In "Things Without Honor," Arthur Pease gives us a detailed history of adoxography, demonstrating how the encomium was used to praise a number of things, including inanimate objects. Our second major project will operate in this tradition as we compose our own encomia to a nonhuman.
Your encomium can focus on any nonhuman connected with your making project, or with the object that you are making. The ecomium should follow the format detailed in Crowley and Hawhee's Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (handout provided in class): prologue, birth and upbringing, extraordinary acts of one's life, comparisons used to praise the subject, and an epilogue.
Your encomium should be no longer than 1250 words, and you will read your encomium aloud in class.
When evaluating these papers, I will be asking the following:
- Have you used the encomium to shed light on your chosen nonhuman?
- Have you creatively deployed adoxography as you "praise" your chosen nonhuman?
- Does your encomium follow the required format?
- Is your paper well-written and free of grammatical errors?
