Fleckenstein talks about the body as a text. This concept stood out to me the most due to the lengths Catherine took to achieve this. The body as text is someone doing or living exactly as the text says. Catherine goes as far as to starve herself and self-discipline in order to follow what God is telling her. Catherine used this concept of body as text as a visual image to her devotion. She literally mirrored the text as it was. In today’s society I think this concept of body as a text could be looked down upon. Rhetoric is seen as persuasion so if the rhetor wants to persuade people, harming your body and starving yourself wouldn’t be appealing today. But this concept showed how determined and faithful Catherine was to her work. Today, people want to see people act not just talk, so this concept could be useful to a certain degree. I think that people who saw how devoted Catherine was, respected her and I think getting someone’s respect is the first step to being able to use rhetoric to persuade. Using body as a text could persuade people to also act on what they believe in.
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