Rhetorica
590 articlesJune 2019
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Abstract
Historians of rhetoric continue to debate the relative degree of transmission and implementation of the progymnasmata during the Middle Ages. This essay intervenes in this debate by analyzing Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (Art of the Versemaker), showing that the treatise emphasizes the construction of probable assertions within a system of rhetorically-informed poetic composition. While past scholarship has shown Matthew's indebtedness to Ciceronian and Horatian rhetoric and poetics, this essay argues that progymnasmata exercises focused on probability and verisimilitude may have also influenced Matthew, suggesting the continued influence of the exercises within rhetorical and grammatical education during the 12th century.
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Reviews 325 Following Baudrillard, Gogan asserts throughout the book that "percep tion itself is rhetorical (8). He means that "language use brings about percep tion (8). Here is where I think many a materialist, but also many a more traditional scholar, will have a hard time following. For if the claim were sim ply that tropes and the use of language shapes human perception, there could be no argument. What you perceive as the just, the normal, or even—more concretely the sexual is inevitably affected by the categories and images through which you process your perceptions. Moreover, even the object world itself is created as a set of distinct identifiable objects through the existence, elaboration, and circulation of linguistic categories. There was a world in which oxygen did not exist, grav ity was not a concept, and in which the atoms of Lucretius were v ery different from those of Einstein or Niels Bohr. In the end, howev er, these observations do not establish the claim that "language use brings about perception." The prelinguistic infant has percep tion. My dog, whose language use is minimal, perceives. And this elementary recognition is important. While there may be no human perception worthy of entering into symbolic exchange not shaped by language use (i.e., rhetoric), that is v ery different from saying "perception is rhetorical." The latter asserts there is no necessarv referent of perception. It asserts that all perceptions are merely simulacra and in no sense representations. Phantasia, on this level, is triumphant, and meaning has disappeared. Nonetheless, Aristotle's position, which Gogan quotes approvingly, is very different. For Aristotle, phantasia ("appearance") is what mediates between perception and judgment (144). Thus, while there may be no judg ment without rhetoric, aisthësis ("perception") exists and so differential judge ments can be made. Indeed, the appearance on which judgment is predicated must be rigorously separated from perception itself. In a world of "alternative facts" and of "fake news," a world in which climate science is a matter of opin ion, the imperative not to reduce experience to the exchange of interchangeable simulacra, all equally unmoored from perception, has never been more urgent. Baudrillard was masterful in predicting and analyzing the rhetoric of our post truth society, but we will need something more to survive it. Paul Allen Miller University of South Carolina Michele Kenrterly and Damien Smith Pfister, eds., Ancient Rhetorics and Digital Networks, Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama Press, 2018. 328 pp. ISBN: 9780817359041 When Edward Corbett first published his didactic volume Classical Rhetoric for the Modem Student, the context was mid-century television cul ture, and many of Corbett's examples, which were intended to demonstrate the continuing applicability of traditional tropes from ancient Athens, relied on familiarity with mass media. Since that time - when Corbett marveled at the introduction of the data-rich medium of microfilm - much in information 326 RHETORICA technology has changed dramatically, including the advent of personal com puting, the rise of social media platforms, and the ubiquity of access to dis tributed networks. Of course, there were significant works published on classical rheto ric and digital communication during the nineties, including Richard Lanham's The Electronic Word and Kathleen Welch's Electric Rhetoric dur ing the Web 1.0 era. Although Lanham and Welch are not contributors to Ancient Rhetorics and Digital Networks, this new volume is a notable achievement in representing a very broad range of perspectives from classi cal rhetoric - including concepts from Aristotle, Plato, Protagoras, Isocrates, and Gorgias - and applying them to seemingly ephemeral online phenom ena expressed in networked publics. The introduction to Ancient Rhetorics and Digital Networks outlines the case for understanding the ancients through contemporary digital practices and vice versa; at the same time, it resists simplistic or arbitrary "cutting and pasting" (2) of heterogeneous sources without sufficient justification. It observes that the texts in the collection represent a range of possible linka ges between present and past: historical antecedents, analogues for practi ces, heuristics for theoretical framing, and cues to conventions such as social customs and moral orientations, as well as relations of renewal. Many of the essays outline broad theories to explain internet infra structures...
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Abstract
328 RHETORICA Haixia W. Lan. Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth: The Form and the Way. Routledge, 2017. 228 pp. ISBN 9781472487360 At a 2013 Rhetoric Society of America Summer Institute seminar on comparative rhetoric, twenty-five scholars spent a week together reading scholarship on comparative rhetoric of the recent past and charting out possible paths for the future. In their culminating statement, "A Manifesto: The What and How of Comparative Rhetoric," which appeared in Rhetoric Review in 2015 (34.3), they outlined best practices in the subfield, underscoring both the imperative to speak for and with the other and the need to cultivate self-reflexivity and accountability for such engagement. They further called on comparative rhetoric scholars to search for "simultaneity, heterogeneity, and interdependence" both within and between different rhetorical traditions and practices. Haixia Lan's Aristotle and Confucius on Rhetoric and Truth: The Form and the Way provides an example of what such best practices actually can look like and of how best to center comparative rhetorical studies on simultaneity, heterogeneity, and interdependence. Lan's monograph, consisting of five chapters together with an introduc tion and an epilogue, offers an in-depth comparative study of Aristotle (384322 BCE) and Confucius (551—479 BCE), two pivotal figures hailing from Greek and Chinese ancient cultures, respectively. While plenty of studies have focused on Aristotle and Confucius in the past, they tend to be informed by a philosophical and literary framework. Meanwhile, comparative rhetoric scholars have also studied Aristotle and Confucius, but none, in my view, has offered such a comprehensive study of these two thinkers as Lan has done, for which she must be commended. The introduction provides a succinct overview, laying out both its object of study (focusing on the similarities and differences in Aristotle and Confucius's rhetorical thinking) and its method of study (deploying a rela tional and contextualized approach that traverses disciplinary boundaries). Such a study, for Lan, not only presents comparative rhetoricians with a better opportunity to understand these two thinkers' singular contributions to the development of rhetoric but also enhances the prospect of a more felicitous exchange between the two cultures they represent and continue to influence and, better still, between East and West in the global contact zones of the twenty-first century. No less important, Lan's study also counters sticky bina ries that pit, for example, Aristotle's purported discourse of abstraction and linearity against Confucius's alleged discourse of pragmatism and circularity. It further problematizes past studies that focus exclusively on either differen ces or similarities but not both or that are long in overgeneralizations and short on contextualized or recontextualized engagements and discussions. Each of the five subsequent chapters provides a detailed and nuanced analysis of one central aspect of Aristotle and Confucius's rhetorical thinking. They together contribute to a portrait of two individuals being separated by time and space but joined by an unfailing insistence on hylomorphic thinking that Truth or tianming (the cosmic order) is enmattered in, and can be Reviews 329 actualized through, rhetorical practices; on engaging self, other, and the cos mos with an inclusive vision; and on conceptualizing ultimate realities with analogy, be it form (by Aristotle) or the way (by Confucius). For example, in Chapter One, Lan takes up rhetorical invention or the dynamic and mutually entailing relationship between language-in-use and knowledge-making. She characterizes Aristotle's views on episteme as knowledge of certainty, techne as knowledge of probability, and rhetoric as techne that intersects with episteme. In other words, Aristotle's rhetoric dwells in this in-between space where certainty and unpredictability join hands and dialectic and sophistical reasoning mingle with each other. Chapter Two, “Interpreting the Analects," takes its readers to Confucius, to the Analects, a collection of conversations between the Master and his students compiled by the latter after his death, and to the rhetorical dimension of his ways of knowing and speaking, the latter of which mani fests itself in Confucius's complex understanding of rhetorical invention, of the role language, audience, and context play in the making of probable or local knowledge. For Lan, developing an historical and interdisciplin ary understanding of rhetorical invention...
March 2019
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Abstract
In the 5th century a number of sophists challenged the orthodox understanding of morality and claimed that practicing injustice was the best and most profitable way for an individual to live. Although a number of responses to sophistic immoralism were made, one argument, in fact coming from a pair of sophists, has not received the attention it deserves. According to the argument I call Immortal Repute, self-interested individuals should reject immorality and cultivate virtue instead, for only a virtuous agent can win the sort of everlasting reputation that makes a life truly admirable and successful.
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Abstract
The main purpose of this paper is to discuss parrhesia (literally “free speech”), in the rhetorical theory of Bartholomew Keckermann (Systema rhetoricae, Hanau 1608) with particular attention to its nature, forms, and functions. For Keckermann, parrhesia is not only one of the rhetorical figures related to expressing or amplifying emotions, but also may be considered as a regulative idea of speech best epitomized in the postulate, to speak “everything freely and sincerely,” since the term includes the Greek notion. Aside from such ancient authors as Quintilian, the major source of theoretical inspirations for Keckermann are the textbooks written by Melanchthon (on the relations between parrhesia and flattery), Ramus (on parrhesia as a kind of exclamation) and Sturm (on the critical power of parrhesia). With a firm grounding in this contextual background, this analysis elucidates Keckermann’s contribution to the Renaissance debate on this rhetorical schema.
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Abstract
The sententia, which I translate as “a concise expression of one’s sense of things,” plays an important role in Quintilian’s approach to the formation of an orator and to the forms public speech should take. Passages about sententiae, which appear across the Institutio Oratoria, show how Quintilian attempts to temper a generational frenzy for making clever quips: by reminding readers that sententiae also can be familiar lines of verse or prose circulating in culture and by advising readers that sentence-length variety increases an orator’s affective and communicative efficacy. Studying sententiae in Quintilian enriches our understanding of past and present attitudes toward what one might generally call being quotable. These days, quotable forms include sound bites and tweets, and some critics view those short forms as analogous to sententiae. Quintilian’s views on sententiae, therefore, not only prove applicable to on-going debates about the place of quotable forms in rhetorical pedagogy and practice but also might help channel those debates in more productive directions.
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Abstract
Reviews 209 Howe uses suggestive dialogue to persuade her male readers to admit her to their literary canon. Like Howe, Johnson seeks to legitimate sentimental poetry; however, Johnson does so by reading this verse through a rhetorical lens. Johnson's anal yses are rich and incisive. Sometimes, her larger argument gets lost in the details of her close reading. Moreover, while Johnson promises to offer readers a heuristic for reading sentimental verse, her analyses are often too local and deep to be generalizable to other texts. Regardless, Antebellum American Women s Poetry makes a valuable contribution to both rhetorical and literary scholarship, particularly feminist scholarship on nineteenth-century American women's writing. Demonstrating the importance of sentimental verse in nine teenth-century America, Johnson recovers a site of women's rhetorical activity that has otherwise been lost to the divide between literature and rhetoric. Paige V. Banaji Barry University Robin Reames, ed., Logos without Rhetoric: The Arts of Language before Plato, Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2017. 191 pp. ISBN 9781611177688 The contributors to Logos without Rhetoric confront Edward Schiappa's so-called "nominalist" view of rhetorike techne - that it makes little sense to speak of a discipline of rhetoric before the coinage and circulation of the term rhetorike, which Schiappa famously attributes to Plato in the Gorgias. Rather than examine Schiappa's view directly, the contributors try to give substance to an "evolutionary" or "developmental" view. On this account, important ingredients of rhetoric appear in the fifth century and even before. These views do not, of course, conflict; they rather shift the question from (i) "when did the thing called rhetorike begin, and what is that thing so named?" to (ii) "what stuff if any within that thing predates its/their being called rhetorike?" The first question gets at a specific concept, its work, and its effects within Greek self-understanding, with the goal of reconstructing specific debates and conscious practices that deployed or were governed by that concept. The second question searches for any treatment of language as a "manipulation of persuasive means" (p. 8), an inquiry bound only by our own presumptions of relevance. Now, from an Aristotelian perspective, rhetorike (techne) is at once a sys tematic theory7 and an ongoing inquiry into the various kinds of persuasive manipulation. From that perspective, what one wants to find in an account of the origins of rhetorike is not particularly clever, routimzed, or flexible deployments of persuasive manipulation but rather evidence for the rise of a discipline, an increasingly concerted, increasingly self-conscious effort through time to understand the extent and nature of it. 210 RHETORICA Be that as it may, questions (i) and (ii) could differ markedly. The contri butors to Logos without Rhetoric draw the two questions together by trying to attribute a quasi- (or proto-) systematic quasi- (or proto-) consciousness to their various authors' use of persuasive manipulation, such that they could be seen not only as speaking well but also as coming to think about the task of speaking well. (The authors generally do not address the extent to which these efforts were concerted or dialectical - that is, a matter of public discus sion.) Success in the contributors' enterprise depends, then, on their actually identifying theoretical or disciplinary rudiments in texts. This is in principle possible since, whatever the coinage situation for the term, rhetorike must have been formed and accepted in response to some prior if rudimentary the oretical or disciplinary activity. As it turns out, the chapters themselves are of rather mixed success. Terry Papillon ("Unity, Dissociation, and Schismogenesis in Isocrates") contributes a short, jargon-heavy, and free-floating chapter about the rheto ric of divisiveness. It wavers between two theses, the rather grand and lessevidenced one that "Isocrates. . . redefined the notion of politics" (p. 17) and the rather mundane and quite plausible one that "Isocrates shows us a prac tical example of an early Greek rhetorical practice" (p. 18). Robert Gaines ("Theodorus Byzantius on the Parts of a Speech") argues that a pre-Platonic figure, Theodorus, distinguished oratorical speeches into twelve parts and that we see the adoption of this normative distinction in the (fragmentary) ps.-Lysianic Against Andocides for Impiety...
