..A Thousand Graceful Subtleties: Rhetoric in the Poetry of Robinson Jeffers

Robinson Jeffers’ poetry has always taught that men and women shine through their endurance, through their acts of courage, and through their appreciation for the transcendent beauty of the natural world. This study uses Aristotle’s descriptions of ethos, logos, and pathos to launch an inquiry into the rhetorical means by which Jeffers teaches these lessons, and finally argues that Jeffers’ literary and rhetorical artistry made him into a twentieth-century American epic poet.