow our cicero. So
the master of uh rhetoric in the roman antiquity and
Erasmus of Rotterdam, one of the greatest humanists of
the early northern renaissance, with pan european influence between
Cicero and Erasmus in the fourth century of the christian
era. Uh are the writings of ST Augustine,
Augustine, of Hippo, um who wrote about rhetoric
and extolled plain style in relation to predication and uh
against the safest and other masters of rhetoric who use
very ornate um um types of discourse to seduce the
masses. And so the argument was that the Gospel
written plain style and inhabited with the spirit uh being
the word of God does not need to be taught
uh conveyed, relayed with uh great outbursts of ornate
rhetoric speaks for itself. It's a great influence um
Landing back on the 16th century land. two main
influences on the spiritual side and um socio historical side
um cultural as well are lefevre the top um who
is associated with pre reformation thought, but whose ideas
are influence a very french vision of what it is
to go back to the Gospel and revive Christianity against
the perceived corruption of the catholic church at the time
, sort of separate from what is going to become
more dogmatic thought in Luther or Calvin. And then
Castiglioni with his book of the courtier er influenced um
a new way of being at court. That a
new new normative behaviours that aristocrats were supposed to follow
. Its both ethical, aesthetic and sort of dramatic
. one core idea that Castiglione is courier revived um
made italian. But it's it's it's it's it actually
comes from Cicero is that of spreads a Torah that
grace, that effortless ease that the nobleman is supposed
to um um behave himself with. Um so to
make everything he does appear natural, um not studied
uh while in actuality it is the product of much
um mastery in practice etcetera. So Catalonia's predatory comes
from Cicero's negligence to dili diligence. So this um
it's um a paradoxical notion that is um appearing nonchalant
um uh appearing artless in speech in behavior. And
that's the core notion in plain style that both of
my authors very much exploits in um reinterpret in their
works. So um the main contrasts between plain and
high style and high style is what um Maho and
ability issue work against in parody at times to show
its excesses. Um Another formulation of the rhetorical hierarchy
um that um was transmitted through the middle ages is
the wheel of Virgil. So the idea was that
three major works by Virgil, um one of the
greatest classical authors um uh emblem a ties embodied the
three uh types of discourse of rhetorical discourse. So
the high style would of course, be in the
immediate the the epic and plain style, the bucolic
six. Um and um uh medium style and then
it gets sort of conflated with low or plain style
, would would um be based on the model of
the geopolitics the bucolic in the geologic so sort of
um become um merged together in renaissance theory because you
know, there's high power and then there's all the
other people rushed the rustic world. Um I it's
probably not necessary to to serve you a lesson on
plain style. But I'll just point out the notions
that the notions that um are at the core of
the paradox of what it means to use plain style
or reinvent a form of plain style in renaissance poetry
. So poetry was highly valued, considered considered inspired
speech, um the closest of philosophy and theology possible
at the time and uh therefore was related to high
ambitions, high levels of ornamentation, uh etcetera.
So in theory it completely clashes with the main goals
of plain style, which is to teach explain things
plainly it clashes with the required register of language,
register of discourse, of plain style, which is
conversational. Uh You know, the theoretical goals of
poetry completely clashed with the fact that poetry um as
val arised in the renaissance was supposed to be serious
and poor attendance, while plain style uses humor uh
is supposed to make people laugh. Poets very much
use that. And there's a whole uh not of
uh clashes, contradictions paradoxes. Um And if you
add to that, that poetry in itself, poetry
written in verse, that's the only form at the
time, can never be humble. Lowly um Prosaic
negligible discourse then like in theory place style cannot exist
in poetry. Um But my whole Andy Bell realized
it. And so to give you a panel l
of the uh uh commonalities and differences that the two
parts of my study unearth. Um There's this slide
. So the key principle in morrow's um plain style
revival is grace, um Grace as the theological principle
, but also made secular more earthly more human as
um using charm uh moving with these like the cornea
and his spreads of tura um making people smile through
his verse etcetera. And de bellas core. Um
driving force is virtue, jubilee is closer to ancient
philosophy uh than um the gospel and his um his
christian um morals are much more informed by our civilian
ethics and ancient philosophy, moral philosophy than Macos.
