Craig Stroupe introduces terms that have been somewhat of a mystery: hypertext, lexias, hypermedia, and web design in the “new work paradigm.” This is in contrast to Aristotle’s rhetor, the present “verbal contentmaster is not necessarily the controller of the form and rhetoric of the site as a whole but may work far down the chain of command” (14). Stroupe refers to Cynthia and Richard Selfe’s question as to the “social consequences of composing through an interface that is visual and iconic in its focus…and not exclusively verbal…?”(17). Stroupe states that there is contrast to Elbow’s “metaphors” of a solitary “process of invention” and the Web page where “everyone can publish” and this contains a very different environment that is less like Aristotle’s public speaking, which is a “one-speaker-at-a-time orderliness” (19). Stroupe also includes another philosopher, Mikhail Bakhtin, who visualizes English studies “as a theoretical vision of hybridization that goes beyond invention processes” (25). Strupe’s attention to the image of Ulmer’s “The New “Atlantis” (31) concludes his article on this demonstration of “a synthesis of poetic and rhetoric…(35).
Charles Hill’s article was a pleasure to read, and his descriptions are clear and informative. He quotes Jay Bolter’s claim that we are now in “the late age of print” (2), and today’s students have probably been exposed to more “texts”, in a visual form, than “any other generation in history” (107. Hill contends that there is a difference between “the act of seeing an object…and seeing a visual representation of it” (114). “Rhetorical images” do not have to “portray and object,” and older representations have meanings both visual and verbal because the “new representation” can be associated with the past (115). Hill believes that in addition to images of “cultural artifacts,” students need to discover “psychological processes” which these images portray (119). Hill also presents an “older” philosopher, Kenneth Burke, who believes that “images can be rhetorically powerful, and “an evocative image” can be associated in individual’s minds with “many kindred principles or ideas.” Hill points out that Burke discusses the use of “verbal imagery as in poetry” (120).
