• View
• Edit
• History
• Print

Frank D Angelo Annotated Bibliography Books

Classical rhetoric provides models that organize learning into stages that help students to construct effective and persuasive compositions. Writing teachers can use these ancient forms to instruct students and guide them in their writing. Utilizing the ancient practice of progymnasmata, D’Angelo constructs fourteen lesson plans, based on each of the main discourses (fable, narrative, chreia, proverb, refutation, confirmation, commonplace, encomium, vituperation, comparison, impersonation, description, thesis/theme, defend/attack law), and offers definitions of their major terms. He also provides ancient and cotemporary examples explaining how each discourse functions, and constructs lessons for students to follow interrogating the successes or failures of the examples. Each exercise, built upon the information gained from previous chapters, provides students with different strategies for composing their works as well as helping them to refine their techniques.

As part of a wave in the seventies to construct a new rhetoric, this book undertakes to produce a model which intermingles classical rhetoric with modern psychoanalytics. D’Angelo examines how modern psychology has created new ways of understanding how the human mind functions, both in perceiving the world and determining how individuals will participate in it. D’Angelo argues that the development of linguistic skills and reasoning capabilities enable rhetors to gain greater success as they become more adept at their practices. Their success is based on an understanding of how to appeal to audiences. Modern psychology can explain how and why certain appeals either succeed or fail. Psychology can thereby assist composition rhetoric by providing insight into the mental processes that rhetorical appeals are based on. Teachers can similarly construct their courses designed for their students’ mental developments and capabilities.

The third edition of D’Angelo’s original textbook dealing with composition, this book defines basic terminology in rhetoric and demonstrates the application of these terms within composition. The textbook provides students and teachers with fundamental tools for constructing written works that are informed by rhetorical strategies and conventions. In applying classical rhetoric structures to modern writing lessons, D’Angelo demonstrates the value of ancient strategies to inform students of what they are creating and how they are doing so. Writing, rather than being a final product that is arduously worked towards, emerges as a development of highly complex rhetorical techniques that aim to persuade, instruct and/or inform readers. The fifteen chapters of this textbook develop student writing skills and provide them with methods of making effective compositions.