Durable Design: Classical Oration for Speeches and Essays - Paperback

by Michael J. P. Larson (Author)

Classical design for the modern communicator. This elegant guide to organization brings to life the time-honored art of arranging one's thoughts into a cohesive piece of thesis-driven communication, whether oral or written. The particular method of organization under discussion here is that of classical oration, a flexible and robust system for ordering the components of a speech or an essay so as to maximize the rhetorical impact on a given audience. After a brief introduction, the book is arranged in two parts. The first part defines each of the six components of classical oration, and the second part delineates a suggested sequence for the actual building of a cohesive essay or speech. Included at the end is an appendix containing a sample essay and a sample speech to illustrate classical oration design features. Lots of people have good ideas but find themselves at a loss when it comes to ordering those ideas in such a way that others can readily apprehend them. This book is for all those people: for speakers and writers-and ultimately for their audiences.

Author Biography

Michael Larson teaches English at Minnesota State College - Southeast Technical, in Winona, Minnesota. He is the author of A Concise Guide to Documentation: MLA, APA, and Chicago, as well as a book of poems, What We Wish We Knew, and a chapbook of poems, The Light Remaining. Mr. Larson is also the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in poetry, a Loft-McKnight fellowship in poetry, and an Iowa State Arts Board grant in fiction.