So what does it mean to speak plainly from Moscow
? It means being humble, just like a good
christian is supposed to be for Debelle. It means
working on being humbler on formulating um things in projecting
humbling um attitudes especially for uh the rulers or the
poets who are too proud and forget to do that
. So, um the value notions such as sweetness
from my whole close to grace and labour close to
Bill, A virtue requires effort. Um there's sort
of an opposite motion. Um Plain style lifts me
upward if I'm with marco and the christian underpinnings of
his work because then I get closer to the word
of God and the simplicity of angels and grace and
the spirit and downward for double because like yeah,
you know, the grandiose ambitions of the monarchy,
the church of Chester should really be pulled down like
uh that's the solution. So uh my whole seeks
to elevate the humble and double it again to demean
debate the haughty in moral terms. Um Yeah,
so part part of this contrast is due to the
original social class in modern terms uh that morrow and
double speak from, so morrow is not an aristocrat
. He's a avenue we would say in french who
made it to court. Uh um He was the
son of a poet, but a very humble origins
. While do Bell is a noble man and and
had the ambitions uh that befit his class his estate
as we said at this time. Uh so getting
close to the end um I wanted to show you
for those who can read french do go read those
poems. These are to be emblematic of what marco
and Davila try to do of their very poetics of
of uh the active um thinking and action they try
to convey through their work. So lou belladonna for
claymore Maho and leave the door, assured him to
deafness for jubilee. Levada means the uh jolly dancer
. So the core idea in La belladonna is that
love for Christine, an allegory of the church of
christ. Um and the conversion that such love induces
alleviates uh the aching soul inspire him, elevate him
and in linda the rest of the day, the
topic is deafness. Uh jubilee will extol celebrate deafness
. So it's part of the paradoxical discourse they both
use. Why should one praise and thank and celebrate
deafness a condition he was a victim of? It's
because it causes a um limitations that are productive because
they make me adapt and think differently and uh it
causes an inward turn that may preserve me from arrogance
and social alienation and spiritual philosophical alienation. Um So
a similar ethical drive but very different views. And
so to conclude on uh key principles. Um I
just summarized the main notions in my conclusion and partly
because I think these go far beyond uh my time
period, my little poets and show what literary studies
can do for the here and now and uh to
connect uh movements, time periods, schools of thoughts
and um aesthetic ways of thinking. I do believe
poetry as a motive of producing thought, uh not
just uh entertainment and prettiness. Um So reviving plain
style um is motivated by my whole and abilities,
belief in the generative power of poetry. And you
can see that partly through all the metaphors they use
that make more active um that reactivates some of the
terminal logical terms um in rhetoric that were flattened.
So, for instance, the sap, um the
life spring, uh the wind, the nerves.
Um All of this um gets um takes on new
dynamic and generative meaning. Elusiveness matters a lot.
I am deceptively simple. What appears literal always says
something else reflectiveness, which, you know, modern
and contemporary literature is all about the self consciousness of
uh the writing voice, uh moderation I've talked about
with rebel. So all of this bulls down to
a paradoxical form of legitimation for poetry um which against
had to fight for um to make a place for
itself because rhetoric was the reigning discourse at the time
. And so uh combining ethics and pleasure in one's
worldview and and and driving principles and poetry was both
um understandable at the time and paradoxical because of christian
influence. So very understandable because Aristotle's ethics says that
, you know, arriving to virtue, um producing
ethical morally beautiful, um acts conforming to um um
virtue, magnanimity and other great qualities produces in itself
produces pleasure. And so that's part of the argument
. But then poets, exalting pleasure had to constantly
justify themselves because christian uh morals uh that did not
necessarily condone it in all its forms. Um So
that's that's where we get and uh the last words
um uh for me uh could be uh that to
read very smart and subtle poets, one has to
remember that line from the Gospel, which is also
a method in literary criticism. Um, whoever has
ears to hear, let them hear. Thank you
. Mhm. I wanted to say something about Bush
. Can I say something about Bush? To conclude
This book is related to George Bush? Yes,
believe it or not. Is it okay, because
I see it's 33 already, is it? Okay
. All right. Okay. So there's okay.
Yeah. No, I'm fine. You know,
I'm a legal alien. I can I can endanger
my status. I'm fine with that. Yeah.
So, yes, So to conclude, I I
was thinking maybe I would read use inverse, even
though nobody understands poetry. But then I thought,
okay, there will be um people from very,
very, very diverse background. So I'll end on
Bush. So, uh, so why George Bush
? As a final side note? Um, that
is because the doctoral thesis that um became a book
was produced, was written and conceived of during the
Bush era and the Iraq war. That is times
in political history when canine rhetoric and loud, pathos
driven discourse conveying grandiosity and fearmongering in particular prevailed.
