A reader of this post wrote to ask me what I have against “how to write” books, and Strunk & White in particular. Over at The Anti-moderate, I answered.
Tags: how to write books
Archive for the ‘Rhetoric’ Category
January 24, 2010
3
On Learning To Write (Without All the Usual BS)
By Robert Minto in Education, Rhetoric, ScholarshipI have experienced far, far too many writing courses. When I was homeschooled for a while in high-school, I read dozens of books on How to Write — How to Write Essays, How to Write Stories, How to Write Poetry. I read Zinsser’s book on non-fiction, Gardner’s book on fiction, and Williams’s book on style. [...]
Tags: american rhetoric, edgar allen poe, famous writers, how to write essays, how to write poetry, john updike, robert louis stevenson, samuel johnson, sir thomas browne, strunk and white, wordsworth, writing courses, writing process, zinsser
January 3, 2010
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Theological Criticism of Films
By Robert Minto in Criticism, Film, Narrative, Rhetoric, TheologyWhat, exactly, does a theologian as theologian have to say about films? Or, really, about popular narrative altogether? There is a need to ask this question, because “theological criticism” is frequently attempted — not least by myself over the history of this blog, with varying success — but infrequently considered on its own, as a [...]
Tags: An und fur Sich, avatar, baptism, Bible, biblical narrative, Christ, christ figures in film, Church, Creation, Criticism, culture, discourse, Israel, liberation, life, methodology, mythology, Narrative, old testament, old testament theology, Rhetoric, ross douthat, theologian, theologians, Theological Criticism, Theology, theology and film, Walter Bruegemann, watership down, witness
December 9, 2009
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Would Dr. Johnson Blog?
By Robert Minto in Blogging, Criticism, RhetoricIt seems so.
Taking a break from only the second (I congratulate myself) all-nighter of this semester, I note the recent double-impingement of Dr. Johnson upon my life. First, I listened to the New York Review of Books’ podcast about the fellow, then I came across Jason Peters’ Front Porch Republic post about “Blogging and the [...]
Tags: Blogging, blogosphere, dialogue, discourse, dr johnson, jason peters, moralist, new york review of books, openness, periodic essay, Porch Republic, realism, rhetorical purpose, wisdom of the elders
September 5, 2009
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Erasmus On Pilgrimage
By Robert Minto in Books, Criticism, Rhetoric“Here’s how I wander about at home [rather than wandering about on long and expensive pilgrimages to pray at shrines]. I go into the living room and see that my daughter’s chastity is safe. Coming out of there into my shop, I watch what my servants, male and female, are doing. Then to the kitchen [...]
Tags: colloquies, Erasmus, pilgrimage, religious culture, satire
August 4, 2009
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The Subversive Pedagogy of Calvin’s Institutes: Series Introduction
By Robert Minto in Blogging, Books, Education, Politics, Rhetoric“Tis those whose cause my former booklet pled
Whose zeal to learn has wrought this tome instead.” — John Calvin
One of the most fascinating things about Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion is the history of its slow accretion of content from a simple four part booklet to a voluminous tome. One aspect of the Institutes [...]
Tags: compass, couplet, evolutions, institutes of the christian religion, irony, john calvin, persecution, piety, posterity, protestant revolution, roman church, Theology
June 29, 2009
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The Gatekeeper as Anti-autobiography
By Robert Minto in Books, Criticism, Man, Politics, RhetoricIn his book The Gatekeeper, in the midst of a discussion of “anti-philosophers,” Terry Eagleton throws out the following sentence.
… anti-autobiography means not just not writing your autobiography, an astonishly prevalent practice, but writing it in such a way as to outwit the prurience and immodesty of the genre by frustrating your own desire for [...]
Tags: autobiography, delusions of grandeur, Desire, Gatekeeper, hypocrisy, immodesty, jim elliot, journals, notations, prurience, r l stevenson, self deception, terry eagleton
June 28, 2009
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In Defense of Self-plagiarism
By Robert Minto in Rhetoric, Scholarship, ThinkingI’ve been enjoying a brief Terry Eagleton kick this last week. My first exposure to the fellow.
First, I read Literary Theory: An Introduction: beautifully written, polemically brilliant, wonderfully informative. Then I worked through Walter Benjamin: Toward a Revolutionary Criticism: somewhat hampered by the jargon, but evincing great insight and interesting lines of thought especially in [...]
Tags: autobiography, coherence, comprehensiveness, Gatekeeper, jargon, Literary Theory, outline, prolific writers, Self-plagiarism, systematization, terry eagleton, walter benjamin
Against Expository Preaching
By Robert Minto in Criticism, Gospel, Preaching, Rhetoric, ScriptureI am currently reading Christ-Centered Preaching: Redeeming the Expository Sermon, by Bryan Chapell. I haven’t finished the book yet, so some of what I am about to say may have to be modified at a later date. Still, I have some objections to this whole movement of expository preaching (to the degree that I’ve been [...]
Tags: barth, chapell, Christ-centered Preaching, commentators, expository preaching, John the Baptist, pointing, preachers, Preaching, witness