Preconditions for the politics of rhetoric in compositio

This dissertation examines the restoration of the humanistic discipline of rhetoric to composition pedagogy by the mid-1950s as a reaction to the progressive political and pedagogical tendencies of the communications course introduced during and immediately after WWII. The restoration of traditional rhetoric to the required course in English composition was part of the larger revival of classical studies in the humanities during the late 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The academic revival of classical philosophical and political systems in general during these decades was a reaction to the threatening social, political, and professional implications of the new social sciences and the "mass" democratic movements of the 1920s and 1930s. The classicist revival in the humanities, in fine, represented a new conservative or traditionalist reaction to the modern social sciences and the Progressive liberal ideals fueling changes in U.S. educational and social policies.;Understanding the sociopolitical background occasioning the revival of classicism in English studies during the 1930s and 1940s and the revival of traditional rhetoric in composition by the mid-1950s is crucial to understanding the politics of the social or rhetorical move in composition studies in the late 1970s and 1980s. The neo-classical and epistemic reincarnations of rhetoric in composition have also functioned to reestablish the disciplinary foundation of studies in writing and the teaching of writing as humanistic rather than human or social scientific. Once again social and political movements for the democratization of higher education, as occurred during the late 1960s and early 1970s, were appropriated and contained by traditionalist forces in and for the profession of English studies. Neo-classical and epistemic poststructuralist theories of rhetoric in composition studies and the various disciplinary developments of literary studies (particularly since the New Critical movement) are aligned philosophically and politically against the progressive and neoprogressive tendencies in language, literature, and composition instruction in the twentieth century.;This dissertation argues that the progressive and neo-progressive tendencies of U.S. education (mirroring the progressivist liberal politics of the 1930s and 1960s) are indicative of the changes higher education must accommodate to remain viable in a postmodern world. Composition studies and pedagogies, in particular, should reclaim their roots in progressive education and politics.