Tag: Progymnasmata

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Phillip Wade Wilson

Breaking Down an Image, but what about presence? – Comparison

Above is a photo I found of an extremely emaciated polar bear, one that the photographer claimed only had a few days left to live. How did it make you feel? What were your initial thoughts when you saw it? Did you think of climate change and the impact humans have on the natural world? Did you think of the barren environment in which the bears live?

I wanted to continue on with another post similar to my last one on the usefulness, and power, that can come with images. We read Cohn’s piece on what images do for us and how they shape our lives, but this week’s readings delve a bit deeper into the “why” and “how” surrounding this topic.

Most of what is found in Breaking Down an Image, by Sheffield, is a continuation of Cohn’s work. She gives us a few basic ways to understand how a photographer or advertisement company might set a photo up as, but in my opinion, she fails to give us something new to push the bounds of what we already know about rhetoric. In the Psychology of Rhetorical Images, by Hill, he establishes something I never even thought of when it came to understand the “why” and “how” of an image and that is presence.

“the desired element receives the greatest amount of presence from being directly perceived”

Hill is explaining that words can only do but so much for us as humans. We want to experience things to fully understand them, and many of us (myself included) have difficulty understanding complex situations until we, ourselves, are faced with them. A photo, video, or some sort of visual representation is going to be the next best thing for us to be able to experience what we have not, and in this case, we are experiencing the sight of what happens when a habitat is reaching full destruction. The presence images have, especially in cases where a change needs to be made, can be vital. This photograph from 2015 garnered a huge following as it is quite undeniable that there is clearly something wrong and that something is the way humans have treated our environment.

More on the polar bear photo here: https://www.cbc.ca/news/trending/thin-bear-photo-kerstin-1.3232725

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Phillip Wade Wilson

Understanding Visual Rhetoric by Jenae Cohn – Description

I really enjoyed this piece because it opened my eyes to a lot of mundane ways we organize our blog posts for this class, and just how things in our world are made to look in general. She focused a lot on the separation of ideas, and things in general really, to make it easier for others to understand as well as the different approaches in order to make those distinctions between one thing and the other. 

“visuals play a tremendous role in a) how we make decisions, b) how we receive instructions, and c) how we understand information”

While the above is seemingly obvious information, how often do we look at the menus in restaurants we visit or websites we’re using, or even our own textbooks and ‘analyze’ how stylistic that work is completed? For me, it is not often at all… though I am more prone to complain about how something is not user-friendly especially in regard to websites and other forms of technology. This detailed essay really opened my eyes as to why I might be thinking “this website is really not laid out well” or “could they have made this any more difficult to understand”. Personally, I think a huge point Cohn makes is all about context.

“the context in which we see visuals matters an awful lot in terms of how we analyze and understand their impacts on us as viewers”

She details how one culture might view a color one way, or one type of profession might have preexisting notions about the way something should be done, or quite possibly where we have seen certain things before in our own lives. Before reading this, I had the ideas to analyze visual representation in ways similar to what she explained but never to the level or extent. She explains the ‘what?’ then gives us the ‘how?’ and ‘why?’ to give her audience the most context before explaining the topics at hand. The opening segment about food and menus puts things into perspective for all of her readers to associate something with. I find it so interesting the way she established this common ground, looking at restaurant’s food pictures online before going and looking at menus while sitting in the restaurant so that we can better understand what she is referring to by applying it to the times we have done or seen something similar

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Samuel James Conroy

Confirmation Progymnasmata

Confirmation Progymnasmata

Jenae Cohn’s piece “Understanding Visual Rhetoric” is a great writing about using imagery to your advantage in writing and to show how something as simple as an image can change opinions drastically. Cohn does a fantastic job of describing rhetorical imagery in a way that most can relate to.

The piece is started by giving an example of going out to get food with your friends. Since you are trying to decide where you want to go out you research various places and see the imagery that is present to determine where you go. You end up finding a burger place online that has some pictures that are simply making you salivate. However, the next picture that you stumble upon is significantly worse than the ones you just viewed. All of a sudden, the burgers look cheap, greasy, and unappetizing. Your liking of this restaurant just decreased heavily, and you no longer feel that it is the choice for you and your friends. Cohn then goes on to explain that the use of these images is all visual rhetoric. These images are used to display information in a way that words cannot.

This piece is unquestionably logical as anyone who has wanted to gain info on something is profoundly influenced by the imagery on display. Say you are attempting to purchase a boat. You go online and find a boat that appears to be the one:

Looks to be in great condition and is reasonably in your price range. Upon further investigation you find this image of the boat from a top angle:

All of a sudden that boat is not looking like you thought it would. The visual rhetoric has changed your mind completely and you stop pursuing this boat despite the fact it could just have been not cleaned at the time of that picture.

