In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

  • The Legacy of Edwin Black
  • Stephen E. Lucas (bio)

Ed Black was, above all, a practicing rhetorical critic. Across the span of four decades, he produced a string of celebrated essays on subjects that ranged from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address to Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream," from the sentimental style of nineteenth-century oratory to the cancer metaphor in the rhetoric of the radical right, from the aesthetics of American political discourse to the recurrent idioms of secrecy and disclosure, from the mutability of rhetoric to the malleability of Richard Nixon.1 In addition to their intrinsic merits, his essays are models of what rhetorical criticism can aspire to in the hands of a master. Distinguished by singular insight and sparkling prose, they were to rhetorical scholarship in the second half of the twentieth century what the writings of Susan Sontag were to the modern arts. Black's powers as a critic were simultaneously intellectual and ocular. He allowed us—indeed, compelled us—to see familiar phenomena with new eyes, through unaccustomed angles of vision, and by doing so he broadened and deepened our understanding not only of particular rhetorical phenomena but of the nature and possibilities of rhetoric itself.

Criticism, to Black, was an aesthetic enterprise as well as an analytic one. He believed that language mattered as much in the practice of rhetorical criticism as it did in the discourse studied by rhetorical critics. He always affirmed that criticism is a reason-giving activity that requires critics to construct arguments in support of their claims, but he knew a critic's hold on his or her readers is not simply a matter of logical entailment. More than any scholar of his time, he brought the artistry of language to bear in the service of rhetorical criticism. One does not have to read far in any of his works to recognize that one is in the presence of a gifted writer. Many adjectives have been applied to his prose: eloquent, urbane, magisterial, commanding, elegant, felicitous, erudite. All are apposite. [End Page 509]

Black crafted his prose with the precision of a jeweler cutting a fine diamond. Each word flowed into the next with the same sense of artistry that marked the progression of notes in the classical music he loved so well. Wagner, above all, helped him summon the Muse, and one can discern in his prose linguistic equivalents of Wagner's sweeping themes, complex textures, and rich chromaticism. Black wrote as much for the ear as for the eye, a fact readily attested to by anyone who heard him deliver a paper at a scholarly conference. His keen sense of prosody was complemented by his dramatic, even mesmerizing, performative skills. His ability to captivate an audience in an academic setting was comparable to that of another Texan, Barbara Jordan, in a political setting. After listening to Black present an early version of his essay on Daniel Webster and the sentimental style at Wisconsin's weekly rhetoric colloquium, Lloyd Bitzer exclaimed, "Read it again, Ed!" He was not alone in that request.

It would be a mistake, however, to sever Black's stylistic virtuosity from the substance of his criticism. Language, he stated, is the "indispensable tool" of criticism. It is through language that the critic addresses his or her readers, but it is also through language that the critic apprehends, interprets, and judges the object of criticism. In addition to being a vehicle of communication, style is coevally an expression of thought and an instrumentality of thought. Rather than being embellishment, the style of critical writing possesses probative force, and to the extent that a critic's interpretations are at all nuanced, they will depend on "subtleties of style that are highly individuated."2 Black often said in conversation that a sole great sentence could redeem an otherwise quotidian essay—not because that sentence proffered a display of stylistic prowess, but because it constituted an infallible sign that the author had at least one thing worthwhile to say.

At bottom, of course, that is what criticism is all about—having something worthwhile to say. In a postmodern age, some would argue that judging the...

pdf