Reviews Thomas A. Szlezak, Reading Plato, trans. Graham Zanker (New York: Routledge, 1999), xii + 137 pp. This short book will be interesting to all readers of Plato and all those who have pondered the relationship of oral and written discourse. It consists of twenty-seven short sections (2-6 pages each) the totality of which makes the following argument: Plato's philosophy can best be understood when read in the light of his critique of writing in the Phaedrus. According to Szlezak, nineteenth and twentieth-century readers have misunderstood and misinterpreted Plato's dialogues. This is so, he explains, because they have paid insufficient attention to Plato's critical comments on writing, because they have tended "to align the great thinkers of the past with the attitudes of [their] own times" (p. Ill), and because thy have confused Plato's esotericism, which is directed to a cause, with the notion of secrecy, which is directed to power (p. 115). Szlezak observes that starting with Schleiermacher "the modern devo­ tees of the god Theuth" (p. 41) have missed the intent of Plato's critique of writing. Consequently, they have supplemented the text of the Phaedrus in in­ admissible ways. Their graphocentric orientation and anachronistic readings have kept them from seeing Plato's repeated point that written philosophy itself can only go so far; to go further, it needs support, the kind that only the dialectician's oral logos can provide. Szlezak applies Plato's critique of writing to most Platonic dialogues, and shows that most of the recent interpretations have little, if any, merit. This is so, he argues, because the internal evidence of several dialogues points not to what is written but to what remains to be spoken about the texts at hand. Rather than read each dialogue separately, Szlezak reads across several dialogues, and identifies seven structural features they all share: 1) they typically depict conversations, with only occasional monologues within the conversational framework; 2) the conversations are place- and time-bound, happen between true-to-life participants most of whom are historically verifi­ able; 3) they all have a discussion leader, generally Socrates; 4) the discussion leader converses with one partner at a time, and in some cases he replaces the real partner with an imaginary one; 5) the discussion leader answers all objections, introduces all elements helpful to the conversation, refutes all other participants but is never himself refuted; 6) the conversation is raised to a higher level in the course of warding off an attack; and 7) none of the© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XIX, Number 3 (Summer 2001). Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St, Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223, USA 341 342 RHETORICA dialogues comes to a definite conclusion, they all point to the need for further investigation and reflection, and they all have one or more "deliberate gaps" (pp. 18-19; 103-108). Szlezak does not argue for the general superiority of oral discourse over its written counterpart. Rather, he shows that oral discourse has a higher status but only for those capable of playing the role of a philosopher, more specifically a dialectician in the Platonic tradition. To play such a role requires that one identify significant topics for discussion (it is simply not the case that any one topic is as good as any other), expedite the discussion through poignant questions, refute objections, and defend doctrines committed to writing. Effectively, a Platonic dialectician possesses something of higher value (ta timiotera) than his philosophical writings (p. 49). This something consists of doctrines whose articulation happens orally and whose function is to support, defend, or extend written doctrines. Reading Plato is a good piece of scholarship, it guides the reader through Plato's dialogues carefully and thoughtfully. And it raises questions that expose the limitations of the disciples of Derridolatry. At the same time, however, it brings attention to several theoretical issues that Szlezak does not address. For example, how is a contemporary reader to "adapt himself to the perspective of the author, against all kinds of prejudices and resistance which are specific to...

Ever since Plato, the Sophists have been seen as teaching "the art of persuasion", particularly the art (or skill) of persuasive speaking in the lawcourts and the assembly on which success in life depended. I argue that this view is mistaken. Although Gorgias describes logos as working to persuade Helen, he does not present persuasion as the goal of his own work, nor does any other Sophist see persuasion as the primary aim of his logoi. Most sophistic discourse was composed in the form of antilogies (pairs of opposed logoi), in which category I include works like Helen where the other side—the poetic tradition Gorgias explicitly cites as his opponent—is implicitly present. The purpose of these works is primarily to display skill in intellectual argument, as well as to give pleasure. Persuasion may be a goal of some sophistic works, but it is not their primary goal; and teaching the art of persuasion was not a major concern of the Sophists.

Reviews 271 Tersite (p. 251): L. Spina analyse, dans le cadre des rapports entre l'orateur et le contenu de son discours, condamnations et réhabilitations de Thersite (Iliade, II, 211-277), de Libanios à La Stampa. Dans La testimonianza diAtanasio sul Péri hupokriseôs di Teofrasto (177,368 Rabe = 712 FHS & G) (p. 271), M. Vallozza examine un texte d'Athanasios dans les Prolégomènes au Péri staseôn d'Hermogène comme témoignage sur le Péri hupokriseôs de Théophraste et justifie la correction par Rabe de ton tonon tes psukhês en ton tonon tês phones. On se réjouit que chaque article soit accompagné d'une bibliographie judicieusement sélective et parfaitement à jour. Cela contribue à faire de ce livre une mise au point sur la recherche dans le champ de a rhétorique et une invitation à s'engager sur les pistes tracées, qu'il s'agisse d'auteurs, de thèmes ou d'approches nouvelles. Michel Nouhaud Université de Limoges Michel Patillon, Hermogène, l'Art rhétorique. Traduction française inté­ grale, traduction et notes, Préface de Pierre Laurens (Paris, L'Age d'homme, 1997), 640pp. In his Lives of the Sophists Philostratos tells of the rise and fall of the adolescent prodigy Hermogenes (577K). By the age of fifteen his reputation was such that Marcus Aurelius came to hear him declaim and left amazed by his talent for improvisation. But, says Philostratos, his powers suddenly and inexplicably deserted him, leaving him to live out the rest of his life in obscurity, far from the glittering prizes of the sophistic performance circuit. The rhetorical textbooks attributed to him, however, became the standard rhetorical curriculum throughout the Byzantine middle ages, before being introduced to Reniassance Europe through the work of Greek émigrés like George of Trebizond. Only two of the treatises, On Issues (Peri Staseôn) and On Types of Style (Peri Ideon Logou) are now accepted as second-century works, the others having been added in the 5th or 6th century. But the corpus as edited by Rabe and as translated here in its entirety for the first time, does show us the full range of the rhetorical curriculum of the later Empire. Starting from Progymnasmata, the collection progresses to the complexities of stasis theory — the systematic analysis of the types of question arising in declamation — in On Issues. The treatises Peri Heureseôs (On Invention) and On Types of Style treat the art of composing a speech, and the choice of style. Finally, the curious treatise on the method of "forcefulness (or simply skillfulness as in Patillon's choice of the French term "habileté"), Peri methodou deinotêtos, provides a collection of advice on a variety of problems likely to face the declaimer such as "how to praise oneself". 272 RHETORICA The two treatises generally accepted as works of Hermogenes have been translated separately into English (On Types of Style by C. Wooten, On Issues notably by M. Heath) and into Russian. But, with the exception of the Progymnasmata, the others have never before been available in a modern language, nor has the corpus been accessible as a whole. Patillon's elegant and clear translation is accompanied by copious notes elucidating the mean­ ing of Greek terms, unpacking the unspoken assumptions about language and communication which inform the texts, opening up questions which the rhetoricians themselves took for granted. He also pinpoints the relevant passages of the Late Antique and Byzantine treatises and commentaries preserved in the largely uncharted waters of Walz's Rhetores Graeci. The sub­ stantial introduction (over 100 pages) provides a concise characterisation of the literary and rhetorical culture from which the Hermogenean corpus emerged, discussion of questions of authorship, and an invaluable overview of each of the constituent parts of the corpus. A preface by Pierre Laurens traces the reception of the corpus, particularly the treatise On Types of Style, in the Renaissance and Early Modern periods. The bibliography and indices are full and extremely useful (though the index of Greek words does not always give every occurrence of a term). The publication date did not allow for the inclusion of Patillon's...

