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Jim Corder Annotated Bibliography

Jim W. Corder presents an outstanding argument against the division of academic and personal writing. He opposes the practice of one-sided writing; be it persuasive or self-expressive which leads to a loss of objectivity. He argues for the necessity to switch forms and styles, as Samuel Johnson did, changing styles as he moved from The Rambler and the Preface to the Dictionary to Lives of the Poets. Corder insists that neither academic writing (which he calls “jargon”) nor personal essays (here “soul-searching drivel”) should exist separately since scholarly writing is “no less opinion since it is personal” personal writing is “not less empirical because it is personal” (316).

The article is a lament on the division between the empiricists (academic writers) and hermeneutecists (essayists) which, if the author were to pick a side he definitely favors “soul-searching drivel” (319). Corder bases this on the fact that the personal essay can “show the place an argument occupies” (319) as well as the structure of the argument. He concludes that all types of writing should be pursued since the academic steps out of the way so the reader can perceive the truth of his assertion while the essayist embodies his truth.

The samples of two of his best essays---one on smoking, and one on the rise and fall of Mexican War Lieutenant Claiborne---are worth reading the essay in of themselves. The errors committed in the latter essay lead to the conclusion that although empirical studies in composition pedagogy are important for teaching writing; what exists inside the writer’s head is equally important. This article is a must-read for students of composition.

(1985): 16–32.

In one of his most renowned articles, Corder describes people as authors and narrators, living out personal narratives. As narrators “we tell our lives and live our tales,” (14) but when our narrative confronts another opposing narrative, it inevitably becomes an argument. If the other narrative is threatening sometimes we lose our plot or our convictions; but too often we go to war over our principles.

After citing Carl Roger’s and Maxine Hairston’s arguments for client-therapist relationship-type dialogue, Corder concludes these alternatives are valuable but not sufficient. He proposes we must change the way we think about argument. He calls argument “emergence toward the other.” In argument the individual is revealing him or herself to the other; while at the same time confronting and countering the opponent’s sacred values. Emotions run, high, tribes go to war, people kill each other over such differences, Corder says. Only if we love before we disagree can this be avoided, and this is a rare occurrence. To prove a point he cites the example of the German and American veterans who met, hugged and shook hands at the fortieth anniversary of the Remagen bridge takeover.

Corder suggests the arguer can both hold his identity and give it over to the other, learning form the lessons rhetoric teaches. He can study how to deal with conflicts and not walk away, thus opening himself to the infinite possibilities of creation. The burden of the argument must rest on ethos: the rapport with the reader. Time and energy must be invested in “anecdotal, personal, and cultural reflection that can sway the opposition. The world desires quick solutions, but, “we must teach it otherwise using rhetoric.” This type of rhetoric he calls love.

Lawson, Bruce, Susan Sterr Ryan and W. Ross Winterowd, eds. Urbana: NCTE, 1989. 89–99.

In a humorously written, anecdotal piece, Corder revisits his theme of essay writing. He strongly favors lenience and the creative grading of essays and vigorously opposes Harold Bloom’s assertion that, “there are no texts, only but only interpretations” (90). He counters this concept with the affirmation that not only do freshman essays exist, but they provide an opportunity to improve the way teachers evaluate them (90). Corder’s goal is to make students want to write. To this end he discourages the use of cryptic commentaries such as “frag,” “sp” and “Trans” written in the margins, and proposes evaluating freshman essays only after he dissects his own essays, and critiques both them and his methods of grading (91). After rejecting the idea of being reduced to the thirty-two questions graded by students on a teacher evaluation sheet---Corder makes fun of his own essay-writing.

Fourteen years previously Corder begasn writing essays along with his students and handing them out to be graded by them. During that time he became moderately adept at “lying, cheating, and showing off” (94). Sometimes he “recycled old papers” and “cash(ed) in on something” he had already written. Once he found out his desire to please students and get good grades was much the same as theirs, he became a more diligent grader and developed a new set of criteria.

Corder’s unique ideas merit a second look by compositionists and grammarians alike. He concludes freshman essays deserve as much attention as a poem and that teachers should help students express themselves. They should refrain from writing nonsensical abbreviations on compositions, work harder to make students like writing, and, when possible, oppose grading.