January 2019
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Abstract
Reviews 91 Gary A. Remer, Ethics and the Orator: The Ciceronian Tradition of Polit ical Morality, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press 2017. xii, 291 pp. ISBN: 9780226439167 The subjects of Remer's book are of central importance to the study of (western) rhetoric: the troubled relationship between rhetoric and morality, both in general and as approached by Aristotle, Cicero, and others; and the reception of Ciceronian ideas and their potential contemporary relevance. He proceeds in roughly chronological order. In a long introduction and a first chapter he sets the scene and favourably contrasts Cicero's approach to that of Aristotle, and in a second chapter then develops his most impor tant claim: that Ciceronian rhetorical morality is based on the notion of decorum. Four chapters follow on later authors and issues, and their links with Cicero: Machiavelli, Lipsius, the notion of (the orator as) a political rep resentative, and the relationship between rhetoric and "deliberative democ racy." Here, I shall mainly concentrate on the introduction and chapters 1-2, as they make up almost half the book and are meant to define the issues addressed in the rest. In these chapters, Remer argues for the value of Cicero's approach to the ethics of rhetoric, especially as compared to that of Aristotle's Rhetoric. The latter's much-discussed inclusion of emotional persuasion (pathos) is of course particularly relevant. It is problematic in ethical terms, as it suggests that he endorses emotional manipulation. In addition, it seems to be inconsis tent with the first chapter of the work (1.1), where Aristotle criticises contem porary writers on rhetoric for including emotional appeal in their "arts" (technai). Remer (42, alib.) accepts the now common solution, associated espe cially with Nussbaum (cf. 11-13 for nuances): Aristotle regards emotions as grounded in cognition, and recognises only emotional appeals that are based on argument; and this implies that the opportunities for manipulation are severely restricted, as emotions can again be removed by counter-arguments that is, they are "responsive to cognitive modification" (36). I am on record as rejecting such views (Ethos and Pathos from Aristotle to Cicero, Amsterdam, Hakkert, 1989,17-20; 72-4), and for all of their popularity, they still seem highly dubious to me. For one thing, the fit with what Aristotle in fact says in his first chapter is not particularly good. Moreover, according to Aristotle the whole point of the emotions in a rhetorical context is that they make people change their judgements (Rhet. 2.1, 1377b30-1378a6; 1378a20-23); an angry person, e.g., is thus likely in fact to be impervious to counter-arguments. However that may be, Remer accepts the common view as a plausible interpretation of Aristotle's ideas - ideas which, however, he proceeds to criticise. He points out, e.g., that Aristotle himself sometimes recognises non-cognitive emotional responses (36-7); that Aristotle also seems to suggest the use of false arguments (43-4); and that reality shows that emotions are often not responsive to cognitive modification (44—8, including a discussion of the Willie Horton case). These points, while not all new, are valuable. More fundamentally, however, he faults Aristotle for providing only moral rules external to rhetoric (48—9), that is, 92 RHETORICA in terms developed especially by Michael Leff (Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1, 1998, 61-88), he regards Aristotle as offering a weak rather than a strong defence of rhetoric. It is such a strong, intrinsic defence that Remer claims to find in Cicero. This, however, is highly problematic. Cicero, as is well known, saw argu ments as generally less important than ethos, presenting the characters on one's own side favourably, and pathos, playing upon the audience's emotions (e.g., De or. 2.178). Remer fully acknowledges that Cicero, pragmat ically, sees "rhetorical deception" as necessary in real life. He nonetheless attempts to mitigate this "manipulative" view of rhetorical persuasion. For instance, according to De or. 2.203 Antonius, in his defence of Norbanus, employed "commonplaces" (loci) to elicit emotions. Remer asserts that he thus elicited emotions through argumentation; but the term locus is also frequently used for non-argumentative emotional appeal (e...
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Abstract
This article seeks to demonstrate that, already at the end of the fifth century BCE, the style of the tragedian Agathon was described in terms that would also be used for what is later called Asianism in the first century BCE. This is accomplished by relating the characterization of the Asiatic style, as provided by Cicero, to the descriptions of Agathon’s style. Both Agathon’s style and the later Asiatic style are conceptualized as ‘Asiatic- barbaric.’ Consequently, the Atticists of the first century BCE were not the first to vilify their opponents by situating specific stylistics and rhetoric within Asia since Agathon’s critics had already used similar strategies to mark his style as exotic and extravagant.
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Abstract
In this paper I discuss Lorenzo Valla’s criticism of the traditional Square of Opposition displayed in the second book of the Dialectica. I show that, according to Valla, the opposition rules of the propositions must take into account both common speeches and the correct use of Latin language, not the formal link occurring between the parts of propositions. In Valla’s perspective, this theoretical change is carried out through rhetoric and philology, and it involves a reassessment of the arts of the trivium. As regards this topic, I argue that Valla aims niether to reduce dialectic to rhetoric nor to replace the former with the latter, but rather to establish some rhetorical principles as a better-suited way to set the opposition rules, because they take into account the linguistic context in which these rules apply.
December 2018
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Aristotele. Retorica, Introduzione, traduzione e commento di Silvia Gastaldi, and: [Aristotele]. Retorica ad Alessandro di Maria Fernanda Ferrini ↗
Abstract
96 RHETORICA I take issue with Mifsud's verdict that Aristotle sacrifices Homer is that, if the project is to "excavate the gift in rhetoric and rhetoric in the gift, [in order to] discover resources for resisting tyranny" (p. 11), then it seems ill-advised to make doxa responsible for the loss of the magic inherent in the gift. Indeed, at the 2016 NCA event several panelists focused their commentaries on doxa as the gift of inherited stories, transmitted through generations. Stories circu late through private as well as public networks; they are the gifts of rhetorically constituted social formations. Aristotle's doxa of prudential rhetoric do in fact have the capacity to resist tyranny, as the history of the polis shows. That tyr anny sometimes wins is hardly proof to the contrary. In gifting theory, a sacrifice is a gift with no obligation or debt. In Mifsud's portrayal, Homer is almost Christ-like insofar as he gives to Aris totle without expectation of return. Mifsud pursues an ostensibly prescrip tive analysis of what the gift ought to be, never quite accounting for the move away from the gift as a logic of the relationship between poiesis and rhetoric. It is intriguing that the classical focus of Mifsud's investiga tion of the gift does not direct her toward history's most powerful caution ary tale regarding dangerous gifts. Virgil's fear of the Greeks bearing gifts is nowhere to be found in Rhetoric and the Gift, which obscures the possibil ity that even the gift left at the city gates may bring brutality long before the technical apparatus of rhetoric. (Those who attended the tribute panel will not soon forget John Poulakos's artful present to Mari Lee: a wooden horse with a retractable ribbon in its mouth bearing forty Greek words— one for each warrior hidden inside the Trojan gift—illustrating the continuity of Indo-European etymology.) Mifsud describes how Homer's "song-like speech is his well-recognized gift to the civic world" (p. 33). His call to Aristotle is "imaginative, inventive, and ingenious" (p. 33). In it, all manner of goods— hospitality, friendship, love (p. 86), honor (p. 103), and equity (p. 107)—maybe discovered. This view of gifting is irresistibly hopeful. To conclude, I submit that Mifsud's book is a masterful analysis of Homeric traces in the rhetorical tradition that continue to exert influence to this day. I would contend, how ever, that her reading of the gift, together with its implications for rhetoric, overlooks those aspects of gifting that are inflected with other rhetorical impul ses: fear, enmity, and coercion. E. Johanna Hartelius, University of Pittsburgh Silvia Gastaldi, Aristotele. Retorica, Introduzione, traduzione e commento, Roma, Carocci 2014 (ristampa 2017) ISBN: 9788843074198; Maria Fernanda Ferrini, [Aristotele]. Retorica ad Alessandro, Milano, Bompiani 2015. ISBN: 9788845279249 Nell'ampia messe di studi sulla retorica greca e latina prodotti negli ultimi decenni un posto di rilevo occupano senza dubbio quelli dedicati alie prime Technai rhetorikai consérvate, la Retorica di Aristotele e la Retorica ad Alessandro. Reviews 97 Per la collana Classici di Carocci Editore, Silvia Gastaldi ha curato una nuova edizione délia Retorica aristotélica, con testo greco, traduzione ita liana ed ampio commento. Nell'introduzione si legge che la Retorica aristo télica "sembra davvero collocarsi al crocevia tra un'impostazione teórica, finalizzata a riflettere sulle modalité attraverso cui si costruisce un discorso persuasivo, qualunque sia il suo ámbito di applicazione, e una prospettiva pragmática, che rinvia alie pratiche comunicative proprie délia città greca, e perciô legate alla realtà fattuale" (p. 14). La consapevolezza del duplice binario lungo il quale si muove Aristotele — quello délia descrizione empirica delle pratiche del discorso del mondo reale e quello délia teorizzazione di un modello scientifico di retorica filosófica - anima Lanalisi délia Gastaldi sia nelle pagine introduttive sia nel commento al testo. La studiosa non manca peraltro di sottolineare il debito dello Stagirita nei confronti délia tradizione retorica precedente, che aveva i suoi poli fondamentali nelLinsegnamento dei sofisti da un lato, nella riflessione platónica dall'altro (pp. 10-11). Il testo greco, come specificato in una Nota al testo...
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Abstract
100 RHETORICA Hui Wu, “Guiguzi," China's First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Trans lation and Commentary, Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, xiv + 180 pp. 2016. ISBN: 9780809335268 "Guiguzi," China's First Treatise on Rhetoric: A Critical Translation and Commentary consists of Hui Wu's translation of the classical Chinese text of Guiguzi, accompanied by an introduction to the original text, notes on the translation, and a glossary of the key terms in Guigucian rhetoric. C. Jan Swearingen also contributes a concluding commentary on the similarities and differences among the rhetorics of Guiguzi, the sophists, and the PreSocrates , as well as Plato and Aristotle. This book offers the field a muchneeded direct encounter with indigenous Chinese rhetorical theories and concepts. In the past two decades, both comparative and Chinese rhetorical studies have significantly remapped our sense of "the" rhetorical tradition. Mary Garrett, Xing Lu, Arabella Lyon, LuMing Mao, and C. Jan Swearingen (to name a few) have reinterpreted key Chinese rhetorical concepts, terms, and modes of meaning-making in order not only to understand Chinese rhet oric in its own contexts but also to change the paradigms of rhetorical criti cism in the present age of globalization. However, not much scholarly attention has been paid to translations of classical Chinese treatises. Limited primary textual evidence and inaccurate translation have contributed to ori entalist (mis)readings of Chinese rhetorical theories, in which the Chinese tradition is held to lack rhetorical thinking. Such a deficiency narrative has spurred comparative rhetoricians to study Chinese rhetoric without the bur den of the Eurocentric model, and here I am thinking of Xing Lu's Rhetoric in Ancient China, Fifth to Third Century B.C.E.: A Comparison with Classical Greek Rhetoric. I am also thinking of LuMing Mao in his "Essence, Absence, Useful ness: Engaging Non-Euro-American Rhetorics Interologically." Being well aware of the "paucity of primary texts and inadequate trans lations," Hui Wu allies herself with attempts to remake the Chinese rhetorical tradition (p. 7). In particular, Wu distinguishes the Guigucian rhetoric from Confucian rhetoric. The latter expresses a strong mistrust of eloquence and stresses a strict connection between language use, action, and moral orders. In Wu's estimation, the addition of Guiguzi to the landscape of rhetoric "offers an opportunity for critical studies of an indigenous rhetorical theory and practice excluded from the rhetorical canon in both China and the West" (p. 9). By bringing Guiguzi back into conversations of non-Greco-Roman rhe torics, the translation and commentaries of Wu and Swearingen redefine the scope of rhetoric, innovate with Guigucian rhetorical terms and concepts, and offer us language to think outside of Eurocentric logic and rationality. In order to situate her translation in the sociopolitical context of the orig inal, Wu first takes her readers back to the pre-Qin Warring States period (475-221 BCE). In so doing, she reassesses Guiguzi by critiquing the dominant receptions of the book in both Chinese and Western contexts. While Guiguzi is conventionally seen as a magic book on war strategies, Wu dissociates it from issues of military deployment. According to Wu, although Guiguzi, Master Guigu, is the presumed teacher of the zong-heng practitioners (who Reviews 101 were travelling persuaders famous for eloquent military consultations), his rhetorical theory is "independent" from that of his students, because "the entire treatise [Guiguzi] hardly develops any notions or terminologies directly related to the school's [the zong-heng school's] war strategies" (p. 20). Further, instead of accepting that Guiguzi is unfathomably difficult or enigmatic, Wu portrays it as a "profound theory of rhetoric" (p. 20). Closely related, she rejects the common Western characterization of Guiguzi as a "Chinese Sophistic," as if it intends to teach manipulation and distrust. She further points out that such a Western understanding forces us to understand Guiguzzi in terms of the debate between Plato and the sophists about communi cative ethics. In Wu's English translation, Guiguzi is neither a magic book on military affairs nor a mysterious or deceptive anti-rhetorical doctrine. It is instead a treatise about a rhetorical theory that relies on yin-yang philoso phy, the Dao, and moral doctrines to develop rhetorical tactics for building human...
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Cicerone, de Inventione, 1.18: Iudicatio est, quae ex infirmatione et confirmatione rationis nascitur controversia ↗
Abstract
Cicero, in the early work de ïnventione (1.18), defines what is the hermagorean doctrine of ϰρινόμενον: “the point for the judge’s decision is the issue which arises from the denial (ex infirmatione) and tight assertion of the excuse (et confirmatione rationis)”. The doubts on the authenticity of the text are old, and modern editors delete the reference to the confirmatio. However, most of manuscripts attest the necessity of the confirmation of the defense. Also, confirmatio is that by means of which our speech proceeding in argument adds belief, and authority, and corroboration to our cause (de Inv., 1.34). Moreover Cicero, in Partitiones oratoriae (104), explains that only by continuous refutations between the parties to the proceedings it arises the ϰρινόμενον: this is the rhetorical counterpart of dialectic antilogy. Finally, the early medieval commentaries of the de ïnventione give reason to the firmamentum after the ϰρινόμενον.