Reviews L. Calboli Montefusco ed., Papers on Rhetoric III (Bologna: CLUEB, 2000), 281pp. On doit savoir gré à Lucia Calboli Montefusco d'avoir assuré la pub­ lication si rapide de ce recueil d'articles issus de communications présentées au XIL Congrès de la Société Internationale d'Histoire de la Rhétorique (Amsterdam, juillet 1999). Ces articles recouvrent une très longue période, allant d'Homère à l'époque médiévale, ce qui et peut-être justifié un classe­ ment chronologique. Leur diversité, leur originalité témoignent du regain de faveur que connaissent les recherches actuelles dans le domaine de la rhétorique et font de ce livre un ouvrage particulièrement stimulant. Dans The S. C. de Cn. Pisone pâtre: Asianisam and Juridical Language (p. 1), G. Calboli étudie les particularités linguistiques de ce Senatus Con­ sultant et y distingue une influence de l'éloquence rhodienne et des traits d'asianisme (grand nombre des relatives). Il met en lumière le rôle joué par Tibère dans la rédaction de ce texte, qui apparaît comme un document sur l'école de rhétorique de Théodore de Gadara. Dans Aristóteles' Benutzung des homoion in argumentatio und elecutio (p. 27), L. Calboli Montefusco con­ sidère la catégorie philosophique de Yhomoion comme le fondement de la rhétorique elle-même. Elle analyse son utilisation à l'intérieur de la preuve logique sur des exemples empruntés à la Rhétorique et aux Topiques ainsi que sa fonction stylistique dans l'élaboration des métaphores. Avec II sesto libro delT Institutio oratoria de Quintilian: la trasmissione del sapere, Tattualita storica, Tesperienza autobiográfica (p. 61), M. S. Celentano souligne la transfor­ mation du maître de rhétorique, qui devient un éducateur, un formateur de la jeunesse, par l'introduction dans son oeuvre, à côté des procédés tech­ niques, de son expérience personnelle et d'une réflexion autobiographique à valeur pédagogique. Quelques observations sur la théorie du discours figuré dans la Tekhnê du Ps.-Denys d'Halicarnasse (p. 75) nous sont données par P. Chiron, qui s'intéresse essentiellement au chapitre 9 de ce texte: l'auteur y décrit le discours figuré, qui consiste à "feindre de dire une chose et à en dire une autre". Ce chapitre prend ses distances vis-à-vis de la déclamation, comme de l'analyse linguistique, pour s'ouvrir sur un réel à charactère poli­ tique dans lequel les situations sont diversifiées. Dans Meeting the People: the Orator and the Republican Contio at Rome (p. 95), E. Fantham analyse les exigences rhétoriques de ces assemblées informelles que sont les contiones en faisant appel au témoignage de Cicéron, qui a vu, au cours de sa carrière, le caractère de ces réunions passer du meilleur au pire. Ethos and 269 270 RHETORICA Argument: The Ethos of the Speaker and the Ethos of the Audience (p. 113), tel est le rapport qu'E. Garver cherche à déterminer à partir de la remarque d'Aristote (Rhét. 1356al3) faisant de Yêthos le moyen de prouver le plus efficace. L'orateur ne peut viser à Yêthos sans en faire une fonction de lo­ gos, sa rhétorique devenant un art de l'apparence et de la manipulation. Ainsi Yêthos de l'orateur émerge-t-il de Yêthos de son public. Dans Cicéron critique de l'éloquence stoïcienne (p. 127), C. Lévy commence par présenter quelques personnages que l'orateur "considère comme emblématiques de l'éloquence stoïcienne romaine". Puis il envisage la critique de la rhétorique stoïicienne dans une perspective philosophique (accusation d'obscurité con­ tre les Stoïciens), avant d'étudier la relation entre cette critique et celle que suscitent les Néoattiques et que est d'ordre essentiellement stylistique. La rhétorique de Cicéron s'affirme par contraste avec ces deux conceptions. Avec Sull'uso retorico délia fabula esopica: un esempio nel De virtute di Dione de Prusa (p. 145), A. M. Milazzo étudie l'utilisation de la fable ésopique...

Reviews 273 A reading of the full Hermogenean corpus also reveals the sheer in­ tellectual demands of the art of declamation as practised by Philostratos's sophists, not to mention countless generations of Greek and Roman school­ boys. We are familiar with the sophist as virtuoso, as histrionic performer of the Greek past. These treatises take us behind the scenes to show the degree of training in analysis, argumentation, arrangement and verbal expression involved, particularly in an improvised performance like the one which im­ pressed Marcus Aurelius. The difficulty of the primary sources has been a great obstacle to the appreciation of late classical rhetoric, one can only hope for more translations like this, with commentaries of this depth. Ruth Webb Princeton University R. Meynet - L. Pouzet - N. Farouki - A. Sinno, Rhétorique sémitique. Texts de la Bible et de la Tradition musulmane (Paris: Ed. du Cerf, 1998), 347pp. Cet ouvrage, rédigé à quatre mains par des chercheurs de l'Université Saint-Joseph de Beyrouth, a déjà été publié en 1993 en version arabe; rédigé originairement en français dès 1985, il est publié ici avec des remaniements et des améliorations substantiels. Son introduction (pp. 7-11) annonce un double but: (1) tenter de définir, à partir de la rhétorique hébraïque et biblique (cette dernière incluant, outre la Bible hébraïque (l'Ancien Tes­ tament), également le Nouveau Testament, rédigé en grec mais dont le substrat araméen est reconnu), le concept plus large, et par là plus diffi­ cile à cerner, de "rhétorique sémitique", incluant également la composante arabe; et (2) élaborer, ce faisant, une base de travail commune aux "études exégétiques bibliques et musulmanes", qui ne se situent pas actuallement au même stade de développement et qui dès lors nécessitent la convergence d'une "recherche menée en commun entre chrétiens et musulmans pour une meilleure connaissance mutelle" (p. 7). Il faut saluer ce projet généreux et ambitieux, sans oublier - car il date déjà par certains aspects théoriques (cf. infra) - qu'il a pris naissance dans des circonstances certainement difficiles, à Beyrouth dans les années 1980; comme dans les temps anciens, c est d une crise collective profonde que peut surgir la lumière! L'ouvrage est divisé en trois parties. La Ire partie situe "L'analyse rhétorique dans le champ de la critique" (pp.13-112), en présentant briève­ ment "L'histoire des critiques" et "L'analyse rhétorique", cette dernière étant une "opération exégétique" (pp. 105 ss.) qui constitue ici le concept opératoire de base. La IIe partie inclut 14 exemples d' "Analyse rhétorique des textes" (pp. 115-272), regroupés selon les deux structures majeures: "Textes parall èlles" (= Textes No 1-8: Siracide 8, 8-9 - Matthieu 25,31-46 - Luc 6,46-49 274 RHETORICA & Bukhâri, Sahih, 2, 33; 3, 20; 23, 93 bis; 24, 26) et "Textes concentriques" (= Textes No 9-14: Psaume 67 - Proverbes 9, 1-18 - Luc 11, 1-54 & Muslim, Sahih 18 - Bukhâri, Sahih, 1,1 & 1, 6). La IIIe partie, consacrée aux "Bilan et perspectives" (pp. 273-308), anal­ yse successivement : la "Validité de l'analyse rhétorique", ses "Situation et apports" et ses "Domaines". Des indices (réferences bibliques et textes musulmans: auteurs) et une bibliographie complètent cet important volume. Menée selon les principes de "l'analyse rhétorique" (cf. l'ouvrage théorique publié, sous ce titre, par R. Meynet en 1989), la mise en évidence des divers éléments structurels des textes choisis est riche d'enseignements et, par là, convaincante à bien des égards. Les tableaux qui "illustrent" les 14 cas-types constituent ainsi des outils pédagogiques de valeur. La dif­ ficulté majeure, ressentie par le recenseur, est l'absence, dans cet ouvrage approfondi (et rédigé par des auteurs qui sont de bons sémitisants), de toute référence au niveau des langues sémitiques elles-mêmes; en effet, les textes s. étudiés n'y sont présentés qu'en segments textuels rédigés en...