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Samuel James Conroy

Encomium about William Murray

Encomium about William H.H. Murray

            William H.H. Murray was a, “handsome young preacher from Boston,” (Perrottet) who was successful in increasing the interest in American travel. Murray was born as a poor farm boy in Guilford, Connecticut who ended up attending Yale with nothing more than his handmade clothes and $4.68 in his pocket. Murray was quite different from the common man for the late 1800s. People would often consider the great nature spots of America hurdles to their lifestyles and areas that needed to be conquered. He would start to enjoy nature and specifically the Adirondacks at a young age. A good friend of Murray’s growing up got him into traveling to the Adirondacks, where he would write stories about it for a local newspaper. The congregations that Murray would minister were often confused by his love for nature, one time, “he arrived to give a sermon while still wearing his shooting jacket and hunting breeches, and leaned his rifle against the pulpit” (Perrottet).

Murray would write a book titled, Adventures in the Wilderness; or, Camp-Life in the Adirondacks, that would become hugely successful in convincing people to get out into nature. Europeans had already been interested in travel and nature, yet Americans had not yet been turned to these ideas. His book would become a best seller post-civil war. Unfortunately for Murray, the summer after his book would happen to be one of the worst in Adirondack history. This wet season would ruin many travelers’ experiences making people question Murray and nature.

Murray was forced to defend himself in the New York Tribune to which he stated it was not his fault for the poor weather. Murray would go on to state the travel to the region would only grow, and he would happen to be correct as the next summer the Adirondack region flooded with travelers. Murray would be described as, “the right person, in the right place, with the right words, at the right time” (Engelhart). This meant that despite previous famous writers like Emerson or Thoreau also encouraging going into nature, they were too niche and did not reach a broad audience like Murray did. Murray did a great job in encouraging the common American to get out into nature allowing us to see just how great a vacation can be for the body and mind. Many travel industries and people have Murray to thank for their current successes.

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Samuel James Conroy

Chreia Progymnasmata

Chreia Progymnasmata

            Pico Iyer has put out great work on not only his personal travels but traveling as a whole. His experience as being a foreigner in multiple countries has given a great insight on the intricacies of travel.

In his article, “The Foreign Spell,” Iyer goes into the life of being a foreigner and what it truly means. He gives his personal experience of being a foreigner in Britain and America due to his family originally coming from India. He states,

“I was a foreigner on all three of the continents that might have claimed me—a little Indian boy with an English accent and an American green card” (Iyer Para. 1).

Iyer would even be considered a foreigner in his “home” country of India due to not being born there and having an English accent.

Iyer goes into the minutiae of what it means to be a foreigner due to the ever-growing number of foreigners in the world. Iyer mentions about how there will soon be more foreigners on earth than there will be Americans. He also describes how in most major cities you will find people on just about every corner speaking a different language and dealing with different customs than yourself. Due to this growing population Iyer wants to give his insight on what it means to be a foreigner in order to bring more familiarity to the matter and explain the benefits rather than draw on the negatives.

Iyer warns of not assuming we have common values or feelings in our global world just because we are simply more connected than ever. He relates his own life to this sentiment by explaining his travels growing up. Iyer was able to travel between England and California numerous times a year unlike most humans had ever traveled before, yet, he never felt comfortable settling in just one place due to this constant movement. This is not all bad as Iyer says,

“all I thought then was that nearly everywhere I knew was foreign, which meant that nearly everywhere had the power to unsettle and surprise me, forever” (Iyer Para. 29).

 

 

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Samuel James Conroy

Theme Progymnasmata

Samuel Conroy

Professor Comstock

September 8, 2020

Rhetoric of Travel

Wordsworth Theme Progymnasmata

            William Wordsworth, one of the greatest poets in history, describes his disappointment with the modern world through his poem, “The World is Too much With Us.” During Wordsworth’s time, the world was undergoing a mass transition due to the industrial revolution taking place. The world was moving away from nature and becoming entrenched in material items being produced by the revolution.  Wordsworth uses a sonnet system in iambic pentameter to lay out his frustrations. His vexations can be heard through,

“Little we see that nature is ours; We have given our hearts away” (Wordsworth 3-4).

Wordsworth drives the theme of communion with nature, which he does in many of his poems to express his annoyance with the current times. His use of rhetoric through theme is brilliantly done throughout this poem allowing him to engage the reader with his line of thought and lay out his emotions in an effective manner.

 

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Samuel James Conroy

Creative Narrative Progymnasmata Post

Samuel Conroy

Rhetoric of Travel

September 4, 2020

Professor Comstock

Creative Narrative Progymnasmata

In “An Autumn Effect,” the author departs his town and goes on an adventure into the woods. Upon his travels, the season has changed to fall and is providing a beautiful ambience for the author to travel through. He states, “my whole view brightened considerably in colour, for it was the distance only that was grey and cold, and the distance I could see no longer” (Stevenson 4). Fall is described to be the best time of the year due to the change in color, the calmness of the insects, the movement of certain animals, and the aura of serenity that seemed to come over the land. The story continues of the author’s adventures throughout Great Britain taking in all of the autumnal force, before returning to London on a train to go back to everyday life.

 

Below is my best attempt to draw the author departing town to go into nature and experience fall: