Gates' "The Signifying Monkey"

Gates is very interested in presenting the African-American rhetorical tradition as one that is separate from the classical (white) rhetorical tradition because it is rooted in an entirely different social, political and linguistic context. Any effort to measure or define it, therefore, must emerge from that context; we cannot approach it from the traditional means of analyzing text or rhetoric because, without understanding that context, we fail to understand the language and rhetorical styles it involves. The Signifying Monkey is a metaphor for the common misinterpretation of African-American literature and discourse: it is a tale of a monkey who tricks a lion into believing that an elephant has made demeaning statements about the lion's family members. Because the lion responded to the monkey from a literal, rather than figurative, perspective, he completely misunderstood the monkey. That misunderstanding resulted in a trouncing by the elephant, for which the lion felt embarassed and foolish. Gates provides multiple definitions and examples of what it means to signify - essentially, it is a verbal fluency employed to trick, taunt, cajole, needle, persuade, lie or engage in playful language games. Monkey tales are important to Gates for three reasons: "as the source of the rhetorical act of Signification, as examples of the black tropes subsumed within the trope of Signifyin(g), and as evidence for the valorization of the signifier." We'll talk about what these mean in class, but try to think of why they're important to his thesis. He later mentions the importance of naming language, and it's interesting to note that Gates has been very involved in the development of the first African-American dictionary. Why is this act of "naming" important? How does it play out in today's society? I think it's also important to have a discussion about the relevance of language (or the existence of disparate languages within society) to our educational system. What are its implications for us as educators? For consumers of literature and culture?

Foucault's "The Order of Discourse"

No one will probably get the chance to read this before class, but I'm hoping that the qeustions I pose here will be a good post-class discussion prompts.

In "The Order of Discourse," Foucault argues that discourse is controlled by certain functions, actions, or rules. In particular:

• certain topics are prohibited
  
• reason is valued and madness is ignored
  
• the will to truth: "[T]he highest truth no longer resided in what discourse was or did, but in what it said: a day came when truth was displaced from the ritualized, efficacious, and just act of enunciation, twoards teh utterance itself, its meaning, its form, its object, its relation to its reference" (1462).
  
• what we choose to comment on
  
• the author function (attributed to author so must be true, is it part of the author's "work", does it disagree with what else the author says)
  
• disciplines (excludes that which does not belong in the field
  
• distribution limited
  
• who speaks is limited

Since many of use are teachers or are desiring to be teachers, I'm wondering what ideas people have for how they can make decisions as teachers that are informed by Foucault. Hopefully, we'll start this dialogue in class, but I'd like it to continue here.

If you're not going into the teaching profession, how do you see Foucault's ideas affecting your work or the discourse that goes on in your chosen field?

comment on Bakhtin

It won’t let me just comment. Blogs are confusing. Anyway, I was intrigued and a little annoyed by that comment of his about creative individuality. Bakhtin is fascinating, so I don’t want to sound like I disagree with him, but I don’t know about creative individuality having nothing more to do with a person than his/her social orientation. As an artist, I like to think that what I create comes from some spark inside me, but it’s true that I am strongly influenced by images around me and by stories or movies or other art I’ve seen. But I think his meaning is more complex than that. I remember theme and meaning from my discourse and text class last Spring: meaning is just the literal meaning of an utterance, while theme is actually what gives an utterance its meaning between speaker and spoken to. For instance, “I can’t hear you” means literally that the speaker cannot hear what the other person is saying, but the real meaning lies in who is speaking and where, and what about. Say your housemate is complaining again about something you don’t want to hear about, and you’re angry, so what you really mean is, “I don’t want to hear you.” Indirect speech acts don’t always work, and they work best between people who share a social orientation and situation. I guess I’m trying to orient myself on what Bakhtin is saying: a lot of the chapter was really hard to decipher. I do agree with him, though, that what someone says is really less important than its social connotations. Like I said above, the literal meaning doesn’t really “mean” anything, other than that the speaker is unwilling to say straight out what they mean. Indirect speech acts are often about saving face, but in this case, it’s about expressing anger. I like Bakhtin’s idea of communication being like an “electric spark that occurs only when two different terminals are hooked together.” But, you know, when an artist is really working, the sparks are flying just fine off one person. Going back up to the third question, no, I don’t think I can completely agree with his idea that no two utterances can have the same theme and meaning. They can’t ever be exactly the same, I suppose, because that point in time won’t ever roll back around again, but some utterances are repeated again and again for the same effect, like catch phrases: “Can you hear me now?” But of course, the original utterance didn’t mean what the catch phrase means now. Fourth question, yeah, I think a lot is happening during a conversation that we don’t consciously think about, and I think sometimes people are really clicking together and sparking, and other times they just can’t connect and don’t understand each other, shared social orientation notwithstanding.

For Tuesday's discussion of Bakhtin

Hello class. Sorry this is so late in coming, but I had a bit of a family emergency over the weekend and didn't have as much time to work on preparation as I would have liked. That said, I feel like I am fairly prepared now, and I want to post some questions here for our discussion of Bakhtin in Tuesday's class. We might not get to all of them, since I only have half an hour and plan to give a bit of a lecture about Bakhtin's life and such. Anyway, here they are:

Bakhtin says that our “‘creative individuality’ is nothing but the expression of a particular person’s basic, firmly grounded, and consistent line of social orientation” (1220). What would a believer say about this? A doubter? Are our utterances based on the society we are a part of? Why or why not? How does this relate to Burke’s “Terministic Screens”?

Bakhtin ends chapter 3 with a set of propositions. What do you make of these? Do you agree with them? Why or why not? What works and what doesn’t?

Bakhtin says that “the theme of an utterance itself is individual and unreproducible” (1224). Do you agree that no two utterances can have the same theme, the same meaning, even if they are identical in form and content based on the “historical situation” in which it is uttered?

Bakhtin says that “only active understanding can grasp a theme—a generative process can be grasped only with the aid of another generative process” (1226). Is actively thinking about a conversation really necessary? Does this mean that “multi-tasking” during a conversation means that you cannot truly understand its meaning? Does the speaker need to focus as intently as the listener; that is, does the speaker need to concentrate to really understand what he or she is saying and make sure that the intended message is going through?

Bakhtin says that the meanings of individual words do not matter, but the combination of those words, the social upbringing of the speaker and listener, and the “historical setting” of an utterance all combine to give an utterance meaning. Do you buy that? Why or why not? What would a believer say? A doubter?

Bakhtin says that “meaning is the effect of interaction between speaker and listener produced via the material of a particular sound complex” (1226). Does this mean that the listener has an equal share in the clarity of what the speaker is saying? How does this relate to the idea active understanding is necessary to “grasp a theme”?

If anyone would like to volunteer to act as a believer and/or doubter, I would love to include that in our discussion. There is also a possibility that I will divide the class into groups to perform the believer and doubter rolls, but I am not sure about that yet. We can discuss it a little bit tomorrow before I get into my short lecture.

I'm looking forward to a lively discussion of Bakhtin and his theories about language tomorrow, and I hope that you are, too!

See you then,

-Simon

Gloria Anzaldúa: a couple of concepts

I’d like to talk about code-switching and language use before we discuss why Anzaldúa would choose to write in a mixture of languages instead of simply choosing one.

Language is a marker of class, of race, of gender. Language marks one as a member of a group. It may betray where we grew up, or our nationality; it may betray what kind of education we’ve had, or it may mark us as upper class or lower class. By marking, I mean how we are perceived by others. Often, speakers use a particular type of language or word choice consciously to allow themselves to be identified a certain way by another person. Group solidarity is reinforced by certain language use. When someone speaks differently than the majority, that person is singled out. When a group speaks differently than the majority, that group is singled out, often in a negative way.