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Abstract
Reviews Menegaldi in Ciceronis Rhetorica Glose, Edizione critica a cura di Filippo Bognini, Firenze, SISMEL-Edizioni del Galluzzo 2015, pp. CLII-286. ISBN: 9788884505910 La prestigiosa collana di testi della Société Internazionale per lo Studio del Medioevo Latino (SISMEL) si arricchisce di un nuovo volume, ossia il commento, finora inedito, al De inventione ciceroniano di Menegaldo, un commentatore attivo fra Luítimo scorcio del sec. XI e la prima metá del XII secolo. L'edizione è curata magistralmente, per rigore e per ampiezza di riferimenti utili anche a ulteriori ricerche e/o edizioni, da Filippo Bognini (d'ora in poi B.), un giovane ricercatore dell'Universitá Ca' Foscari di Vene zia, studioso della tradizione grammaticale e retorica medievale e umanistica (sua peraltro la recente edizione critica del Breviarium de dictamine di Alberico di Montecassino). La figura di Menegaldo (dai manoscritti risultano le diciture Menegaldus , Menegaudus, Manegaldus o Mainegaldus, d'ora in poi M.) si colloca a un punto di svolta nella storia della cultura scolastica, e in particolare della tradizione retorica del Basso Medioevo. Fra la seconda metà dell'XI e il XII secolo - quando le nuove esigenze della scena politica, del diritto e delle controversie teologiche fanno si che il dibattito pubblico e dottrinario trovi un più vivace contesto pratico di applicazione - si registra un forte impulso all'istruzione sistemática delle arti della scrittura (artes dictaminis o artes dictandi ) e in generale della retorica, impulso che comporta un rinnovato inter esse per il De inventione e la Rhetorica ad Herennium, entrambe ritenute auténticamente ciceroniane e rispettivamente note anche come Rhetorica Vêtus e Rhetorica Nova (sulla ricezione medievale della retorica ciceroniana il rinvio obbligato resta la messa a punto del volume, a cura di V. Cox e J. O. Ward, The Rhetoric of Cicero in its Medieval and Early Renaissance Com mentary Tradition, Leiden, Brill, 2006). Tale interesse trova adesso la sua principale espressione testuale nella forma delle glose: un apparato continuo di note a commento del senso e della lettera del testo, pubblicato - ben diversamente dalla mise en page Carolina del commento, caratterizzata da note a margine del testo e/o interlinean - su un supporto autonomo dal testo commentato ma formalmente collegato ad esso proprio dai "lemmi" costituiti dalle prime parole della frase o del parágrafo volta per volta presi in esame. Rhetorica, Vol. XXXVI, Issue 1, pp. 92-102. ISSN: 0734-8584, electronic ISSN: 1533-8541.© 2018 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct aU requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press s Reprints and Permissions web page, http:/ /www.ucpress. edu/joumals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2018.36.L92. Reviews 93 Al nome di M. sono riconducibili una serie di commenti, alcuni perduti (fra gli altri un commento ai Salmi), altri pervenutici in maniera piú o meno cospicua (fra cui glosse alie Metamorfosi di Ovidio e all'Ars poética di Orazio). Secondo alcuni autorevoli studiosi questo autore potrebbe identificarsi con il polemista Manegoldo di Lautenbach, attivo nellXI secolo in area francotedesca come esponente del movimento noto come "riforma gregoriana". Pur sembrando a B. questa identificazione plausibile, a suo giudizio gli elementi finora raccolti sono insufficient! per esprimersi categóricamente in modo favorevole. Dalle indagini di B. sul milieu di circolazione delle opere di M. e da un accurato esame delle fonti del testo édito, comunque, emerge il profilo intellettuale di un autore di area non italiana, gravitante in area franco-tedesca, buon conoscitore del canone degli autori classici (in particolare Sallustio, Virgilio, Lucano, Terenzio, Orazio e Ovidio), che leggeva Cicerone verosímilmente per un capitolo di canonici, attualizzando il testo con esempi pratici legati alia loro vita quotidiana. Al di la delle questioni biografiche - sulle quali il lavoro di B. fomisce comunque un rilevante contributo - per la ricostruzione della tradizione reto rica (e scolastica) medievale conta di piú il fatto che M. rappresenta uno dei piú illustri esponenti di una dotta e impegnata schiera di commentatores, capace di rinnovare la tradizione esegetica dei testi degli auctores classici, awalendosi in particolare della forma-commento, continua e lemmatica, delle glose. Per quanto riguarda...
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Abstract
This essay situates the political thought of the French Renaissance prose writer Jean Bodin within the dual tradition of political theory and epideictic rhetoric. Bodin’s pragmatic reappraisal of superstition, as a bulwark against atheism and anarchy, represents a sort of convergence of paradoxical encomium and political realism in the service of religious pluralism and pacification of civil war. When juxtaposed with his more famous predecessor Niccolò Machiavelli and more renowned contemporary Michel de Montaigne, Bodin’s treatment of superstition, both in his vernacular masterpiece Les six livres de la République and in his neo-Latin works, emerges as a timely intervention in confessional strife and a classical adaptation of epideictic wisdom.
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Rhetoric and the Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Contemporary Communication by Mari Lee Mifsud ↗
Abstract
94 RHETORICA capacita di attualizzare; le osservazioni etimologiche e filologiche e, infine, il ricorso al commento "interno" del testo, commentare cioé il de inventione col de inventione stesso (e, in 7 casi, con la Rhetorica ad Herennium). A seguiré si trova un esame sistemático della tradizione manoscritta del commento (cap. 3) e un'analisi delle relazioni tra i manoscritti (cap. 4). Nella costituzione del testo B. distingue due recensiones, alpha (costituita da cinque manoscritti, il cui piú importante é Túnico integro: H) e beta (sostanzialmente un solo manoscritto : T), ma quella che viene pubblicata in effetti é la recensio alpha, Túnica riconducibile integralmente direttamente a M., mentre beta é sostantanzialmente un collage di piú commenti, incluso quello di M. presente in alpha. Questa sezione si conclude con una Bibliografía selezionata e una Nota al testo, nella quale si rende conto dei criteri di presentazione del testo cri tico. Nella seconda parte del volume si trova il testo critico vero e proprio delle glose. II testo viene presentato da M. in una facies continua; inoltre, per agevolare la lettura, é stato formattato con capoversi e paragrafi facendo riferimento alia divisione in libri, capitoli e paragrafi del de inventione secondo Tedizione teubneriana di E. Stroebel. Gli apparati in calce al testo sono tre. II primo é l'apparato critico vero e proprio, di tipo positivo (nel quale cioé viene in primo luogo presentata la variante accolta nel testo cri tico); nel secondo e nel terzo si trovano soltanto alcuni cenni relativi rispettivamente alie fonti e alia fortuna (entrambi questi aspetti vengono piú ampiamente trattati nel cap. 2 dei Prolegomena). Chiude il volume una doppia serie di indici: quella dei manoscritti e quella dei nomi. Francesco Caparrotta, Bagheria (Palermo) Mari Lee Mifsud, Rhetoric and the Gift: Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Contemporary Communication (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2015), 186pp. ISBN: 9780820704852 Mari Lee Mifsud's elegant and illuminating excavation of the Homeric references in Aristotle's rhetorical theory demonstrates the enduring value of the notion of the gift for the study of rhetoric. It compellingly introduces an alternative metaphor to the familiar logics of rhetoric as an economy, a war, or a cheap trick. In so doing, it not only offers contemporary rhetoricians a ver satile hermeneutic that connects rhetorical scholarship to other academic pro jects but also reminds us of rhetoric's centrality in the social choreography of Aristotle's time as well as our own. The present review of Rhetoric and the Gift is inspired and informed by a 2016 tribute panel, organized by Marie-Odile Hobeika for the National Communication Association's annual conference, during which panelists Jane S. Sutton, John Poulakos, Nathan A. Crick, and myself offered commentary and critique. Explicating classical poiesis in rhetorike, Mifsud traces the concept of the gift (and gifting) in two interdependent registers: the gift of the pre-figuration Reviews 95 call that demands a response, and, second, the gift in the response, articulated through figuration. With attention to the registers' tension, she challenges Maicel Mauss s widely cited sociological study, which characterizes gifting as a hierarchical negotiation of power through "prestations," the metainstitutional practices that compel gift recipients "to make a return." Mifsud asks, "Can we imagine giving, not figured through cycles of obligatory return?" (p. 143). In her response to this question, we have the essence of Mifsud's contribution to rhetorical theory, for she "explores rhetoric not only at the level of the artful response hut [also] at the level of the call and response, or said another wav, at the level of the gift and rhetoric prior to and in excess of art" (p. 3). To develop the idea of rhetoric as the gift that exceeds art, Mifsud invokes Diane Davis s "preoriginary' rhetoricitv," the non-relation in which a call to "inessential solidarity " is issued. This call is by definition from an Other; or it may come as a gift from far aw ay and long ago. Like Davis, Mifsud hopes that "the theory of the gift offers a theory' of human solidarity" (p. 4), as long as it is able to resist the practices that conventionally define rhetoric: strategy, persuasion, deliberation, and consensus. Homer's gift to rhetoric, to Aristotle...
June 2018
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L’écriture des traités de rhétorique des origines à la Renaissance éd. par Sophie Conte, Sandrine Dubel ↗
Abstract
324 RHETORICA claim that "Despite his ambivalence with regard to rhetoric, Milton remain ed loyal in many respects to the tradition of the rhetoric handbooks, of Wilson, Peacham and Puttenham, on which he and his generation, in educa tional terms, were raised" (29), a claim repeated in various ways through out. I can think of no reason whatsoever to assume that Milton depended on English vernacular summaries of classical rhetoric unless it be that Lynch is relying on an outdated narrative about English Renaissance rhetoric. In reality, these English vernacular texts were so meagerly published as to make virtually no contribution to early education; neither were these texts included in any university curricula (Green 74-76). This is not to say that Lynch's 27-page bibliography does not already include many of the author itative texts for her discussion, yet other texts are missing, such as recent work on Milton and rhetoric by William Pallister and James Egan or Stephen B. Dobranski's magisterial summary of earlier Samson Agonistes criticism. But one might work forever to produce the perfect book. In the one that we have here, Lynch makes some original contributions to various conversations. Historians of rhetoric with an interest in her topics or period may well find in her text some new directions for those conversations. Stephen B. Dobranski, A Variorum Commentary on the Poems of John Milton: Volume 3, Samson Agonistes, intro. Archie Burnett, ed. P. J. Klemp (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 2009). James Egan, "Oratory and Animadversion: Rhetorical Signatures in Milton's Pam phlets of 1649," Rhetorica 27 (2009): 189-217. James Egan, "Rhetoric and Poetic in Milton's Polemics of 1659-60," Rhetorica 31 (2013): 73-110. Lawrence D. Green, “Grammatica Movet: Renaissance Grammar Books and Elocutio," in Peter L. Oesterreich and Thomas O. Sloane, eds., Rhetorica Movet: Studies in Historical and Modern Rhetoric in Honour or Heinrich F. Plett (Leiden: Brill, 1999), 73-115. William Pallister, Between Worlds: The Rhetorical Universe of Paradise Lost (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2008). Daniel Shore, Milton and the Art of Rhetoric (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). Jameela Lares The University of Southern Mississippi L écriture des traités de rhétorique des origines à la Renaissance, textes édités par Sophie Conte et Sandrine Dubel, Ausonius, Scripta Antiqua 87, Bordeaux 2016, 241 pages. ISBN: 9782356131614 Ce livre, qui rassemble 11 contributions, traite un sujet qui est souvent abordé dans les ouvrages sur la rhétorique de manière indirecte ou margi nale . 1 écriture des traités de rhétorique, c'est-à-dire leur forme et leur style. Reviews 325 L idée majeure est qu il y a à la fois homologie entre le fond et la forme et contamination de la forme par le fond. Posée au début de Pouvrage avec une citation de Boileau - traducteur et éditeur du Traité du sublime au XVIIe siècle . « Souvent il fait la figure qu'il enseigne et, en parlant du sublime, il est lui-même très sublime », cette idée se décline sur différents plans : la composition des traités, leur mode d énonciation, les métaphores récurren tes, la place des citations et des exemples. Sont pris en compte à la fois les traités grecs et les traités latins, l'ordre suivi étant l'ordre chronologique, avec successivement des articles sur la Rhétorique à Alexandre, Démétrios (le Pseudo-Démétrios de Phalère), la Rhétorique à Hérennius, le De oratore de Cicéron, Denys d'Halicarnasse, le Traité du sublime, Quintilien, Fronton, les Progymnasmata d'Aphthonios, Martianus Capella, et enfin, sur un plan un peu différent et en guise d'ouverture finale, des traités de poétique de la Renaissance. Il y a nécessairement des manques, comme Isocrate, Aristote ou les autres traités de Cicéron, mais ces textes sont pris en compte à propos d'autres traités ; et surtout, l'introduction générale y pallie en présentant l'ensemble de la production rhétorique. Notons que la bibliographie, pré sentée à la fin de chaque article, est à jour et véritablement multilingue. L'Introduction, due à Sophie Conte, est...
