Fundamentally, my approach draws on Edwin Black's observation that many great rhetorical moments chart a sort of "career," starting out rather humbly "as an
amorphy of inchoate ideas within the mind of an author." Over time, he continues, an idea destined for rhetorical greatness "somehow takes hold; it endures; it survives controversy and the vicissitudes of fashion; in time it achieves, as the Gettysburg Address has, an iconic status" (Black 1994, 21-22).