Rhetorica

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March 1999

  1. Vico’s Axioms: The Geometry of the Human World by James Robert Goetsch Jr
    Abstract

    222 RHETORICA substitute aux mots orator ou poeta celui de pictor et applique à la peinture des analyses rhétorico-poétiques" (pp. 19-20). The result amounts to a digest of everything in classical rhetoric relevant to the visual arts. The full extent of Junius's re-elaboration of rhetorical theory can be partly gauged by the subjects treated in the editor's invaluable commentary section, reduced to key terms: imitatio, ars, phantasia, ratio imitandi ("une problématique cicéronienne"), ut pictura poesis (including the roles of inspiration, enthusiasm, imitation, illusion, emotion), and contemplatio (the function of the spectator, aesthetic and moral). Every self-respecting historian of rhetoric should make sure his departmental library buys this remarkable edition. And we keenly look forward to its completion. Brian Vickers ETH Zurich James Robert Goetsch Jr, Vico's Axioms: The Geometry of the Human World (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995) xiv + 173pp. Goetsch undertakes a defense of Vico against his "friends", such as Isaiah Berlin, who are mainstream historians of philosophy; he is concerned to give Vico credit for a solid, systemic mode of inquiry, rather than the wildly eclectic mass of detail, chaotically presented, attributed to Vico by Berlin, (p. xi). His defense of Vico becomes a defense of rhetoric, for Goetsch insists on the significance of fundamental rhetorical assumptions and strategies of analysis of language structure and process as they frame an investigation. Vico's hermeneutics are, for Goetsch, a rhetorical hermeneutics. The defense of rhetoric is also an abandonment of the hegemonous strategies of definition and the standard issues of history of philosophy. To give a perspicuous, inclusive account of Vico's project, it is necessary to focus on the axioms, the key structuring principles, Vico lists in his New Science (p. 106); Axioms 1-22, 106 are common (koinoi), Axioms 33-144 particular Reviews 223 topics (p. 128). But, in Goetsch's rhetorical reading, the Vichian axioms, or elementi, or degnita (things worth thinking), are peculiarly rhetorical uses of the topoi,of the topical connections of the general and the particular (p. 108). The commonplace tradition illumines Vichian method (p. 104), because "topical storehouses" provide the arguments, enthymemes, motivating the most basic civil operations. The topoi, as both bins, spaces, organising argument and the contents of the bins represent a mode of connection in which both source and goal are in the domain of the communis. "Common sense", as a body of beliefs and dispositions held by a historical community, is a primary interest for Vico (p. 96), as the origin of the principles which illumine human history; Vico reads the axioms as "causes of customs" (p. 108). The description of common sense, as the summary of the common practices and values of the communities, is the goal of all historical initiatives and arguments. Moreover, when Vico claims that Providence, "like the queen she is", works only through civil institutions and practices, he selects irony as primary trope; history is not simply the product of self-conscious personal impulses; rather, particular institutional effects and strategies are often the unintended consequences of radically different, earlier dispositions and practices. Goetsch claims Vico's strategy represents a "recovery of an authentic Aristotelian rhetoric" (p. 106), a more "dynamic" Aristotle (pp. 54, 114). Goetsch reads the opening statement in the Rhetoric, that rhetoric is the antistrophe of dialectic, as pointing to the peculiarly heavy engagement with civic consciousness and civil effect of rhetoric (p. 108). Goetsch thus claims to recontextualise Vico in an Aristotelian tradition which is not that of a purely abstract, logical systematicity, the dominant reading of Aristotle in history of philosophy, but of a rhetorical, topical systematicity; a "rhetorical" reading of Aristotle, he claims, "corrects" the "scholastic" tendencies of Aristotle's logical interests (p. 77). Thus Goetsch asserts he may place Vico in a history of ideas aligned with the peculiar interests in philosophy of language and the philosophy of psychology represented in such twentieth-century figures as Ernst Cassirer, Ernesto Grassi, and Owen Barfield, to name three of the mentors frequently invoked by Goetsch.. At all times, Goetsch privileges, and claims Vico 224 RHETORICA privileges, "organic" wholeness (p. 116), valuing the image, imagination, ingenium, temporicity, historicity—a...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1999.0020
  2. Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric by Stephen D. O’Leary
    Abstract