And, uh, to my mind that threaten freedom
, truth, equity, all the values my poets
tried to defend and they threaten the legitimacy of the
state. And the question of state is important in
the French 16th century, even though the regime,
of course, is monarchy and democracy. So in
a way, and I don't believe this is a
stretch at all. My poets provide their own trans
historical answer to what Fox news is still doing after
the Bush era. And it has been an honor
to, uh, echo and reverberate their wives and
certainly potent voice. Thank you. Thank you for
the second time I've done for real something. I
think with politics. Okay, we're gonna talk Yeah
, I think about are right. I think you're
failing my personal opinion is that they are failing because
I think they're toking expression that staying at politicians use
but they aren't hearing any of that. And I
think our boy because they become very prosaic prosaic in
in what sense, appealing to the common man in
language that isn't. Uh huh. I just I
think you're talking really are both public, right?
Today's world in I have to go right towards I
read it. I keep poor thing by my bedside
. Yeah. Many come in. And people who
are in charge these poets are impressed. Their benefactor
. Mhm. I just wonder if we have people
who are doing that. I know we have our
own poets here. Yeah. Elsewhere. And I
do hear the But I wonder in charge do do
hear them? Well, there's so there's a question
of address, as you were saying, do contemporary
poets position themselves as voices to be reckoned with addressing
the powers that be um trying to, you know
, change the world through there, through their words
. So, um I believe some of them still
do, but from from a paradoxical and partly self
defeating as you're trying to say, I think position
that's related to the paradox of democracy because democracy is
um supposed to thrive on educated, enlightened masses.
Um uh so that pushes certain forms of area diet
, artful, um expert, um everything but simple
uh discourse like poetry to try and uh meets the
people at the level they're at or we assume their
ads. And and so if some poets you have
in mind do do that, then yes, they
are failing and failing the people. Um, it's
to me it's questions um very closely related to education
and democracy. Do us as educators. Are we
here to um start or stay at the level or
perceived level our students are at or pull them upward
um and forward. Um Did you want to finish
your thought? So, yes. No, it
was very striking to me and and it was,
you know, I was, yeah, I was
a recent um visa holders living in America extensively for
some period of time. And I I just I
could feel that it became certain that this had to
be my doctoral thesis because of of this ambience.
Noah isn't. Um yeah, screaming and biting and
and uh there were alternative ways to um to address
the people and and handle power. Mhm. Thank
you. We're talking about some styles and levels.
Fighting on high style and medium. Okay. Three
poetry addressing people. They were not Talking about four
Gloria. But if I dare to bring countries repeat
this for me because of the acoustics. Country music
. That's debatable. But want to make the taste
. Oh shit pop could be poetry for some people
. So I would not say entirely that population doesn't
have access to a point. So I just think
looking torture something were highly educated people is something only
elite have access to is something to be more used
. And it's still it is still true today.
Huh? We leave in the society which probably always
have different level of culture, right? But again
, american society today likes to pretend there's no classes
and democracy. You know, uh Everyone has the
same um base level of intelligence. Everyone is entitled
to the same level of education to become an informed
citizen and critical thinker. Uh So in theory like
you know the promises of democracy tell us it should
not be that way, but it's it still is
. Um um there are poets who do not um
take it that way, climb tomorrow out of the
two double is definitely more elitist. You know,
he did he doesn't care if poetry is read to
some village people and they don't get it, like
he couldn't care less, but tomorrow it's crucial because
to him it's related to translating the gospel and disseminating
in french in the in the vernacular, the language
that people did speak um then and there. Um
and so that's why their projects are very layered and
there's always a very literal level. And if you
you were mentioning pop music and marcos poems were constantly
set to music, especially the most humorous lively ones
and you know those that are body at literal levels
and all that. So he did he he did
speak for all the people but then there were layers
and multi dimensions of meaning and complication. Um that
um that speak to a tiered audience or multi targeted
address. So why, you know, I hope
I hope some poets still do that today. I'm
just gonna back brag on Karen because she teaches a
fabulous course on popular music. Yeah. Yeah.
And it brings out the kuwaiti. Yes. Yes
. Uh huh. And uh yeah, song lyrics
are theirs theorists. I really like to say song
lyrics are poor poetry. Um Poor gets enriched by
the music without the music. You know, most
of the time when we read lyrics like Yeah.
Okay. Yes, this could be poetic but it
needs the music which actual put Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Poetry as a as a as an artful
practice does not require music too resonates multi dimensionally.
Well, that's a lot of people. I'm really
, I'm really grateful you came into Virginia Tech in
general for, you know, helping this thing wherever
it is now. Um, come to lights.
So we conclude tom we're done. Thanks again.
Have a cookie.