Rhetorica
179 articlesJune 1998
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The Reader’s Figure: Epideictic Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, Racine and Pascal by Richard Lockwood ↗
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RHETORICA 312 In chapter 11, "Philosophy and rhetoric", Stephen Halliwell considers the debate between rhetoric and philosophy along the lines suggested in several of Plato's and Aristotle's works. Although both Plato and Aristotle consider rhetoric "philosophically", Halliwell argues that Plato imposes on it the demands of his ethical and political standards while Aristotle accepts the commonsensicalness of rhetorical practice all along reinforcing it with the technical equipment that rendered it an intellectual force of consequence. In the final chapter, "The Canon of the Ten Attic Orators", Ian Worthington reconsiders the dating, the authorship, and the intellectual background of the canon of the Attic orators and concludes that both the rationale and character of the canon are unsatisfactory if only because they hamper scholarly efforts to study and assess the orations of those orators who are excluded. John Poulakos Richard Lockwood, The Reader's Figure: Epideictic Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, Racine and Pascal (Geneva: Droz, 1996) 310 pp. Epideictic has always been the joker in the pack. Where deliberative and judicial eloquence can be fairly readily defined, and their function briefly summarized, epideictic continually poses problems. In the first place, what is it? The demonstrative genre, we are told, is that in which the orator (or writer) attributes praise and blame. But this narrow definition is quickly expanded into something much more amorphous—epideictic comes to be the gathering up of all speech acts which are not deliberative or forensic, sometimes including the didactic or academic (as in the volume under review), and not infrequently spilling out to include all speaking whose purpose is not obvious, including, as the writing "for nothing" which came to be called literature. For the question "who does what to whom in epideictic" is by no means straightforward, as Richard Lockwood makes abundantly clear in this densely written and interesting book. Quintilian saw it as aiming solely at delighting its audience", Reviews 313 with the further aim of enhancing the "honour and glory of the speaker". The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "intended or serving to display oratorical skill". It is thus a form of entertainment, a performance meant to gather in applause. But of course there are other views. A speech of praise, for instance, is not necessarily a piece of self-indulgence or flattery. Many historians of the subject have written of the potential civic function of epideictic for inculcating values and creating social consensus. As Aristotle put it, "to praise a man is...akin to urging a course of action". Even Plato, with his sharp eye for the deceits of rhetoric, allows room in his republic for "hymns to the gods and encomia to good men". So what is going on in epideictic? The strength of Lockwood's study is that it homes in on these tensions within the genre. He argues that this type of speech or text carries within it a doubleness, and thus, even more clearly than other rhetorical performances, creates a double figure of the listener or reader, who can at the same time admire the orator and admire the thing praised. It is this doubleness, he claims, that accounts for the powerful effects of epideictic, effects that in the examples he gives are not infrequently unsettling, often fruitfully so. One of the most important points stressed here is the vital role played in epideictic by metadiscursive elements—those points at which the orator or writer reflects as he goes along on what he is doing. In an interesting preliminary, this tactic is seen at work in the Gettysburg Address, where "five full sentences out of ten discuss Lincoln's own act of speaking, and the rest focus largely on the parameters of its context" (p. 19)—the speech in other words is largely about "how to give speeches and how to listen", and in so doing seeks to create what Lockwood calls the "figure" of the reader/listener. In other words, theory and practice are closely interwoven, and there can be no question of a simple dualism whereby the naive take the bait while the sophisticated reflect critically on it; all readers and listeners are involved in the perils and pleasures of...
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The Empty Garden: the Subject of Late Milton by Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, and: Milton and the Revolutionary Reader by Sharon Achinstein ↗
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Reviews 339 preachers' macaronic compositions, recently well-documented by Siegfried Wenzel. All ingeniously augment the means of sharing Christian wisdom among the laity. Georgiana Donavin Ashraf H. A. Rushdy, The Empty Garden: the Subject of Late Milton (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992) xvii + 515 pp. Sharon Achinstein Milton and the Revolutionary Reader (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994) xv + 272 pp. Hardly any student of modem American politics would fail to agree that the mass media—specifically television—play a key role in structuring political discourse. Whether or not individual politicians and their media representatives actually formally study mass communication, all know the forms, demands, and constraints of television. Failure to master the medium usually results in failure to win an election or carry the day in a discussion of public policy. Further, the medium creates a series of expectations in viewers, expectations that must be met or consciously manipulated and subverted by any political writer or speaker. Now, imagine reading a scholarly book on modem political discourse that may mention television but does not examine its characteristics as a medium or the viewing habits or demographics of the audience, and yet claims to study "media". Such is frequently the situation in current studies of the literature, politics, and political discourse of seventeenth-century England. The word "rhetoric" often appears in titles, and indeed in authors' arguments, but, on inspection, a reader hoping to find discussion of the ars bene dicendi as an epistemic approach to structuring political language will be disappointed. Too often "rhetoric" simply becomes a synonym for "language" or "trope", rather than a means of inquiry into the workings of argument. 340 RHETORICA The reasons for scholarly attention to political language in the period are manifest. The century claims what for many historians is the first modern revolution, complete with a nascent public sphere, people beginning to perceive themselves as public actors, and, most importantly, a free press that empowered both. It claims many writers engaged in pamphleteering who at any time would rank with the best in the language, from William Prynne and John Lilbume to Thomas Hobbes and John Milton. Milton's stature as a poet guarantees attention to his political prose and to the politics of his great poems. Moreover, without question, the educational practice of the century, beginning in the grammar school, was relentlessly rhetorical. Rhetoric thus saturated seventeenth-century writers and readers as much as television does the modern political nation. The period is thus ripe for rhetorical analysis. I examine here two recent exemplars of Milton studies that illustrate the gulf between "rhetorical study" and knowledge of rhetoric that pervades current seventeenth-century scholarship. Both books have been extensively, and largely favorably, reviewed in reputable journals. One received the James Holly Hanford Award from the Milton Society of America as the best book on Milton published in 1994. Both are learned and engaging, and both offer valuable insights into Milton's work. But the arguments of both are compromised by the writers' apparent unfamiliarity with the entire field of the history of rhetoric. In one case, the author's knowledge of rhetoric is limited; in the other, the author lacks any comprehension of rhetorical theory, principle, or practice. My purpose here is to highlight the ways in which this blind spot affects the theses of these two otherwise powerful books, and to call attention to two recent studies of other periods that admirably achieve, through their grasp of rhetoric, what the Miltonists attempt. In The Empty Garden, Ashraf H. A. Rushdy offers a study of the Jesus of Paradise Regained as founder of a religious culture that offers a "new way of knowing and a new way of being" (xi) through self-knowledge gained by "reading", broadly defined as interpreting both the written word and the "text" of the world. Through his creation of Jesus, and his contrast of that Jesus to the Samson of the companion work Samson Agonistes, Milton becomes Reviews 341 a powerful cultural critic, ultimately arguing that the relationship between self-knowledge and self-representation may best be negotiated through politics. As Rushdy makes abundantly clear in his first chapter, "'Confronting the Subject: The Art of...