Code switching occurs when a bilingual (or multilingual) speaker switches suddenly from one language to another, and this can only happen naturally when the speaker is fluent in both. For instance, a girl and boy are working together at the computer. They are speaking Spanish, talking about their friends, but when they start to talk about the assignment they’re working on, they begin speaking English. My professor who is Greek is talking on the phone in Greek with her son, and suddenly she says in English, “Did you pay your car insurance?” This is code-switching. Monolingual speakers will switch styles or dialects in this same way. We all use language, normally, that is appropriate to the situation we are in, including who we are talking to and where we are, and even what emotions we are feeling. Another similar phenomenon that often occurs with code-switching is borrowing, when a word from another language is inserted spontaneously. For a bilingual or multilingual speaker, code-switching is especially rich. It serves a particular function in speech that provides more dimension for these speakers than they might have in a single language.

In order for a child to be completely bilingual, many experts believe that each language must be used in separate contexts at home. For instance, maybe the Hispanic mother speaks Spanish to the child, while the Anglo father speaks English. Or maybe both parents are bilingual and Spanish is used for close family situations and English is used for talking about school or the outside world in general. My Greek teacher uses Greek to talk to her son about his feelings or his personal life, but then switches to English to talk about whether he paid his bills. I was watching a program on a Spanish speaking channel, and the show host, in Spanish, introduced the next topic, then grinned at the camera and said, “Check it out.” It was startling to me, but I noticed that quite a few people on the Spanish channels and on Spanish radio will pop in English words and phrases for emphasis, or to express a concept. English speakers do the same with Spanish phrases. We see bits and pieces from other languages everywhere: my stepson’s school sends out a newsletter every month. The closing salutation is “Carpe Diem!”

Why do we use phrases like this instead of just translating them into English? Because they carry a certain significance in their own language. Everyone knows Carpe Diem means seize the day in Latin. It doesn’t sound the same to yell, “Seize the day!” But to yell the Latin phrase does carry significance. It brings to mind certain images or ideas. For bilingual speakers, not every language functions in the same way. Apparently, “Check it out,” carries a different meaning than saying the equivalent in Spanish, and clearly, the people watching the TV show are expected to at least be familiar with the English phrase, otherwise it wouldn’t be worth using.

According to Suzanne Romaine in her book Language in Society, switching is an option available to bilingual speakers in the same way that monolingual speakers switch between dialects or speech styles. An example of this would be a mother asking a child about his day versus reprimanding him for spilling milk, or you speaking to your best friend versus greeting your boss at work. This type of switching is an important function of language, and it has meaning in the way we express ourselves in a given situation or context to a given person or persons (59). Speakers switch for many reasons, Romaine states, to define a certain “social arena” or to redefine a conversation from one arena to another (60). Such as I showed with my teacher and her son.

There is a little poem on page 1585 of BH: “Ahogadas, escupimos el oscuro.” It means “Drowning, we spit the dark.” I may not have it quite right, but regardless, we have lost something important in the translation: in Spanish, most adjectives are gender oriented. In this poem, the adjective which describes the persons in the poem as drowning is a feminine adjective. A Spanish speaker knows that the people drowning are female. This can’t be expressed so succinctly in English. We have to add more words. On page 1586, we see her shock at hearing the word “nosotras,” which means “we” feminine. She hadn’t known the word existed. She had only heard “we” used in a masculine form: “nosotros.” I found this particularly poignant, and it is a concept that just can’t occur in English.

Because Anzaldúa is multilingual, fluent in many languages because of her exposure since birth, she can “walk between worlds” in a manner of speaking. She has far more freedom than someone who speaks only a single language, and she can use whatever language she feels is most appropriate to express a particular concept. But it certainly isn’t as easy as she makes it look, or as easy as it sounds. Imagine trying to write an essay and switching from standard, formal English to casual English. My mother, when I was growing up, always used Standard English, while my father speaks some mix of Midwestern dialect and Oregon dialect, so I can speak either depending on which is most appropriate, but I couldn’t write this way, switching back and forth. I don’t know how Anzaldúa does it.

Gloria Anzaldúa believes that your home language is who you are, a vital part of self that can’t and shouldn’t be erased. Her work matters because she shows us what it means both to feel ashamed of one’s home language, and to regain that love and pride in it. She shows us how we can benefit from using a rich mixture of language. La Frontera demonstrates clearly that someone can master and use Standard English smoothly, yet still maintain a sense of self and individuality.

