The epistemic music of rhetoric

In this groundbreaking new book, Steven B. Katz conducts a philosophical critique of Reader Response Criticism from an "aural point of view" afforded by classical rhetoric, the philosophy of language, and music theory. Simultaneously, he assesses the scientific empiricism and technological rationalism that control the parameters of reading and writing theory, research, and pedagogy.

In doing so, Katz examines the possibility and desirability of teaching reading and writing as "rhetorical music" to supplement the formalistic, logocentric imperatives that underlie current methods of reading and writing instruction. This book will interest not only theorists and teachers in rhetoric, composition, and literature but also scholars and teachers of oral interpretation, literature and science, and poetics.