    Reviews 233 plutôt: parce que rhéteur) en musicien: les idées sont des thèmes, les sujets sont des instruments. Pierre-Louis Malosse Stephen D. O'Leary, Arguing the Apocalypse: A Theory of Millennial Rhetoric (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994, ix + 314 pp. Endings, like beginnings, have always fascinated us; thus, speculative accounts of the world's beginning (etiologies) and its ending (eschatologies) have engendered controversial philosophies and gripping narratives. As we approach the end of a millenium, eschatological speculation can only be expected to increase; and thus, Arguing the Apocalypse is a timely contribution to rhetorical history and rhetorical theory. It is also broadly interdisciplinary, carefully researched, and intelligently written. The book's author, Stephen O'Leary, studied comparative religion at Harvard before going on to graduate work in Communication Studies at Northwestern; this book is a revision of his dissertation, and it is marked by the influence of both its director (argumentation theorist Tom Goodnight) and one of its readers (Bernard McGinn, a historian of medieval theology). With a few exceptions, the author has purged his book of the stylistic residues of the much despised "dissertation" genre. Nevertheless, as in Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose, the first ninety pages will test the readers' mettle; only if they are able to wade through the complexities of the theory will they earn their just reward: two rhetorical histories that are fascinating (and at times, even "page-turners"). Yet there are those first ninety pages. Chapter 1 begins by defining apocalypse—a subset of eschatological discourse that "makes manifest a vision of ultimate destiny, rendering immediate to human audiences the ultimate End of the cosmos in the Last Judgment" (pp. 5-6). Given the powerful appeal of such discourse through the ages, the author suspects that rhetorical theory will be useful in showing how it has shaped human 234 RHETORICA thought and action within particular cultural milieux. Chapter 2 sets out three important topoi of apocalyptic discourse: time, evil, and authority. These topoi are ripe for rhetorical analysis, since they involve not only the intellect but the whole person. O'Leary provides thumbnail sketches of the typical accounts of these three topoi, suggesting that apocalyptic discourse attempts to address certain aporiae that have been left by such accounts. In chapter 3, O'Leary develops the dramatic frames of comedy and tragedy, through which he will view various apocalyptic movements. Traditional Christian eschatology, he argues, accented the comic frame by emphasizing God's complete sovereignty in bringing about the end of time; the divine plan is inscrutible, and we can neither predict the end nor bring it about. But this view still acknowledged an identifiable end, in which evil and time would be no more; and this created the rhetorical space for a "tragic" apocalyptic eschatology, in which God brings the world to a catastrophic close (an event that will be survived only by those who know what to look for, and when to look). "Once an audience has accepted the eschatological argument that evil will be both eliminated and justified in the Last Judgment...their experience of evil will create a hope and expectation for this Judgment that still requires satisfaction" (p. 81). Thus, in apocalyptic rhetoric, "the evils of the present day are pyramided into a structure of cosmic significance" (p. 83). This arouses ever more eager anticipation of the consummation of history. Apocalyptic rhetoric thus tends to be enormously persuasive in the short term. While often blithely dismissed as the ranting of fanatics, it has mobilized thousands, indeed millions, of adherents—a claim that O'Leary will demonstrate in the historical sketches that fill most of the remainder of the book. The next four chapters examine two of the most important apocalyptic movements in the United States. Chapter 4 chronicles William Miller's rise from obscure farmer, to sought-after lecturer, to religious figurehead, to discredited prophet; the chapter also shows why Millerism should be analyzed as a rhetorical movement. In chapter 5, O'Leary examines the particular forms of Millerite argument, showing why they were found persuasive by certain auditors. Chapter 6 jumps ahead some more than a century, examining the more...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1999.0022

