ABSTRACT This study contributes to the conversations on a more globalized and inclusive rhetorical praxis by focusing on how rhetoric was produced and understood by Turks – a group whose history spans centuries since their ancient origins in central Asia. We examine the ways in which Turkic/Turkish rhetoric was practiced and conceptualized in two seminal texts from the pre-Islamic and republican periods of the Turkish rhetorical tradition: the Orkhon inscriptions (8th century) and Atatürk’s Nutuk (1927). The intertextuality of these texts allows us to explore their relationships across time and space as well as mediate rhetorical styles and performances in their discourse.

ABSTRACT This essay develops a reception history of the Communist Party of the USA’s (CPUSA) responses to Richard Wright’s Native Son. Drawing on what Fiona Paton calls “cultural stylistics,” I argue that the voices residing in Native Son itself participated in the broader interpretive politics surrounding the novel. Specifically, Wright’s primary character, Bigger Thomas, functioned as a disruptive performance of blackness that revealed the limitations of communist orthodoxy for bringing expression to black subjectivity. I conclude by reflecting on the ways cultural stylistics poses salient ethical challenges to all of us who engage in the labor of critique.

ABSTRACT The Panathenaicus is often referred to as one of the weakest and most enigmatic of Isocrates’ orations. It has been criticized for lacking innovation, coherence, and rhetorical style. Furthermore, it concludes with a curious use of dialogue otherwise foreign to Isocrates. In this article, I read the dialogue alongside the apparently digressive proemium and argue not only for the speech’s internal unity, but for its creativity and intellectual complexity. I demonstrate how the Panthenaicus connects Isocrates’ Panhellenic project with his civic-minded paideia in a way that simultaneously identifies Academic philosophy and attempts to subordinate it to Isocratean philosophia.

ABSTRACT Intercultural contexts introduce unique sources of complexity into our theories of rhetoric and persuasion. This study examines one of the most successful cases of intercultural rhetoric concerning religion: the case of Swami Vivekananda, a Hindu monk from India who came to the United States in 1893 for the World’s Parliament of Religions. He arrived as an unknown monk, but he left America years later as the nationally known face of Hinduism. Facing a tense scene in 1893 that featured a plurality of religions and American organizers and audiences who judged Hinduism as inferior to Christianity, Vivekananda enacted a unique rhetoric of pluralism to assert the value of his form of Hinduism while simultaneously respecting other religions. This study extracts from Vivekananda’s popular performance at the parliament a pluralistic style of rhetorical advocacy, one that builds upon his unique reading of Hindu religious-philosophical traditions. This pluralistic style can be used to unravel some of the theoretical issues created by invitational rhetoric’s reading of persuasion as inherently violent to disagreeing others.

ABSTRACT Lysias is best known for his portrayal of character (ethopoiia), his believable narratives, his plain or “Attic” style, and for the role he plays as inferior foil to Socrates in Plato’s Phaedrus. But he was also an important figure in developing, refining, and employing types of argument, including the rhetorical technique that would later be called the enthymeme. In On the Death of Eratosthenes, Lysias not only uses enthymemes, he highlights their use, selects a term (enthymizing), and demonstrates how “enthymizing” could be central to rhetorical artistry, to narrative development, to legal reasoning, and to political activism. Examining Lysias 1 not only deepens our understanding of Lysias’ rhetorical abilities, but it suggests that the orators had an important role to play in the development of rhetorical theory.

ABSTRACT Combining Zeno’s rhetorics of the open hand and closed fist, Nachmanides addressed the heirs of Rashi to defend Maimonides. Polemical letters were a vehicle for this controversy, and a major example is his “Letter to the French Rabbis.” Using cleverly organized arguments and a brilliantly learned style of allusion to Biblical and rabbinic texts, called “shibutz,” Nachmanides influenced his addressees to mitigate a herem (ban) against students of Maimonides. Nachmanides sought to unify the warring factions rather than to achieve victory for either side, and his densely packed allusions to texts all the combatants revered comprise common ground for reconciliation.

ABSTRACT This article defends the “rhetorical chorus” as a useful method for recovering women’s voices in the history of rhetoric. As distinct from the more amorphous term “collaboration,” which designates any act of cooperation in the production of rhetorical texts, the “chorus” offers a more nuanced way to identify and map the recording, preservation, appropriation, and alteration of works originally dictated by women rhetors. Using The Book of Margery Kempe as an example, the study traces both homophonic and polyphonic relationships between the lead voice of Margery and the voices of her scribes and annotators.