Subject to neglect and at times harsh criticism, the eighteenth-century British elocutionary movement merits reconsideration as a complex rhetorical episode within the history of rhetoric. Confirming the value of the rhetorical analysis of rhetorical texts, this essay examines the forms and functions of persuasion which two key treatises from the elocutionary movement enacted within their own socio-historical context. A rhetorical reading of Thomas Sheridan's A Course of Lectures on Elocution (1762) and John Walker's Elements of Elocution (1781)—informed by theories of ethos, logos, and pathos—illustrates the nuances of the different cases made for the scholarly and educational credibility of elocution as a new field of study within the context of late eighteenth-century British culture: Walker's text, while profiting from Sheridan's earlier promotional campaign for the value of elocutionary study, attempts to redress the excesses of his forerunner's "florid harangue[s]" and to fill in the gaps of his incomplete instructional method.

130 RHETORICA tion. Fascicule I incorrectly refers to Peter of Blois's dictaminal treatise as an abridgement of work by Bernard of Meting (p. xxxv). An appendix contains the edition of an allegorical letter from Simon O.'s Summa dictandi which concerns the authorship of Regina sedens Rhetorica . A useful Glossary of Medieval Words and Unusual Spellings with ref­ erences to standard Medieval Latin dictionaries is followed by a list of cited manuscripts, editions of primary texts, cited secondary sources, and a full and accurate index. A copy of this book should be found in the library of every student of the ars dictaminis. Emil J. Polak Queensborough Community College, The City University ofNew York Kathleen Welch, Electric Rhetoric: Classical Rhetoric, Oralism, and a New Literacy (Cambridge MA: MIT Press, 1999) xvii + 255 pp. The dust jacket of Electric Rhetoric sports a blurb from Andrea Lunsford which praises an author who "re-theorizes (and re-races, re-genders, and re­ performs) pre-Aristotelian rhetoric and then uses it to explore posthumanist literacy and rhetoric in a range of electronic spaces. In its insistent rejection of what Welch calls the 'worst' of Enlightenment, Modernist, and Postmod­ ernist values—and in its bold program for change—this book is going to make a lot of people nervous. A must read!" I open with Lunsford's remarks because they are as illuminating for what they say as for what they do not say. Welch's book is not a "program" but a polemic for change which, by the author's own avowal, seeks to "redirect inquiry" and raise more questions than it answers (p. 9). Welch does so handily in six chapters housed in two parts, "Classical Greek Literacy and the Spoken Word" and "Logos Perform­ ers, Screen Sophism, and the Rhetorical Turn", followed by an "Appendix: Excerpt from the Origin Myth ofAcoma and Other Records". In Chapter 1, "Introduction: Screen Literacy in Rhetoric and Composi­ tion Studies", she opens with the captivating image of the television screen which, for better or for worse, is ubiquitous in "locations of power as well as of powerlessness". In addition to contrasting it effectively with the com­ puter screen which "mostly appears in locations of power" (p. 4), Professor Welch vows to rouse humanities scholars from what she condemns through­ out as their utter refusal to acknowledge and rethink the massive cultural changes which attend the universal sign system of video. Of no surprise to those familiar with her prior excellent contributions to the history and theory of rhetoric and composition, she believes that that mission can best be accomplished by returning to (and revamping considerably) Isocratic rhetoric. Simply put, Electric Rhetoric proposes a holistic approach to three fundamental principles: (1) that literacy conditions "how people articulate Reviews 131 within and around their ideas, their cultures, and themselves, including their subject positions"; (2) that "any current definition of literacy must account for changes in consciousness or mentalité"; and (3) that literacy "depends on social constructions (including [sic] gender and racial constructions) that give value to some writing and speaking activities and that devalue others" (pp. 7-8). Chapter 2, "An Isocratic Literacy Theory: An Alternative Rhetoric of Oral/Aural Articulation", provides the forum for Welch's endeavor to re­ cover Isocrates. Praising his recognition of the dependence between articu­ lation and thought and his emphasis on aptitude vs. native ability (p. 51), she simultaneously vilifies his rhetoric, which "reveals for us strikingly one of the hideous aspects of classical rhetoric: it appears to erase women or to victimize us. This erasure works hand in hand with Isocrates's agenda of imperialism, an intolerance, a dehumanizing of Others, for which he must be held accountable" (p. 49). Our job, then, as readers of Electric Rhetoric, is to hold the past accountable. The main thrust of Chapter 3, "Disciplining Isocrates", is to dismantle "the Great Man theory of history writing, with some token women thrown in the same underlying theoretical structure" (pp. 82-83). It contains some fascinating readings of the Antidosis, notably the dancing bear episode and its link to learning ability. What is not clear, however, is why "Isocrates's biggest problem lies in his and...

Reviews 467 Gilbert Collard, L'art de s'exprimer en toutes circonstances. Les secrets dévoilés des orateurs (Paris: Presses de la Renaissance, 1999), 204 pp. Maître Gilbert Collard, du barreau de Marseille, est un des plus grands avocats français, bien connu du public pour sa participation à des causes célèbres impliquant des personnalités du monde politique, artistique ou sportif. Auteur déjà de nombreux ouvrages, il publie ici un livre qui se définit comme "recueil de vingt-six ans de pratique oratoire" et somme de conseils, tant pour les futurs avocats que pour d'autres utilisateurs qui auront à s'exprimer en public. Or, sur la couverture de ce livre, l'auteur a tenu à faire figurer sa qualité de membre de l'International Society for the History of Rhetoric: démarche intéressante pour les lecteurs de Rhetorica. La première partie de l'ouvrage consiste dans un bref historique, qui commence par les œuvres d'Homère, qualifiées à juste titre de "poésie oratoire". G. Collard note que la rhétorique doit beaucoup aux sophistes, qui "méritaient mieux que la mauvaise réputation que Socrate leur fit". Se référant aux travaux de Marc Fumaroli, qui l'ont inspiré, il cite Aristote, Cicéron, Quintilien, et souligne l’importance de la tradition et des enseignements quelle dispense pour qui veut apprendre à parler aujourd'hui. La deuxième partie prolonge ce plaidoyer en faveur de la parole, en montrant, avec des raisonnements efficaces, comment l'art de parler a partie liée avec la formation de l'intelligence et du sens critique, avec la démocratie, avec l'humanité. L'auteur pose le problème moral de la rhétorique (comment distinguer persuasion et manipulation), présente les notions d'éthos et de pathos, puis énumère un certain nombre de défauts à éviter. Chemin faisant, des anecdotes illustrent l'actualité toujours renouvelée des problématiques rhétoriques, et l'avocat livre le fruit de ses expériences. Par exemple, Maître Collard estime que "ïe meilleur discours du monde ne devrait jamais dépasser une heure, l'idéal 468 RHETORICA étant le discours de quarante minutes" -au-delà, l'endormissement guette... La troisième partie brosse un panorama des principales notions techniques : les figures (notamment l'hyperbole, définie comme "la Marseillaise du répertoire"), les procédés d'argumentation (ici l'auteur s'appuie sur les travaux de Chaim Perelman), les principaux types de plan. Des conseils d'entraînement pratique sont donnés, et le livre se termine, dans une quatrième partie, par des analyses de discours fameux prononcés par des hommes politiques et des avocats, depuis Mirabeau jusqu'à Henri René Garaud. Comme l'auteur l'indique lui-même, son but n'est pas universitaire. Il n'entend pas proposer une recherche savante sur l'histoire de la rhétorique, mais offrir le témoignage d’un grand praticien de la parole. Le livre de G. Collard témoigne de l’intérêt de l'auteur pour la rhétorique et pour l'histoire de celle-ci, vue comme une source d'inspiration pour le présent. Il manifeste une approche du sujet, qui, sans être érudite, est profonde, parce qu'elle s'étend à l'histoire, à la morale, à la littérature. G. Collard est un orateur qui pense que la pratique oratoire doit être fondée sur le travail, la méthode, la culture, qui a des exordes prêts d'avance (comme Démosthène!), qui lit Montaigne et les poètes et qui veut réhabiliter la rhétorique dans des milieux (il y en a) où elle n'a pas bonne presse. Son témoignage est important. Laurent Pernot Université de Strasbourg II ...

