ENGL 224 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Tangled
Document Summary
An immediate challenge i encountered as i began this project was that the use of the root as a metaphor for origin, beginnings, or genealogical heritage is so widespread in the languages of focus. I found endless banal uses of it by well-known writers and thinkers throughout the twentieth century. To prevent this from becoming a theme project that would involve merely listing conspicuous appearances of the term, i have been very careful in my selection of examples. If the word root could simply be replaced by origin , i generally dismissed it. The metaphor in this petrified form is neither interesting nor telling for the arguments i attempt to make here. Instead, i have selected examples in which the root metaphor is taken up to make the case through the rhetorical mobilization of ethos , pathos , or logos , often all three simultaneously that something in the human is undeniably plantlike.