ABSTRACT This article argues that the founding logics of late neoliberalism actively mitigate against a radically democratic future. By calling attention to the invocatory drive which is responsible for effecting the Symbolic order’s interpellative address, the article makes the case that Lacan’s retheorization of desire, the drives, and/as jouissance opens the way toward an ontologically grounded conception of radical political agency and rhetorical intervention whose abiding ethical injunction is to “imagine there’s no Publics!”

ABSTRACT In antiquity, rhetorical treatises generally identified clarity and obscurity as positive and negative qualities of style, respectively. But in the fifth century, Augustine developed a valuation such that both clarity and obscurity could potentially function as equally viable resources for persuasion. While previous rhetorical treatises acknowledged that standards of perspicuity varied with genre, Augustine's stipulations for variability are tied much more closely to the particulars of the rhetorical situation. In a bold vision of the potency of style, Augustine demonstrates how a principle like clarity can be adjusted according to the rhetorical situation.

ABSTRACT This article culls a theory of rhetorical vision from Aristotle's Rhetoric by examining the cluster of terms that bears on his theory of visual style. Rhetorical vision stands apart from but complements visual rhetoric in that it attends to the rhetorical and linguistic conjuring of visual images—what contemporary neuroscientists call visual imagery—and can even affect direct perception. The article concludes by examining rhetorical vision in Demosthenes' Epitaphios. At stake in this investigation is the visible and visual liveliness of rhetoric and its ability to alter sense perception.

ABSTRACTThis reading of De Oratore uses Stoic philosophy and rhetoric to trace out a complex Ciceronian theory of rhetoric. Cicero rejected Stoic style, labeling it as meager and unpersuasive. However, he coalesced Stoic philosophy with Greek rhetoric to produce his ideal orator. Cicero described eloquentia as natural public speech that was distinctive to every person, yet he also explained how eloquence, like wisdom, unified aspects of the entire universe. Through these connections, Stoic influences enabled Cicero to negotiate major questions concerning rhetoric, such as the emotional control of the orator, the virtue of eloquence, and the status of rhetoric as an art. Cicero's negotiation is productive of a theory of rhetoric that is useful today, especially as it holds speech and public action as important and fundamental acts of human individuality.

ABSTRACT One of the strongest voices against rhetorical excess in the Renaissance can be found in Montaigne's Essays. It is no wonder, then, that the author's own style has often been associated with a Stoic terseness that matches a professed goal of writing sans estude et artifice—in other words, without rhetoric. But when we consider the volatile political context in which Montaigne was writing, it becomes apparent that his stylistic restraint accomplishes far more than an effect of transparency. Focusing on the figure of emphasis-one in which the rhetor allows his audience to infer an additional meaning from what he says or does not say—this article explores the connection between the restraint of Montaigne's prose style and the classical art of covert argument.

Abstract This essay examines the debate regarding Pope Pius XII's lack of protest regarding ethnic massacres during World War II. By failing to publicly expose what was happening to Jews under Nazi occupation, Pius is seen as defaulting on his responsibility as moral leader. The mounting number of books on this subject indicates a persistent level of controversy that has not abated in the decades since the war. Criticisms about the Pope tend to attribute personal motives for his lack of oratory, indicative of malice or indifference. This conclusion is reached because contemporary critics assume that the pontiff, as head of his church, had a liberty of discourse and of personal independence in his style of rhetoric. This study, by contrast, posits the view that Pius was constrained rhetorically by the demands of his office. The statements of the previous pontiffs who were his predecessors indicate that Pius was conforming to a discursive style imposed by papal protocol and consistent with the ornately impersonal linguistic style that characterizes Vatican documents. Applying a rhetorical lens to the pontiff's peculiar reticence provides a way to penetrate the historical impasse surrounding this disputed figure.

Abstract At Pseudolus 41–73 Plautus represents the slave Pseudolus as reading a passionate letter from the courtesan Phoenicium to his master, Calidorus. Pseudolus and Calidorus offer strikingly different reactions to the letter. Calidorus praises its style and content, but Pseudolus ridicules both—with a string of sexual insults. In this essay I focus upon gender and class as factors in the literary reception of Phoenicium's writing in Plautus' comedy. My discussion compares the writing attributed to Phoenicium with several second century BCE texts by men. In light of these comparisons, I argue that Pseudolus unfairly holds Phoenicium's writing to standards different from those applied to males, and I suggest that social class—that of the critic as well as the writer—played a complex role in the public assessment of what Roman women said and how they said it.