January 1999

  1. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance by Cheryl Glenn
    Abstract

    Short Reviews Cheryl Glenn, Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997) xii + 235pp. Glenn's purpose in Rhetoric Retold is feminist and cartographic: to remap the history of rhetoric by putting female rhetoricians and rhetorical practices solidly on the map. She challenges patriarchal rhetorical history at the center by including the voices of women who practiced rhetoric from the margins. Her hope is to revitalize "rhetorical theory by shaking the conceptual foundations of rhetorical study itself" (p. 10). Glenn's method derives from historiography, feminism, and gender studies. She uses "resistant readings...of the paternal narrative" and "female-authored rhetorical works" as well as "broad definitions of rhetoric" (p. 4). Her rationale for subject selection appears in Chapter One. Thereafter, she develops each historical chapter by overviewing cultural conditions of the period, describing women's place in those worlds, sketching the nature of patriarchal rhetoric at the time, then presenting the rhetorical activities of some exceptional women who were able to speak and write from the margins. Whenever she can, she highlights significant "points of contact" across all of the subjects she considers. Chapter Two examines pretheoretical sources of rhetorical consciousness in ancient Greece. Her reading of Sappho and female Phythagorians (Theano, Phintys, Perictyone) present rhetorical avenues that mainstream tradition never explored. She details public (argumentative) rhetoric (Corax, Gorgias, and Isocrates), then treats Aspasia as a silent heartbeat at the center of Pericles's intellectual circle. Aspasia was as likely a source of inspiration to Socrates and Plato as was Diotima. Glenn examines© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XVII, Number 1 (Winter 1999) 89 RHETORICA 90 tradition (Cicero and Quintilian), challenging this tradition with voices from the margins. Here we meet Vergima, Cornelia, Hortensia, Amasia Senta, Gaia Afrania, Sempronia, Fulvia, and Octavia. In Chapter Three Glenn details Christian cultural dynamics, calling the Bible the "ur-text of history, wisdom, and doctrine" (p. 75). She discusses inheritance laws, conceptions of women's bodies, the theoretical equality of men and women in the eyes of Christ, yet the practical inequality of doctrine and of Christian institutional piety. Examining representations of women in medieval literature (imaginative, Marian, inspirational), Glenn contends that women never received "the full range of human feelings or characteristics" (p. 86). Women appear as inferior to rational men, some of whose (Augustine, Jerome) rhetorical practices (ars poetica, ars dictaminis, ars praedicandi) Glenn treats next in some detail. She shows how a small group of religious women achieved some release from the cultural hold, such as Julian of Norwich and Margery Kempe, whose unusual rhetorical practices Glenn tells in illuminating detail. In Chapter Four Glenn overviews the general nature of Renaissance culture, tracing the patriarchal bias of laws, the nature of women's work both outside and inside the home, the inferiority of women's bodies when compared to men's, and more. She situates classical and Christian humanism, showing the usefulness of humanistic education in society and religious life. Some special English women, according to Glenn, received humanistic training, and she traces their (modest) literary accomplishments. She contrasts these women to the fake representations of women in literature; some women appear overly assertive (Edmund Spenser's Britomart, Shakespeare's Lady Macbeth), while others appear willfully disobedient (Juliet, Desdemona, the Duchess of Malfi). Such images reinforced women's exclusion from the public world of traditional Ciceronian rhetorical practice, though the entry of educated women became more probable as rhetoric and poetics converged in early English rhetorics that focused on style and eloquence. Glenn shows how three exceptional woman each used their own versions of rhetorical eloquence to make an impact on the public Reviews 91 from the margins—Margaret More, Anne Askew, and Queen Elizabeth I. In Chapter Five Glenn stresses the performative value of her project: the "promise that rhetorical histories and theories will eventually (and naturally) include women" (p. 174). She presents "four ways...[to] work together to realize...[these] performative...goals": we must recognize our common ground, "explore various means of collaboration", reevaluate the notion of "silence", and recognize the unlimited opportunities for research in this area (p. 174-78). This was a difficult...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1999.0026

