This analysis of the literary qualities of orally performed art is based on a body of entertaining Texan narratives collected by the author over the last fifteen years. The author's main emphasis is on the act of storytelling, not just the text. He looks at the interrelationships between the narrated events, the narrative texts and the situations in which they are narrated.
Between 1895 and 1920, the United States saw a sharp increase in commercial sound recording, the first mass medium of home entertainment. As companies sought to discover what kinds of records would appeal to consumers, they turned to performance forms already familiar to contemporary audiences--sales pitches, oratory, sermons, and stories. In A Most Valuable Medium, Richard Bauman explores the practical problems that producers and performers confronted when adapting familiar oral genres to this innovative medium of sound recording. He also examines how audiences responded to these modified and commoditized presentations. Featuring audio examples throughout and offering a novel look at the early history of sound recording, A Most Valuable Medium reveals how this new technology effected monumental change in the ways we receive information.
In Aristotle's Logic of Education, Richard Bauman makes a contribution to both the history of logic and the philosophy of education. He argues that Aristotle, in the course of laying out his system of syllogistic inference, intends to guide the way science is taught, rather than how scientific research is conducted. The teacher is supposed to proceed by the method of demonstration from the appropriate necessary premises. Dr. Bauman contends that the problems raised in Plato's Meno form the background for understanding Aristotle's presentation of logic in his Posterior Analytics. In light of Banman's interpretation, a fresh approach should be taken to the recurrent claim that syllogistic reasoning always involves committing the fallacy of petitio principii. Finally, the author criticizes Aristotle's attempt to reduce both reasoning and teaching to singular patterns. In particular, Bauman argues that Aristotle fails to account adequately for the acquisition of first principles.