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The Evangelical Rhetoric of Ramon Llull: Lay Learning and Piety in the Christian West Around 1300 by Mark D. Johnston ↗
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RHETORICA 336 Mark D. Johnston, The Evangelical Rhetoric of Ramon Hull: Lay Learning and Piety in the Christian West Around 1300 (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996) xii + 274 pp. This book continues the author's already distinguished investigations into Ramon Llull's theories on language. While Johnston's previous work The Spiritual Logic of Ramon Llull (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987) focuses on Llull's argumentative methods for justifying medieval Catholicism, his recent book articulates lullian principles of eloquence. The Evangelical Rhetoric of Ramon Llull demonstrates Llull's significant contribution to the field of rhetoric: the innovative use of his Great Art as an inventional tool. With fine organization, Johnston evokes a wide variety of lullian texts coalescing in a theory of rhetoric. The first three chapters outline Llull's premises for effective speech. Chapter 1 summarizes the heuristic method of the Great Universal Art of Find Truth, from which discourse proceeds. The Great Art employs an elaborate system of comparison, relying on nine letters of the alphabet—B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and K—to symbolize absolute and relative principles, concepts and questions for discovery. When combined, these letters yield knowledge of divine truth which can illuminate a variety of arts, in this case, Christian wisdom for rhetoric. Like Augustine, who declares charity the ultimate end of reading and preaching, Llull calls theological understanding the end of speech whose material derives from the Great Art. Chapter 2 depicts Llull's vision of divine truth, a picture of interconnected creation, described in a representational language which correlates words and things. Chapter 3 discusses Llull's epistemology of resemblances in which humans, participating in God's universe, observe, think and finally speak according to the likenesses of creation. The middle section of the book, chapters 4 through 9, specifies how Llull's premises apply to particular offices of rhetoric and highlight Llull's emphasis on beauty, order and propriety. Finally, chapter 10 takes up Llull's sermons and brings the organization of the book full-circle by demonstrating Reviews 337 how the Great Art provides the heuristic for preaching material. The Liber de praedicatione reviews the Great Art; the Liber de virtutibus et peccatis employs the combinatory process in the Great Art to produce sermons. The concluding chapter introduces a polemic, so eloquent and compelling on the pertinence of Johnston's study, that this reader wished the argument had been dispersed throughout. Here, Johnston differentiates his own view of Llull from those who imagine him as either an inspired saint or a cutting-edge academic. While emphasizing Llull's contributions, Johnston repudiates claims to holy uniqueness in lullian rhetorical theory because of the preponderance of allusions to both classical and medieval lore. Moreover, exposing the narcissism in certain scholars' perceptions of Llull as an avant garde professor, Johnston reminds his readers of Llull's antipathy to the schools. Since Johnston's readers include those "unfamiliar with [Llull's] work, but interested generally in medieval intellectual or cultural history, and especially in the arts of eloquence" (10), it would have been helpful to describe, test and eschew pervading scholarly attitudes toward Llull throughout. Johnston, on the other hand, presents evidence that Llull was a Majorcan courtier, "born again" into the religious life and propelled into contemplation and study by his desire to convert. Having little background in language studies, Llull probably sought local tutoring and lectures in Paris in order to read divine writings and develop preaching skills. This exposure to learning allowed Llull to invoke well-known rhetorical authorities such as Cicero. However, Llull departed Paris with a distrust for scholasticism, which in his view, obscurely analyzes and thus fragments the picture of an integrated, unified creation. Throughout, Johnston observes Llull's differences with scholastic thought and practice. For instance, he notes Llull's failure to question the efficacy of language, an enduring issue for medieval schoolmen, but not for Llull, who relied on speech for evangelizing. Johnston concludes that "[Llull's] general regard for rhetoric as a means of fostering community in human society is one of the features that most distinguishes his accounts of eloquence from conventional Scholastic doctrines" (27). RHETORICA 338 Johnston establishes his...
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RHETORICA 308 these six essays demonstrate the breadth, status, and versatility of rhetoric as a field of inquiry, study, and practice. In their introductory essay, Bennett and Leff remark, "Working quietly against the grain of a specialized [academic] culture, Murphy has opened a conduit between historical scholarship and the classroom" (4). A lengthy bibliography of Murphy's publications and work in progress, contributed by Winifred Horner, follows the Preface. Like Murphy's own contributions to the field, the essays collected in Rhetoric and Pedagogy successfully "hold historical scholarship and current pragmatic interests in a useful relationship to one another" (4). By their own interest in bridging historical scholarship and current teaching practice, the contributors to this Festschrift honor Murphy's legacy and continue his work. Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard Ian Worthington ed. Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London: Routledge, 1994) xi+277pp. This collection of twelve essays is interesting for three reasons. First, it constitutes one more sign that rhetoric is undergoing a veritable renaissance. Second, it shows that classics, a discipline once indifferent or hostile to the rhetorical enterprise, is now willing to join other disciplines in recognizing rhetoric as a major force in the shaping of western culture (nine of the contributors to this collection are classicists). Third, and most important, this volume does not concern itself with rhetoric in isolation. Rather, it examines its many intersections with such genres as politics, history, law, epic, tragedy, comedy and philosophy. The various treatments of the particular intersections combine traditional and new insights, and open the path to many provocative questions. Likewise, they generally invite reflection and criticism. More importantly, however, the collection as a whole points to a maximalist project that takes rhetoric beyond the orators, who practised it and the philosophers, who discussed Reviews 309 it. In so doing, it suggests that richer understandings can be had when placing rhetoric at the center of the Hellenic culture and crossing it with other genres (i.e. epic, tragedy, comedy, history). In this regard, the collection recommends itself in its entirety much more than any one of its chapters. The common framework that all contributors share comes from the distinction as well as the connection between rhetoric as the study, and oratory as the practice of persuasion. According to the editor, "The aim of this book is to bring together...discussions of the relationship of Greek oratory and rhetoric to a variety of important areas and genres, at the same time reflecting new trends and ideas now at work in the study of rhetoric" (ix). In the first chapter, "From orality to rhetoric: an intellectual transformation", Carol Thomas and Edward Webb trace the emergence of rhetoric along the orality-literacy continuum. Relying on but also refining the work of George Kennedy, Eric Havelock, Walter Ong and Thomas Cole, the authors point out that even though rhetoric benefited from the contributions of literacy it nevertheless retained its initial oral character. This chapter examines rhetoric along the registers of composition, delivery, and analysis, and pays attention to four features: uses, persuasive intent, magical aura, and the speaker's esteem. In chapter 2, "Rhetorical means of persuasion", Christopher Carey argues that of the three Aristotelian pisteis, pathos and ethos are more indirect while the third, logos, is a more direct means of persuasion. Carey illustrates the uses of pathos and ethos in the actual speeches of orators such as Demosthenes, Aeschines and Lysias, and concludes that Aristotle's distinctions are considerably "neater" than their actual use shows. In chapter 3, "Probability and persuasion: Plato and early Greek rhetoric", Michael Gagarin seeks to minimize the Platonic influence on our understanding of classical Greek rhetoric. His thesis is that Plato's widely accepted claim that the orators prefer probability over the truth is demonstrably wrong. Gagarin reviews the uses of probability arguments in the surviving speeches of orators and sophists and finds no evidence supporting Plato's claim. Gagarin's study shows convincingly that the orators generally value truth; however, they resort to probability when RHETORICA 310 the truth of a case is unknown, unclear, or subject to differing interpretations. In chapter 4, "Classical rhetoric and modem theories of discourse", David Cohen takes a brief but...