This article reviews studies on Ramus amd Ramism published between 1987 and 2000 under the headings: Biographical and General Studies, Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, Scientific, and Ramism, this latter subdivided by geographical areas. It finds that the study of Ramus is in a very healthy state, particularly through international collaboration, though there are still considerable problems for scholars in securing access to the different versions of his works. Ramus is now presented primarily as a teacher and educationalist. The debate about Ramus's "humanism" has produced new work on his classical commentaries. Attempts have been made to achieve better definitions of Ramism.

This article examines the ideological functions of seventeenth-century ceremonial oratory by distinguishing between two related rhetorical strategies: textual image and propaganda, defined as the promotion of a policy. This distinction helps characterize the particular nature of Louis XIV's régime, instead of anachronistically equating it with modern totalitarianism. If pursued in other contexts it can serve to illuminate the mechanisms of personality cult in general. Fashioning an image of the ruler with the help of an institutional apparatus which varies with the régime is a way to create public confidence in his/her ability. A well-established absolutist monarchy should not require propagandistic discourse; yet it was ubiquitous in Louis XIV's global design for government. This suggests a dialectical interpretation. When belief in the monarch's greatness fails to produce blind faith in his/her infallibility, propaganda may take over to bolster persuasion. When counter-propaganda, or facts, become insistently present, image may again appear as an expedient alternative.

Le discours royal (basilikos logos) est un genre de la rhétorique ancienne qui a connu un grand développement sous l’Empire et dont Libanios fournit un échantillon de cinq exemplaires (éloges des empereurs Constance et Constant, et Julien). Tenus à la louange systématique, les orateurs se heurtaient à la difficulté de traitement que leur posaient les actes peu glorieux ou peu honorables du souverain. Plutôt que de mentir, ils ont eu souvent recours à l’omission. Mais ils pouvaient aussi employer une troisième voie, entre vérité et mensonge, celle du masque rhétorique apposé sur les faits. Cet article s’efforce d’établir une sorte de taxinomie de ces procédés de déguisement à partir des nombreux exemples que nous fournit Libanios. La parenté avec la théorie des états de causes paraît flagrante.

This article examines the way in which the classical rhetorical tradition inspired John Quincy Adams’s public life. While rhetorical scholars have probed Adams’s role as Harvard’s first Boylston Professor of Rhetoric, they have not appreciated how the classical tradition in general, and Ciceronian rhetoric in particular, influenced his political career. Social scientists, on the other hand, have studied Adams’s impact on Antebellum America but have not appreciated how his life-long devotion to classical rhetoric shaped his response to public issues. John Quincy Adams remained inspired by classical rhetorical ideals long after the neo-classicalism and deferential politics of the founding generation had been eclipsed by the commercial ethos and mass democracy of the Jacksonian Era. Many of the idiosyncratic positions that Adams adopted over the course of his long career are explicated by considering his abiding devotion to the Ciceronian ideal of the citizen-orator “speaking well” to promote the welfare of the polis.

Abstract: On Style, written by a certain Demetrius probably in the first century B.C., is an important witness to the rhetorical education of the third/second centuries B.C. It is a matter of long scholarly debate whether Demetrius intended his treatise to be a handbook of rhetoric or a work of literary criticism. Here it is argued that the public Demetrius writes his book for are pupils who have done the preliminary courses in rhetoric and have leamt to write progymnasmata. They now enter the final course on rhetoric and will compose the more difficult exercises, commonly termed declamationes.

On Style, written by a certain Demetrius probably in the first century B.C., is an important witness to the rhetorical education of the third/second centuries B.C. It is a matter of long scholarly debate whether Demetrius intended his treatise to be a handbook of rhetoric or a work of literary criticism. Here it is argued that the public Demetrius writes his book for are pupils who have done the preliminary courses in rhetoric and have learnt to write progymnasmata. They now enter the final course on rhetoric and will compose the more difficult exercises, commonly termed declamationes.

Reviews 111 Shirley Wilson Logan, "We Are Coming": The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999), 255 pp. Shirley Wilson Logan introduces "We Are Coming": The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth-Century Black Women by stating, "This book examines the public persuasive discourse of nineteenth-century black women intellectuals" (p. xi). She continues in the Preface to talk more specifically about the nature of the historical era of the analysis, constraints on the availability of texts, the nature of both public discourse and persuasive discourse, and the rhetorical theories and strategies that shape her analysis. Near the end of the Preface she says, "My hope is that these discussions might also add to a clearer understanding of nineteenth-century culture and of the ways in which the persuasive discourse of nineteenth-century black women adapted itself to its multiple audiences and multilayered exigences" (p. xvi). By this process, Logan makes the reader immediately aware of the extent to which the participation of African American women in public discourse during the nineteenth century signals complexity, rather than simplicity, and a need for contemporary researchers to account for patterns in rhetorical practices at the same time that we resist reducing those patterns to simplistic and monolithic notions of a "Black women's rhetoric". First of all, in focusing attention on specific rhetors, Logan re­ inscribes the historical record with the names of women who actively charted new pathways for rhetorical engagement during an era of remarkable social, political, and economic change. She brings texture to what we have come to know about the rhetorical performances of Maria Miller Stewart, Frances Watkins Harper, Ida Wells Barnett, Fannie Barrier Williams, Anna Julia Cooper, Victoria Earle Matthews, Mary Shadd Cary, Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, and others who in recent years have been brought to the attention particularly of teachers and scholars in women's studies, ethnic studies, and literary studies. To this list, however, she adds the names of women whose accomplishments are much less familiar: Rosetta Douglass-Sprague, Alice Woodby McKane, Lucy 112 RHETORICA Wilmot Smith, Mary Cook, Edmonia Highgate, Georgia Swift King and others. She reminds us that to date we have only scratched the surface of the history of African American women's intellectual work as she places the subjects of her study more visibly onto the rhetorical landscape. Using five themes that are symbolized by quotations from the texts of die rhetors, Logan explains in systematic ways how the rhetorical actions of this group were shaped and performed amid various systems and forces of the social environment. She raises for critical viewing points of inquiry that help us to envision these women both individually and collectively, interrogating, for example: the importance of allusions to an African past in the gamering of rhetorical power; their commitment to forging alliances across various communities of interest; the directing of their energies toward critical issues within the African American community; the use of specific strategies in the art of persuasion; their creation of their own arenas for rhetorical engagement; and the ways and means of rhetorical action in the particular arena of the Black Clubwomen's Movement, that is, their shaping of the discourse of racial uplift. Logan suggests that individually these women illustrate a breadth of rhetorical responses to a continuity of exigencies and that collectively they were quite astute at finding ways to invoke lively connections between themselves and their audiences; to invent themselves anew within their performative arenas; and to respond provocatively to the exigencies of multiply constrained rhetorical situations. The effect of Logan's approach is to underscore a critical point that she makes in her statement of purpose, that is, her assertion that these women are intellectuals. In attending to individual practices, common exigencies, and thematic points of inquiry, Logan makes visible that the case to be made ultimately with this analysis is not simply that African American women engaged persuasively in rhetorical practices in public arenas during this era, but that their doing so demonstrates the liveliness of their intellectual engagement and their ethical commitments. Logan's choice in making this case is to lead us analytically through a textual display, making conditions...

