Rhetoricizing English Studies: Students' Ways of Reading Oleanna

Abstract

“It’s not about sexual harassment. It’s about power” (Ryan 1996: 393). So says David Mamet in describing his Oleanna, a play that has stirred controversy in dramatic reviews, theaters, and classrooms since its first staging in 1992. It’s not about sexual harassment or power; it’s about love. So says Socrates to his young lover in Phaedrus, a dialogue that has stirred controversy about the nature of rhetoric for a somewhat longer time. Juxtaposing Mamet’s claim with this paraphrase of Plato exposes the ancient roots of a play that focuses, as Mamet says, on the power struggle between a male professor and a female student. Predictably, given the publication date, Mamet’s play has been more often associated with contemporary headliners — Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky—than with Socrates and Phaedrus. Nevertheless, placing Mamet’s work in this Platonic context acknowledges the central project of both Oleanna and Phaedrus: the effects of good and bad rhetoric, the language of love and the language of rape. Realizing that Plato and Mamet held this common ground, I used Mamet’s play as the focal point for reading and writing in my course in advanced persuasive writing, a seniorand graduate-level elective otherwise rooted in the fourth edition of Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (1999). In describing my approach to this course, I will share selections from my students’ writing. Doing so will document the value of Oleanna in helping students learn not only the cere-