March 1998
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SHORT REVIEWS Christopher Lyle Johnstone, Theory, Text, Context: Issues in Greek Rhetoric and Oratory (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996) 196 pp. In many ways, this collection of articles on Ancient Greek rhetoric in English offers the best of what contemporary historiography and rhetorical theory have to offer. Rather than reading texts in isolation, or presuming interpretive clarity, these articles interpret their objects in relationship to the social, political, and even physical circumstances that influenced their production. Taken together, they summarize much of what is new in ancient rhetoric. Christopher Lyle Johnstone introduces the collection by rehearsing current rhetorical historiography, attributing the term rhetorike to Plato but acknowledging the creative significance of a set of prototypical rhetorical conditions such as the rise of democratic institutions, the spread of literacy, and the concomitant transformation of mythos into logos which made abstract categorization possible. These social, political, and intellectual conditions nurtured rhetoric as a distinct discipline. Johnstone's perspective clearly differentiates this work from earlier creation narratives that attributed rhetoric to the spontaneous genius of specific individuals. Continuing this line of reasoning, the first article, one of Father Grimaldi's last, "How Do We Get from CoraxTisias to Plato-Aristotle in Greek Rhetorical Theory?" is an excellent overview of the sophists' contribution to the development of rhetoric, and thus a contribution to their ongoing rehabilitation. While Grimaldi acknowledges that his task is synthetic and therefore not highly original, the article is nevertheless thorough and cogent. The second article dedicated to sophistic origins, John Poulakos's "Extending and Correcting the Rhetorical Tradition: Aristotle's Perception of the Sophists" argues that Aristotle acknowledged the 227 RHETORICA 228 sophists for inaugurating the study of rhetoric but went to great lengths to correct the logical and linguistic inadequacies that were the inevitable result of their imperfect epistemology. Thus he concludes that Aristotle followed Plato insofar as he critiqued the sophists but "marked out an independent path", for himself by including their efforts as among those founding the rhetorical tradition. In the third piece on the place of sophistry within the tradition, Schiappa argues for what he calls a "predisciplinary approach" to the study of the sophists, by which he means avoiding "vocabulary and assumptions about discursive theories and practice imported from the fourth century when analyzing fifth-century texts" (p. 67). He makes the case for rigorous historiography by rereading Gorgias's Helen in such a way as to prove that it "advanced the art of written prose in general, and of argumentative composition in particular" (p. 78) while in no way succumbing to the tendency to perceive the sophistic piece as somehow indicative of the philosophy/rhetoric split which was an intellectual artifact of later developments. Leaving the sophists but remaining firmly within the realm of current theoretical issues, Michael C. Leff questions the general applicability of Dilip Goankar's assertion that contemporary rhetorical theory differs from ancient theory in that it is hermeneutic rather than performative and dubious about the possibility of human agency fully explaining rhetorical decisions. Leff reads Thucydides's account of the Mytilene disaster as evidence that the ancients were, or at least Thucydides was, aware of how rhetorical discourse could be shaped by circumstances beyond participants' control. Leff ends his argument, however, by asserting that Thucydides' observations were intended to have a therapeutic effect in that "The readers of History...become better equipped to assume the role of agent, for they are better able to interpret that role not just at the moment of action but also from within an understanding of history" (p. 96). Christopher Lyle Johnstone's own noteworthy contribution combines archaeology with acoustics to challenge one of the idols of traditional rhetorical history. Whereas we have always argued that deliberative rhetoric must have played an integral part in Athenian democracy, Johnstone points out that we have never taken into account the physical circumstances of delivery in the open spaces of the ancient agoras. The Pynx, in particular, he argues, was constructed such that even under ideal climatic conditions, perhaps only "half of the 5000 Reviews 229 present could understand what speakers were saying" (p. 126). If this compelling argument is true, then we need to...
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RHETORICA 232 James L. Kastley, Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition: From Plato to Postmodernism (New Haven and London: Yale University Press), pp. vi + 293. At a time when so many are trying to "rethink" rhetoric by making up stories about "the sophists" or parroting de Man's version of Nietzsche, Kastley's book is most welcome. In it, we have a thoughtful and illuminating contribution to the conversation that needs to be promoted about the ways in which the past may meaningfully speak to the present. His list of "required reading" is not the standard one. The book begins with readings of the Gorgias and the Meno that present a Plato who was not an enemy of rhetoric but its subtlest theorizer. The two dialogues, Kastley argues, constitute a critique of the rhetoric of private interests. Socrates, by his practice of refutation (elenchos), gets us to see the inevitable entanglements with injustice and injury that ensnare anyone who engages in symbolic action in political concerns. Sophocles' Philoctetes and Euripides' Hecuba are then shown to address problems of the availability of audience, the crisis of trust, and the consequences of marginalization. In the second half of the book, Kastley reads Austen's Persuasion as an allegory confronting the lost public sphere of discourse, offering rhetoric not as a solution, but as a problem. He then presents critiques ("refutations") of Sartre's views in What is Literature? and, in one of the book's most successful chapters, of de Man's views on rhetoric. In his reading of de Man, he offers an adroit demonstration of the ways in which de Man's position is blind to the dangers of collapsing position to truth and of framing rhetoric in terms of cognition rather than action. The final chapter, "Rhetoric and Ideology," takes us to Kenneth Burke—partly by way of Lentricchia's misreading of him—and to an insightful reconsideration of the nature of ideology and of community that yields a vision of a rhetoric that can use the strategies of classical skepticism as critical devices to "expose the exercises and deformations of power operating as a set of structured relationships" (p. 257). Kastley's readings are not without problems. Not everyone will agree, for instance, that Gorgias (in Plato's dialogue) has the best interests of the community at heart (p. 35); and some may feel uncomfortable with Kastely's tendency to shape his expectations of Reviews 233 dramatic characters and explain their actions as though they were real people. The Socrates Kastley portrays seems less like the Socrates of Plato than that of Cameades's Academy. And if Persuasion shows us how, in the wake of social transformations, it became necessary for women to discover how to speak, cannot the same be said of men? On the other hand, Kastley's argument that Sartre quietly allows Kant in by the back door and his detailing of the paradoxical results of de Man's favoring knowledge over action are both persuasive. Even more impressive is the subtlety with which he thinks through the problems posed by post-Enlightenment thinking to reject the temptation to find some place to stand "outside the rhetorical flux" and move, rather, toward a world in which we act, toward a community that is pluralized, temporal, and a provisional form of sharing, where we might begin to wrestle with the injustice and injury that are inevitable, but not insurmountable. Kastley's "refutations" are, in the end, affirmations; and for those he is to be commended. THOMAS M. CONLEY University ofIllinois Gabriele Knappe, Traditionen der klassischen Rhetorik im angelsachsischen England (Heidelberg: Universitatsverlag C. Winter, 1996), xx + 573 pp. According to Gabriele Knappe, previous efforts to assess the knowledge, use, and function of classical rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England have failed to distinguish between the tradition of ancient rhetoric proper and elements of rhetorical instruction taken over by grammarians. The goal of the former was the production of prose texts designed to have a specified effect on an audience, while the principal goal of the latter was the proper interpretation of texts and only secondarily their production. Systematic evaluation of all available evidence indicates little or no direct knowledge of...