June 1998

  1. Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of James J. Murphy ed. by Winifred Bryan Horner and Michael Leff
    Abstract

    REVIEWS Winifred Bryan Horner and Michael Leff eds, Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of James J. Murphy (Mahwah, NJ: Elrhaum, 1995) 337pp. This commemorative volume honoring James J. Murphy is an eclectic collection of essays authored by scholars from around the world, colleagues and former students of Murphy whose own contributions to rhetorical history are well known. The collection pays tribute to Murphy's career as scholar and teacher and celebrates historical texts and figures for their cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural contributions to rhetorical history and pedagogy. Beth S. Bennett and Michael Leff's Introduction praises Murphy for his commitment to the history of the rhetorical tradition—both discipline and profession—through his integration of teaching and scholarship as well as his role in the founding of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. They note that ISHR, in addition to publishing the field's premier journal, Rhetorica, has held biennial conferences since 1977 leading to the publication of important articles and edited volumes on Western rhetorical history and historiography "from the end of the Roman Empire through the 16th-century" (3). The intellectual status of rhetorical studies was thus elevated through Murphy's efforts. The collection's eighteen chapters are grouped chronologically into four sections: I. Theory and Pedagogy in the Classical and Medieval Traditions, II. Renaissance Textbooks and Rhetorical Education, III. Continuity and Change in 18th-Century Rhetorical Education, and IV. Rhetoric and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present. The Introduction forecasts the recurrence of three themes throughout the volume: "(a) Murphy and his work are 305 RHETORICA 306 ahead of their time; (b) Murphy not only studies rhetoric but also uses it to promote a communal effort; and (c) Murphy adopts a comprehensive view that opens an old tradition to future inquiry" (2). Bennett and Leff describe the ways in which each of the essays that follows illuminates one or more themes. They also advocate reading "across" chapters to trace the ways in which certain topics and controversies have evolved and enduring throughout rhetorical history. This way of reading, they suggest, can yield "the sense of unity in diversity" (16) that exemplifies Murphy's teaching and scholarship. The six essays in part one concern such topics as Aristotle's enthymeme as a doxastic rather than syllogistic form of reasoning (Lawrence D. Green), Cicero's criticism of philosophers (Robert Gaines), distinctions between Cicero's published court speeches and their oral presentation (Jerzy Axer), attitudes toward textual authority and ownership of ideas into the Christian era (George A. Kennedy), the use of poetry in the teaching of rhetorical tropes during the Middle Ages (Marjorie Curry Woods), and the contrasting missions and pedagogical practices at the universities of Oxford and Bologna in the late Middle Ages (Martin Camargo). Against long-held misperceptions of the "medieval fragmentation" of the classical rhetorical tradition, this first group of essays re-envisions the rhetorical tradition's passage from a "golden" to a "dark" age. Rather than "confused and confusing" (Woods 73), this early period in the history of rhetoric is rehistoricized as a period in which the study and practice of rhetoric flourished in new and various shapes, "each appropriate for its particular time and place" (Camargo 94). The second group of essays, the most esoteric in the collection, extends discussions of pedagogy into the Renaissance. John Ward s essay on Guarino da Verona includes lengthy discursive notes and references to primary texts as well as Latin excerpts for the specialized reader of Renaissance rhetoric. As scholar, teacher, and rhetor, Guarino contributed "toward the definition of 15th-century Italian paideia ...educative of the whole man", capable of developing his human, moral, social, and civic potential (101). Jean Dietz Moss's essay on Ludovico Carbone follows, offering a summary of the contents and significance of Carbone s On the Nature of Rhetoric and Eloquence", the first Reviews 307 book of his De arte dicendi (On the Arts of Speaking), a work organized as a series of disputations with classical rhetoricians. William A. Wallace's essay on Antonio Riccobono and rhetorical pedagogy in 16th-century Padua shows the persistence of such issues as whether rhetoric is an...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1998.0015

March 1998

  1. Theory, Text, Context: Issues in Greek Rhetoric and Oratory by Christopher Lyle Johnstone
    Abstract

    SHORT REVIEWS Christopher Lyle Johnstone, Theory, Text, Context: Issues in Greek Rhetoric and Oratory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996) 196 pp. In many ways, this collection of articles on Ancient Greek rhetoric in English offers the best of what contemporary historiography and rhetorical theory have to offer. Rather than reading texts in isolation, or presuming interpretive clarity, these articles interpret their objects in relationship to the social, political, and even physical circumstances that influenced their production. Taken together, they summarize much of what is new in ancient rhetoric. Christopher Lyle Johnstone introduces the collection by rehearsing current rhetorical historiography, attributing the term rhetorike to Plato but acknowledging the creative significance of a set of prototypical rhetorical conditions such as the rise of democratic institutions, the spread of literacy, and the concomitant transformation of mythos into logos which made abstract categorization possible. These social, political, and intellectual conditions nurtured rhetoric as a distinct discipline. Johnstone's perspective clearly differentiates this work from earlier creation narratives that attributed rhetoric to the spontaneous genius of specific individuals. Continuing this line of reasoning, the first article, one of Father Grimaldi's last, "How Do We Get from CoraxTisias to Plato-Aristotle in Greek Rhetorical Theory?" is an excellent overview of the sophists' contribution to the development of rhetoric, and thus a contribution to their ongoing rehabilitation. While Grimaldi acknowledges that his task is synthetic and therefore not highly original, the article is nevertheless thorough and cogent. The second article dedicated to sophistic origins, John Poulakos's "Extending and Correcting the Rhetorical Tradition: Aristotle's Perception of the Sophists" argues that Aristotle acknowledged the 227 RHETORICA 228 sophists for inaugurating the study of rhetoric but went to great lengths to correct the logical and linguistic inadequacies that were the inevitable result of their imperfect epistemology. Thus he concludes that Aristotle followed Plato insofar as he critiqued the sophists but "marked out an independent path", for himself by including their efforts as among those founding the rhetorical tradition. In the third piece on the place of sophistry within the tradition, Schiappa argues for what he calls a "predisciplinary approach" to the study of the sophists, by which he means avoiding "vocabulary and assumptions about discursive theories and practice imported from the fourth century when analyzing fifth-century texts" (p. 67). He makes the case for rigorous historiography by rereading Gorgias's Helen in such a way as to prove that it "advanced the art of written prose in general, and of argumentative composition in particular" (p. 78) while in no way succumbing to the tendency to perceive the sophistic piece as somehow indicative of the philosophy/rhetoric split which was an intellectual artifact of later developments. Leaving the sophists but remaining firmly within the realm of current theoretical issues, Michael C. Leff questions the general applicability of Dilip Goankar's assertion that contemporary rhetorical theory differs from ancient theory in that it is hermeneutic rather than performative and dubious about the possibility of human agency fully explaining rhetorical decisions. Leff reads Thucydides's account of the Mytilene disaster as evidence that the ancients were, or at least Thucydides was, aware of how rhetorical discourse could be shaped by circumstances beyond participants' control. Leff ends his argument, however, by asserting that Thucydides' observations were intended to have a therapeutic effect in that "The readers of History...become better equipped to assume the role of agent, for they are better able to interpret that role not just at the moment of action but also from within an understanding of history" (p. 96). Christopher Lyle Johnstone's own noteworthy contribution combines archaeology with acoustics to challenge one of the idols of traditional rhetorical history. Whereas we have always argued that deliberative rhetoric must have played an integral part in Athenian democracy, Johnstone points out that we have never taken into account the physical circumstances of delivery in the open spaces of the ancient agoras. The Pynx, in particular, he argues, was constructed such that even under ideal climatic conditions, perhaps only "half of the 5000 Reviews 229 present could understand what speakers were saying" (p. 126). If this compelling argument is true, then we need to...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1998.0031
  2. The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces by Thomas P. Miller
    Abstract

