Elle Krause-Lyons
Persuasion
Spring 2006
Neo-Aristotelian Rhetorical Criticism
William Faulkner has understandably been hailed as one of America’s finest
novelists and literary geniuses. His literary prowess has been the subject of legends
and the inspiration for many subsequently great literary figures. There is no doubt
about the fact that William Faulkner possessed a rare power over the English language
and used all personal knowledge of it to his best advantage. “The same desire to
experiment is shown in his mastery unrivaled among modern British and American
novelists, of the richness of the English language, a richness derived from its different
linguistic elements and the periodic changes in style-from the spirit of Elizabethans
down to the scanty but expressive vocabulary of Negroes of the Southern states.” He
was a giant among novelists and this, it should come as no surprise, has proved him to
be a fine rhetorician and orator as well. In all of Faulkner’s work, he has specific ideas
and themes which he tries to present to the reader. These themes are omnipresent in
nearly all of his work, and seem to be the guidelines by which he lived his life. In 1950
William Faulkner was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for the previous year
(1949). In his speech to the Swedish academy, he expounds upon these ideas that
have driven, in large part, much of the great works he has written. This paper will
describe why, according to the Neo-Aristotelian model of rhetorical criticism, Faulkner’s
speech is representative of his life philosophy and how this is displayed through the
cannons of rhetoric. The question that will be answered is: How can ceremonial
speeches convince the hearer of a the baseness of an unseen and non-human entity?
William Faulkner was a Mississippi native who was the mind behind such literary
classics as The Sound and the Fury, As I Lay Dying, A Light In August, and Absalom!
Absalom! Faulkner’s influence over the American novel and literature in general has
been as great if not greater than that of F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and
Mark Twain. Consequently, Faulkner’s place in literary history is solid and undisputed.
As proof of these previous statements, in 1950 Faulkner was awarded the Nobel prize
in Literature “for his powerful and artistically unique contribution to the modern American
novel.” The Nobel prize in Literature is an award unrivaled internationally in its prestige.
It is presented to exceptional poets, novelists, essayists etc. who display profound merit
through their work which is recognized by an elite committee of their peers, professors
of academia, and experts from all over the world. The speech that Faulkner gave
accepting his award is short, only one page typed out in its entirety. It provides,
however, a look into Faulkner’s major goals in life and his chief nemesis in achieving
them. His ideas reflect America (and the larger world)’s involvement in WWII which had
ended less than five years earlier and the repercussions of which were still being felt in
full force all over the world. Faulkner himself had been a member of the Air Force prior
to the war before a crash injured him making him unable to fly anymore. After his
accident, Faulkner rethought his ideas of war and became a pacifist which influenced
much of his later work. Faulkner’s personal philosophy continued influencing his writing
right up until his Nobel speech. In his presentation speech, Gustaf Hellstrom, gives
some important insight into the reasoning behind Faulkner’s philosophy and how he
uses the outcomes he draws from his ideals to influence his audience in his Nobel
speech. “Faulkner’s dilemma: he mourns for and, as a writer, exaggerates a way of life
which he himself, with his sense of justice and humanity would never be able to
stomach...In almost every new work Faulkner penetrates deeper into the human
psyche, into man’s greatness and powers of self-sacrifice, lust for power, cubidity,
spiritual poverty, narrow-mindedness, burlesque obstinacy, anguish, terror, and
degenerate aberrations. As a probing psychologist he is the unrivaled master among all
living British and American novelists.” In his speech, Faulkner basically uses his time at
the podium to reach out to future Nobel prize winners and humanity in general to tell
them of their failures and tragedies in life for which they all bear responsibility and which
they must fight against. In the end he believes they will prevail over them. His speech
is dire and even desperate but not despairing or hopeless. It reaffirms his profound faith
in the resilience in mankind but also his understanding of their inherent responsibility.
His basic idea and the recipient of all base characteristics in his speech reflects FDR’s
sentiment declaring “we have nothing to fear but fear itself.” To be afraid is “the basest
of all things” according to Faulkner. This is where the Neo-Aristotelian rhetorical
criticism comes in.
A Neo-Aristotelian rhetorical criticism his a rhetorical criticism based upon the
writings of Aristotle in his book Rhetoric. This paper will focus on how Faulkner’s
speech meets the requirements of the cannons of rhetoric which include: invention,
organization/ arrangement, style, delivery, and memory. As a part of this, however,
many other aspects will be expounded upon from Aristotle’s Rhetoric, including but not
limited to enthymemes, elements of speech-making, and rhetorical genres.
The first cannon of rhetoric, as stated before, is invention. The three major
subsets of invention are logos (inductive and deductive), ethos, and pathos all of which
are internal proofs. These three themes appear numerous times in Faulkner’s speech
and he utilizes them very effectively. At the very beginning of the speech, he states, “I
feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work -- a life’s work in the
agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create
out of the materials of the human, spirit something which did not exist before.”
(Paragraph 1, lines 1-4). In this, Faulkner appeals to the reader/listener’s emotions
(pathos) in his use of words such as agony and human spirit. The audience is made to
feel for him and understand the nature of his sacrifice. Simultaneously, Faulkner is also
attesting to his own character (ethos). He humbles himself in this section which is an
admirable quality and makes him more legitimate as a human and as an orator. In the
next section, Faulkner says, “There is only one question: When will I be blown up?”