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In the late Renaissance in England and France women appropriated classical rhetorical theory for their own purposes, creating a revised version that presented discourse as modeled on conversation rather than public speaking. In Les Femmes Illustres (1642), Conversations Sur Divers Sujets (1680), and Conversations Nouvelles sur Divers Sujets, Dediées Au Roy (1684), Madeleine de Scudéry adapted classical rhetorical theory from Cicero, Quintilian, Aristotle, and the sophists to a theory of salon conversation and letter writing. In The Worlds Olio (1655), Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, feminizes rhetoric by analogies from women's experience and inserts women into empiricist rhetoric by assuming discourse based on conversation rather than public speaking. In Women's Speaking Justified (1667), Margaret Fell revises sermon rhetorics, claiming preaching for women, but preaching in private spaces, in the Quaker prophetic fashion. In A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1701), Mary Astell adapts Augustine, proposing a women's college to promote a "Holy Conversation", and a rhetoric of written discourse treating writer and reader as conversational partners. These women use categories of the ideal woman to contest the gendering of discourse in their culture, questioning "private" and "public" as defining terms for communication.
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The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces by Thomas P. Miller ↗
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RHETORICA 236 Thomas P. Miller, The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces, (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1997), x + 345 pp. Thomas Miller's excellent work The Formation of College English examines a strand in the development of English studies—the civic domain of rhetoric—neglected in other important histories of the discipline: Gerald Graff's Professing English Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), Franklin Court's Institutionalizing English Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), and Robert Crawford's Devolving English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). In the role of respondent to the 1997 Conference on College Composition and Communication session "Octalog II: The (Continuing) Politics of Historiography", Miller stressed the "civic sense of the work that lies before us" as historiographers of the discipline of composition and rhetoric. In particular, he praised historical research based on a "civic philosophy of teaching that links critical understanding with collaborative action toward social justice" and applauded archival work "that take[s] up the project of reconstituting the experiences of those who have been erased from accounts of the dominant tradition." In The Formation of College English, Miller "takes up" the little examined "provincial traditions that introduced modem history, politics, rhetoric, literature, and science into the college curriculum as case studies of how the teaching of culture functions as a means of social reproduction and transformation" (p. 19). He offers a comprehensive and unique treatment of territory introduced in recent institutional accounts of the development of American classes in rhetoric/composition, including Nan Johnson's Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in American Colleges (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992) and Winifred Bryan Homer's Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: The American Connection (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). Miller asks "from a historical perspective, what then are the practical values of rhetoric and composition?" (p. 285). The answer: studying parallels between "historical situations" leads to Henry Giroux's conception of "teachers as transformative intellectuals" who strive for self-awareness and view "education as a public discourse" (p. Reviews 237 288). Beginning with an examination of the "civic domain, where rhetoric concerns itself with popular values in political action," Miller applies key concepts defining Antonio Gramsci's rhetorical theory ("civil society," "cosmopolitanism," "organic and traditional intellectuals") to his exploration of "how the humanities can prepare students to become productively involved in political debates over popular values in practical action" (p. 7). In the first chapter, Miller points to print economy and the resulting expansion of the reading public as the driving force responsible for effacing rhetoric: "Professors...de-emphasized the composition of public discourse and concentrated on teaching taste to adapt higher education to the mission of instilling a common culture in the reading public" (pp. 60-61). In chapter two, Miller examines the role of professors at the elite English universities, the "antiquarians who divorced the learned tradition from the needs of contemporary learners", in an attempt to preserve English culture against change (p. 64). Conversely, the utilitarian approach to education characteristic of the dissenting academies and subsequently the provincial colleges introduced modem culture into higher education. The new pedagogy at these institutions was based on the belief that "free inquiry would advance liberal reform, economic progress, and rational religion" (p. 85). The next three chapters closely examine the development of the "new rhetoric" at: the Dissenting Academies, which encouraged students to assume a critical perspective on received beliefs; the provincial Scottish Universities, which reformed the university curriculum against a critical reexamination of classicism; and the colonial Irish "contact zones", where outsiders had to teach themselves the proprieties of English taste and usage. Miller's investigation of the classical tradition in Ireland, focusing on the elocutionary movement and English studies outside the university, represents a novel and fascinating contribution to rhetorical studies of this period. Miller devotes the following chapters to closely appraising the contributions to rhetorical theory and practice of perhaps the three most influential figures and movements of the period—Adam Smith and the rhetoric of a commercial society, George Campbell and the "science of man", and Hugh Blair and the rhetoric of belles lettres. In the final chapter, Miller examines the expansion of higher...