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The World of Tacitus’ Dialogus de Oratoribus: Aesthetics and Empire in Ancient Rome by Christopher S. van den Berg ↗
Abstract
Reviews Christopher S. van den Berg, The World of Tacitus' Dialogus de Orato ribus: Aesthetics and Empire in Ancient Rome, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014. 344 pp. ISBN: 9781107020900 If, as Ronald Syme remarked, "Tacitus gives little away," this is espe cially true for the Dialogus de Oratoribus.1 Elusive as Tacitus is in his historical works, he is more so in the Dialogus: Tacitus himself plays no real role in the dialogue (unlike Cicero, who sometimes appeared in his own dialogues), and readers have long puzzled over which speaker, if any, wins the day or repre sents Tacitus. The enigmatic character of the Dialogus has led to a variety of readings, most of which seek to pinpoint either a single argument or a single speaker as embodying the text's positive message. Each of these readings faces inter- and intratextual difficulties, as Christopher S. Van den Berg amply demonstrates in this volume. Rather than seek to resolve these tensions by identifying a particular speaker with Tacitus or describing an argument or speech as more persuasive, van den Berg argues that the "manifold contradic tions" (p. 124) within and across the speeches are, in fact, intentional and pro ductive features of the dialogue. In grappling with these tensions, along with the intertextual and intratextual dimensions of the work, van den Berg deve lops an interpretive approach that he terms "argumentative dynamics," an approach rooted in the very dialogue(s) that van den Berg studies. The result is an original and deeply learned approach to a perplexing and important text. The book consists of seven substantive chapters, along with an introduc tion, conclusion, and appendix featuring a detailed, outline of the Dialogus. Chapter 1 focuses on the first set of speeches (Aper and Messalla), weaving this analysis together with an overview of Tacitus' biography, the external and internal dating of the Dialogus, the role of rhetoric and declamation in imperial Rome, the work's Ciceronian engagements, and the dialogue genre. The "argumentative dynamic" interpretive approach is outlined in Chapter 2, where it is contrasted with "persuasion oriented" and "character oriented" (p. 56) approaches. The "persuasion oriented" seeks to describe a speech or set of speeches as being more persuasive than others, while the "character ori ented" seeks to identify a speaker with Tacitus. Both, though, seek to develop a coherent interpretation of the Dialogus according to which a particular 1 Ronald Syme, Tacitus (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958), Vol. II, p. 520. Khetorica, Vol. XXXVI, Issue 3, pp. 320-329. ISSN: 0734-8584, electronic ISSN: 15338541 . © 2018 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http: / /w\nv. ucpress.edu/joumals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.Org/10.1525/rh.2018.36.3.320. Reviews 321 argument or speaker effectively wins. Both approaches face abundant difficul ties: the dialogue is far from the Platonic model, featuring neither Socratic elendms nor deliberative exchange (p. 124), while Tacitus himself undermines his own voice and, in Academic fashion, allows each speaker to subtly under mine the persuasiveness of the others without engaging in direct question and answer. Argumentative dynamics seeks, instead, to explore "how dialogue functions to create and communicate meaning" turning to the text itself to recover "these functional strategies" (p. 94). Reading the Dialogus in light of the dialogue form - and as a literary work rather than a philosophical work, per se - focuses our attention on a number of features, the result of which is a rhetorical-literary reading in which the dialogue's "rhetorical aspects" are in fact the "core message" (p. 95) of the work. Chapters 3, 4, 5, and 6 turn to an interpretation of the Dialogus itself. Interstitial passages are the focus of Chapter 3, in which van den Berg explores the way in which interstices contain "categories which describe the evolution of eloqueutia" (p. 99). Chapter 4 centers on what van den Berg describes as a sort of "rapprochement" (p. 164) between poetry (championed, ostensibly, by Maternus) and oratory (championed by Aper). That is, rather than view Maternus...
May 2018
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Abstract
Book Review| May 01 2018 Review: Passions & Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric, by Jamie Dow Jamie Dow, Passions & Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric ( Oxford University Press) Oxford & New York, 2015. 248 pp. ISBN: 9780198716266 Daniel M. Gross Daniel M. Gross Daniel M. Gross English Department 435 Humanities Instructional Building University of California, Irvine Irvine, California 92697-2650 USA dgross@uci.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2018) 36 (2): 209–211. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2018.36.2.209 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Daniel M. Gross; Review: Passions & Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric, by Jamie Dow. Rhetorica 1 May 2018; 36 (2): 209–211. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2018.36.2.209 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. © 2018 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
April 2018
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Abstract
The following comparison of Cicero’s Verrines with Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign rhetoric reveals the parallelism between these candidates’ stylistic responses to the challenges of novitas, as they turn obstacle into advantage and transform change into tradition. Through similar stylistic means, these candidates demonstrate their unique ability to preserve their respective political communities thanks to their positions as both outsiders and insiders who possess “double vision.” Cicero’s distinctive rhetoric of novitas, which is an enduring contribution to republican politics, is a model for the campaigns of outsider candidates like Obama who seek to sustain, not break with, the classical republican tradition.
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The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric: A Study of the Speeches in Herodotus’ Histories with Special Attention to Books 5–9 by Vasiliki Zali ↗
Abstract
432 RHETORIC A The final topic, that of chapter eight, is lexis, "style." Enos says very lit tle about traditional features of style (e.g., pleonasm, prose rhythm), but dis cusses instead Demosthenes's "stylistic strategy," which consists primarily of what he calls "chiastic contrasting" (191). More than to chiasmus, this seems connected to antithesis, that is, the "polar" or "diametrical" opposi tion between Aeschines and himself. Enos concludes that like Lincoln, Churchill, and King, Demosthenes raised political oratory to a literary art and created a speech perfectly fitted for the political and rhetorical moment. The book could have used some good copy-editing and proof-reading; in particular, the bibliography is not easy to use. It consists of four sections; texts and translation of Demosthenes, translations and studies of Aeschines, studies of Demosthenes, and general studies. The first section is especially difficult: almost all works are under Demosthenes as author, followed by the title, so that if one is looking for X's translation, one needs to remember its exact title (some of the Texas series have the title Demosthe nes: Speeches . . ., whereas others are just Speeches . . .). Dilts's OCT is listed as a translation, as are several commentaries (e.g., Wankel's). One author is "Harris Edward Monroe." Etc. In sum, this book has much of value, especially Walker's chapter. But starting from scratch rather than revising a fifty year old publication might have improved its value. Michael Gagarin The University of Texas Vasiliki Zali. The Shape ofHerodotean Rhetoric: A Study of the Speeches in Herodotus' Histories with Special Attention to Books 5-9. Interna tional Studies in the History of Rhetoric 6. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2015. VIII + 383 pp. ISBN: 9789004278967 This is a well-researched, detailed, and well-presented literary analy sis of the Histories of Herodotus that substantiates the author's claim that the Histories is an under-appreciated contributor to the development of rhetoric in the 5th century. As Zali explains, the intent of the work is "to show that in the Histories there is great interest in the rhetorical situation per se; that speakers are very well aware of the process of manipulating and adapting their arguments to suit the particular audience, and they do so systematically" (3). In this way, Herodotus can be understood as anticipat ing the rhetorical developments of Thucydides and the more theoretically oriented works of both Aristotle and the author of the Rhetoric to Alexan der. The Shape of Herodotean Rhetoric is characterized by the use of specific textual examples to illustrate claims about how the text operates. It also provides an impressive mixture of contextual information that is historical, political, and cultural in scope. These elements are trained on the larger Reviews 433 purpose of "a comprehensive study of particular modes, kinds and effects of speech, exemplified through in-depth discussions of case studies and of the ways these related to two overarching narrative themes: the GrecoPersian polarity and the problem of Greek unity" (31). The focus on these two themes, through the analysis of Herodotus' rhetorical choices, is divided into three sections. In the first section, "Allo cation of Speech," the analysis extends to the impact of the speeches both included and excluded as well as the selective use of both direct and indi rect speech. Zali takes these selections and choices by Herodotus to be rhe torical, choices that are made in order to advance his interpretive and persuasive goals. They are also shown to be empowering for the Greeks as presented in the text and disempowering for the Persians. Zali thus makes a strong case that these choices by Herodotus were not random. As a result, while Cicero and many others have viewed him as the father of history, Herodotus should also be viewed as a significant figure in the development of rhetoric. The text includes an appendix that categorizes all of the debates and conversations in books 5-9 by speaker, addressee and mode of speech (i.e., direct, indirect, and record of a speech act). In the second section of the book, Zali shows that a narrow definition of debate, as consisting only of instances reported as direct speech, yields...
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Abstract
In chapter one of the twelfth book of his Institutio oratoria, Quintilian goes out of his way to defend his meta-rhetorical thesis that only a morally good man can be called an orator. This article argues that, from a logical point of view, his reasoning has many leaks and is ultimately not convincing. What is more, Quintilian seems to have been conscious about the fallaciousness of his own argument. So this article goes on to search for an explanation of his resolution to take upon himself the herculean task to establish the validity of his paradoxical thesis.
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Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies ed. by Cinthia Gannett, John C. Brereton ↗
Abstract
Reviews 437 dianoia (thought) in the Poetics where Aristotle assigns it to his Rhetoric, even though, Bialostosky observes, it occupies, at best, an inferred presence in that work (138). Performing a close and careful rereading of both texts, Bialos tosky concludes that Aristotle's assigning of dianoia to the Rhetoric is evidence of what Bakhtin calls a "hidden polemic" Aristotle conducts with a sophisticinspired "poetics of the utterance" that pre-dated both of these works. This line of argument ultimately leads Bialostosky to something of an unexpected reversal. Where he had earlier argued for a separate discipline, or "art of dialogics," he now perceives that art as but one of many that can be "responsive to the predisciplinary scene of action" (146). Drawing upon the architectonics of Bakhtin's early works, Bialostosky now thinks it possi ble to "refer our sometimes calcified institutionalized disciplines at least to an imagined, reconstructed common world that preceded them and still underwrites them" (147). Such a world is inaccessible, Bialostosky argues, except through the sorts of "radical inquiries" that "Bakhtin and Heidegger undertook in the 1920s" (147). Such a world is inaccessible so long as we think of disciplines as fixed, able to stay within the boundaries drawn for them. For not only does disciplinarity exceed itself in interdisciplinarity, it also discovers a surplus in its predisciplinary origins. And it is here that Bia lostosky sees a particular significance for Bakhtin, whose "dialogic field of discourse [is] broader than the modem disciplines or the ancient ones of rhetoric and dialectic" (82). Heard again as a complete utterance, what questions does Bialostosky's work pose for contemporary inquiry? Does Bakhtin and Voloshinov's inter est in intonation, for example, bear any relevance to our interest in sonic rhetorics? Does Bakhtin's regard for the historical significance of the "per son-idea" connect to recent investigations into the meanings of embodi ment? Is the shift from epistemology to ontology, as posited by the new materialism, reflected in Bialostosky's conception of Bakhtin's architecton ics as predisciplinary? These questions cannot be answered here. But if Bakhtin still speaks to us, as I believe he does, then Bialostosky's essays will serve as exemplary models of how to engage Bakhtin with care, insight, and admirable rigor, and collectively, as an invitation for future dialogues. Frank Farmer University of Kansas Cinthia Gannett and John C. Brereton, eds., Traditions of Eloquence: The Jesuits and Modern Rhetorical Studies, New York: Fordham Uni versity Press, 2016. 444 pp. ISBN: 9780823264537 This book contributes in welcome and valuable ways to the history of rhetoric, the history of education, and current rhetorical pedagogy. It is an 438 RHETORICA enriching read, with provocative and significant theoretical implications. These essays raise important questions concerning central disciplinary issues and make available to both theorists and teachers richly encompass ing and hence highly generative curricular models with wide applicability. I thoroughly enjoyed the time spent perusing these pages and have already begun to draw upon the resources herein to bolster both my own scholar ship and teaching. This Jesuit tradition brings into view a rhetorical para digm that is truly "transdisciplinary" (xv). As the editors acknowledge, the book provides the "first maps of this huge intellectual geography" (xv). Therefore, I look forward to future scholarship on Jesuit contributions to rhetorical theory and pedagogy. Following the three distinct periods of Jesuit education from its beginnings in the sixteenth-century to the present day, the book is divided into three sections: 1) studies of Jesuit rhetorical instruction from 1540, when Ignatius Loyola and friends founded the Society of Jesus, to 1773, when Jesuit education was suppressed by the pope; 2) studies of Jesuit rhetorical education from 1789, when many Jesuits moved to North Ame rica and established colleges and universities, to the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), which marked the end of the rhetoric-centered curricu lum in Jesuit institutions; and 3) studies of developments in rhetorical ins truction in United States' Jesuit higher education from the 1960s to the present. Although some description of the grammar school classroom appears in several early chapters, the primary emphasis of the book is on higher education. Each section contains a loosely...
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Abstract
Reviews James J. Murphy, ed., Demosthenes' On the Crown: Rhetorical Perspec tives, Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2016. 232 pp. ISBN: 9780809335107 This book has a curious history. First published in 1967 by Random House under the title, Demosthenes' On the Crown: A Critical Case Study of a Masterpiece of Ancient Oratory, the exact same work was then republished in 1983 under the same name by Hermagoras Press. The current volume is a "revised version" of the 1983 publication; the 1967 publication is not acknowledged but is mentioned by one author (201, n. 30). The revision consists of a new Introduction by Murphy, five new chap ters (out of eight), and a new half-page epilogue by Murphy. The three retained chapters (from the 1967 publication) are chapter two, a brief sum mary of Aeschines' career followed by a summary of his speech Against Ctesiphon by Donovan Ochs; chapter three, a translation of On the Crown (OTC) by John J. Keaney; and chapter four, a brief structural abstract of OTC by Francis Donnelly, first published in 1941. The five new chapters are chapter one, a background chapter on Demosthenes and his times by Lois Agnew, chapters on Aristotle's three main rhetorical divisions - includ ing chapter five on ethos by David Mirhady, chapter six on pathos by Richard Katula, and chapter seven on logos by Jeffrey Walker - and an eighth chapter on lexis by Richard Enos. The goal of the volume, according to the introduction is to make OTC "come alive"; in more modest terms, the book seems to be aiming to pro vide everything a student unacquainted with the speech might need to appreciate Demosthenes's rhetorical ability and, for more advanced stu dents and scholars, to demonstrate how the principles of Aristotle's Rheto ric can help appreciate the greatness of OTC. In my view, several chapters succeed quite well in accomplishing this latter goal, while several are less successful. In chapter one, "Demosthenes and his Times," Agnew gives a thor ough account of Demosthenes's life and career; she is particularly good at sorting out facts from legends, and she produces a more balanced assess ment than the many pro-Demosthenes accounts. I note only two minor mis takes. On page 25, the three charges Aeschines brought against Ctesiphon's decree are misstated; the first (not having completed his term in office) is Rhetorica, Vol. XXXVI, Issue 4, pp. 430-439. ISSN: 0734-8584, electronic ISSN: 15338541 . © 2018 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http:/ /www. ucpress.edu/joumals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.Org/10.1525/rh.2018.36.4.430. Reviews 431 stated twice (in slightly different forms) and the second (presenting the crown in the theater) is omitted (the correct charges are on 38, 153). And in the Harpalus affair Demosthenes was not tried in the Areopagus but by a popular jury (see 29). Chapters two and three are adequate, though barely so. Ochs's account of Aeschines's career is highly oversimplified, especially after Agnew's more complex treatment, and his summary of the speech is based on the 1928 Bude edition; a few more recent studies could have been noted (espe cially Harris), which are in fact in the bibliography. I cannot see any use for Donnelley's structural abstract, chapter four, which I just find confusing. In chapter five, Mirhady uses Aristotle's view of ethos to understand Demosthenes's sustained and generally successful attempt to portray him self as a good democratic citizen, better than his rival Aeschines. Mirhady is a bit dismayed, however, by the (also successful) use of vitriolic rhetoric to portray Aeschines as a piece of scum. In his final thought, Mirhady cau tions that this "sustained invective should give readers today some uneasi ness about the tendency of democracies to fall under the sway of negative discourse" (126). Mirhadv's concern must be even greater now than it was when his chapter was written. Katula's assignment, chapter six, is pathos. Using Aristotle's theory...