Short Reviews1 Martin Heidegger, Plato's Sophist, trans. Richard Rojcewicz and André Schuwer (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), xxvii + 476 pp. Reflecting on her early years as a student of philosophy at the University of Marburg, Hannah Arendt recalls how the name of a young assistant professor, Martin Heidegger, travelled across Germany like "rumours" of a "secret king". Now, with the publication of Plato's Sophist, readers of English may judge for themselves whether these lectures confirm or dispel the rumours of Heidegger as a "subterranean" king of the realms of thinking and teaching. Plato's Sophist is a faithful and readable translation of Platons Sophist, Ingeborg Schiisslers's superb reconstruction of a lecture course on the Sophist conducted by Heidegger at Marburg in the Winter semester of 1924/25 under the deceptively simple title, Interpretation Platonischer Dialog (Sophistes). Although Heidegger claims in his preliminary remarks that the phenomenological "way of seeing" follows the "pure" and "simple" way of thinking of the early Greeks, there is nothing simple about Heidegger's magisterial interpretation of the Sophist as the first radical inquiry into the question of the "meaning of Being", the guiding thread of Heidegger's own Being and Time (1927). In order to prepare the way for an understanding of the Sophist as a "scientific" dialogue, Heidegger devotes the introduction (pp. 15-155) to a detailed exposition of the doctrine of intellectual virtues set forth by Aristotle in the Nicomachean Ethics (VI, 2-6) and the Metaphysics (I, 1-2). Taking its point of departure in the Greek concept of truth (aletheia) as "unconcealedness" and "uncoveredness", chapter one argues that 1 The Editor and the Book Review Editor would like to apologize to Janet Atwill for the error in naming in the review of her book Rhetoric Reclaimed in Rhetorica, 17 (1999) p. 334. 103 RHETORICA 104 the intellectual virtues (episteme, techne, phronesis, sophia, and nous) represent different ways of "unconcealing" and uncovering the truth of Being. While chapter one exposes the "deficiency" of know-how (techne) and fabrication (poiesis) as ways of unveiling Being, the second and third chapters seek to establish the preeminence of sophia ("genuine insight") over phronesis ("circumspective insight") as the highest mode of "disclosive seeing". Here Heidegger argues that while phronesis concerns the "gravest" matters, the "shared world" (Mitwelt) of words and deeds in the city, sophia concerns the "highest" matters, the "ultimate principles" (archai) of Being, which reveal themselves only in the "silent speaking" of the solitary thinker. One of the most striking features of this remarkable "double preparation" for the Sophist—apart from the rigour, clarity, and sobriety of its argumentation—is the subtle process by which Heidegger purifies the concepts of practical and theoretical wisdom of any trace of sophistry. The translation of deliberation (bouleuesthai) as "circumspective self-debate", for example, seems to eliminate the plural dimension of deliberation for the Greeks: the deliberative assembly (boule), the forum of deliberative rhetoric (rhetorike symbouleutikos), becomes the "inner forum" of the call of conscience and the "silent dialogue" of the soul. Having surveyed the "thematic field" of the Sophist through an exposition of the modes of truth in the Nicomachean Ethics, Heidegger devotes the "main part" (pp. 157-422) of Plato's Sophist to a patient, almost line by line exegesis of the dialogue. Following the argument of the Eleatic Stranger "step by step", the first four chapters bring to light the inner coherence of the various apparitions of the sophist, arguing that all seven definitions converge on the art of disputation as the "unitary basic structure" of the techne sophistike. The excursus on Plato's "ambiguous" (zwiespaltige) attitude toward rhetoric in chapter three will doubtless hold the most interest for the historian of rhetoric. Here Heidegger argues that dialectics emerges from an "inner need" of Socratic philosophy to transcend the "idle chatter" of sophistry and its modes of "pretheoretical speech" (the rhetoric of the law courts, deliberative assemblies, and public festivals). Although Plato failed to achieve a "positive understanding" of rhetoric, Reviews 105 concludes Heidegger, his vision of a redeemed rhetoric as the leading of souls in the Phaedrus lays the foundation for the "concrete work" of Aristotle in the Rhetoric, the "first...

Reviews 113 are able to do so with a useful vocabulary, specific examples, and an assessment of the landscape of rhetorical practice that sets a new pace. Her title, then, "We Are Coming", gains increasing significance. Indeed, African American women are coming onto the rhetorical scene, and this analysis contributes greatly to our ability to take into account in interesting ways what their presence means. JACQUELINE JONES ROYSTER The Ohio State University Lynette Hunter, Critiques of Knowing: Situated Textualities in Science, Computing, and the Arts (London and New York: Routledge, 1999), vi + 239 pp. Critiques of Knowing is a disarmingly accurate title for Lynette Hunter's most recent book, a study of the relevance of rhetoric to critical theories of language in several fields. Standpoint theory, Hunter proposes, integrated with rhetorical understandings of ethos, topos, and audience, can both illuminate, and exemplify the need for a rhetorical critique of "critical and aesthetic discourses for talking about communication, textuality, and the arts" (p. 7). The discussion moves patiently and informatively through discourses about ideology and the nation state, agency, the subject, recent studies of artificial intelligence and computing, hypertext models of literary texts, "scientific" discourse studies and linguistic poetics, feminist critiques of science, and feminist aesthetics. Hunter weaves rhetoric into the methods and languages of these disciplines with subtlety and common sense; readers will find in each chapter an up to date review of current critical theory in the fields reviewed. Another major accomplishment of the study as a whole is a collateral appraisal of the languages and epistemologies, stated and unstated, that each field employs. The comparison is no easy task, particularly since the fields under scrutiny have been prominent advocates of critiquing knowledge, understood as comprehension of the "real" 114 RHETORICA by subjects capable of knowing, and of representing their knowledge in representational, informative texts. This relentless critique of knowledge and language in recent theory, Hunter asserts, has resulted in a barrage of pluralisms and relativisms, each with its own canonical ideology. Hunter teases out different versions of an "essentialist-relativist" standoff that has emerged again and again among recent ideological constructions of plurality (pp. 6-7). In characterizing many of these problems Hunter is not alone; she will find readers welcoming her positions. What makes her discussion original and especially valuable is the way in which she brings to this impasse several richly drawn definitions of rhetoric. Because of its historical and conceptual self awareness as "inexorably different to the real world" in any literal or scientific sense, rhetoric can help construct an analysis of stance which will position the discourses of the disciplines historically, politically, and socially (p. 6). The prospect that rhetoric may be able to integrate and amplify a number of critical discourses about language that are currently bogged down in confessing their own impossibility and meaninglessness is a welcome vision. Hunter's exposition of the ethical and epistemological adjustments rhetoric could provide to contemporary critical discourses is also an anatomy of the past and present wealth that resides in rhetorical studies that continue to be marginalized by so many fields. The chapters are arranged by discipline: contemporary studies of the ideologies of nation-states, studies of artificial intelligence and computing applications within the humanities, hypertext methodologies, feminist critiques of science, and feminist critiques of aesthetics. Hunter's analysis establishes an important parallelism: a lack of rhetorical self awareness has hampered the discussion of the subject and of agency, of intelligence and knowledge, of the ethics of critical discourses visa -vis their contexts and audiences. Hunter defines her overall goal as "a critique of critical and aesthetic discourses for talking about communication, textuality, and the arts" (p. 7). The essentialistrelativist standoff that Hunter seeks to redress has locked many branches of discourse studies, including linguistics, artificial intelligence, computing, rhetoric and poetics, into methodologies that, somewhat oddly, base social and political tolerance for all Reviews 115 discursive practices upon scientific models of neutral description and quantitative analysis. Somehow, according to many of these models, discourses are produced by "the culture" or by "language". Alternatively, we find accusations of "essentialism" or "enlightenment humanism" hurled at any and all references to the subject, to agency, to an ethnic...