June 1997
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Reviews 347 dimension often missing (a point mentioned by Trevor Melia in his erudite Comment). Here rhetoric reaches its fullest extension, becoming one with the domain of poetics - but that should come as no surprise to historians of rhetoric. Jean Dietz Moss Ronald H. Carpenter, History as Rhetoric: Style, Narrative, and Persuasion (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995). Ronald Carpenter's History as Rhetoric argues that the stories of past events we call "history" draw upon the resources of rhetoric and can serve to shape a public understanding of the world. For postmodernists, this may not qualify as news, but Carpenter is no postmodernist. He relies pri marily on methods that would satisfy the most doctrinaire neoAristotelian or New Critic. He uses the tools of "scientific history" and traditional literary analysis to demonstrate the rhetoricality of history. The focus of Carpenter's book is on American historians of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries: Frederick Jackson Turner, Carl Becker, Alfred Thayer Mahan, Frank L. Owsley, and Barbara Tuchman. He attempts to show how each of these writers employs techniques of style and/or narrative in an effort to achieve "opinion leadership" beyond the realms of academic history. In the cases of Turner, Becker, Mahan, and Tuchman, Carpenter argues that they achieved an effective "rhetorical impress," making his case by means of close readings of their texts com bined with documentary evidence of the responses of actual readers. As his one negative example, Carpenter attempts to show that Frank Owsley's contribution to the agrarian manifesto I'll Take My Stand failed in its persuasive purpose. Carpenter devotes three chapters (one each on Turner, Becker, and Mahan) to the effects of style, and three chapters (another on Mahan, plus one each on Owsley and Tuchman) to techniques of narrative. In a long concluding chapter, he ranges more broadly across historical and popular writings and even motion pictures to show the pre science of Turner's frontier hypothesis in respect to twentieth-century American attitudes toward warfare, and to urge the need for alternatives to the frontiersman metaphor in war-related public discourse. Carpenter is at his best when working as a rhetorical analyst on archival materials. In his chapter on Frederick Jackson Turner, for exam- 348 RHETORICA pie, Carpenter traces the evolution of Turner's style, starting with analyses of primary sources from Turner's high-school and college days, and mov ing from those to the later professional writings. Drawing upon both clas sical and modem stylistic theory, Carpenter teases out the stylistic lessons Turner learned as a student and shows how those lessons found their way into his mature work. Carpenter then uses published reviews and corre spondence from readers to support an argument that, through the power of an "oratorical" style, Turner helped establish the frontiersman as an archetype of American culture. The chapter is a model of stylistic analysis and of cautiously developed argument. Equally interesting and somewhat more venturesome in interpreta tion is Carpenter's treatment of Barbara Tuchman's The Guns ofAugust and its role in John Kennedy's decision making during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. That Kennedy had drawn lessons from Tuchman was previously established, and here, as elsewhere in the book, Carpenter acknowledges his debts to other writers with meticulousness and grace. Carpenter's own purpose is to get at specific rhetorical techniques that might account for Tuchman's influence. He draws on Tuchman's correspondence with edi torial adviser Denning Miller in an effort to understand the compositional choices made in the writing of her book, and uses Hayden White's tropical theory to characterize the resulting narrative form. He simultaneously develops a speculative argument that draws on documentary evidence to show how specific narrative and stylistic features of The Guns of August might account for its role in Kennedy's thinking during the crisis. Throughout the chapter, Carpenter interweaves narrative, rhetorical analysis, theoretical explication, and the citation of documentary evidence in an admirably coherent and persuasive form. In the Tuchman chapter, Carpenter focuses on the rhetorical effect of a single work on an audience of one. In other chapters he examines rhetori cal effects wrought on audiences...
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Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric ed. by Gregory Clark, S. Michael Halloran ↗
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340 RHETORICA singularly persistent—and, one might add, singularly disturbing in some contexts—would be thoroughly vindicated. Whatever one's perspective, however, no one who is seriously inter ested in early modern culture, the history of pedagogy, or the history of ideas can afford to neglect this major contribution. Terence Cave Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric, eds. Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran's point of departure for this important collection of essays is Gerald Graff's claim in Professing the University that the collegiate oratorical culture in the first half of the nine teenth century linked college curricula with the "literary culture outside" (pp. 2-3). Yet as their introduction makes clear, "the culture outside dur ing the early years of the nineteenth century was not 'literary' in our sense of the term, but oratorical. Its most prized symbolic work was that of the orator" (p. 3). In fact, "literary" is just one species of expertise that began to develop during the course of the century. As Clark and Halloran write in their introduction, "both the theory of rhetoric taught in the schools and the practice of public discourse sustained outside them were transformed during the nineteenth century from those of the neoclassical oratorical cul ture into those of the professional culture we see characterizing both col leges and communities by its end" (pp. 5-6). Clark and Halloran use the Burkean concept of transformation to describe the changes in nineteenthcentury oratorical culture, and though the historiographical stance of the introduction and the collective practices of the nine essays are somewhat at odds, this collection makes a significant contribution to scholarship describing the move from a collective moral authority to an individual authority which became grounded, ultimately, on notions of expertise. Further, the volume contributes to studies of collective reading and writ ing practices by positing "oratorical culture" as a concept beside "audi ence," "community," "rhetorical culture," and "public" to describe where and how groups analyze and produce discourses collectively. In "Edward Everett and Neoclassical Oratory," Ronald Reid argues that Everett's successes and failures "illustrate the nation's changing Reviews 341 oratorical culture" (p. 29) because "Everett exemplifies the declining repu tation of neoclassical oratory" (p. 30). Reid contends that Everett's reputa tion declined because he could not adapt the neoclassical oratory in which he was trained at Harvard to the needs of Jacksonian democracy. Thus Reid's essay replaces Clark and Halloran's introductory trope of transfor mation with that of paradigm shift—"the old oratorical culture" versus "the new oratorical culture." The tensions among different conceptions of permanence and change within Reid's essay force us to question whether oratorical culture, or any culture, is not always undergoing transforma tions and how serviceable the notion of "oratorical culture" is for studying change. The contradictory tendencies inherent in belletristic rhetoric are taken on more directly by Gregory Clark in his essay "The Oratorical Pulpit of Timothy Dwight." Clark's argument centers on how Dwight combined Scottish conceptions of taste with the Evangelical Calvinism of his infa mous grandfather, Jonathan Edwards. The combination, which resulted in a distinctive theory and practice Clark calls "oratorical poetics," empha sized "the force of the language of sentiment" in service to "sustaining a common moral and political culture" (p. 58). Though Dwight's lectures on rhetoric are lost, Clark uses edited editions of the lecture notes of two of Dwight's students to reconstruct what Dwight probably taught. Instruction, of course, raises the question of native ability and of who was authorized to instruct whom. Again, Clark emphasizes the contradictions inherent in belletrism and Enlightenment rhetorics of all kinds, and articu lates how those contradictions asserted themselves in early nineteenthcentury America in particular. Russel Hirst's essay on Austin Phelps, Bartlett Professor of Oratory in Andover Theological Seminary from 1848 to 1879, is a rich historical study of how individualism and collectivism manifested themselves in the orato ry and homiletic theory of a less-known figure in the history of rhetoric. Valuable as it is both historically and for...