On Correctness... and hopefully other

On Correctness:

Much as it is now, correctness in linguistics, is due to a need for power (sorry about the social justice mind that's still at work). In many ways it parallels the treatment of women: education equals unchase. By saying educated women are unchase they are able to control their education and their lives. In similar fashion, by saying you need to be correct, especially in pronunciation, you are setting limitations/expectations that not everyone can live up to. Although it did help unify education by having spelling/grammar/pronounciation expectations, it limited a lot of people. As Michael Faris presented in class, most education systems were limited to those at least in middle class. This includes universities like Oxford and Cambridge, the dissident schools, and the Redbrick universities. Although all three of these had different curriculums and students seeking different educations, they all served the the same monetary classes.

Faris also noted the working class may have received an education but it wasn't the same as others, the employed practical skills, working skills. Basically, anything that can help them continue to do menial work, but nothing that will broaden their mind. This immediately sets up the ability to distinguish between classes: the upper and middle classes will speak "eloquently" and the lower classes will speak in broken patterns, not graceful, and according to the other two classes, mispronouncing everything.

There is still a desire for correctness today, within the poetry world at least. Three years ago a female novelist came to OSU as a visiting writer. She briefly gave her ideas on writing, her writing process, and where she plans to go from there. A Q&A session followed and got on the subject of minority writers. Her response was they are "destroying" the English language and getting way too much credit for it. She cited that Maya Angelou taught too many bad habits... and then her voice trailed off when she saw me, and said, "but we still need them." I then asked her if she felt the same way about women writers, if they are horrible writers, "but we still need them." And I asked the group in general if Southern writers did the same to the language, destroyed it, "but we still need them." Most responded in accordance with me, but others would say there's nothing wrong with the way Southerners speak, citing, "It's just another dialect." I then asked if minorities, each individual group, had their own dialect. Some agreed, a handful didn't.

Women's Education

Since I am presenting my discussion in class on Mary Astell I decided to post the process of women's education for some background information.

In 1681 Archbishop Fenelon wrote a treatise On the Education of Girls that explained how women’s education had been neglected since the Renaissance. He suggested a list of curriculum: reading, writing, arithmetic, and household economy. This treatise also assisted in the development of childhood education. By the eighteenth century more women were getting an education, but mostly those of the upper class. Louis XIV founded the school of St. Cyr that serviced the education of women. The headmistress, Mme. de Maintenon, fought not only for women’s education but also for a better education.

Mary Astell wrote a promotion for the plans of a college for women, but instead of pushing forward with the idea she wrote a revision. She worked at a girl’s school, many of which appeared in England, and more women were becoming not only literate but fiction and poetry writers as well. Reading and writing seemed to be the main focus because it was thought that a woman’s “station” in the household did not pertain to business or public affairs. Women still had no voice in the Roman Catholic and Anglican services but some were allowed to participate in Dissenting churches.

epistemology and semantics

I thought I would address April’s question in her previous post:
I’m having a lot of trouble with page 799-800 which details concepts talked about on page 792: espistemology, semantics, other scientific theories in play.

We might look at this issue (“What is the relationship between language and knowledge?” [799]) as a disagreement with two major camps. On one side are Descartes, Condillac, and Locke, and on the other side is Vico. (Of course, there are others, but these are the ones described on these pages.)

Descartes valued empiricism, the belief that knowledge is created from human experience. He valued the use of experiments and the reformulation of logic “as a means of investigation,” not of proof (793). Descartes sought truth, not the Scholastic dispute and rhetoric, which only gets at probability and persuasion (793-794). Drawing on the Cartesian “tradition,” “Locke argues that all ideas are mental combinations of sense perceptions and that words refer not directly to things but to mental phenomena, the ideas we retain and build from sense impressions” (799). Bizzell and Herzberg suggest that Locke’s ideas were followed by various philosophers in order to “purify language” (799). Condillac proposes that there is a universal grammar and a way to perfect language for science (799). In fact, this belief that grammar is so intrinsically linked to logic led the French to go so far as to replace the university chairs of logic and metaphysics with chairs of universal grammar in 1795 for eight years (800). These philosophers believed that knowledge was possible because we perceived the world, not because we created it or because of the way we described it.