March 2018
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Reviews 209 Jamie Dow, Passions & Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric (Oxford University Press) Oxford & New York, 2015. 248 pp. ISBN9780198716266 Aristotle s Rhetoric has long posed problems of fit, which makes its uptake particularly revealing of the preoccupations that define a historical moment. Where should the Rhetoric be situated in the Corpus Aristotelicuml Is it primarily a practical work in the handbook tradition, or is it supposed to offer a full-blown theory of rhetoric? Should it be approached as a kind of philosophy, or something else entirely, especially since it devotes so much attention to style and passion? Is it even a coherent text to begin with? In his ambitious book, Passions & Persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric, Jamie Dow begins with these basic questions in mind, and he defends a set of interlocking answers that point to the Rhetoric as a serious, philosophical work along the following lines. Aristotle's Rhetoric is primarily a work on argumentation as understood by medieval Arab commentators along with some of our contemporaries including Bumyeat and Allen; it offers a full blown theory of rhetoric opposed to the handbook tradition of Gorgias and Thrasymachus; it is coherent in general and in detail, and it legitimates on philosophical grounds the use of passion in rhetoric. Thus, Dow's project also speaks to our historical moment—broadly postwar—when passions in political life became suspect for good reasons. Few will agree with all of the key claims as laid out by Dow or with each of the demonstrations offered. But it is an outstanding virtue of the book that Dow defends each claim with such care that even objections can be sharpened productively. In what follows, I outline the main arguments and what appears to be at stake. The first page offers the basic argument and a sense of the imperatives that make Dow's book bracing. "The principal claim defended in this book is that, for Aristotle in the Rhetoric, arousing the passions of others can amount to giving them proper grounds for conviction, and hence a skill in doing so is properly part of an expertise in rhetoric. This claim rests on two principal foundations. First, it involves defending the attribution to Aristotle of a norma tive view of rhetoric, centered around its role in the state, in which rhetoric is a skill producing proper grounds for conviction. If the arousal of the passions is part of rhetoric, thus understood, Aristotle must hold, second, a particular view of the passions: he must think they are representational states, in which the subject takes things to be the way they are represented" (p. 1). First Foundation I: this normative view, according to Dow, contrasts sharply with the merely practical understanding of rhetoric held by his pre decessors in the handbook tradition, and it diverges from the Platonic expectation that the orator needs to know the truth about the subject matter. Instead, according to Dow, Aristotle's orator should skillfully grasp plausi ble starting points for the listener's deliberations in the form of reputable opinions" (endoxa) related to the subject at hand (pp- 34—5). So how exactly is the rhetor obligated, and why isn't this obligation arbitrary? Here Dow is careful not to invoke some higher ethical principle. The obligation of the 210 RHETORICA rhetor remains immanent to the skill itself, as it becomes manifest in the context of the state organized along participatory lines. That is to say, rhetoric is by virtue of the world in which it appears as such—originally in the lawcourts and in the political assembly (p. 9). Understood at the most basic level, a rhetor should exercise skill precisely where the subject at hand speaks to the commonplaces and reputable opinions anchored in the state thus consti tuted. This is an important point that Dow wishes to extend beyond Aristotle per se: rhetorical skill has wide value and it must be measured as such (p. 76). Hence Dow gives us an ethos-proof like this: "they believe the things Pericles has said, because they believe Pericles—he himself is what is pistos" (p. 98). And then more formally this example of a pathos-proof: "1.1 register evidence...
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Disability Rhetoric by Jay Timothy Dolmage, and: Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics by Shannon Walters ↗
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Reviews Jay Timothy Dolmage, Disability Rhetoric. Syracuse, New York: Syracuse University Press, 2014. 349 pp. ISBN: 9780815634454 Shannon Walters, Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2014. 257 pp. ISBN9781611173833 Rhetoric is an ability. So begins the blithe Englishing of Aristotle's defi nition of rhetoric. In early translations it appears as a faculty, following the European vernaculars and the Latin translation of Aristotle's dunamis with facultas. Yet even if this translation flattens the complex significance of Aristotle's original sense, it happily brings us within the orbit of pressing problems in our own moment. We may now pose new questions: If rhetoric insists it be thought of as an ability, how might we inflect this idée reçue of the field by thinking through the meaning of rhetoric from a position of disability? This is not a matter of simple inversion. Disability is not the opposite of ability but the suspension of the assumptions of ableism. In this sense, it is like disbelief. We say we are in a 'state of disbelief' precisely when we are presented with incontrovertible evidence that commands assent. Disability rhetoric, then, seeks to illuminate the unreflective assump tions and heuristics that we commonly use to make judgments concerning the conditions and abilities of others. In Disability Rhetoric and Rhetorical Touch: Disability, Identification, Haptics, Jay Timothy Dolmage and Shannon Walters offer book-length elaborations of what such a rhetoric might be. The authors do not simply challenge rhetoric about disability or examine disability advocacy rhetorically, although both these aims are crucial to their projects. The authors argue that a thoroughgoing criticism of ableism requires a reexamination of rhetorical history and theory. The classical tradition's inability to think through bodily difference made it narrower than it otherwise might have been. Quintilian asserted that the limits of rhetorical education could be found in the body of the orator, "for assuredly no one can exhibit proper delivery if he lacks a memory for retaining what he has written or ready facility in uttering what he has to speak extempore, or if he has any incurable defect of utterance." Any such "extraordinary deformity of body ... cannot be remedied by any effort of art" (11.3.10). Unable to think of bodily difference as anything but deformity gave ancient rhetorical theory a Rhetorica, Vol. XXXVI, Issue 2, pp. 205-215. ISSN: 0734-8584, electronic ISSN: 15338541 . © 2018 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www. ucpress.edu/joumals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2018.36.2.205. 206 RHETORIC A false sense of order and precision, erected upon the assumption that audience and orator could be treated as positions within a discourse rather than approa ched within the complexity of situated and contested embodiment. These books can be taken as complementary projects. Dolmage wishes to extend and reinterpret the repertoire and vocabulary of critical rhetoric. Walters focuses on the inventional strategies of disabled persons and their circles. This is not to say that Dolmage neglects invention or Walters criti cism. Disability rhetoric shows the imbrication of criticism and invention, since both rely upon practices of sensitization. We might extract six maxims to serve as guideposts for furthering this critical-inventive program. 1. Modes of communication require invention and shape meaning. The con stitution of communication between Annie Sullivan and Helen Keller in the now famous story of their experience at the water pump (Sullivan hand spelling 'water' in Keller's palm after running water over her hand, marked by Keller as her entry into language) resulted from a pragmatic awareness of possible channels of meaning-making. Walters argues that many of these possibilities reside within touch and her book serves in part as a collection of examples showing the variety and power of haptic communication. Perhaps even more importantly, a disability rhetoric would attend to the way in which the mode of communication constitutes and affects the meaning of the communication. Rather than appealing to the sensus communis...
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Reviews 211 Now for a catalog of some possible objections. Since Dow places sub stantial weight on Rhetoric 1354a 13—"for it is only the proofs that belong to the art, other things are mere accessories" (p. 40)—his interpretation of Aristotle's Rhetoric is admittedly limited (p. 9). Dow can pay little attention to epideictic speech, for instance, or to the bulk of Rhetoric, Book III. At the same time Dow is invested in Aristotle's coherent "theory of the emotions" (p. 145), which obligates him to admittedly strained arguments including some speculation about what Aristotle "should hove said" when it comes to the passionate status of friendship and hostility, for instance (pp. 153-4, italics in the original). More lenient "dialectical investigations" of the pas sionate phenomena in question are studiously avoided when Dow goes to work (p. 145), and thus he is forced to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable. Aristotle's Book I carpenter's rule simile ("for one shouldn't warp the juror by bringing him into anger or envy or pity" as "that would be like someone warping the rule he is about to use" 1354a24-6) knocks up against the entirety of Book II and against Dow's principal claim about the legitimacy of passionate rhetoric. Finally, Dow's normative and representational take on Aristotelian emotion comes at a cost, including a social take on Aristote lian emotion that better explains how social status structures the emotions that Aristotle treats. (Konstan observes how, for instance, "the capacity for anger depends on status, and where power is unevenly distributed between men and women, anger will be similarly asymmetrical"; see The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, p. 60). All this is to say that Dow's philosophical mission has its disadvanta ges from the perspective of rhetoric per se. But I hope it is clear how Dow's orientation toward philosophical precision and coherence offers all sorts of new considerations for non-philosophers as well—far too many to mention in this brief book review. Dow's defense of rhetoric compels anyone inter ested to consider each careful step and conclusion, even if disagreement is the end result. The book thus invites just the sort of passionate deliberation Dow appreciates in Aristotle, and in this way Dow winds up appearing as just the sort of rhetorician he would endorse. Henceforth, scholars working on passion and persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric should look forward to debating Dow, as they will be obligated to do so in any case. Daniel M. Gross, University of California, Irvine Ray, Brian. Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy.Anderson, SC: Parlor Press; Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clear ing house, 2015. 264 pp. ISBN: 9781602356122 When people talk about style in rhetoric and composition, they often view it in dichotomous terms. On the one hand style is often viewed in the context of a very prescriptive grammarian tradition. On the other hand, style is talked about as a form of rhetorical composition. In Style. An 212 RHETORIC A Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, Brian Ray successfully places style in the long history of rhetoric. Alongside Kate Ronald's essay ("Style: The Hidden Agenda in the Composition Classroom," 1999), Paul Butler's book (Out of Style, 2008), and Mike Duncan and Star M. Vanguri's edited collection (The Centrality of Style, 2013), Ray's book may be one of the most important written on style in the last twenty years. Style is broken up into nine chapters and ancillary materials, including a glossary and an annotated bibliography of major works for further reading. With a book that traces the history of style from Ancient Greece through contemporary scholarship on style, it is impossible to fully describe the text, but I will examine several key features of this book. Ray begins his work defining the major threads of stylistic definition and research. Since "style" is used in a multitude of ways (the author calls it "A Cacophony of Definitions"), Ray explores "the major modes of thought" (p. 16) pertaining to style together with their research avenues. For scholars approaching style for the first time, anyone...
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A peculiar feature of the philosophy of Georg Friedrich Meier (1718–1777) lies in its being based on rhetorical principles. We are in front of an important construct that claims for attention in the context of the growing literature on eighteenth<entury rhetoric. The syntagm ‘rhetoricised logic’ indicates a specific function of rhetoric as the basis for rethinking philosophical discourse. The paper shows that Meier’s philosophical programme is consistently based on the trivium. On top of this, the paper compares Meier and Immanuel Kant on the ancient topos of the artes liberales, thus making it clear that the position of Meier can be assessed as a model for a rhetorically founded theory of knowledge, which was transformed and overcome by Kant.