This essay provides the scholar with a cogent analysis of what makes effective argument based on ethics. Using Johnson’s Rambler 154 as an example, Corder explains that neither “raw emotional assertion” nor plain logic is useful in persuading the reader. He uses Rambler 154 as the ideal exercise in persuasiveness. Johnson does this by citing his sources, which include Aristotle, Virgil, and Dryden, and providing proofs of his argument. Corder describes the essay as a “transforming process” in which the author establishes his authenticity and move quickly into the main argument. Johnson’s contention that the “mental disease of the present is impatience of study” contempt of the ancient masters, and a prideful reliance on their own abilities. The essay flows smoothly into Johnson’s conclusion that to the study of the Masters man must add his own toil in order to attain literary eminence.

In this sequel of “Asking for a Text and Trying to Learn It,” Corder continues his argument for the importance of essays. He calls himself an essayist as opposed to a rhetorician, gives an example of an essay, and shows how to mix personal and nonfiction writing. His belief that continuous practice in essay writing is useful to everyone leads to the question—how does someone unprepared and uninterested in the art of writing go about composing an essay, and discovering what he wants to say. Corder calls the experience, or memory each writer has to share with mankind, the “blessed particular” (304). These “particulars” are usually found in a person’s past, something Corder illustrates by providing a comical, autobiographical, factually-based essay called “Cheerio.” In it he uses his family’s embracing of Cheerio’s as their favorite breakfast food, to show how to use a commonplace subject, join it with the personal history and combine it with impersonal research. In this instance the research consists in estimating the weight, measuring the size, and counting the number of cheerios in a box.

Corder uses the essay as an example of how to write a purposeful, human interest essay which reveals at least a small part of the writer’s self. His conclusion: every piece of writing is a personal essay.

One of Corder’s most existentialist essays that begins with the statement “I believe I exist,” incorporates questions about existence with an exploration of oratio, naratio, and refutatio. Corder moves from childhood memories of a young boy’s tombstone and his mother’s supplying a word for a hymn, to Mrs. Emma Johnson Elkin’s remembrance of a war scene in West Texas. He maintains events take place regardless of whether we are in them, and texts exist apart from our interpretations of them. The latter argument counters Harold Bloom’s theory that “there are no texts, but only interpretations” which Corder opposes since it eliminates him as well as the text. The linking of subject matter in this essay is a stretch, even for Corder, who is a master at interweaving diverse topics. He succeeds in tying them together by combining a series of poetic devices, such as anaphora, epistrophe, and epaneleupsis with the topoi, (recurrent poetic formulas) and oratio (oratory). Corder breaks down the oration into the naratio—the part of the speech that establishes background---exordium and peroration---openers and closers of our reality, and its argument: the refutatio. He concludes that oratio is the “human dance” that exemplifies each of us.

This posthumously published essay is one of Corder’s most direct expressions of his lifelong view that all writing is personal. In it he defends what he terms “self-writing” and its intrinsic relation to rhetoric. The first part of the essay describes Corder’s unique version of Aristotle’s rhetoric, which includes five, not four, rhetorical classes. These include intellectual, emotional, willful, spiritual and corporal rhetoric. To this Corder adds a sixth, which is the rhetoric the writer and reader are inside of. It is hard to perceive the sixth; almost as difficult as seeing “the backs of your own eyeballs” (33). This leads to an error in identifying arguments and confronting them for what they are. Examples of arguments that are not perceived as such are “barbs, slurs, and insults” (34). Corder calls them “shorthand arguments” that arise out of “one world” to counteract another and are part of the speaker’s completed thought. The error, according to Corder, lies in engaging in debates over matters of conviction since the “argument is already over before it begins” (35).

Corder concludes that the solution to pointless arguing is more concentration on the narrative and descriptive techniques he calls “self-writing.” Corder defends ‘self-writing against those who call it ‘drivel’ and makes the claim that “all writing is self-writing. He values this writing style since it is self revealing, based on experience, and helps create a writer’s rhetoric.

Corder uses his sharp wit to compare the call for a “return to the basics” to the idea of resurrecting the outhouse. To make this absurd comparison in 1977, when the author was forty-six, Corder cites contemporary publications such as the TIME that asked the question, “Can’t Anyone Here Speak English?” in which the magazine blamed the death of English on the fact that the language was not being taught properly in schools. Newsweek countered with an article of its own entitled “Why Johnny Can’t Write,’ that accused the educational system of producing semi-illiterates. Corder calls the cry for returning to the basics as nostalgia for the past and a desire to return to the “good old days” which never existed.