Giambattista Vico, however, was opposed to the Cartesian epistemology. Instead of viewing knowledge and language as separate, Vico understood knowledge as “bound up in human reason, passion, and imagination” and valued rhetoric more than the Cartesian method to investigate knowledge (800). For Vico, even the “certainty” of hard sciences like math comes into question because this certainty is merely belief, not actual knowledge (800). While Cartesians believed the world was something that could be perceived and thus known, Vico was of another philosophical bent: We cannot know what God has created, but only what we have created.

For Vico, a universal grammar exists for a different reason than it does for Locke and the others. The others saw a purified language as best because then one can accurately describe what one sees (empiricism). For Vico (the best I understand it at this time), all languages developed from a universal language that was used to describe and create human reality (but not affecting nature).

Does that make sense?

Further Simplification:
Cartesian: We perceive the world accurately, and the more pure our language, the more accurate our descriptions of our perceptions.
Vico: Our perceptions are bound up in our history, language, emotion, and social groups, and so therefore we can only, with the best probability, describe human affairs. We cannot have actual knowledge of the world because only God can have that.

Correctness during the Enlightenment

What fascinates me most about this period—and annoys me—is the obsession with correctness. Blair particularly writes in detail about how development of “proper taste” leads to improvement of character, that when one speaks and writes properly, one is morally superior. This isn’t a new idea: I think Aristotle was one who touched on the idea of developing the mind’s faculties and becoming more virtuous, but during the Enlightenment period, something different was happening. After hundreds of years of the feudal system, two factors—as I understand it—played into shifting power out of the hands of the nobility. One was the black plague. Thousands and thousands died, mainly those who were responsible for working the land and growing food (little access to good food and doctors). Suddenly, the peasant class had a little bargaining power since healthy workers were hard to find. Secondly, the industrial age had begun and a true middle class began to arise. I’m really oversimplifying it, but basically, during the Enlightenment, the merchant class had burgeoned into a consuming public. The population centers were shifting as well, with people flooding into cities looking for work in the new factories as many landowners, faced with a dearth of workers, turned to sheep farming.
With the rise of a middle class which wasn’t sure where they stood in a world that valued those with power and wealth (oh, like that’s any different), a concern over class identification also arose. In earlier centuries, you were a member of the class you were born into, and there was little room to move upward: you were noble, or you were a peasant. Many rules applied to help keep the population pegged into the right holes: only the King could wear a certain type of fine fabric or fur such as ermine, a lesser noble could wear fox-fur, and peasants could only wear homespun wool, etc. These rules applied to education as well. Ruling class or working class. Now, with a prosperous middle class of “common” birth, the question arose as to how one could tell what class a person belonged to. How could you tell who had privilege? You could say that this middle class was extremely class-conscious, and they had serious nobility-envy. They wanted to speak as the members of the ruling class did.
Also, to keep oversimplifying because I don’t want to write hundreds of pages, we see the development (after the printing press) of a desire to standardize English just as French and—I think—Italian had been. These latter languages had universities and committees devoted to preserving the language. The idea was that change in a language meant deterioration, thus rules must be set in stone as to what was correct. Also, a language only has status when it is used by those with power, can be taught, and has rules of usage to follow. A dictionary is vital to this. Samuel Johnson produced the first substantial dictionary, and he felt strongly that language should be fixed and not be “polluted” by a haphazard introduction of foreign words. Unfortunately for him, English is a language that adapts easily and quickly to foreign words, having its own roots in old German, but many other languages as well, all blending together into a fantastically flexible system. Believe it or not, our “unpredictable” methods of spelling can be predicted by a computer programmed with just a few guidelines to follow.
I apologize for focusing so much on linguistics, but I think this is important to understanding why there is such an obsession with correctness in the way writing is taught even today. What surprises me most about the Enlightenment period, however, is that the birth of the study of language truly blossomed here, whether anyone in influence over the universities took notice or not. Sir William Jones (page 801 of BH) noticed through intense study that Latin, Greek and Sanskrit had to have had a common source. This realization led to the understanding—at least on the part of linguists—that language does change and grow, just like everything else on earth.
One last point: Cicero made a comment that he felt that rules of usage should be based not on ancient, fixed rules, but on common usage of educated, respectable people in society. George Campbell (801 of BH) also felt that “prevailing custom” should set the standards. These are, unbelievably, issues still under passionate debate. There was a fantastic show on PBS just last year about language use and dialect in the USA, and prescriptive (rules of usage) grammar versus descriptive (how do people use language?) grammar.
My question: I’m having a lot of trouble with page 799-800 which details concepts talked about on page 792: espistemology, semantics, other scientific theories in play. Anyone with a logical brain who can help me understand these ideas?