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Reviews 213 concerned primarily with prescriptive correctness. He traces pedagogies that have used these ideas at various times in western schools, but his biggest con tribution is examining theories that challenge this paradigm. For example, feminist stylistics, he contends, challenges the rules of convention. Pointing to the works of Cixous and Kristeva, Ray shows that textual structure and organization should be challenged as points of gendering stylistic choice. The last two chapters are on researching style and teaching style. Ray's chapter on researching style shows that there are still major gaps in the research; for instance, he notes that there have been no ethnographic studies on writing styles to date. Additionally, he describes the use of quantitative methods used to describe style, and data mining to describe stylistic featu res of writing. Beyond this, there are opportunities for research in rhetorical analysis, stylistics, and discourse analysis. The concluding chapter argues for better teaching strategies in the classroom. The fear is that teaching style will not liberate a curriculum but rather enslave it to prescriptive grammar study. Ray assuages these fears with suggestions for incorporating style in the classroom to develop writing, including ways in which classical rhetoric informs writing instruction in current theory. He invites interdisciplinary work in the classroom to discuss style from the perspective of various dis course communities enabling students to see diverse approaches to compo sition. Ray ends the chapter on a hopeful note: "For those teachers who adopt them, these guiding principles bring style out of the shadows of col lege writing classes, helping to improve students' writing while also per haps increasing their satisfaction in producing academic texts required for their success" (p. 219). A significant issue with Ray's book is that it does not quite live up to its lofty claim that "an in-depth, historical, and theoretical understanding of style helps teachers make writing more satisfying and relevant to stu dents" (p. 5). This may be true, but the topic is immense, and this is a rather slim volume. At best, Style is, as the title suggests, an introduction. The chapters do establish a framework for style, but they are not genuinely indepth discussions. However, Brian Ray's Style is an invitation for scholars to fill in those gaps, and I believe this book paves the way helpfully for future research. Robert L. Lively Arizona State University A. Pennacini, Discorsi eloquenti da Ulisse a Obama e oltre, Seconda edizione riveduta e corretta, Alessandria: Edizioni dell Orso, 2017 (I ed., 2015), 592 pp. ISBN 9788862746090. Adriano Pennacini é stato uno dei precursori, nell'universitá italiana, del tentativo di intrecciare lo studio delTantica técnica retorica con gli studi classici e con le nuove discipline della comumcazione. Presidente della 214 RHETORICA International Society for the History of Rhetoric dal 1991 al 1993, ha affidato a un corposo volume un 'eloquente' saggio del suo método di analisi della comunicazione persuasiva, che spazia dalla prima 'retorica' omerica fino a quella del (penúltimo) Presidente degli Stati Uniti d'America e comprende nell'oltre del titolo un esempio della origínale eloquenza di Jorge Bergoglio, papa Francesco. Raccolte di discorsi non mancano nelle biblioteche degli studiosi di retorica. Attingendo alia rinfusa in quella personale (assolutamente parziale e selettiva), posso ricordare: F. Sallustio, Belle parole. I grandi discorsi della storia dalla Bibbia a Paperino, Milano: Bompiani 2004 (anche in questo caso, una diacronicitá quasi esaustiva); G. Pedullá (cur.), Parole al potere. Discorsi politici italiani, Milano: Rizzoli, 2011; C. Ellis, S. Drury Smith (eds.), Say it Plain. A Century of Great African American Speeches, New York-London: The New Press, 2005; C.M. Copeland, Farewell Goodspeed. The Greatest Eulogies of Our Time, New York: Harmony Books, 2003; C. Knorowski (ed.), Gettysburg Replies. The World Respond to Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, Guilford, Connecticut: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Raccolte importanti (e ne ho elencate davvero pochissime fra le tante circolanti nelle varié parti del mondo), che offrono testi accompagnati spesso da riflessioni e inquadramenti generali, ma che difficilmente si prefiggono e realizzano lo scopo che ha avuto in mente Pennacini nel raccogliere discorsi anti chi e moderni accompagnati ciascuno da prove di analisi: quello, cioé, di«mostrare la durata...
February 2018
December 2017
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Reviews Cristina Pepe, The Genres of Rhetorical Speeches in Greek and Roman Antiquity. International Studies in the History of Rhetoric 5. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2013. xviii + 618 pp., ISBN: 978-90-04-24984-4 When I review a book that is of high quality, I like to read it twice before submitting the review. That does not excuse the inordinate length of time it has taken me to review Cristina Pepe's Genres of Rhetorical Speeches, for which I apologise to the author, but it immediately indicates my admiration for the book. I shall outline its contents, before making a few observations, all of which are offered in a constructive spirit. The book consists (suitably, given its theme) of three parts, followed by an extensive list of Testimonia, an Appendix, Bibliography, Index of Greek and Latin Terms, Index Locorum, and a General Index. Part One covers the fifth and fourth centuries, opening with an overview of the contexts of speechmaking in Greece and, of course, in particular Athens. Separate chapters address the practice of the Sophists (with an inevitable focus on Gorgias and the Helen, supplemented by observations on the ori gins of the praise speech); Thucydides (deliberative oratory, with an anal ysis of the Mytilenean Debate in Book 3); Plato (analyses of the Gorgias, Phaedrus and Sophist, and of Plato's conception of advice and praise); Isocrates (in particular how he defines his logoi); Demosthenes (his distinc tion between deliberative and judicial); and, in greater detail, the Rhetoric to Alexander (with a discussion of genres and species, and of the connected and complex ascription of the treatise to Anaximenes, without committing herself either way). Part Two is of roughly the same length as Part One, but focuses on one author only: Aristotle. Rhetorical development, including in the Rhetorica ad Alexandrian, all led to the Rhetoric, which for Pepe was Greek rhetoric's 'crowning theoretical achievement' (p. 123; I note that this repeats the earlier judgment of Laurent Pernot in the English translation of his Rhetoric in Antiquity, 'the crowning achievement of rhetorical theory in Classical Greece', p. 41), though the dates of composition of the Rhetoric to Alexander and the Rhetoric were not necessarily linear. Most will not quib ble with Pepe's concentration on the Rhetoric, even if we need to bear in mind Pernot's assessment that 'this treatise full of novel views was rela tively little read in antiquity' (Rhetoric in Antiquity p. 44). Pepe examines Rhetorica, Vol. XXXV, Issue 1, pp. 110-120. ISSN: 0734-8584, electronic ISSN: 1533-8541.© 2017 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http: / /www.ucpress. edu/joumals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2017.35.L110. Reviews 111 the system of genres in the Rhetoric in minute and instructive detail, pay ing a great deal of attention to epideictic, which Rhetoric scholars agree Aristotle introduced 'as a genre in its own right' (p. 144), but also indicat ing the 'aspects of originality with respect to tradition' of his treatment of the deliberative genre (p. 159). Very helpful chapters on the different topics that are used in the three genres (Chapter Twelve), and on the style and arrangement of the genres (Chapter Thirteen), precede a final chapter in this Part on the relatively little-studied treatise, the Divisiones Aristoteleae. Part Three takes us through the Hellenistic period and into Rome (the title Rhetorical Genres in the Hellenistic and Imperial Ages' perhaps does not do full justice to the material on the Roman Republican period). This might be thought the least satisfying of the three parts, not because of any lack of knowledge, hut simply because it covers, inevitably in less detail, such a wide range of material, in Greek and Tatin, from Hellenistic theory to the proyyninasmata and declamation (Chapter Twenty). There is thus no individual chapter on Cicero or Quintilian, rather an approach that looks at topics from a combined Greek and Roman angle, such as the vocabulary used for each of the three genres...
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112 RHETORICA 55-70); and it is misleading to state (p. 244) that the Roman Senate was made up of 'the heads of the leading patrician families and ex-magistrates' (patrician exclusivity only applies to the regal and early Republican period, while serving magistrates were also members). I attribute the erroneous dat ing of PHib 26 'to the 3rd century AD' to a simple typographical error, as the following '(ca 285-250 BC)' shows. The English translator, along with the readers noted in the Acknowledgements, is to be congratulated on produc ing a flowing text, though occasional extraneous use of the definite article remains (e.g. the title of 11.5 does not need 'The' at the start, nor does 'stasis theory' on p. 347 require a preceding article) and there are some other infe licities ('Trials were indicted by a magistrate', p. 246; 'How do the Greeks call this?', p. 486; use of 'we' instead of 'I', as 'We prefer', p. 396). Finally, some might wonder about the absence of a discussion of the situation pre fifth century. This is a remarkable first book. I would expect a scholar whose PhD was supervised by Luigi Spina to be of the first rank, and Cristina Pepe cer tainly is that. The book is the fifth in the ISHR series of International Studies in the History of Rhetoric edited by Laurent Pernot and Craig Kallendorf. Since this review is by the current (as I write) President of ISHR for ISHR's journal Rhetorica, there might seem to be a risk of nepotism. I would counter that no reviewer could do full justice to a book of this size and cov erage, with its meticulous philological and rhetorical scholarship. In my opinion it is eminently worthy both of the series and of the Society, and it will, I am sure, remain a key textbook in the study of classical rhetorical genres for many years to come. Mike Edwards, University of Roehampton, London Jacques-Emmanuel Bernard, La sociabilité épistolaire chez Cicéron, Paris: Honoré Champion, 2013. 641 pp. ISBN 978-2-7453-2591-4 Bien qu'immense, la bibliographie cicéronienne a donné lieu à peu de monographies portant spécifiquement sur les lettres de Cicéron (p. 14). Certains se sont intéressés à la correspondance comme source d'informa tion sur l'histoire et la civilisation romaines (Deniaux, 1993; Ioannatou, 2006) ou sur la personnalité de Cicéron et son environnement sociocultu rel (Boissier, 1865; Carcopino, 1947), d'autres comme support pour l'étude de la langue, de la grammaire et du style cicéroniens (Bomecque, 1898; Monsuez, 1949) (p. 14-7), ou pour s'interroger sur le statut littéraire de la lettre, ses spécificités structurelles et ses aspects textuels et rhétoriques (Wistrand, 1979; Hutchinson, 1998) (p. 18). D'autres enfin ont pris en considération les règles sociales qui déterminent les relations entre Cicéron et d'autres hom mes politiques romains, relations sur lesquelles se fonde sa correspondance (Hall, 2009; White, 2010) (p. 19—20). C'est dans ce cadre bibliographique que Reviews 113 Jacques-Emmanuel Bernard situe son objectif: prendre la pratique épistolaire comme objet d'étude en soi en étudiant de manière plus systématique la correspondance cicéronienne comme un tout, pour montrer comment elle s organise à la fois comme pratique sociale et pratique discursive. D'où le titre même du livre: Lu sociabilité épistolaire chez Cicéron (p. 20). Pour ce faire, il se sert des concepts et de la terminologie de la rhétorique antique (p. 23), en s'intéressant particulièrement à la doctrine du décorum (« convenable »), afin d'analyser selon quels principes élémentaires Cicéron dans ses lettres adapte son langage aux données sociales qui déterminent sa relation avec chaque cor respondant (p. 25; voir p. 25-7). La rhétorique est donc au cœur de l'étude de J.-E. Bernard, qui s'oppose ainsi à une partie très importante des études cicéroniennes - pour lesquelles les lettres sont le lieu de l'intimité et de la spontanéité -, et met en lumière les contraintes sociales et les...
November 2017
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A complex definition of the figure, anadiplosis, develops in the tradition that runs from ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians up to sixteenth-century continental rhetorical theorists such as Susenbrotus. Drawing on and enriching this tradition, the English rhetoricians of Shakespeare's day defined the figure as the repetition of the word or words with which one phrase or line ends, at or near the beginning of the succeeding phrase or line. A series of anadiploses was understood to make for a gradatio (or climax). Having been schooled in these and other definitions of the tropes and figures, Shakespeare implements anadiplosis, as well as the rhetoricians’ rich metaphorical description of it, in his text. In so doing, he enhances his representation of people who are impassioned, thoughtful, witty, deranged, and ridiculous. In keeping with the rhetoricians’ recognition of the polysemy of the figure, Shakespeare also implements this figure to narrate events and make some of them seem inevitable (usually in history and tragedy) and others unlikely (usually in comedy). The Shakespearean script also frequently includes dialogic anadiplosis: the sharing of the figure by two speakers. In this form, it plays a significant role in Shakespeare's creation of authentic dialogue.
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Review: [Quintilian] The Son Suspected of Incest with His Mother («Major Declamations», 18–19), by Bé Breij ↗
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Book Review| November 01 2017 Review: [Quintilian] The Son Suspected of Incest with His Mother («Major Declamations», 18–19), by Bé Breij Bé Breij, [Quintilian] The Son Suspected of Incest with His Mother («Major Declamations», 18–19), Edizioni Università di Cassino, Cassino 2015, pp. 612. ISBN: 9788883170577 Mario Lentano Mario Lentano Università di Siena Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2017) 35 (4): 475–477. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2017.35.4.475 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Mario Lentano; Review: [Quintilian] The Son Suspected of Incest with His Mother («Major Declamations», 18–19), by Bé Breij. Rhetorica 1 November 2017; 35 (4): 475–477. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2017.35.4.475 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. © 2017 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
August 2017
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The Artistry of Civil Life: Deliberative Rhetoric and Political Pedagogy in the Work of Nicolaus Vernulaeus (1583–1649)* ↗
Abstract
Attempting to re-invigorate classical deliberative oratory, the Leuven professor of rhetoric Nicolaus Vernulaeus developed a new kind of political eloquence adapted to the needs of counsellors and diplomats working in the service of a monarch. In the present article we shall highlight his largely forgotten contribution to late humanist rhetorical theory and practice. We shall try to show that his rhetorical programme was based on a cogent, pointedly rhetorical view of political life. By analyzing the student orations which were composed under his guidance and subsequently published by him, we shall furthermore try to demonstrate that his training programme was consistent and practical, some striking discrepancies between theory and practice notwithstanding.
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Abstract
Book Review| August 01 2017 Review: Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise, by Laurent Pernot Laurent Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. xiv, 166 pp. ISBN 978-1-4773-1133-2 Brad L. Cook Brad L. Cook University of Mississippi Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2017) 35 (3): 370–372. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2017.35.3.370 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Brad L. Cook; Review: Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise, by Laurent Pernot. Rhetorica 1 August 2017; 35 (3): 370–372. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2017.35.3.370 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. © 2017 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2017 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
June 2017
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The Artistry of Civil Life. Deliberative Rhetoric and Political Pedagogy in the Work of Nicolaus Vernulaeus (1583–1649) ↗
Abstract
Attempting to re-invigorate classical deliberative oratory, the Leuven professor of rhetoric Nicolaus Vernulaeus developed a new kind of political eloquence adapted to the needs of counsellors and diplomats working in the service of a monarch. In the present article we shall highlight his largely forgotten contribution to late humanist rhetorical theory and practice. We shall try to show that his rhetorical programme was based on a cogent, pointedly rhetorical view of political life. By analyzing the student orations which were composed under his guidance and subsequently published by him, we shall furthermore try to demonstrate that his training programme was consistent and practical, some striking discrepancies between theory and practice notwithstanding.