March 1997
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Reviews 215 expediency. Jean-Louis Labarrière treats Aristotle's remarkable compari son of deliberative oratorical style to skiagraphia, or chiaroscuro, in painting. In Section IV, Alexander Nehamas, in an essay that first appeared in Rorty's 1992 collection on the Poetics, writes on pity and fear in the Rhetoric and Poetics, while André Laks (following influential essays by G. E. R. Lloyd, J. Lallot, and I. Tamba-Mecz and Paul Veyne) attempts a unifying interpretation of Aristotle's theory of metaphor. We have here, then, a formidable collection of essays by students of ancient philosophy, one which future scholars of rhetoric will need to take into account. If the shadow of Plato looms large behind most of the essays, that should come as no great surprise. As is the case with all col lections, it would be easy to fault this one for what is omitted or ignored here: it would have been valuable, for example, to have such a group of philosophers comment in more detail on the presocratic / sophistic back ground of the Rhetoric. But that would be to miss the virtues of what is included. I prefer, as I have indicated, to take the publication of this col lection as an auspicious omen for the philosophical study of rhetoric in general, and of the Rhetoric in particular. John T. Kirby Barbara Cassin, L'effet sophistique (Paris: Gallimard, NRF Essais, 1995), 693 pp. To readers who are not quite acquainted with the idiosyncrasies of French publishing, the release by Gallimard of Barbara Cassin's L'effet sophistique may seem unremarkable. However, for such a mainstream publisher to take the major step of printing nearly seven hundred pages of rhetorical analysis, even in a series devoted to philosophy (NRF Essais), is most remarkable. It means, in terms of France's intellectual landscape, that "rhetoric" has broken into a different field of readership, more accus tomed to reading (and giving credence to) Jean-François Lyotard than, say, Marc Fumaroli. Setting aside this strategic effect, L'effet sophistique bears all the charac teristics of being a major work on at least three counts. Firstly, it heralds a shift in French philosophy from denying history of rhetoric the status of a discipline to its reincorporation in philosophical debates. However, Cassin's work keeps its distance from both deconstruc tion and history of ideas (as in De Romilly's Les grands sophistes dans 216 RHETORICA l'Athènes de Périclès [Paris: De Fallois, 1998]). Secondly, L'effet sophistique has the merit to question sources and to provide new translations and insights into mistranslations (Cassin also heads a team working on a Vocabulaire européen des philosophies). A main tenet of Cassin's method is to immerse her reading-as-translation into the history of readings of particu lar texts such as Gorgias' Praise of Helen or Sextus Empiricus' Aduersus mathematicos VU, 65-87, or Galen's Libellus de captionibus and excerpts from Lucian as well as the remains of Antiphon the Sophist. Thirdly, it offers conceptual tools to formulate a theory of political or civic discourse not unrelated to current debates on the nature of democracy, diversity, and human rights. In this respect, L'effet sophistique truly does justice to the art of rhetoric by inscribing an analysis of the Sophists in the history of their reception by ancient and modern philosophy and in "current affairs." What is most topical is the way Cassin articulates the opposition of what she terms "Arendts' Greece" and "Heidegger's Greece" (pp. 248-69), by way of conclusion to a chapter on "City as Performance." She elucidates how Arendt constructs the primacy of politics over philosophy by resort ing to Protagoras. L'effet sophistique formulates one central question: in the conflict between the two logoi that haunts ancient thought, between ontology and logology, between the Sophist and the Philosopher, how did the First and the Second Sophistics position themselves as key operators in the inven tion of "fictionality"? Can we reconstruct the rhetorical history of that "Other" of philosophy and of good Politics, the Rhetor—either Protagoras, Gorgias, and Antiphon or Philostratos, Ælius Aristides, Lucian, and Longus—and, in the process, obtain a...
February 1997
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Moderation, Religion, and Public Discourse: The Rhetoric of Occasional Conformity in England, 1697-1711 ↗
Abstract
Abstract: This paper analyzes the rhetoric of the eighteenthcentury English debate over occasional conformity in order to develop a better understanding of how persuasive appeals to moderation were used in this particular case. This debate is noteworthy because it reveais how the eighteenth-century veneration of moderation was influeneed by the seventeenth-century Protestant reading of the New Testament. This understanding of moderation led to some of the first arguments suggesting a need for separation of church and state. Further, this example extends our theoretical understanding of moderate rhetoric when we observe its use as a justification for social change.
January 1997
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Moderation, Religion, and Public Discourse: The Rhetoric of Occasional Conformity in England, 1697–1711 ↗
Abstract
This paper analyzes the rhetoric of the eighteenth- century English debate over occasional conformity in order to develop a better understanding of how persuasive appeals to moderation were used in this particular case. This debate is noteworthy because it reveals how the eighteenth-century veneration of moderation was influenced by the seventeenth-century Protestant reading of the New Testament. This understanding of moderation led to some of the first arguments suggesting a need for separation of church and state. Further, this example extends our theoretical understanding of moderate rhetoric when we observe its use as a justification for social change.
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Ars Poetriae: Rhetorical and Grammatical Invention at the Margins of Literacy by William M. Purcell ↗
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Reviews William M. Purcell, Ars Poetriae: Rhetorical and Grammatical Invention at the Margins of Literacy, Studies in Rhetoric/ Communication (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996), 193 pp. In the context of the evolution from oral to written discourse in the classical and medieval periods of western Europe, Purcell discusses six texts on the art of versification, or artes poetriae: 1) Matthew of Vendome, Ars versificatoria; 2) Geoffrey of Vinsauf, Poetria nova and Documentum de modo et arte dictandi et versificandi; 3) John of Garland, De arte prosayca, metrica , et rithmica (Parisiana poetria); 4) Gervasius of Melkley, Ars poetica; and 5) Eberhard the German, Laborintus. Composed in the twelfth and thir teenth centuries, these texts are revolutionary in their adaptation of rhetoric and grammar to poetry, which in that period was usually read aloud or recited. The book offers a useful introduction to material which may be difficult for most undergraduate students to obtain or to under stand; however, the critical framework into which Purcell places these texts needs justification, as it is part of a growing debate on the history of orality and literacy. The book is divided into two parts. Part I, consisting of two chapters, establishes the two main assumptions of the theoretical framework into which Purcell has placed the six treatises on poetic composition. The first assumption sets up a diachronic dichotomy between orality and literacy, from the Greek tradition to the invention of the printing press. Purcell argues that rhetoric in classical Greece and Rome was a discipline designed for oral delivery. Grammar was a written activity, developed for analysis and correction of text. As the societies of the Middle Ages pro gressed in literacy, grammar was increasingly applied to written material. Thus, Purcell sets up an oral-literate time spectrum. He treats the ancient Greek and late medieval periods as two poles, the former primarily oral and the latter increasingly text-based or literate. Citing Paul Prill, Purcell asserts that the arts of poetry of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries stand at the cusp of the shift from orality to literacy. The second major assumption of Purcell's theoretical framework is that grammar and rhetoric exchanged functions along the oral-literate time spectrum. In the classical period, rhetorical theory was used as a system of composition for oral delivery, while grammar was a system to correct and to analyze written text. By the time the arts of poetry were composed, these roles had begun to be reversed: "Ultimately, with the advent of the printing press, the text became the thing in and of itself, moving away 107 108 RHETORICA from the oral end of the spectrum and toward the literate end. At the same time, rhetoric—a more orally focused technology—moved toward the literate, and grammar—a more literally focused technology—moved toward the oral. The tension created by the rhetorical/grammatical move ment is reflected in the theoretical treatises in the artes poetriae themselves" (p. 5). Part II consists of five chapters, arranged chronologically, on the artes poetriae which illustrate the developments in the matrix of orality, literacy, grammar, and rhetoric which Purcell has set up in the first section of his book. Purcell provides excellent summaries of these treatises by giving an overview of their sections on invention, arrangement, and style. Less attention is given to invention and arrangement, as the author's primary interest is the overlapping of grammar and rhetoric in the domain of style, a unique contribution of poetic theory in the Middle Ages. Purcell's study of figures in the artes poetriae shows how the medieval tradition leads to the systematic relation of style to stasis theory in Renaissance rhetoric. This is the most valuable contribution of the book. Purcell argues that these treatises are not simply extensions or adapta tions of classical rhetoric, but that they establish a unique genre of rhetori cal theory at a time when orality and literacy coexisted. To demonstrate this point, he observes that the existing editions of the texts can be mis leading in causing readers to assume a debt to the classical sources. For example, the Faral edition and the Nims translation of Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria Nova...