On "On Copia"

[Sorry about re-representing what I did in class. I didn't get to fully makes some points on repetition that I would have liked.]

"On Copia..." was written by Erasmus as a demonstration of a writing exercise. You take one sentence and then express it as many different ways as you possibly can. Copia is translated as "abundance."

He wrote, "First of all, exercise in expressing oneself in different ways will be of considerable importance in general for the acquisition of style. In particular however it will help in avoiding, that is, the repetition of a word or phrase, an ugly and offensive fault. It often happens that we say the same thing several times. If in these circumstances we find ourselves destitute of verbal riches and hesitate, or keep singing out the same old phrase like a cukoo, and are unable to clothe our thought in other colors or other forms, we shall look ridiculous when we show ourselves to be so tongue-tied, and we shall also bore our wretched audience to death." (BH 598)

I agree with the exercises importance for "the acquisition of style." In his exercise, Erasmus rewrote the sentence, "Your letter please me mightily." (BH 605) In the importance of acquiring style I immediately find phrases that I like and dislike. I find Erasmus' first variation, "From my dear Faustus' letter I derived much delight." a rather weak variation (BH 606).

After studying the sentence I know I dislike it because of its structure: Object-Subject-Verb. Or in other words, Erasmus employs a passive voice instead of an active voice. An active voice would read like this: "I [the subject] derived [the verb] much delight from Faustus' letter [the object]"

Another example of passive voice: "When your letter was delivered, I was filled with delight." (BH 606)

To make it active: "I was filled with delight when your letter was delivered."

An example of active voice: "Your letter was very sweet to me." (BH 606)

Although I agree with using this exercise for acquisition of style, I don't believe, "... repitition of a word or phrase, [is] an ugly and offensive fault." I don't think you will sound like a "cukoo" that "sings out the same old phrase" and "bores the audience to death."

I believe there are three poetry forms that you can use to make repetition a beautiful thing. These three forms are the Pantoum, Villanelle, and the Sestina.

Erasmus noted on writing "copia" that it should be started out by "rendering" your sentence "twice, then three times, and eventually treating it over and over again, so as to attain such facility in the end that we can vary it in two or three hundred ways...." (BH 598)

I agree with him on this, that the repitition should be done gradually and because of this, I recommend starting with the pantoum, followed by the sestina, and then the villanelle. The reason being, is the pantoum's repetition is often the easiest to master, sestina somewhat harder in difficulty, and the villanelle being very hard to master.

The pantoum is very subtle in its repitition, each line is only repeated once, much like Erasmus would want it. The finished product itself is always stunning as each repeated line may take on a new meaning, or feeling.

The sestina is is somewhat harder because of its strict requirements, 7 stanzas, but easier than a villanelle as you are only repeating words and not entire lines.

The villanelle itself, depending on the person, can be harder or easier than the sestina.

