Creativity and Invention in Rhetoric and Religious Literature: Topics or Commonplaces as Instruments for Discovery

FAIN: FA-11848-77

Wilhelm H. Wuellner
Graduate Theological Union (Berkeley, CA 94709-1212)

A study to introduce the methods and criteria of the discipline of modern rhetoric to the critical interpretation of early Christian literature. Study will pursue five basic questions: 1) what are the social conditions and resources available to the inventor? 2) what are the materials out of which invention is fashioned? 3) what kind of person is it that participates in the innovation? 4) what is the deep-structure of the invention? 5) what presentational form is adopted for the thing invented?