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114 RHETORICA than once, insists he is telling the truth: "If I speak untruthfully . . . , O God, let me never come into thy kingdom" (p. 27). In an impressive compression of facts into nine pages of the publish ing history of the printed versions and six pages of detailed endnotes, Parker and Johnson give us a wealth of data, and one goes away feeling that indeed one has gotten closer to the speech event than anyone has pre viously been privileged to get. The authors conclude, "... it becomes clear that although frequently published, Raleigh's speech has been presented from relatively few of the potentially available texts: three from identifi able manuscripts, and four basic printed sources, with various conflations of these texts. The Dutch edition takes its place, therefore, as the earliest of the published texts, the closest to the event it describes" (p. 69). A limited edition of six hundred copies of this volume was printed. Those fortunate enough to secure a copy will possess a classic volume of rigorous scholarship, a model for those drawn to the history of rhetoric. J. Vernon Jensen Lana Cable, Carnal Rhetoric: Milton's Iconoclasm and the Poetics of Desire (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1995), x + 231 pp. This is an interesting but irritating book. Lana Cable's survey of Milton's affective rhetoric ambitiously extends Paul Ricoeur's doctrine of metaphor, which (more emphatically than the other theory assimilated by Cable) already constitutes a serious implicit challenge to older thinking. For Quintilian, emotion is mainly derived from enargeia and visio, and for the Roman rhetoricians (as Beth Innocenti recently reminded us), such visio was best expressed in graphic, sensory, non-figurative language. For Ricoeur, thinking and poetic feeling (the most positive and transformative mode of emotion) are integral. They work through metaphor, and, in the Aristotelian terms which Ricoeur adopts, the differences between the metaphorical idea (or image) and its referent are as important as the similarities. Overcoming every pre-existent sense of difference, metaphor at its most novel "does not merely actualize a potential connotation, it creates it. It is a semantic innova tion, an emergent meaning."1 Since feeling is an integral part of this process, rhetoric will project its most intense pathos when it orients this innovation towards things of the greatest import, as it does in Milton. Ricoeur protests at a tendency, derived from Hume, to think of :Mario J. Valdes, ed., A Ricoeur Reader: Reflection and Imagination (London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991), p. 79. Reviews 115 imagery as decaying sense impression, basically passive; he favours the active Kantian view of "imagination as the place of nascent meanings and categories."2 Applied to the rhetorical arousal of emotion, this means the subsuming of pathos into ethos: sensory images, whether of the past, the present, or the future, of the actual or the potential, are presented through the "likeness" of metaphor. This brings new connotations to bear for both "tenor" and "vehicle" (terms which Ricoeur adopts from Richards), and presses these on the reader or listener through the emotional, logical, and linguistic shock of a comparison that transcends the "first-order feelings" or "bodily emotions"3 derived from sense—or from the direct verbal evo cation of sensory experience? Repeated shocks must draw attention from the subjects of debate (however emotive) to the condition of the debaters, and to the inspiriting relationship of persuader and persuadee. Cable's point of departure is to question or qualify Ricoeur's idea that the "second-order feelings" attendant on metaphor transcend (or suspend) the emotional impact of sense. In her view, "A more psychologically cred ible account of metaphor's dependence on imagination and feeling would have to recognize that these two are functioning in tandem all the time, whether occasioned by literary experience or by some other kind of experi ence . . . drawing ... on sense perceptions both immediate and remem bered; on understanding and knowledge; on beliefs, aspirations, opinions, and prejudices . . ." (p. 29). This existing complex of influences must (though Cable never adequately explains the point) constitute the mental and emotional images, the "complacency" (p. 32) which iconoclastic metaphor breaks or refashions. In fusing it with poetry and semantics, Cable is...
November 1996
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Abstract: This essay explores how classical legal or forensic rhetoric informs Henry Fielding's work as a novelist. Focusing on the dichotomous or contradictory application and characterization of forensic rhetoric in Fielding's three major novels—joseph Andrews, Tom jones, and Amelia—I will suggest that the exuberance and confidence that tjrpify the novelist's portrayal of legal rhetoric within the diegetic realm of his narrators is undermined or rendered problematic by the wariness and pessimism with which the same kind of discourse is presented within the mimetie worlds of the stories themselves. After speculating about the biographical, historical, and aesthetic ramifications of this dichotomy, the essay concludes with brief discussion of the ideological significance of Fielding's portrayal of the lawyerly art of persuasion.
August 1996
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Abstract
Abstract: Traditional histories of rhetoric assume that the practical oratory of lawcourts and political assemblies is the “primary,” original form of rhetoric in its “preconceptual” or predisciplinary origins in archaic Greece. Hesiod's “Hymn to the Muses,” however, presents both prince and bard as practicing an art of psychagogic suasion, and presents the prince's discursive power as dependent on, and derived from, the paradigms of eloquence and wisdom embodied in the epideictic/poetic discourse of the bard: epideictic is the “primary” form of “rhetoric” in Hesiod's world. Hesiod's account agrees with what is known about the discursive practices of oral/traditional societies worldwide.
February 1996
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“Wherein hath Ramus been so offensious?”: Poetic Examples in the English Ramist Logic Manuals (1574-1672) ↗
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Abstract: The logic manuals of Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-72) enjoyed a wridespread pedagogical sueeess in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in Protestant England. Historians of dialectical studies have judged these manuals, and Ramist dialectic more generally, as purveying a vitiated form of Aristotelian logic because the manuals cite examples frem poetry to illustrate logical principles and axioms. The semantics of Ramist method, however, blurs the neat line between literal and figurative language. A semiotie analysis of Ramist dialectic suggests that the oppesitien between logical discourse and poetic discourse is net stable and that Ramist logie is fundamentally representative or “poetic.”
November 1995
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Research Article| November 01 1995 The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences R. H. Roberts and J. M. M. Good (ed.), The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences (London: Bristol Classical Press, 1993), xii + 278 pp. Peter Mack Peter Mack Department of English, University of Warwick, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1995) 13 (4): 455–456. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1995.13.4.455 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Peter Mack; The Recovery of Rhetoric: Persuasive Discourse and Disciplinarity in the Human Sciences. Rhetorica 1 November 1995; 13 (4): 455–456. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1995.13.4.455 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1995, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1995 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
August 1994
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Abstract
Abstract: In this paper I wish to ask whether philosophers have good grounds for elaborating rhetorics of science. By doing so they might seem to deny the distinction between the theoretical intellect and the practical intellect, which traditionally have reigned over scientific discourse and rhetorical discourse, respectively. I shall suggest that philosophers of rhetoric do indeed have a warrant for developing their rhetorics of science. We shall assume with Aristotle that we may distinguish the theoretical from the practical intellect by distinguishing objects which cannot be other than they are from objects which can be other than they are. What we shall find is that a stalwart of British empiricism, John Stuart Mill, develops a philosophy of science concerned with objects which can be other than they are. Mill thus provides us with an ontological justification for our new rhetorics of science.
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Abstract: Seventeenth-century “natural religion” in England included the work of many theologians and scientists who comprised a close-knit discourse community shaped by a common theology and many similarities in intellectual outlook. They developed a complex rhetoric compounded of probabilistic reasoning and a wide range of figurative conventions for the argument from design. These writings offer a rich intertext of discursive practices which are more classically rooted, more intuitive and imaginative in appeal, and simultaneously more probabilistic and less demonstrative in reasoning, than has generally been assumed. This essay focuses on the imaginative, figurative dimensions of this work, identifying its primary classical sources and its sanctions in the rhetorical theory of the time.
May 1994
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Abstract: To non-specialists, academic disciplines invariably seem homogeneous, even monolithic. But even a relatively young discipline such as modem linguistics is more diverse in its procedures and concerns than might appear to those working in other fields. In this paper I attempt to show how certain kinds of linguistic inquiry might be relevant to those whose primary concern is rhetoric. I argue that these practices are often opposed to what I call the dominant paradigm in modern linguistics, with its commitment to abstraction and idealization. I discuss first those strands of linguistics, such as discourse analysis, text-linguistics, and stylistics, which tend to take the social formation for granted; I end by considering recent trends in so-called critical language study. Finally, I offer some thoughts on how linguistics may proceed in order to achieve a more programmatic rapprochement with rhetoric.
February 1994
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Abstract: While accounts of Renaissance rhetoric have recently begun to consider the work of Martin Luther, understanding of Luther's preaching strategies depends on detailed scrutiny of his sermons. A careful investigation of the language of a Luther sermon, in consideration of the rhetorical intent and context in which the work was developed, reveals a speaker striving to engage an audience. As a critical concept more pervasive than traditional notions of elocutio,the paradigmatic concept of "style" offered here draws from Burke and Perelman/Olbrechts-Tyteca to show how rhetorical devices ("figures") advance the argument and how the audience is intended to apprehend the meaning and action ("form") of the discourse. Coherent analysis of contextual, thematic, and structural features of Luther's sermon text shows style a primary rather than derivative feature of rhetorical criticism.
August 1993
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A Distinction No Longer of Use: Evolutionary Discourse and the Disappearance of the Trope/Figure Binarism ↗
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Abstract: The concem with progress and utility is shared by nineteenth-century scientists, philosophers, and rhetoricians, leading to significant correspondences among their discourses. This concern is manifest, for example, in the way in which several rhetorical treatises of the nineteenth century regard the distinction between a figure and a trope, which had been a common part of rhetorical theory since the time of Quintilian, as useless and anachronistic. By examining three nineteenth-century articulations of the justifications for erasing the trope/figure distinction from the cultural repertoire, this essay reveals structural and semantic parallels between these rhetorical treatises and the discourses of evolution and utilitarianism. Thus, the essay locates the source of the synonymity which the terms “trope” and “figure” have acquired in contemporary critical metalanguage in Victorian ideologies of progress and of the unprofitability and consequent discardability of the ancient.
May 1993
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Abstract: Gregorio Mayans y Siscar's Rhetórica (Valenda, 1757)must be regarded as a pivotal work in the evolution of eighteenthcentury Spanish rhetorical theory. Since Mayans' ideas did not appear without precedent in the Rhetórica, this article begins by tracing the development of his principles through his earlier writings about the state of discourse in Spain. A detailed analysis of the Rhetóricaitself is followed by a demonstration of how Mayans modified classical rhetoric into a rhetoricized poetics whose history became integrated into the history of Spanish literature. Thus Mayans' transformation of classical rhetoric takes its place in the development of Spanish cultural history, in which rhetoric increasingly came to be regarded as a part of the larger study of the national literature.
November 1992
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Research Article| November 01 1992 The Limits of Narrative: Truth Aspiring Discourse in the Bible Allen Scult Allen Scult Dept. of Speech Communication, Drake University, 206 Medbury Hall, Des Moines, lowa 50311-4505. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1992) 10 (4): 345–365. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.4.345 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Allen Scult; The Limits of Narrative: Truth Aspiring Discourse in the Bible. Rhetorica 1 November 1992; 10 (4): 345–365. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1992.10.4.345 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 Copyright 1992, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1992 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
May 1988
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Toward a Comprehensive Art of Written Discourse: Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the <i>Ars Dictaminis</i> ↗
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Research Article| May 01 1988 Toward a Comprehensive Art of Written Discourse: Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the Ars Dictaminis Martin Camargo Martin Camargo Department of English, University of Missouri, Columbia, Missouri 65211. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1988) 6 (2): 167–194. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.2.167 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Martin Camargo; Toward a Comprehensive Art of Written Discourse: Geoffrey of Vinsauf and the Ars Dictaminis. Rhetorica 1 May 1988; 6 (2): 167–194. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.2.167 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 Copyright 1988, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1988 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
August 1986
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Research Article| August 01 1986 Alexander Richardson's Puritan Theory of Discourse John C. Adams John C. Adams Dept. of Speech Communication & Theatre Arts, Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas 77843-4234 USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1986) 4 (3): 255–274. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.3.255 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John C. Adams; Alexander Richardson's Puritan Theory of Discourse. Rhetorica 1 August 1986; 4 (3): 255–274. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.3.255 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1986 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
February 1985
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Research Article| February 01 1985 Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse Edited by Robert J. Connors,Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. 291pp. Susan Miller Susan Miller University Writing Program, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, U.S.A. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1985) 3 (1): 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1985.3.1.71 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Susan Miller; Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse. Rhetorica 1 February 1985; 3 (1): 71–75. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1985.3.1.71 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1985, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1985 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.