Reviews 343 within this conventional context. "What this means in practice", Skinner explains, "is that I treat Hobbes's claims about scientia civilis not simply as propositions but as moves in an argument. I try to indicate what traditions he reacts against, what lines of argument he takes up, what changes he introduces into existing debates" (p. 8). While Skinner's method has occasioned much debate, culminating in a collection of essays entitled Meaning and Context: Quentin Skinner and His Critics (1988), historians of rhetoric, who themselves attempt to understand texts within larger contexts, should welcome the attention paid to questions of intention, meaning, and language. Meticulously researched, Skinner's study of Hobbes and the rhetorical culture of Tudor England is a welcome contribution to histories such as Victoria Kahn's Machiavellian Rhetoric and Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment. Together, these studies clarify the complex interplay between rhetorical and political traditions in early modem Europe. WADE WILLIAMS The University ofPuget Sound Alan G Gross and William M. Keith eds, Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997) 371 pp. Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar writes "The Idea of Rhetoric in the Rhetoric of Science", the lead essay in this volume—its "Provocations"—and the rest of Rhetorical Hermeneutics is a collection of "Dissensions", "Extensions" and "reflections", the last including a response to respondents by Gaonkar. So the book is the perfect rhetorical study. It is utterly dialogic; Gaonkar's claims are all tested on an audience of distinguished rhetorical theorists and rhetoricians of science: John Angus Campbell, Thomas Farrell, Steve Fuller, Alan Gross, James Jasinski, David Kaufer, William Keith, Andrew King, Michael Leff, Deirdre McCloskey, Carolyn Miller and Charles Willard. The book has an 344 RHETORICA excellent cast—and a sometimes argumentative one (McCloskey writes that the philosophical warrants for Gaonkar's case against a ubiquitous rhetoric themselves warrant the question, "So what?", p. 107); it also has a very worthy project. The central question of Rhetorical Hermeneutics is this: can a theory of production be usefully, and without distortion, transformed into a theory of interpretation? This question sponsors others—for example, does the "thinness" of rhetorical theory (the paucity of constraints on its terms of use) make it so easy to spread, as it were (rhetoric is the universal hermeneutic) as to weaken the plausibility of rhetoric altogether (what distinguishes rhetoric as an interpretive program?)? Gaonkar answers his own questions in part by evoking the work in rhetoric of science of John Angus Campbell, Alan Gross, and Lawrence Prelli. Campbell and Gross respond. Campbell, Gaonkar finds, is mired in a problem of agency ("refuses to let go of an image of Darwin as the rhetorical superstar", p. 49); Gross is only successful as a rhetorical critic to the extent that he does not practice the neoAristotelianism he proposes; Prelli, among other questionable practices, seems to be "probing into the 'rhetorical unconscious'" of Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (p. 73). So Gaonkar describes problems in the house of rhetoric of science; he also draws attention not only to the problematic relation of rhetorical criticism to other criticisms, but also to the "embattled" relation of Rhetoric of Science—as a discipline—to both rhetorical studies and science studies. Gross and Keith's design and authoritative editing shape a volume which deserves consideration at a number of levels: What are possible answers to questions raised? What can be said about the questions qua questions? Why does rhetoric ask so many questions about itself anyway? The book not only deserves consideration at these levels; it also enables it. Fuller writes, for example, "The more that rhetoric of science looks like classical rhetoric, the less exciting its interpretations seem...[T]he more that rhetoric of science strays from classical sources, and the more provocative its readings become, the more interchangeable its methods seem with those used by sociologists and critical theorists" (p. 279). Gross writes, "The current attitude of Reviews 345 historians and philosophers oscillates between increased need to take a rhetorical point of view into consideration and an occasional hostility to the possibility of rhetorical analysis" (p. 146). With such comment, the authors invite readers to participate...

RHETORICA 338 for most individual readers. I am happy to report that the International Sales Manager of Brill subsequently wrote to me to say that, as a result of my review, the cost of those books was being reduced to 90.00 dollars each. DK is still expensive, but much less so than these others were; and where a bilingual edition is involved, it is understandable that overhead costs would be higher. And, once the purchase is made, the reader may luxuriate in the sumptuous quality of a Brill edition. JOHN T. KIRBY Purdue University Vivian Salmon, Language and Society in Early Modern England (The Netherlands: John Benjamins, 1996) 276 pp. The twelve essays reprinted in this collection demonstrate a variety of approaches to, and treatments of, the topics of language and society in Early Modern England. The subjects range from language concerns of the sixteenth-century England, to the development of female rhetoric by figures such as Bathsua Makin, to the discussion of the actual use of language in a specific socio­ political context, such as the early Anglican church. Although Salmon writes from a linguist's perspective, her well-researched material allows the reader to place rhetoric within a broader context. Her descriptions of historical figures and their contributions are well defined, especially in relation to their connections to logic, rhetoric, and grammar. She includes social, historical, religious, and political details that influenced linguistics and rhetoric. Her theory is balanced nicely with concrete examples, such as enhancing foreign language instruction by the rhetorical considerations of gesture and tone. Salmon looks at the connection between pronunciation and rhetoric, claiming that "sounds changed in accordance with certain figures of rhetoric, for example, prosthesis, apharaesis, epenthesis, and syncope" (p. 8). Other figures, she notes, cautiously retain the classification of sound changes by reference Reviews 339 to rhetorical figures" (p. 8). She also examines challenging issues in translating the Bible, teaching the native tongue to foreigners, and finding the Adamic language. In chapter one Salmon emphasizes the rhetorical elements of syntax. She discusses the seventeenth-century belief that meaning is a nonverbal concept in the mind. Some elements of that concept might remain unexpressed in speech, or even actively "suppressed". Priscian used the term "subaudiri" to refer to sentence elements that are "understood" but not spoken; Salmon notes that traditional rhetoric came to terms with this view by distinguishing between simple and rhetorical syntax, a distinction that was familiar to seventeenth-century scholarship (p. 17). Salmon traces this rhetorical concern with syntax through Gill, Wilkins, Linacre, Sanctius, Lancelot, Cooper, Lane, and Harris. Salmon spends several chapters focusing on the power of words. Chapter three is constructed on three main points: the natural or conventional origin of words (Platonic/Aristolian debate, Socrates, and Hermogenes); the status and power of words; and the meaning of translation, especially when translating the Holy Scriptures. Chapter four talks about language properly to be employed in the liturgy and sacred books of the church. More specifically, Salmon mentions the developments of two kinds of sermons: the "typical Protestant type of Hugh Latimer and Laurence Chaderton that was plain and colloquial" (. 94); the other type was "typical of High Church divines influenced by the rhetorical style of much of sixteenth-century poetry and prose, and in the seventeenth century in the witty and metaphysical style of John Donne, directed at more sophisticated hearers" (pp. 94-95). In chapter five Salmon notes that some seventeenth-century authors like Wilkins argued for a plain writing style because congregations had difficulty understanding the highly rhetorical style adopted by Anglican preachers in the later sixteenth century (p. 103). Bedell was also convinced that his Protestant congregation got lost in the incomprehensible vernacular and the use of rhetorical and ambiguous language (p. 101). Of significance to rhetoricians is chapter six, "Wh- and Yes/No Questions: Charles Butler's Grammar (1633)". Butler's work influenced eighteenth-century rhetorical grammarians like 340 RHETORICA John Walker (1785) who in turn influenced the training of elocutionists. Salmon observes that previous grammarians placed "question" in a section on syntax, but that Butler was the first scholar to place "question" in a chapter on punctuation where he looked at "tone...