Corder’s article strikes a familiar note thirty-one years after its publication. He ironically congratulates the rest of the world on its “late discovery of illiteracy” something English teachers have known for years, and claims that the concept of returning to basics is no more attractive than the idea of forgoing modern bathrooms for outhouses. He makes the point that it is not possible to cover all topics at once, nor forget, either to put our subjects in order, or to connect language and literature. No one vision of English can be taught, nor can words be substituted for true or false answers.

Corder uses this essay to analyze Dryden’s famous poem “Religio Laici” as a classical oration (345). Without losing his audience, Corder takes the reader through the exordium, naratio, partition, confirmatio, confutatio. and refutatio that make up the classical oration and relates them to Dryden’s poem. He explains how Dryden uses ethos, a rapport with the reader, and pathos, which elicits the audience’s sympathy, to combat both the Deists and traditionalists of the Roman Catholic Church. Dryden uses scripture to refute both points of view, and employs the “debate framework of rhetoric” to explain the poem. Dryden’s third antagonist was the fanatic, against whom he employs the logic of his orthodox Anglican views. Corder concludes that religious truth cannot be defined by reason, and that when this truth is denied what remains is a “layman’s religion.”

Written near the end of his life “The Tyranny of Inattention” reflects Corder’s own personal disillusionment that often come with university life. The article is vaguely reminiscent of his essay on Lieutenant Claiborne. The lack of notice in universities signifies a lack of identity which grates on Corder who has to write the yearly citations for retiring faculty. The crisis provoked by his inability to track down a twenty-five year member of the faculty inspires Corder to confront the impersonality of the university, and its lack of recognition of teachers. The author is appalled by the anonymity into which some nationally renowned professors’ slip; and the latent invisibility of other teachers who fail to propose courses or draw attention to themselves. He concludes that the “tyranny of inattention” maybe latent to some universities just as “the tyranny of time” (379) is an innate part of life. Paying more attention to one another might bring some relief to what will otherwise be the inevitable problem.

Corder, Jim W. The Chronicle of Higher Education. (1991): 37–39.

Corder provides a comic analysis of the continued importance of traditional lectures combined with experiential learning. The article argues for the effectiveness of traditional lecturing in dramatizing the creation of knowledge and its interpretation as an attractive feature of a good lecture. While acknowledging the place of experiential learning in the classroom he refers to its substitution for traditional learning as simplistic.

Corder employs the preposterous imaginary example of a proposed multidisciplinary course on “death and dying” to illustrate his point. The “course” was to be offered in the evening to older students in a participatory, not lecture, format. Corder uses his (theoretical) rash offer to “die” during the course, as a demonstration of the (sometime) inappropriateness of “hands-on” learning.

One of Corder’s most famous pieces of writing, “What I Learned at School” is a comical account of the author’s precipitous offer to write an essay for every essay his students write and permit them to grade it. Corder arrives at the conclusion that every teacher should do the same as a “marvelous corrective for any tendency one might have for using “merely habitual” or “thoughtless or stupid assignments” (330). He also discovers that the assignment is not realistic and as a result he falls into the same trap as his students, of rushing through his work. Knowing how to write is not sufficient, especially when time constraints limit creativity, leading to recklessness and resorting to themes already used or still in the planning stages.

Corder ends with a sample essay, “Half Thoughts on a Whole Semester,” written in his characteristic self-deprecating style that defines structure and invention, proffers an existential analysis of the laws of composition, arrives at an intelligent, if not logical, conclusion. When they grade his essay his students conclude that he was “given to rambling” (334).

In this brief but insightful review, Miller describes and praises Corder’s unusual, ground-breaking style that made a significant contribution to the field of composition. Miller, a former student of Corder, gives an insider’s view of the author’s publicly and personally stated goals. His introduction to Corder’s posthumously published essay provides the reader with a clear view of “scholarly and personal writing” that others later adapted, without crediting its inventor. Miller perceives Corder’s “self-effacing autobiographical approach to writing as a disguise for a brilliant writer with a desire to expand Aristotle’s rhetoric from four to five canons. Corder also established his own brand of what James Braumlin terms an “existentialist rhetoric.” Besides giving an overview of Corder’s theory and writing, Miller prepares the reader for the author’s predominant theory that all writing is personal and that autobiographical writing was meant to be wed to the academic.