Pragmatographia

Shakespeare and bloggers use radically different mediums, but a close look at how rhetorical devices are used in different mediums to produce a similar effect reveal how they inform their audience.

A close explication of two parallel texts, the blogosphere's National Geographic Traveler and Shakespeare's The Tempest, further illustrates the value of such comparisons. The rhetorical device which so closely connects these two types is pragmatographia, which is “the description of an action,” which is “frequently used in drama for exposition or to report what has happened offstage" At first, this seems like an ironic comparison. In Shakespeare’s productions in the theater, pragmatographia places full emphasis on text for plot line; whereas,

bloggers use photography to replace or minimize texts. However, in both cases the device allows writers to present a scene to an audience without displaying the action in front of them.

Thus, photography becomes a modern type of pragmatographia, capturing a scene to be viewed at a different time just as an actor recounts unseen action at a time different then its perceived occurrence. In The Tempest, Ariel reports the spectacular sinking of an off-shore ship to Prospero in excited and descriptive language, painting the unseen scene for his master, who wasn’t present at the sinking:

Prospero

I did say so,
When first I raised the tempest. Say, my spirit,
How fares the king and's followers?

Ariel

Confined together
In the same fashion as you gave in charge,
Just as you left them; all prisoners, sir,
In the line-grove which weather-fends your cell;They cannot budge till your release. The king,
His brother and yours, abide all three distracted
And the remainder mourning over them,
Brimful of sorrow and dismay; but chiefly
Him that you term'd, sir, 'The good old lord Gonzalo;'
His tears run down his beard, like winter's drops
From eaves of reeds. Your charm so strongly works 'em
That if you now beheld them, your affections
Would become tender.

Similarly, Traveler has many photography features, including their photo of the week and photo gallery, to present either an idea or a natural or human spectacle to their audiences, who have not seen the photographed subject in person. Traveler's Photo of the Week for November 22 - 28 depicts "Capo Testa lighthouse, a local landmark"; even though it has stood since 1845, it can be guessed that few viewers, if a recognizable number at all, have actually visited it. Regardless, viewers are invited to download it and use it as wallpaper on their computers, their own personal view into the far off Italy.

In both cases, this rhetorical device captures and frames an experience that is then transferable to another individual.

While it is strategically used to induce certain rhetorical effects, pragmatographia has an unlimited range of content as the star of just one of numerous types, able to capture an expansive breadth of human experience; this is characteristic of humanists: using classical devices to relate the experience of an individual.