    RHETORICA 236 Thomas P. Miller, The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces, (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1997), x + 345 pp. Thomas Miller's excellent work The Formation of College English examines a strand in the development of English studies—the civic domain of rhetoric—neglected in other important histories of the discipline: Gerald Graff's Professing English Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), Franklin Court's Institutionalizing English Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), and Robert Crawford's Devolving English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). In the role of respondent to the 1997 Conference on College Composition and Communication session "Octalog II: The (Continuing) Politics of Historiography", Miller stressed the "civic sense of the work that lies before us" as historiographers of the discipline of composition and rhetoric. In particular, he praised historical research based on a "civic philosophy of teaching that links critical understanding with collaborative action toward social justice" and applauded archival work "that take[s] up the project of reconstituting the experiences of those who have been erased from accounts of the dominant tradition." In The Formation of College English, Miller "takes up" the little examined "provincial traditions that introduced modem history, politics, rhetoric, literature, and science into the college curriculum as case studies of how the teaching of culture functions as a means of social reproduction and transformation" (p. 19). He offers a comprehensive and unique treatment of territory introduced in recent institutional accounts of the development of American classes in rhetoric/composition, including Nan Johnson's Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in American Colleges (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992) and Winifred Bryan Homer's Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: The American Connection (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). Miller asks "from a historical perspective, what then are the practical values of rhetoric and composition?" (p. 285). The answer: studying parallels between "historical situations" leads to Henry Giroux's conception of "teachers as transformative intellectuals" who strive for self-awareness and view "education as a public discourse" (p. Reviews 237 288). Beginning with an examination of the "civic domain, where rhetoric concerns itself with popular values in political action," Miller applies key concepts defining Antonio Gramsci's rhetorical theory ("civil society," "cosmopolitanism," "organic and traditional intellectuals") to his exploration of "how the humanities can prepare students to become productively involved in political debates over popular values in practical action" (p. 7). In the first chapter, Miller points to print economy and the resulting expansion of the reading public as the driving force responsible for effacing rhetoric: "Professors...de-emphasized the composition of public discourse and concentrated on teaching taste to adapt higher education to the mission of instilling a common culture in the reading public" (pp. 60-61). In chapter two, Miller examines the role of professors at the elite English universities, the "antiquarians who divorced the learned tradition from the needs of contemporary learners", in an attempt to preserve English culture against change (p. 64). Conversely, the utilitarian approach to education characteristic of the dissenting academies and subsequently the provincial colleges introduced modem culture into higher education. The new pedagogy at these institutions was based on the belief that "free inquiry would advance liberal reform, economic progress, and rational religion" (p. 85). The next three chapters closely examine the development of the "new rhetoric" at: the Dissenting Academies, which encouraged students to assume a critical perspective on received beliefs; the provincial Scottish Universities, which reformed the university curriculum against a critical reexamination of classicism; and the colonial Irish "contact zones", where outsiders had to teach themselves the proprieties of English taste and usage. Miller's investigation of the classical tradition in Ireland, focusing on the elocutionary movement and English studies outside the university, represents a novel and fascinating contribution to rhetorical studies of this period. Miller devotes the following chapters to closely appraising the contributions to rhetorical theory and practice of perhaps the three most influential figures and movements of the period—Adam Smith and the rhetoric of a commercial society, George Campbell and the "science of man", and Hugh Blair and the rhetoric of belles lettres. In the final chapter, Miller examines the expansion of higher...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1998.0035