Reviews 335 begins. And she never fully answers the question posed by the structure of the book. How does a revised understanding of rhetoric as an "art of intervention" help us to rethink current humanities institutions, canons, or curricula? The title and structure of the work invite us to expect some lines of inquiry that don't appear. Anyone looking for specific applications of rhetoric as techne to an emancipatory or interventionist pedagogy might be disappointed. But those looking for careful readings, particularly of Aristotle—in the Rhetoric and other works like the Analytics and the Nicomachean Ethics—that bear upon the relations between theoretical, practical and productive arts will be well repaid. Atwill shows the incommensurability in Aristotle between theory, whose end is static contemplation, and rhetoric (like all techne) whose end is realized only in the exchange between rhetor and audience. She is careful not to overstate the emancipatory goals of Protagoras or Isocrates, who were no more interested in redistributing political power or cultural capital than was Plato. And her focus on this ancient debate between theoria and techne helps us to see current debates within the humanities, as well as well-known ancient texts, in a new light. JAMES FREDAL The Ohio State University Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy eds, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, Mnemosyne Supplement 168 (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1997) xxvii + 249 pp. Prior to this new book by Dilts & Kennedy (hereafter DK), the most satisfactory scholarly edition of either the Anonymous Seguerianus (AS) or Apsines was to be found in the Rhetores Graeci of Spengel/Hammer (Leipzig: Teubner 1894). What we have now is a superb presentation of both treatises, in a carefully edited 336 RHETORICA Greek text furnished with critical apparatus, an accurate en face translation, and a running commentary. DK also provide historical and textual introductions and a bibliography. There is something for everyone here: the philologist will spend many happy hours burrowing into the extensive apparatus criticus; the Greekless reader may read the treatises in modern English translations; and the rhetorical theorist will find much to ponder, in both text and comments. Readers of Kennedy's earlier work will already know about these ancient treatises. Kennedy had signaled the importance of both, as early as The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (1972), and again in Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (1983) and A New History of Classical Rhetoric (1994). These late-antique Greek treatises form part of the didactic tradition of declamation cultivated in the Second Sophistic. Both begin by demonstrating allegiance to what Solmsen labeled the moria logou tradition; that is, their disposition of the material is based on the parts of the oration: proem, narration, pisteis or proofs, and epilogue.1 This in fact is a fair skeletal outline of the AS, which does, however, show some Aristotelian and Stoic influence as well. The treatise is especially valuable as a compendium of the work of various theorists of the period, including Alexander son of Numenius, [?Aelius] Harpocration, the followers of Apollodorus of Pergamum, and one Neocles. The AS is of course anonymous, but we know2 something more about the author of the second treatise in DK. Valerius Apsines of Gadara is praised by Philostratus (2.628), and may be dated to the late second/early third century CE. His treatise, more than the AS, is intended specifically for the instruction of declamation. His list of the moria logou is more elaborate than that in the AS, as it includes proem, prokatastasis (preparation for the proof), narration, enthymemes, kephalaia ("headings"), and epilogue. The Greek texts in DK are superbly careful and accurate. It is an apt adjudication of their quality, in fact, to say that they are a Friedrich Solmsen, The Aristotelian Tradition in Ancient Rhetoric", American Journal ofPhilology 62 (1941) pp. 35-50,169-190. Or thought we knew: for a dissenting voice see Malcolm Heath, "Apsines and Pseudo-Apsines", American Journal ofPhilology 119 (1998) pp. 89-111. Reviews 337 significant improvement over the already good texts of Spengel/Hammer. Fresh manuscript...

Reviews 333 Yunis distorts the Phaedrus by bending it too harshly to his thesis. The setting of the dialogue and the focal relationship of the lovers both argue, in my view, against an endorsement of political discourse. Yunis' suggestion that the demos can be treated as having a single soul and, thus, as subject to the dialogue's rhetorical psychology strikes me as akin to pious efforts to allegorize The Song of Solomon. Nevertheless, by interpreting Plato in the dramatic political context of his time, Yunis succeeds in making Plato's dialogues on rhetoric more compelling objects of study for our time. I recommend the book highly. MICHAEL SVOBODA The Pennsylvania State University Janet M. Atwill, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 265pp. Following Achilles' death near the end of the Trojan War, the chieftains held a debate to determine whether Odysseus or Ajax should win his armor. Ajax claimed the armor based not only on his legendary strength, but on his strength of character, his steadfast loyalty, bravery and self-control in battle. He was governed by a proper sense of shame and honor, corresponding to a code of behavior that guaranteed the propriety of his actions. Odysseus, by contrast, used shameless tricks and deceptions to defeat his enemies, even allowing his slaves to beat him so that, dressed in rags, he could sneak behind the walls of Troy, accomplishing in one night what the entire Achaean army couldn't accomplish in ten years. He makes the weaker appear to be the stronger. Odysseus wins the armor, for good or ill, but the contest represented by constant Ajax and wily Odysseus would continue to saturate ancient Greek public discourse. Are skills at trickery, deception and craft to be valued for their effectiveness, or despised for their dangers? Ought rhetoric to reproduce stable, normative subjects governed by traditional conventions of 334 RHETORICA conduct (like Ajax)? Or does it rather teach crafty arts of social intervention through cunning self-reformation answerable only to the specific exigencies of context and advantage (like Odysseus)? In Rhetoric Reclaimed, Margaret Atwill challenges us to rethink the question of techne, not only in terms of Greek rhetoric, but in terms of contemporary liberal arts education. For Atwill, the liberal arts tradition has long been committed to reproducing normative subjects defined in terms of a universal human "nature", in terms of a foundationalist faith in objective knowledge, and of a reductive scale of value whose end is the acquisition of knowledge. These models of subjectivity, knowledge and value, argues Atwill, coalesce to form what is now termed "the humanities", whose business "is not so much the dissemination of knowledge or competencies as it is the production of a particular 'kind' of subject" (p. 18). This educational paradigm naturalizes the contingent, universalizes the particular, and privatizes the public: claims by now familiar to students of various current postmoderisms. But despite its deformation into a theoretical discipline by scholars like Plato and, later, Grimaldi and Cope, rhetoric was always more than just a tool for normative subject formation. It was in the hands of Protagoras, Isocrates and Aristotle a productive art (a techne) of "seizing the advantage", of social and political intervention, of creating possibilities and transforming existing social structures (a la Odysseus). Atwill's goal is to rethink current classroom goals and methods within the humanities by "reclaiming" rhetoric; to ask "What forums are available and what must be invented to enable the kind of political agency that was once the primary aim of rhetorical instruction?" (p. 210). In her approach to this question, Atwill discusses a wide variety of texts, from Hesiod to Aristotle, unpacking the meaning of techne and rhetoric's place as productive art within that tradition. Atwill develops terms like techne in important ways, but avoids connecting the discussion to related terms (like metis—cunning intelligence, hexis, or habitus all terms used by Bourdieu, upon whom she relies). She does not pursue the important subjectivity/knowledge/value equation with which she Reviews 335 begins. And she never fully answers the question posed by the structure of the book. How does a revised understanding of rhetoric as an...

Reviews Laurent Pemot ed., Eloges grecs de Rome: Discours traduits et commentés (Paris: Les Belles Lettres 1997) pp. 198. Carlos Lévy et Laurent Pemot eds, Dire l'évidence: Philosophie et rhétorique antiques (Paris: Ed. L'Harmattan, 1997) pp. 448. The first book contains in translation two epideictic orations: the famous speech To Rome, (Eis ‘Ρώμην, en l'honneur de Rome, Or. xxvi) delivered in 144 by the then still young and unknown sophist Aelius Aristides when sojourning in Rome, and an oration written by an unknown sophist about 247 in honour of Philippus Arabs and transmitted under Aristides' name, Praise of the Emperor, (Eis Βασιλέα, En l'honneur de l'empereur, Or.xxxv). Both speeches belong to the genre of encomium, concern the Roman empire, especially its centre, the city of Rome and its emperor. Hence the part éloges...de Rome in the title, whereas the word grecs refers to the source language but also, at the same time, to the fact that these praise-speeches are written from a Greek point of view. The two speeches are published here for the first time in a French translation. It is a pleasure to read this version but I must leave a verdict on its Frenchness to others. The strongest point of this book, I think, is its introduction. It shows Pemot as an accomplished critic of the scholarly discussions on these speeches as well as—and this is more important—as a master in analyzing and discussing them. Of course, much of what Pemot says here, is already known from his Rhétorique de l'éloge dans le monde grécoromain (Paris 1993), where one may also find detailed comparisons with other speeches by Aristides, something which would be out of place in an introduction meant for a larger public. But it is very pleasing to have a thorough discussion of these speeches by themselves. It was also a good idea for Pemot to take two orations both concerning Roman power which at the same time are different© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XVII, Number 2 (Spring 1999) 213 RHETORICA 214 from a rhetorical point of view: Aristides is, although (probably) about 26 years old, a talented speaker, who knows how to play with the rules of the genre, whereas the author of the second speech closely follows these rules. It has been suggested, therefore, that this oration is just a school exercise but Pemot finds many reasons not to accept this suggestion. So the author must have been a mediocre orator who was not able to transcend the rules of his art. Thus one can apply the scheme of the basilikos logos from the handbook of Menander Rhetor to explain almost every feature of this oration. Aristides, however, also knows the rules of the genre and Pemot duly annotates many occasions on which what Aristides says and the topoi he uses can be compared with the theory known from rhetorical handbooks and the practice of older orations. But, to take one example, whereas when praising a city it is almost obligatory to deal with its history, Aristides ignores this aspect. The second publication under discussion concerns 21 contributions to a 1995 colloquium organised by the French branch of our Society under the theme of Dire l'évidence. Already its subtitle, Philosophie et rhétorique antiques, shows that a part of this collection is of an immediate interest to readers of this journal but other articles also offer important insights. The volume contains four sections, évidence et argumentation, l'évidence, obstacle ou accès à la connaissance?, images, imagination^ and l'ineffable. The connotations of the word évidence are manifold and those of its Latin source, evidentia, also, or even more, because it is a Ciceronian translation of the Greek enargeia. In the very first paper Barbara Cassin discusses the differences between the philosophical use of enargeia as an notion "liée à la vision, critère de soi, index sui, liée au vrai et au nécessairement vrai", whereas "l'évidence des orateurs est ï'energeia comme...un effet de logos,..liée au 'comme si' de la vision, à la vision comme fiction". It will...

