Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Semester of Degree Completion
1994
Thesis Director
Douglas Bock
Abstract
This criticism uses an organic approach to examine the rhetorical properties of Frost's and Angelou's inaugural poems and their individual enactments respective of the constraints and exigencies in the Presidential inaugurations of Kennedy and Clinton. Apparently responding to the constraints of television's sound bite as well as to exigencies of the traditional inauguration and the need to serve a new generation and a culturally diverse population, the Clinton Administration combined the poetic form, used to heighten an emotional response, with an enactment as a synecdochic symbol, used to assert sociopolitical ideology.
Recommended Citation
Witmer, Donna M., "Robert Frost and Maya Angelou: Poet-as-Rhetor in the Presidential Inauguration: Textual Symbols and the Symbol of Enactment" (1994). Masters Theses. 2123.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/2123
Included in
American Literature Commons, Poetry Commons, Social Influence and Political Communication Commons, Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons