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Abstract
370 RHETORICA Graban finds that she is unable to delineate Gougar's affiliations as stable and permanent because her relationships with other suffragists and politicians evolved throughout her life. And lastly, class-consciousness as the organizing topoi allows Graban to "complicate the language surrounding ... the middle class lens [typically used] to view social uplift in Gougar's work" (p. 154). In her final chapter, Graban presents more textual examples of irony through a critical frame—one from Golda Meir, prime minster of Israel, one from Madeline Albright, American diplomat, and another from Barbara Jordan, investigator of the Watergate Scandal. Although some might think Graban falls into the trap of "tokenism," whereby examples of a few stand in for all women, she works against it as she selects archives based on their ironic potential and qualities. Furthermore these archives are situated panhistorically so as not to essentialize women or their writings as representative of a specific place or time. In addition to alleged "tokenism," some might find fault with the scant textual evidence taken from Anne Askew's archive in chapter one. Yet, these critics should keep in mind the erasure of women's rhetoric throughout the Renaissance and employ their critical imagination to reconsider the potential for the evidence that does exist.2 It is also important to note that Graban not only examines textual evidence, she also employs "historical residue" as evidence—residue that includes: organizing topoi, intersecting contexts, and the positioning of audiences. Graban's scholarship resets the terms of scholarly engagement for those working in the field of rhetoric and history by resituating irony and using it to destabilize historical narratives and the ways in which these nar ratives are remembered. Tiffany Kinney, University of Utah, Salt Lake City Laurent Pernot, Epideictic Rhetoric: Questioning the Stakes of Ancient Praise, Austin: University of Texas Press, 2015. xiv, 166 pp. ISBN 978-1-4773-1133-2 In 1993 Pernot's highly acclaimed, two-volume work, La rhétorique de l'éloge dans le monde gréco-romain appeared. In 2012 at the meeting of the Rhetoric Society of America, with ISHR sponsorship, Pernot conducted a three-day seminar on epideictic for twenty participants (among whom was the current reviewer). Using the format of the seminar but drawing content from his earlier book, Pernot has now produced a concise but 2 J. J. Royster and G. Kirsch, Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition and Literacy Studies (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2012), 72-73. ' Reviews 371 example-packed history, analytical summary, and contextualizing assessment of the theoretical treatises and actual speeches of ancient Greco-Roman epideictic rhetoric. Two questions drive the presentation: (1) How was it that epi deictic, originally the minor player in the famous trio of judicial, deliberative, and epideictic, acquired the far-and-away dominant role of the three in the Imperial age? and (2), What, in fact, was that role? Through an impressive breadth and depth of reading and a precise deployment of select ancient sour ces, Pernot shows how "every encomium is at once a literary work, a moral problem, and a social rite" (ix). In Chapter 1, "The Unstoppable Rise of Epideictic" (1-28), Pernot surveys the meager evidence for epideictic texts from Classical Greece to Republican Rome (1-9). Epideictic was, in those centuries, something of a sidecar to the normally stand-alone two wheels of deliberative and judicial oratory. Yet, as the chapter title suggests, the epideictic sidecar will "tri umph" (9) in the Imperial period, and the path of that triumph is delineated in the rest of the chapter (9-23). The conclusion? The Imperial period, for the whole of that Greco-Roman world—especially in Greek—"was the begin ning of a new rhetorical world order, in which oratory served no longer to rip apart an adversary or to cow an assembly, but to spread honeyed praise and trumpet meritorious conduct with previously unparalleled frequency and variety" (28). Chapter 2, "The Grammar of Praise," (29-65) surveys the methods and means of epideictic in light of the teaching texts that survive, drawing espe cially from Menander Rhetor, but Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle are also quoted and even Aelius...
April 2017
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The Art of Listening in the Early Church by Carol Harrison, and: Paul and Ancient Rhetoric: Theory and Practice in the Hellenistic Context by Stanley D. Porter, Bryan R. Dyer, and: Eloquent Wisdom: Rhetoric, Cosmology and Delight in the Theology of Augustine of Hippo by Mark F. M. Clavier ↗
Abstract
Reviews 477 e una vasta messe di rimandi a loci paralleh interni ed esterni alia scrittura declamatoria; non ce virtualmente passaggio, giro di frase o singólo termine rilevante che non sia puntualmente delucidato o del quale non si dibattano le possibili interpretazioni. Infine, la vasta bibliografía che chiude il volume dà conto dello scrupolo documentado di B. e offre ogni possibile sussidio per ampliare la prospettiva di ricerca sui due pezzi pseudo-quintilianei e in generale sulla declamazione latina. In conclusione, è lecito vedere nel volume di B. non solo il frutto maturo di un lucido e coerente percorso di ricerca dell'autrice, ma anche e soprattutto il punto di partenza e la pietra di paragone irrinunciabili di ogni futura ricerca sulle due declamazioni e sulla gamma di questioni délia piú varia natura che esse, come tutti i testi giunti a noi dalla scuola latina, pongono alio studioso e al lettore moderno. Mario Lentano Universitá di Siena Christianizations of Rhetoric Carol Harrison, The Art of Listening in the Early Church, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. 302 pp. ISBN: 9780199641437 Stanley D. Porter and Bryan R. Dyer, Paul and Ancient Rhetoric: Theory and Practice in the Hellenistic Context, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016. 330 pp. ISBN: 9781107073791 Mark F. M. Clavier, Eloquent Wisdom: Rhetoric, Cosmology and Delight in the Theology ofAugustine ofHippo, Turnhout: Brepols, 2014. 303 pp. ISBN: 9782503552651 For readers of Rhetorica (and for historians of rhetoric more generally), the Christianization of rhetoric is one of the basic intellectual historical pro cesses of Late Antiquity. What are the principal options for representing that process? In reviewing volumes by Carol Harrison and Mark Clavier, as well as one edited by Stanley Porter and Bryan Dyer, we can survey three options. According to one school of thought, rhetoric is at its most intellectually generative when it cannot do the things that it was originally built to do and when as a result it must transpose its themes into a new key to fulfill new purposes. Carol Harrison gives us an example of this kind of displacement in Late Antiquity when she explores the implications of a Christian transfor mation of rhetoric from an art of speaking into an art of listening. The contexts in that Christianizing world may have been new, but she is adamant that the intellectual foundations were rhetorical. In her words, "if we do not 478 RHETORICA pay attention to the rhetorical culture [of Late Antiquity], we will fail to appreciate why the fathers wrote and spoke in the way they did; why their style is so distinctive and yet so easily identifiable as that of an educated per son of their day; what their hearers expected of them; how their hearers were able to hear them effectively" (Harrison p. 48). Indeed, Harrison is showing the figure of the orator itself being transformed into the person of the listener when she parses Augustine's assertion in On Christian Doctrine that one would have to pray (and be an orator) before one could speak (and be a dictor ). Her gloss is supple: "prayer is perhaps one of the most intriguing exam ples of the practice of listening in the early Church, for it is not at all clear who is doing the listening and who is speaking" (Harrison p. 183). And this spon sors two thoughts: that the speaking of prayer was a particularly intense lis tening and that there might be a kind of "confidence, or parrhesia" deriving from "the assurance that [the] hearer is God, the Father" (Harrison p. 195). Now, contingency had been one of the great categories of ancient Greek rhetoric. Within a Christian frame of reference, this orientation to contingency began to look like an immersion in the world encountered by human beings after the Fall. On the one hand, God's creation in fact expres sed a stability, equilibrium, and symmetry. On the other, as it was encoun tered by the human sensorium, that world (and human entanglements with it) seemed thoroughly, endemically, mutable. Just so, Harrison's book privi leges the embodiment of that human sensorium and begins with the assumption that, when developing an art of listening, we should look...
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Abstract
A complex definition of the figure, anadiplosis, develops in the tradition that runs from ancient Greek and Roman rhetoricians up to sixteenth-century continental rhetorical theorists such as Susenbrotus. Drawing on and enriching this tradition, the English rhetoricians of Shakespeare’s day defined the figure as the repetition of the word or words with which one phrase or line ends, at or near the beginning of the succeeding phrase or line. A series of anadiploses was understood to make for a gradatio (or climax). Having been schooled in these and other definitions of the tropes and figures, Shakespeare implements anadiplosis, as well as the rhetoricians’ rich metaphorical description of it, in his text. In so doing, he enhances his representation of people who are impassioned, thoughtful, witty, deranged, and ridiculous. In keeping with the rhetoricians’ recognition of the polysemy of the figure, Shakespeare also implements this figure to narrate events and make some of them seem inevitable (usually in history and tragedy) and others unlikely (usually in comedy). The Shakespearean script also frequently includes dialogic anadiplosis: the sharing of the figure by two speakers. In this form, it plays a significant role in Shakespeare’s creation of authentic dialogue.
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Abstract
Messalla Corvinus, celebrated as one of the greatest orators of the generation after Cicero, offers an ideal case study for political life in the triumviral period and early principate. His distinctive style is reminiscent of what Cicero described as the middle style, exemplified by Marcus Calidius and Cicero’s Pro Lege Manilla and Pro Marcello. This style complemented his mild, accomodationist political persona, evident especially in his support of Augustus and his rejection of the office of urban prefect, in a synergistic fusion of style and ethos.
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[Quintilian] The Son Suspected of Incest with His Mother («Major Declamations», 18–19) by Bé Breij ↗
Abstract
Reviews Bé Breij, [Quintilinn] The Son Suspected ofIncest with His Mother («Major Declamations», 18-19), Edizioni Université di Cassino, Cassino 2015, pp. 612. ISBN: 9788883170577 Un padre tortura il figlio in una stanza appartata della casa per strappargli la verità in mérito alie voci che lo vogliono coinvolto in una relazione incestuosa con la madre. Il giovane muore fra i tormenti; la madre chiede allora al marito cosa abbia appreso nel corso dell'interrogatorio, e al suo rifiuto di rispondere lo accusa di mala tractatio. È questo il tema delle ultime due Declamaziotii maggiori, la raccolta di diciannove controversie allestita a Roma nell'ultimo scorcio del IV secolo d.C. e fatta circolare sotto il nome di Quintiliano: la prima reca l'accusa della madre, la seconda la difesa del padre. Ai due testi in questione Bé Breij (d'ora innanzi B.), una delle più intel ligent! e prolifiche studiose della declamazione latina, aveva già dedicate nel 2007 un ampio commente, oltre a numerosi interventi di minore respiro; il volume recupera dunque un decennio di scavo esegetico, sviluppando linee di ricerca tracciate negli studi già pubblicati e insieme aspetti rimasti prece dentemente in ombra. Nella lunga introduzione si affrontano sistemáticamente le questioni legate ai protagonisti delle due Maiores, alla cornice giuridica della loro controversia, agli aspetti stilistici e retorici dei pezzi pseudo-quintilianei. B. delucida anzitutto storia e contenuti della patria potestas, rilevando in particolare come il diritto di metiere a morte un figlio risulti applicate in un numero esiguo di casi. Molto opportunamente, B. prende tuttavia le distanze da quanti considerano la patria potestas poco più che un idolum storiografico e sottolinea come essa contribuisse in ogni caso a configurare un rapporte fortemente sbilanciato tra padri e figli. Non a caso, la declamazione latina dedica uno spazio cospicuo ai conflitti generazionali: una scelta che da un lato aiutava i giovani romani a verbalizzare le frustrazioni indotte da una struttura familiare spesso oppressiva, daU'altro li preparava al ruolo di pater familias cui essi erano chiamati in età adulta. La studiosa osserva che m nessuna controversia i figli sembrano contestare il potere che i padri esercitano su di loro; al contrario, i retori che parlano in difesa dei padri rivendicano il carattere inevitabile e giusto della misura punitiva; quanti invece intervengono a favore dei figli biasimano l'abuso della patria potestas, ma ne lasciano intatti Rhetorica, Vol. XXXV, Issue 4, pp. 475-483. ISSN: 0734-8584, electronic ISSN: 1533-8541.© 2017 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http.//www.ucpress. edu/joumals.php?p=reprints. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2017.35.4.475. 476 RHETORICA i fondamenti: la declamazione discute insomma i comportamenti del padre, ma frnisce con il presérvame la posizione di vértice all'intemo della famiglia. Il secondo parágrafo concerne il motivo dell'incesto, anch'esso indagato dapprima nelle fonti storiche, giuridiche e letterarie, quindi in riferimento specifico alia declamazione, dove il tema ricorre quattordici volte; le due Maiores restaño comunque le uniche a trattare la piú problemática fra le relazioni incestuose, quella che coinvolge un figlio e sua madre. Di grande rilievo è il parágrafo successivo, relativo al quadro giuridico che regola entrambe le controversie pseudo-quintilianee, quello della actio¡nalae tractationis. In particolare, B. nota correttamente come essa venga spesso brandita per contestare un danno inflitto non tanto alia moglie quanto al figlio di costei, danno che in molti casi coincide con la morte del figlio stesso. Le controversie insistono talora sulla sproporzione fra l'accusa di maltrattamento e la gravità delle colpe maritali cui essa si riferisce e non mancano di elevare il proprio lamento contro un sistema legislativo che non consente altra via di espressione giuridica al dolor delle donne per i torti loro inflitti dai propri mariti; pur con questi limiti, tuttavia, l'azione per mala tractatio dá comunque voce alie istanze delle mogli e permette di esplorare la patria potestas da un terzo e ulteriore punto di vista, dopo quello di padri e...
