Avian Rhetoric, MurmurationsYang, Melissa (2019) Avian Rhetoric, Murmurations. Doctoral Dissertation, University of Pittsburgh. (Unpublished)
AbstractThis dissertation explores the omnipresent role birds play in the English language and in Western cultural history. Reading and weaving across academic discourse, multi-genre literature, and obsolete and everyday figures, I examine the multiplicity of ways in which birds manifest and are embedded in modes and materialities of human composing and communicating. To apply Anne Lamott’s popular advice of writing “bird by bird” literally/liberally, each chapter shares stories of a species, family, or flock of birds. Believing in the enduring rhetorical power of narrative assemblages over explicit thetic arguments, I’ve modeled this project on the movements of flocked birds. I initially proposed and now offer a prosed assembly of avian figures following each other in flight, swerving fluidly across broad and varied landscapes while maintaining elastic, organic connections. My project opens on starling murmurations, and the second chapter follows skeins of geese to goose-quill pens. Chapter three homes in on pigeon deliveries, via pigeonholes and dovetails. I close with corvids, with so-called murders of crows and the legacy of a literary raven. Throughout this work, I emphasize the powerful poetics birds have inspired, juxtaposed with reminders of our frequent marginalization and elimination of these species as pests. I hope such exhibits of human reliance on and exploitation of birds as materials of writing and rhetorics will help cultivate more mindful care and ethical treatment of the avian world, and the larger natural world. Share
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