Patricia M Osborne

Yesterday I mentioned that I studied Narrative and Rhetoric in my first year and  talked about Narrative, today I will focus on Rhetoric.

Practising Rhetoric

When I first began Rhetoric, I don’t mind telling you that I felt out of my depth sitting amongst MA Literature students when I hadn’t even studied A level Literature, never mind a degree. However, I didn’t let it get to me and participated in the seminars as much as I could and became more confident as the weeks went by.

Some of the works we studied:

I can’t say I’m a particular fan of Jane Austen and I certainly didn’t enjoy Kathy Acker, however, I liked Lolita and loved A Girl is a half-formed thing. If you’re going to read the latter then may I suggest you read it like a poem. Lots of students struggled to get through the novel and initially I did too, until I noticed McBride’s poetic language. I went back to the start and approached it like a poem, reading aloud, and discovered a wonderful piece of literature.

The remit for Rhetoric was to present a persuasive speech and write a 3000 word creative piece.

For my presentation I invented a charity, Melody’s Music Makers, and my speech was to convince the audience to become a volunteer.

Melody provided entertainment to local care homes and handed out instruments to the residents so they could join in with singing and tap a tambourine, jingle the bells, or tinkle a triangle. I must have been convincing because the tutor thought it was my own company rather than a work of fiction.

For my creative piece I used a couple of extracts of persuasive speech from my debut novel, House of Grace, A Family Saga. I won’t provide the excerpts as I don’t want to spoil the story for those that haven’t read it yet, but I can say the scenes were set with Grace and her mother, Lady Granville, and taken from Chapter 4 and 5 in Part II.

Here’s a link for anyone that would like to read House of Grace.

http://mybook.to/HouseofGrace

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Next time Part 3 – Year 2 – Poetry and Research Modules