(Warning: this post contains a really awkward segue, for which I apologize in advance.)
The cats are out back with me as I write, sprawled on their sides, too lazy even to fuss at the birds in the maple tree above. Nothing quite like a hot, sunny Sunday afternoon on the deck with some Hank Williams Senior and a cold beer. References to Hank Senior are a prominent trope in country music, to the point where his influence pervades nearly every country song written today, whether it’s acknowledged or not.
Which sets me to thinking: does composition have a Hank Senior? While country existed before Hank, and has flourished in the years since his death in 1953, I think it’s fair to say that country wouldn’t exist as it does today without Hank. Hank, in many ways, is country music. So does our discipline have a figure like Hank? For classical rhetoric, it’s Aristotle; for contemporary rhetoric, it’s Kenneth Burke. But what about comp?
Albert Kitzhaber’s 1953 dissertation is widely cited in histories of composition, but it’s a historical document itself, and I’m not sure it really has the pervasive disciplinary influence that might grant Kitzhaber a contemporary status in composition similar to the stature Hank Williams holds in country music — although his CCC article ten years later does, I think, continue to shape our practice in important ways. James Kinneavy’s work is certainly monumental, but for me, it seems to belong more on the rhetoric side of rhetoric and composition. And given the ways in which my graduate education and institutional affiliations have shaped my perspective, my view of Donald Murray’s disciplinary prominence may not be shared by others.
So I’m thinking that if there is one figure who holds a stature in composition similar to that of Hank Williams in country music, more than anyone else, it’s probably Janet Emig. While other scholars (including Murray) are associated with the process-not-product philosophy, Emig was instrumental in the development of that philosophy, which — along with her write-to-learn ideas — pervades nearly all scholarship in composition today.
What do you think?
Interesting choice. Although he may be too recent to deserve mention, I’d probably nominate Jim Berlin as at least a possibility…
I think that, once more time passes, Berlin will be the one. Just like Hank Senior came after others and didn’t start the genre himself, Berlin may be someone who is seen as universally transformative, at least within the field.
Though I’m not ready to give up on Murray. And as I think about it, Elbow might really be the one.
I was going to say Berlin or Elbow, although I’d prefer Berlin.
Wow. Three out of three for Berlin? He’s really that foundational for us? I’m a bit amazed. Certainly, he’s a huge figure — but for me, he’s like composition’s Beatles were to Elvis Presley: he clarified everything, but he wasn’t there at the beginning. Which I guess is kinda what you were saying, Nels, about him being universally transformative.
I’d advance Anne Berthoff as another candidate.
But wow. Three out of three for Berlin. That definitely says something. Can we say that Berlin is comp in the way that Hank is country?
My vote gotes to Elbow.
Seems to me like it would be Ross Winterowd, but he’s not given quite as many shout-outs as Berlin. He does seem to fill the “was there at the beginning” role, though. Win Horner, same deal.
What about Mina Shaughnessy? She just occurred to me.
I tend to think of Winterowd as more in the rhetoric camp of rhet/comp. Mina Shaughnessy has immense stature, as well, but that stature mostly comes out of her work on one issue or topic, while Berlin’s and Elbow’s and Emig’s bodies of work seem more general in nature, and hence more pervasive in their influence.
I think it’d be interesting to go through the Bedford Bibliography and see whose name comes up in the highest number of different categories — but then, that’d only tell us who Reynolds, Bizzell, and Hertzberg think are most influential. . .
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