SALIR CONSIGO: JESUIT RHETORICAL EDUCATION IN INDIA, 1542-1623

Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Zaleski, Michelle
- Graduate Program:
- English
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- April 26, 2018
- Committee Members:
- Xiaoye You, Dissertation Advisor/Co-Advisor
Xiaoye You, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Cheryl Glenn, Committee Member
Richard Doyle, Committee Member
Suresh Canagarajah, Outside Member - Keywords:
- Jesuit
rhetorical education
india
translingualism - Abstract:
- Salir Consigo: Jesuit Rhetorical Education in India, 1542–1623 studies Jesuit rhetorical education in India during the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Jesuits, a Catholic religious order that came of age during the rise of Renaissance rhetoric in Europe, placed rhetoric at the center of their work abroad. Looking at the earliest Jesuit Tamil grammar and Francis Xavier’s establishment of the Jesuit mission in India alongside the controversial writings of Roberto de Nobili, this study brings together rhetoric as a theory of discourse and an accumulation of practices. Therein, it traces the Jesuits’ translingual approach to rhetoric, where rhetoric is defined by its use rather than by convention. Scholars have used the concept of translingualism as a way to resist monolingual policies within literacy education yet have struggled in realizing its practice. This study of Jesuit rhetorical education in India demonstrates the extent to which translingualism can be used as a practice for transcending the bounds of discourse and difference by recovering the rhetorical history of cross-cultural negotiation in early modern India. The Jesuit rhetoric that surfaced in India was more than institutionally created; it was activated by the gap between one and the other—the desire not only to communicate but also to be understood. This approach to linguistic difference was part of the Jesuits’ Christian mission fueled by Ignatian spirituality and an understanding of the good of the other. In this way, the Jesuits’ translingual approach to rhetoric did not dismiss the importance of culture or preclude rhetorical agency, but instead, depended upon a willingness to learn and be changed by difference. Translingualism, then, is not limited by its lack of practicality; rather, translingual negotiations erupt out of cross-cultural encounters and are limited only by competing definitions of rhetoric as self-preservation and rule.