All of them have one thing in common though, it can teach a person to use repitition, and not jsut variation of repititoin, to be effective in speech or writing. They all can show that repitition is not an ugly or offensive thing.

for pantoum guidelines, please visit: http://anitraweb.org/kalliope/pantoum.html

For a pantoum example, please visit:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/books/features/19980920.htm


For sestina guidelines, please visit: http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/page9.html

For a sestina example, please visit: http://www.cs.rice.edu/~ssiyer/minstrels/poems/904.html


For villanelle guidelines, please visit: http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/page8.html

For a villanelle example, please visit:
http://www.public.asu.edu/~aarios/formsofverse/reports2000/page8.html
Please read sylvia plaths, "mad girls love song." or elizabeths, "one art"

more on Arabic treatment of Aristotle

From Brian Tierney, Western Europe in the Middle Ages: 300-1475, 6th ed.:

...Muslim thinkers also sought to recover the heritage of Greek metaphysics. Between 750 and 1000 all the major works of Aristotle were translated into Arabic, along with various Neoplatonic treatises and commentaries. As the translations appeared, Muslim thinkers turned to the task of reconciling all the new knowledge with the revealed truths of Islamic religion. A pioneer in this was work was Al-Kindi (d. ca. 870) who associated Muslim religious teachings with a Neoplatonic philosophy. It was more difficult to assimilate Aristotelian philosophy into a framework of Islamic thought, primarily because of the lack of a creator-god in Aristotle’s system. Nonetheless, Aristotelian studies flourished. The three most famous names from the tenth century onward are al-Farabi (d. 950), Ibn Sina (Avicenna) (d. 1036), and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) (d. 1198). Al-Farabi wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle that made the writings of the Greek philosopher more accessible to Arabic-speaking people. Avicenna was an eclectic scholar who wrote in many fields and drew on both Aristotelian and Neoplatonic sources. Averroes insisted vigorously on the validity of Aristotle’s teachings, even when they seemed to conflict with the Muslim faith. He enjoyed a distinguished career as a judge at Cordoba, but was finally denounced and disgraced near the end of his life. After his death, the attempt to wed Islamic religion with Greek philosophy effectively came to an end in the Arab world. But the works of these last three Muslim masters became of immense importance in the development of medieval Western philosophy once they had been translated into Latin in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. (244)

After the fall of the Roman Empire, the only works of Aristotle that continued to be known in the West were the elementary logical treatises translated by Boethius. Aristotle’s works survived by Byzantine manuscripts and they were used in the West from the thirteenth century onward. But the first knowledge of the lost works of Aristotle came from Muslim sources. It was through contact with the Arab world that Western Christians eventually recovered the heritage of Greek philosophy. (411)

Tierney discusses some of the metaphysical beliefs and discussions of Aristotle and the Arab philosophers, but nothing really on rhetoric. It appears, though, that Muslims had similar struggles that Christians had: how to incorporate a pagan philosopher into a monotheistic paradigm. It also appears that the philosophy of these Muslims had an impact on Western philosophy in the twelfth and thirteenth century.

By the way, the textbook that I cited in the previous post has the defense of Jacqueline Felicie, a woman doctor who refused to wed and who was brought to court for practicing without a licence (because she couldn't go to the university that granted licences) in 1322. She lost her case, but it's interesting to me that she got to defend herself in court against male medical faculty. I can bring this to class next week if anyone wants to read it. It's about 2 pages or so. There is also an excerpt from Christine De Pizan's The Book of the City of Ladies, which Dr. Tolar Burton mentioned in class today, as well as a few other primary documents about women in Medieval Europe.

The dangers of Aristotelian thought in Medieval Europe

I was flipping around in my old history textbooks, and I came across this. It’s from a 1270 decree by Stephen, Bishop of Paris, condemning errors, most of which, according to the textbook’s editors, are errors committed by Averroists, folowers of Averroes, the Arab commentator on Aristotle. Among the thirteen errors that Stephen bans are:

2. That this is false or inappropriate: Man understands.
3. That the will of man wills or chooses from necessity.
...
7. That the soul, which is the form of man as a human being, is corrupted when the body is corrupted.
...
9. That free will is a passive power, not active; and that it is moved necessarily by appetite.
10. That God does not know things in particular.
11. That God does not know other things than Himself.
12. That human actions are not ruled by divine Providence. (Tierney 269-270)

I think this is interesting because it shows that some European thinkers were following the comments of Averroes, an Arab, about Aristotle. Of course, you can see how these ideas directly violated Church tenets. We can also see how the Church definitely tried to control discourse by banning ideas that disagreed with their Truth.

Tierney, Brian. The Middle Ages: Volume I: Sources of Medieval History. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1999.