Abstract The performative dimension of oral rhetoric has been a central concern of theorists throughout the history of the tradition. Awareness of the persuasive power of the human voice is especially conspicuous in the teachings of Gorgias of Leontini. When he claims that “speech is a powerful lord,” Gorgias articulates a profound insight into how the human mind and body respond to sounds produced by the voice. By examining Gorgias' views of the potency of speech in the context of the oral, poetic tradition of ancient Greece, we can appreciate more fully the sources of this insight. Moreover, contemporary research in psycho-physiology suggests that Gorgias grasped an important dimension of the human mind's fundamental nature.

Abstract The rise of Lech Walesa from shipyard electrician to leader of “Solidarity,” international icon of freedom, and first president of democratic Poland was closely bound up with rhetoric. Walesa's idiosyncratic verbal style galvanized the masses and successfully confronted communist propaganda. The revolution of the workers on the Baltic coast was to a large extent a revolution in language. Walesa was also a skilled negotiator. As president, however, he was a controversial figure; his conception of democracy as a continuing war of words is widely credited with spelling the end of the idealistic “Solidarity” era. Today, allegations remain that Walesa was an agent provocateur and that the Polish revolution may have been a provocation that got out of hand. Some allege that Walesa's myth was a creation of Western media, a function of people's desires, and an accident of the historical moment. While there is no proof that any of these allegations are true and the documentary record reveals Walesa's undeniable rhetorical prowess and political talent, his case provides material for reflection on the relationship between history, rhetoric, and political agency.

Abstract Aristotle's Rhetoric leaves a number of unanswered questions, among them the nature of the relationship between verbal style and êthos, or character, as a means of persuasion. Statements throughout the Rhetoric suggest a connection between manner of expression and persuasive character, but Aristotle's ideas in this area are underdeveloped. Here we argue that Aristotle's stylistic theory, while not demonstrably inconsistent with the technical proof through character, cannot be made to conform neatly with it in most salient respects. Though Aristotle does not explicit y identify style as a means through which the speaker may convey the impression that he possesses positive intellectual or moral qualities, he does recognize a role for lexis in the expression of generic character traits and is aware that an inappropriate style will damage the speaker's credibility. Hence, attention to style is important for the presentation of a plausible êthos and, in this limited respect, style does contribute to the maintenance of persuasive character. This conclusion must be inferred from passing remarks in the Rhetoric. The absence of a more fully developed theory is curious in light of the availability of examples from the discourse of Attic logographers like Lysias, a speechwriter universally praised by later critics for his mastery of ethopoeia(character portrayal).

Abstract This paper has three goals: (1) to point out a characteristic of Isocrates' style of advice, (2) to use that characteristic to discuss the authenticity of To Demonicus, and (3) to place Isocrates' interest in style in its cultural context.

Abstract This paper examines the historical processes that spurred the Cuban feminist movement to articulate positions on suffrage, property rights, reproductive rights, marriage and divorce, children's issues, welfare, and education. It also discusses the changes in Cuban society during the Castro years and how the communist alignment of Cuban society influenced Cuban feminism. Finally, this paper suggests that one of the most interesting spaces to excavate women's history, women's voices and feminist activism is in exile. In exile, we see the hybridity and doubleness that has characterized Cuban life, particularly since the Soviet collapse. Writings by Castro's daughter, Alina Fernandez, help us understand where Cuban women are positioned at the beginning of the 21st century and the subject positioning of women writing in exile.

Abstract The tradition of Western stylistics, initiated by Aristotle, is impregnated with the dialectics between established and unconventional usage. In the twentieth century, Bakhtin acknowledged this dynamic through his conception of the dialectical nature of language. Concepts of the plain style, many of them emanating from the United States, deviated from this dynamic. Prestigious style handbooks such as The Elements of Style and Ten Lessons in Clarity and Grace, which championed a form of the plain style based on empiricism, offered advice that undermined the dialectical, dynamic nature of language. At the same time, calls for cavalier self-expression, e.g., experimentation in Baudrillard and experimentalism in Lloyd, could not account for the great achievements of Western stylistics. A paucity of stylistic diversity led Foucault to promote “heterotopias.” Cixous proposed a three-stage model for linguistic development designed to heighten dialectical interplay between tradition and novelty. Attuned to the crisis in written expression, Kristeva stressed the need for enhancing the role of aesthetic products in contemporary life.