March 1997

  1. L’effet sophistique by Barbara Cassin
    Abstract

    Reviews 215 expediency. Jean-Louis Labarrière treats Aristotle's remarkable compari­ son of deliberative oratorical style to skiagraphia, or chiaroscuro, in painting. In Section IV, Alexander Nehamas, in an essay that first appeared in Rorty's 1992 collection on the Poetics, writes on pity and fear in the Rhetoric and Poetics, while André Laks (following influential essays by G. E. R. Lloyd, J. Lallot, and I. Tamba-Mecz and Paul Veyne) attempts a unifying interpretation of Aristotle's theory of metaphor. We have here, then, a formidable collection of essays by students of ancient philosophy, one which future scholars of rhetoric will need to take into account. If the shadow of Plato looms large behind most of the essays, that should come as no great surprise. As is the case with all col­ lections, it would be easy to fault this one for what is omitted or ignored here: it would have been valuable, for example, to have such a group of philosophers comment in more detail on the presocratic / sophistic back­ ground of the Rhetoric. But that would be to miss the virtues of what is included. I prefer, as I have indicated, to take the publication of this col­ lection as an auspicious omen for the philosophical study of rhetoric in general, and of the Rhetoric in particular. John T. Kirby Barbara Cassin, L'effet sophistique (Paris: Gallimard, NRF Essais, 1995), 693 pp. To readers who are not quite acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of French publishing, the release by Gallimard of Barbara Cassin's L'effet sophistique may seem unremarkable. However, for such a mainstream publisher to take the major step of printing nearly seven hundred pages of rhetorical analysis, even in a series devoted to philosophy (NRF Essais), is most remarkable. It means, in terms of France's intellectual landscape, that "rhetoric" has broken into a different field of readership, more accus­ tomed to reading (and giving credence to) Jean-François Lyotard than, say, Marc Fumaroli. Setting aside this strategic effect, L'effet sophistique bears all the charac­ teristics of being a major work on at least three counts. Firstly, it heralds a shift in French philosophy from denying history of rhetoric the status of a discipline to its reincorporation in philosophical debates. However, Cassin's work keeps its distance from both deconstruc­ tion and history of ideas (as in De Romilly's Les grands sophistes dans 216 RHETORICA l'Athènes de Périclès [Paris: De Fallois, 1998]). Secondly, L'effet sophistique has the merit to question sources and to provide new translations and insights into mistranslations (Cassin also heads a team working on a Vocabulaire européen des philosophies). A main tenet of Cassin's method is to immerse her reading-as-translation into the history of readings of particu­ lar texts such as Gorgias' Praise of Helen or Sextus Empiricus' Aduersus mathematicos VU, 65-87, or Galen's Libellus de captionibus and excerpts from Lucian as well as the remains of Antiphon the Sophist. Thirdly, it offers conceptual tools to formulate a theory of political or civic discourse not unrelated to current debates on the nature of democracy, diversity, and human rights. In this respect, L'effet sophistique truly does justice to the art of rhetoric by inscribing an analysis of the Sophists in the history of their reception by ancient and modern philosophy and in "current affairs." What is most topical is the way Cassin articulates the opposition of what she terms "Arendts' Greece" and "Heidegger's Greece" (pp. 248-69), by way of conclusion to a chapter on "City as Performance." She elucidates how Arendt constructs the primacy of politics over philosophy by resort­ ing to Protagoras. L'effet sophistique formulates one central question: in the conflict between the two logoi that haunts ancient thought, between ontology and logology, between the Sophist and the Philosopher, how did the First and the Second Sophistics position themselves as key operators in the inven­ tion of "fictionality"? Can we reconstruct the rhetorical history of that "Other" of philosophy and of good Politics, the Rhetor—either Protagoras, Gorgias, and Antiphon or Philostratos, Ælius Aristides, Lucian, and Longus—and, in the process, obtain a...

