Committee Chair

Jones, Rebecca E.

Committee Member

Beech, Jennifer A.; Hampton, Bryan A.

Department

Dept. of English

College

College of Arts and Sciences

Publisher

University of Tennessee at Chattanooga

Place of Publication

Chattanooga (Tenn.)

Abstract

This thesis explores how three religious women rhetors – St. Catherine of Siena, Sarah Grimke, and Mary Daly – rhetorically navigated and ultimately subverted the stringent ethical codes and gendered expectations imposed on “virtuous women” by crafting an ethos of interruption. Aristotelian ethos, a distinctly male creation, conceived of solely for use by the male citizen-orator of the polis, represents a hurdle for the female rhetor, who, in order to speak, must transgress gendered notions of virtue inherited from pagan, classical antiquity, and existent up until Christian modernity. Linking recent feminist re-imaginings of ethos to the rhetorical strategy of interruption, this study seeks to trace how religious female rhetors, who by investing themselves with rhetorical authority, subsequently divested themselves of traditional feminine virtue as they overcame the silent, passive ideal of the virtuous woman.

Degree

M. A.; A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Master of Arts.

Date

5-2014

Subject

Rhetoric -- Technique; Rhetoric -- Religious aspects

Name

Catherine, -- of Siena, Saint, -- 1347-1380 -- Criticism and interpretation; Grimké, Sarah Moore, -- 1792-1873 -- Criticism and interpretation; Daly, Mary, -- 1928-2010 -- Criticism and interpretation

Keyword

Women's rhetoric; Ethos; Religious rhetoric

Document Type

Masters theses

DCMI Type

Text

Extent

iv, 91 leaves

Language

English

Rights

https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en

License

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

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