March 2017
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Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction by Liesbeth Korthals Altes ↗
Abstract
232 RHETORICA l'attenzione a generi e tipologie testuali apparentemente minori, come la scoliastica , l'epistolografia, la favolistica e altri ancora, di cui si rivendica persua sivamente, alla luce di una analisi minuta e puntúale, Taita caratura letteraria e la ricercata raffinatezza fórmale. Infime, va sottolineato corne Tindagine linguistico-retorica non sia pressoché mai fine a se stessa, ma concorra a illuminare strategie comunicative, intenzioni letterarie, prese di posizione ideologiche , e questo non solo per gli autori classici, ma anche per i testi umanistici, troppo spesso appiattiti da un pregiudizio critico che li vede come mero prodotto di una pedissequa riproduzione dei modelli antichi. Per tutte queste ragioni, Topera curata da Raffaele Grisolia e Giuseppina Matino si legge con grande interesse, stimola nuovi percorsi di ricerca, invita ad approfondire Tindagine sui testi e sugli autori presi in considerazione nei diversi saggi: che è quanto ogni autentico studio scientifico dovrebbe fare. Mario Lentano, Universita di Siena Liesbeth Korthals Altes, Ethos and Narrative Interpretation: The Negotiation of Values in Fiction. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2014. 325 pp. ISBN (Hardcover) 978-0-8032-4836-6. In his contribution to the edited volume The Ethos of Rhetoric, Robert Wade Kenny observed that even after centuries of inquiry into ethos, it still "calls to us as something to be understood," a point powerfully captured in Liesbeth Korthals Altes's Ethos and Narrative Interpretation. Korthals Altes identifies as a narratologist, and though her book is not directed specifically at historians of rhetoric it offers perspectives on ethos that will likely be new and useful. Korthals Altes's focus on ethos is part of a rhetorical tradition in literary studies intent on considering the author, or the "implied author" as Wayne Booth defined it in The Rhetoric ofFiction, as an integral site of inquiry into the meanings of texts. Like Booth, she is drawn to ethos and rhetoric through Aristotle's "pragmatic" vision (6) that "elucidates what makes per suasive discourse effective and stipulates what means of persuasion can best be used in specific situations in the public domain" (2-3), and while she does not break new ground in her conception of ancient rhetoric (nor does she claim to), her uses of ancient terms aim to extend its influence in a variety of disciplines, particularly narrative theory, hermeneutics, sociology, and cognitive psychology. Uninterested in building ethos "as a consistently rigor ous analytical concept," she instead sees it as a node connecting "heteroge neous aspects of narratives" and the ways they are interpreted (xiv). Korthals Altes uses Aristotle's Rhetoric to build a methodological founda tion that serves her well throughout the book. For her, "the treatise's interest resides in Aristotle's subtle analysis of the various - rational, emotional, and social - components of persuasion and of the implied interactive mechanisms" Reviews 233 (3). She is less concerned with interactions between the three domains of logos, pathos, and ethos and more interested in those she sees contained in ethos itself. One such "interactive mechanism" lies in the connection between ethos and phronesis, which "crucially connects rhetoric to ethics" (257n6), important for Korthals Altes as she develops the argument that narrative literature cons tructs ethical codes in storyworlds and in the minds of readers. An interactive mechanism equally central to the book is "ethos topoi," which she briefly defi nes as "culturally recognized grounds for rhetorical credit" (62) related specifi cally to the character of a speaker or author that "provide an interface between perceived textual clues and cultural norms and shared character repertoires" (211). She notes that Aristotle's ethos topoi, developed as they were for "public speech in the Athenian state," are practical wisdom, virtue, and good will, and she defines these for her modern purposes to include the broad categories of morality, truth, expertise and experience, and social and political power (63), which she breaks into more specific qualities as her interpretive needs dictate. Ethos topoi serve as an important heuristic for what Korthals Altes calls her "metahermeneutic" project: tracing the complex interpretive path ways of a reader "assessing] a discursive ethos" (ix). She develops, for example, specific topoi for assessing the ethos of the "engagé," or socially engaged, writer, someone who at...
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Friendship, temperance and the probable: Erasmus, sermo rhetoric, and the early modern English civic state ↗
Abstract
The essay explores Erasmus’ development of a fourth category of rhetoric, the familiar, in its work as a rhetoric of the absent audience in both personal and sociopolitical contexts, and as a rhetoric resonant with early modern theories of friendship and temperance. The discussion is set against a background of Caxton’s printing of the translation of Cicero’s De Amicitia, because Erasmus casts friendship as the context for appropriate communication between people from quite different education and training, along with the probable rhetoric that enables appropriate persuasion. The probable rhetorical stance of temperate friendship propo ses a foundation for a common weal1 based on a co-extensive sense of selfhood. This focus suggests that the familiar rhetoric set out in Erasmus’ De Conscribendis epistolis draws on Cicero’s rhetoric of sermo2 at the heart of friendship.3 It explores the effects of the rhetorical stance of probable rhetoric, both for personal and social writing, and for political action, and looks at the impact of sermo rhetoric on ideas of identity and civic politics in an age of burgeoning circulation of books (both script and print). The essay concludes with three post-Erasmian case studies in English rhetoric [Elyot, Wilson, Lever] that use probable rhetoric to document approaches to individual and civic agency and which offer insights into the Western neoliberal state rhetorical structures of today.
November 2016
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Review: Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, edited by Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, and Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, by Raffaella Cribiore ↗
Abstract
Book Review| November 01 2016 Review: Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, edited by Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, and Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, by Raffaella Cribiore Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, eds., Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, Oxford, 2013. 420 + x pp. ISBN: 9780199654314Raffaella Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, Ithaca: Cornell, 2013. 260 + x pp. ISBN: 9780801452079 Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker Dept. of Rhetoric & Writing University of Texas at Austin Mailstop B5500 Austin, Texas 78712 USA JSWalker@austin.utexas.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2016) 34 (4): 460–465. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2016.34.4.460 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jeffrey Walker; Review: Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, edited by Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, and Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, by Raffaella Cribiore. Rhetorica 1 November 2016; 34 (4): 460–465. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2016.34.4.460 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. © 2016 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
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Abstract
This study examines the uses of the term harmonia in Aristotle's Rhetoric and Poetics and aims at identifying a consistent meaning of this word when applied to the literary arts. A difficulty arises from the fact that harmonia commonly denotes the melodic component of music and speech, but is mentioned in connection with the hexametric rhythm in two parallel passages from the Poetics and the Rhetoric, the latter of which is textually problematic. The solution presented in this article suggests an interpretation which assigns to harmonia the meaning of ‘speech melody’ and supports the least disruptive emendation of the contested passage from the Rhetoric.
September 2016
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Abstract
This study examines the uses of the term harmonia in Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Poetics and aims at identifying a consistent meaning of this word when applied to the literary arts. A difficulty arises from the fact that harmonia commonly denotes the melodic component of music and speech, but is mentioned in connection with the hexametric rhythm in two parallel passages from the Poetics and the Rhetoric, the latter of which is textually problematic. The solution presented in this article suggests an interpretation which assigns to harmonia the meaning of ‘speech melody’ and supports the least disruptive emendation of the contested passage from the Rhetoric.
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Abstract
Reviews 465 In chapters 3 and 4 Cribiore works through the question(s) of Libanius' opinions of paganism and Christianity in his letters and speeches, showing convincingly that Libanius held a moderate cultural-conservative position that enabled him to genuinely be friends with Christians as well as pagans — which, after all, one would expect from a rhetorician who grasps the value of argumentum in utranique parton not only as a method of debate but also as a way of life, an ethic for a civilized, humane society. Despite these criticisms I do in fact like this book. I particularly like its refutation of the Gibbonesque judgment on Libanius, and its portrait of rhetoric in late antiquity as very much still alive and doing practical civic as well as cultural work (see in particular p. 36). In a sense this book is a sort of appendix to The School of Libanius, which I think remains the most impor tant of Cribiore's books for rhetoricians and historians of rhetoric. Different readers of this journal will want to read both Libanius the Sophist and Hellenistic Oratory for different reasons, and your responses likely will differ from mine, depending on your scholarly interests and orientation. Bottom line, these books give us a closer, better description of rhetoric in the Hellenistic age and late antiquity, and belong on the rhetorician's bookshelf. Jeffrey Walker, University of Texas at Austin Valiavitcharska, Vessela. Rhetoric and Rhythm in Byzantium: The Sound of Persuasion, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013. 243 pp. ISBN: 9781107273511 Midway through the introduction to Rhetoric and Rhythm in Byzantium, Vessela Valiavitcharska sets forth the book's aim, which is to "make a step toward contributing to" an understanding of "the argumentative and emo tional effects of discourse, and of the mental habits involved in its produc tion" (p. 12). That professed goal, enfolded in prepositions and couched in the incremental language of a step—and a single step at that—is modest. And while the framing of the book, and for that matter, Valiavitcharska her self, exude modesty, the rigor, disciplinary reach, and sheer brilliance of her study calls for less modest account. That is where I come in. In addition to its intrinsic value of reclaiming the Old Church Slavic homily tradition for rhetorical study, Rhetoric and Rhythm in Byzantium joins at least three rising trends in rhetorical studies. The first two are burgeoning interests in 1) Byzantine rhetoric and 2) the recovery of pre-modern class room practices. Thomas Conley and Jeffrey Walker have both pointed out the importance of Byzantine rhetoric and have done much to dismantle assumptions that this period presents merely a redaction of classical texts and teaching. Scholars in the U.S. (David Fleming, Raffaella Cribiore, Marjo rie Curry Woods, Martin Camargo) and Europe (Manfred Kraus, Ruth Webb, 466 RHETORICA María Violeta Pérez Custodio) have revived an interest in the progymnasmata and have developed new methods for identifying and extrapolating class room practices from extant artifacts. Valiavitcharska both makes use of those methods and extends them. These two contexts together mean that there ought to be a broad, interdisciplinary readership for Rhythm and Rhetoric in Byzantium. But there is still a third exciting context for this work, one that extends its reach past classical scholars and historians of rhetoric and to scholars concerned with sensory dimensions of rhetoric, specifically those facilitating rhetoric's sonic turn. Scholarship in rhetoric, communication, and commu nications have very recently seen an uptick in interest in how sound shapes thought, interaction, messages, and sociality. Scholars such as Gregory Goodale, Matthew Jordan, Joshua Gunn, Richard Graff, and Jonathan Sterne are leading the way here. This work, partly a response to what rhetoric scholar Sidney Dobrin (following Donna Haraway) calls the "tyranny of the visual," is cutting edge. Some of it is historical, but (with the important exception of Graff) the history is usually limited to the twentieth century, mainly because of its focus on sound-recording technologies, which are rela tively recent. Valiavitcharska's work promises to turn the heads of these scholars and their followers, to reveal to them the intricate and longstanding root system of sonic rhetoric, and to stretch...
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Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change ed. by Christos Kremmydas, Kathryn Tempest, and: Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century by Raffaella Cribiore ↗
Abstract
460 RHETORICA readings of major sixteenth and seventeenth century works. The book is also an excellent jumping-off point for future research, and Acheson s spe cific insights relating to the four particular modes of brainwork the book deals with and the work's broader project of finding productive crossmodal correspondences will certainly be productive for many working in the Renaissance. Chris Dearner, University of California, Irvine Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, eds., Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, Oxford, 2013. 420 + x pp. ISBN: 9780199654314 Raffaella Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, Ithaca: Cornell, 2013. 260 + x pp. ISBN: 9780801452079 Recently I was looking at an early 15th-cenury manuscript copy of a 14th-century Greek "synopsis of rhetoric" in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Christian Walz, in the preface to his 1832 edition of this text, says that he has not seen the Vienna manuscript, but cites an 18th century scholar who cites a 17th century scholar who has (Walz vol. 3, pp. 465-466). It occurred to me that I might have been the first person since the 17th century to actually open the Vienna manuscript and read it. True or false, there's a certain roman ticism in such experience, and a certain pleasure: the intrepid academic, decoder of texts, historian and rhetorician, paddles alone upriver past ruins and jungles, armed with machete, flashlight, and a pencil sharpener, into the world that time forgot. Heureka; I havefound it; houtos ekeinos; this is that. Thus I am happy with both books on review here. Both offer new per spective^) on an insufficiently studied part of rhetoric's ancient history— four fifths of it, in fact: the roughly eight centuries from the Hellenistic age to the end of the ancient world. Both books, moreover, offer a case wellgrounded in the available evidence and delivered in a (mostly) clear, accessi ble style. In short they have many virtues, and are a pleasure to read. Let's paddle upriver a little way. I'll start with Kremmydas and Tempest. i. Hellenistic Oratory and the Myth of Decline At stake throughout this volume is the pervasive myth that rhetoric, or more precisely oratory (rhetoric-al performance), "declined" in the Hellenistic age, the period conventionally dated from the death of Alexander (in 322 BCE) to the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium by the soon-to-be emperor Augustus (in 31 BCE). The myth presumes that Reviews 461 rhetoric is the art of practical civic discourse embodied in the speeches of the foui th-centui y Attic Orators, especially Demosthenes, and that it flouris hes in democratic polities and languishes under autocratic rule. There are no preserved examples of Hellenistic oratory, which prompts an inference that little or nothing worth preserving was produced. Rhetoric (says the myth) had lost its civic role and was reduced to "merely" epideictic and literary functions for most of the next three centuries. Elsewhere I have argued against the "decline" story, mostly on probabi listic and definitional grounds (Rhetoric & Poetics in Antiquity, Oxford 2000, ch. 3). One can make epideictic/panegyric discourse the paradigmatic ("cen tral," "primary") form of rhetoric, as do Chaim Perelman and Kenneth Burke, in which case "rhetoric" seems to have enjoyed a great flourishing in the Hellenistic age. But even if we define rhetoric as the art of the Attic Orators, the fact is that it continued to play an important civic role. Law-courts contin ued to be busy, city councils continued to meet, kings and governors engaged in deliberative discourse with their advisors (if they were wise), inter-city diplomacy involved embassies and large amounts of written correspondence and chanceries to manage it, and so on. The needs of empire created jobs in the imperial bureaucracv, for which a rhetorical education was required, and there were municipallv sponsored ("public") as well as independent ("private") schools to serve the need in cities large and small, as can he seen in the papyrus fragments of boys' rhetorical exercises found at Oxyrhynchus and other prov incial towns in Hellenistic Egypt. Schools of rhetoric multi plied and throve. There were significant advances too in rhetorical theory...
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El comentario de Alardo de Amsterdam a los Progymnasmata de Aftonio traducidos al latín por Rodolfo Agrícola ↗
Abstract
Although Alardus of Amsterdam’s commentary to the Latin translation of the Greek rhetorician Aphtonius’ Progymnasmata by Rodolphus Agricola did not have the influence of the one by Reinhardus Lorichius, who used the partim Agricola, partim Catanaeo translation, it was published previously and served as a model to later commentaries. Thus, Lorichius and Juan de Mal Lara’s commentaries exhibit many similarities with the one by Alardus as regards commented expressions and contents. However, we cannot talk of servile imitation as, in spite of the clear coincidences, we also find important differences, and every commentator shows a personal view and presents his own contributions.