    doi:10.1353/rht.1997.0023

November 1995

  1. The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences
    Abstract

    Research Article| November 01 1995 The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences R. H. Roberts and J. M. M. Good (ed.), The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1993), xii + 278 pp. Peter Mack Peter Mack Department of English, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1995) 13 (4): 455–456. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1995.13.4.455 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Peter Mack; The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences. Rhetorica 1 November 1995; 13 (4): 455–456. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1995.13.4.455 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1995, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1995 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.4.455

August 1995

  1. Quintilian and the Rhetorical Revolution of the Middle Ages
    Abstract

    Abstract: It is often asserted nowadays that the medieval period “fragmented” the classical rhetorical inheritance, while the Renaissance restored it to its former coherence. The story of the assimilation in the Middle Ages and Renaissance of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory is examined here in order to demonstrate the problems inherent in such a position. It is argued that the full utilization of the text of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory in the Renaissance, along with the discrediting of the Ad Herennium (as a work of Cicero) that is associated with the name of Raffaello Regio in the last decade of the fifteenth century, are not the instances of the “recovery” of antiquity and supersession of “medieval philology” that they are often thought to be. Instead the opposite seems to be the case. The philological “recovery” of Quintilian led away from the incorporation of the Institutes into contemporary rhetorical practice and towards philology for its own sake. This, together with the bitter professional jealousies among the Italian schoolmen of the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, led, almost “accidentally” as it were, to a “sundering” of the “whole” that the Middle Ages had put together out of rhetorical fragments from antiquity. The medieval period, less concerned with philological niceties than with the practical utility of good advice from the past, constructed a new kind of rhetorical text from an amalgam of old texts: the Ad Herennium commentary, made up of the text of the Ad Herennium, explanations, summaries, and discussions from the medieval schoolroom, and portions of Boethius' De differentiis topicis, Quintilian's Institutes, and other classical sources. This serviceable “unity” the Renaissance “sundered” by (a) discrediting the Ad Herennium as an authoritative Ciceronian text, and (b) placing the Institutes far beyond the practical capabilities of contemporary rhetorical training courses by restoring it to its original length (vis-à-vis the abridgements and assimilations of the medieval period). In this process of turning the classical texts into icons, the Renaissance scholars were predictably unable to re-create the kaleidoscopic, one-thousand-year reality of rhetorical attitudes and texts in antiquity, from the fragments that the Middle Ages had used to build up their new form of integrated text. Much had been lost, but what had been gained?

    doi:10.1525/rh.1995.13.3.231

May 1984

  1. Historiography and Ethics in Adam Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric, 1762-1763
    Abstract

    Research Article| May 01 1984 Historiography and Ethics in Adam Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric, 1762-1763 J. Michael Hogan J. Michael Hogan Department of Rhetoric and Communication Studies, University of Virginia, 1 Dawsons Row, Charlottesville, VA, 22903, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1984) 2 (1): 75–91. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1984.2.1.75 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation J. Michael Hogan; Historiography and Ethics in Adam Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric, 1762-1763. Rhetorica 1 May 1984; 2 (1): 75–91. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1984.2.1.75 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1984, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1984 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1984.2.1.75

May 1983

  1. The Historiography of Rhetoric: Challenges and Opportunities
    Abstract

    Research Article| May 01 1983 The Historiography of Rhetoric: Challenges and Opportunities James J. Murphy James J. Murphy Department of Rhetoric, University of California, Davis, Davis, CA, 95616 USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1983) 1 (1): 1–8. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1983.1.1.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James J. Murphy; The Historiography of Rhetoric: Challenges and Opportunities. Rhetorica 1 May 1983; 1 (1): 1–8. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1983.1.1.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1983, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1983 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

    doi:10.1525/rh.1983.1.1.1