(Paragraph 2, lines 11-12). A person hearing this speech would have to be aware of
the nature of the times (WWII) and be able to apply that to this statement. He is
generalizing, and thus here, he is using logic and more specifically, deductive
reasoning. The majority of the next paragraph is devoted to appealing to the emotions
of his audience (pathos). Faulkner uses such trigger words as, afraid, heart, truth, love,
honor, pity, pride, compassion, sacrifice, lust, and grief, all of which are either emotions
themselves or evoke emotional responses in the average listener. He enlists the help of
both ethos and pathos again towards the end of his speech. In paragraph three line 26,
he declares that he will not be resigned to “accept the end of man,” thus elevating his
own character by verbalizing his faith in humanity. In the final six lines, the speech
makes one last appeal to the emotions (pathos) saying that the human soul is capable
of compassion, sacrifice, and endurance, and that the lifting of man’s heart reminds him
of the “courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice
which have been the glory of his past.” (Paragraphs 4-5, lines 31-36).
The general organization/ arrangement of the speech is presented in a problem/
solution format. The problem stated is fear, and the solution provided is teaching and
bolstering oneself against that base emotion. Not only should man strive to do this, but
it is entirely within his grasp to do so because of all the virtues with which he is
endowed.
This organization directly reflects the style which Faulkner uses in his speech.
Faulkner’s speech, as is obvious given the circumstances of its inception, is largely a
ceremonial speech. Faulkner, being an educated literary pioneer giving a speech to the
Swedish Academy, naturally assumes his audience is mostly comprised of educated
men who are at least of general maturity if not more so. Thus, he uses educated
language that evokes images and makes allusions to matters outside the average
person’s grasp. It is surprising, then, that Faulkner does not make more use of maxims
and enthymemes to prove his point. Rather, he uses language that is illustrative of his
point without forcing the audience to draw any unstated conclusions or have much prior
knowledge of the subject. His primary way of reaching the audience is through pathos
(the emotions). In paragraph two lines 10-11, however, he states, “Our tragedy today is
a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear
it.” For all intents and purposes, this seems to be an enthymeme, as it is a
generalization that assumes something that has not proved itself to be true or untrue.
Faulkner has the uncanny ability to speak eloquently and in an educated manner to an
educated audience about subjects that really require only a base understanding of the
English language.
In presenting the speech Faulkner comes upon his greatest obstacle to making
an effective and persuasive argument The ideas that he addreses in his speech are
ideals which he has been expounding upon through his literature for the greater part of
his career, and yet he lets them slowly drop from his mouth with little emotion or
emphasis. It provides for an almost dull reading that fails to grab the audience’s
attention. His slow southern drawl is pleasant and understandable, but his lack of
emotion and straight forward speaking style juxtapose themselves with the lofty
emotional issues that he presents. Dialectically, anyone familiar with a generic southern
accent would easily be able to understand him and he conveys his message clearly, but
it is unfortunate that much of its impact is lost through lack of emphasis. Reading the
piece is almost more moving than hearing Faulkner actually speak it.
The last cannon of rhetoric is memory, and it is the hardest to judge in this paper,
as only a select number of people were there to hear the actual speech and because it
was never captured on video cassette, one can only speculate how much memory
influenced the rhetoric of the speech. It is unlikely that Faulkner recited the entire
speech from memory. He was in very dignified and prestigious company accepting a
very important award in a very ceremonial manner, and while he most certainly was
very familiar with his speech and its contents, having no page of reference would
probably have been inadvisable given the circumstances. In Rhetoric, Aristotle seems
to feel that memory is an important aspect of a good speech and a quality of a good
speaker. In this case, Faulkner’s lack of memorization does not really impugn his
speech, although it does attest to the fact that he was a writer by profession, not a
rhetorician. His delivery also belies the fact that his way with words does not translate
into his ability to speak and express his thoughts vocally.
Now that all of the rhetorical cannons have been explained in relation to
Faulkner’s 1950 Nobel speech, and many of Aristotle’s categorizations for a good
rhetorician have been applied to it, the next step is to synthesize this into a clear answer
to the question asked at the beginning of this paper. By way of review, the question
being answered through this Neo-Aristotelian criticism is: How can ceremonial speeches
convince the hearer of a the baseness of an unseen and non-human entity? The two
most obvious ways in which Faulkner is able to do this are through his speech’s
ceremonial nature and his appeals to the emotions. By using a very formal and
common Aristotelian genre, which includes discussion of virtue and vice, noble and
base, praise and attack, Faulkner is able to evoke very strong emotions about an
emotion rather than a person or a thing. He essentially treats fear as if it were a thing in
and of itself and the audience believes him. He is able to further vilify fear by calling
upon other emotions and feelings with which to relate fear to and thus exemplifying its
baseness. Faulkner’s success lies in the fact that he is able to personify fear and make
people ascribe other emotions to this emotion, which is a very complex idea and rather
intangible and difficult. He pulls it off with relative ease, however, which illustrates his
mastery of words and the English language. His delivery sufferers, but his words and
their meanings ring true throughout the piece. Although Faulkner himself could not be
labeled a master of rhetoric because of his inability to effectively deliver his speech, he
is ultimately triumphant because he is still able to make his audience believe, or at least
question, the legitimacy of something that is so subjective its very existence could be
questioned. If this is not mastery, then what exactly is mastery?