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

RHETORICA 102 While several of the articles in the volume do address the extended influence of the Scottish tradition in countries formerly dominated by Britain, conspicuously absent from the collection is any discussion of English Studies on the Indian subcontinent. Taken as a whole, however, the volume presents an expanded account of the historical origins of English Studies and illustrates the degree to which we owe the institutionalization of university English to Scottish culture. DANA HARRINGTON Syracuse University Richard Morris, Sinners, Lovers and Heroes: An Essay on Memorializing in Three American Cultures (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1997) xxi + 237 pp. A modest but noteworthy contribution to research by rhetoric scholars on public memorials, this book focuses on symbolic responses to Abraham Lincoln's death during the nineteenth century in the United States. Morris asserts, "I know of no other event that so exactly marks the dramatic rupture of the social structure of a nation and that so clearly lays cultural transformation open to observation than the death of Abraham Lincoln" (p. 2). Written in a clear and accessible style, Sinners, Lovers and Heroes argues "the thesis that memorials are fundamentally rhetorical and cultural forms of expression, that a careful examination of American memorializing discloses the contours of at least three distinct American cultures, and that shifting visual and discursive memorial patterns across time reveal the ascendancy and subordination of these three cultures and their cultural memories" (p. xii). The organization of Sinners, Lovers and Heroes is straightforward. An introductory chapter articulates an orientation to the rhetoric and culture of public memorials. In the three following chapters, each of the "three cultures" is the central focus of one chapter, corresponding to the three key terms in the Reviews 103 title, Sinners, Lovers and Heroes. Specifically, Morris considers patterns of response to Lincoln's death, as it was represented by members of cultures that Morris names "religionists", "romanticists", and "heroists" (p. 42). The conclusion synthesizes Morris's claims that "Different people memorialize, embrace, and seek to codify through public memory their different images of the memorable not merely because of temporal or spatial or physiological divergences, but because different cultures with different worldviews and ethoi require different images of and from their members" (p. 153). One strength of Sinners, Lovers and Heroes is the extensive use of published primary materials from various nineteenth century figures who commented on Abraham Lincoln's death. Morris claims, "what we see in the transformation of Lincoln's image, then, is not a single people creating and later transforming an element of the symbolic code of collective memory, but the rise and fall of different cultures, each of which positions Lincoln within a different world view and ethos" (p. 27). Another strength of this book is the attention to accumulating details that Morris synthesizes into an encompassing perspective in his conclusion. Unfortunately, however, the book makes little explicit use of contemporary rhetoric scholars' research on public memorials, public memory, or visual rhetoric, even though the book seems to be arguing, at times, with some key figures in these areas of research. Although the introduction and the conclusion stress "differences" among the U.S. people, there is little explicit attention to either race or economic class in the body of the volume (for his comments on race, pp. x, 111; on economic class, pp. 127, 142-43, 147-49). The discussion of the "religionists" depends heavily upon a Christian conception of spirituality. As one consequence, perhaps, the speech by a Jewish leader, Max Lilienthal, is discussed under the "heroists" (pp. 125-35). In the chapter on "heroists," one abiding oxymoron is the manifestation of leveling styles reflecting an egalitarian politics, because placing some people above most others is ordinarily a requirement for having "heroes". Morris writes, "True to the mandates of the first Heroist gravescape, however, cemeterial rules and regulations in lawn cemeteries require markers to be small and, in the vast majority of instances...flush with the ground" (p. 149). 104 RHETORICA Some key concepts would perhaps have benefited from explicit, technical explanation. For example, the use of "hegemony" in Morris's book is disconnected from Antonio Gramsci's use of the same term...

104 RHETORICA Some key concepts would perhaps have benefited from explicit, technical explanation. For example, the use of "hegemony" in Morris's book is disconnected from Antonio Gramsci's use of the same term. Another instance is "culture", which resonates with Lionel Trilling's meanings for this term, but, at times, seems like a synonym for ideology. In addition to references to "collective memory", Morris distinguishes "cultural memory" from "public memory", by remarking, "whereas cultural memory reflects the particularized world view and ethos of the members of a particular culture, public memory is perhaps best conceived as an amalgam of the current hegemonic bloc's cultural memory and bits and pieces of cultural memory that members of other cultures are able to preserve and protect" (p. 26). Sinners, Lovers and Heroes will be useful to scholars interested in the rhetoric, public argument, public memory, American studies, and, especially, the legacy of Abraham Lincoln's public image. LESTER C. OLSON University of Pittsburgh Walter Jost and Michael J. Hyde, eds., Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time: A Reader (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997) xxiii + 406 pp. Like the recent Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition by Kathy Eden, Rhetoric and Hermeneutics in Our Time marks another attempt at a rhetorical Anschluss, annexing rhetoric . to hermeneutics in an apparent attempt to make rhetoric look more philosophical, for instance, by pointing to Hans-Georg Gadamer's philosophical hermeneutics. In fact, two of Gadamer's own essays on rhetoric appear in the Jost and Hyde collection. While the writers within the collection draw many analogies between rhetoric and hermeneutics, hardly anyone obtains any definitional precision about the pairing. Reviews 105 On the other hand, the Jost and Hyde volume seeks to be what Eden's book avoids—concerned with the present, as conveyed by the prepositional phrase in the title, "in our time", and explicitly with politics: "Our very being-in-the-world is inseparably hermeneutical and rhetorical in complex ways and...a multi-faceted speaking as well as listening constitutes our situation. Our own time is an epoch of corporate capitalism and technologism, of vulgarization and breakdown. But it is also a time of deep reflection on linguistic interpretation: on persuasion, 'conversion' across paradigms or worldviews, propaganda, and more invidious forms of deception and power, as well as on forms of the electronic word and the new multimedia. It is, accordingly, a time in which we need both to listen to and to discuss what Gadamer calls the 'deep inner convergence' between rhetoric and hermeneutics" (p. xvi). First, "our" turns out to be some amorphous, underdetermined "everyone", and despite the implicit "critique" of "corporate capitalism" in the passage above, Jost and Hyde never get near the topic again, except to get away from it. The slide happens but a page later: "The task at hand now includes identifying hermeneutics (in its modern forms) as a further counterpart to rhetoric and rhetoric to hermeneutics and seeing both as features or dimensions of all thought and language, not only as the special methods or abilities of political praxis" (p. xvii). Before dealing with any concrete issues of political praxis, they widen the aperture of their project to "all thought and language", and thus sidestep the part of the "all" that might have brought them in contact with any logical definition of "politics", or with concrete historical events in North American party politics, for instance. The rhetoric that goes on in the streets, the deception—what the Greeks called the pseudos—the advertising, the propaganda, the double-talk, the exercises of political esotericism, the kind of interpretive practice that produces The Bible Code, all the "ugly" manifestations of rhetoric that are its life blood, hold almost no interest in the context of the book under review. (For the importance, even primacy, of the "ugly", see Slavo Zizek, in Slavo Zizek / F. W. J. von Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom / Ages of the World [Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997] pp. 21-25). Jost and Hyde promote the lemony fresh side of rhetoric, the side most often seen in contemporary RHETORICA 106 accounts of what rhetoric accomplishes or can accomplish: "Rhetoric...helps promote civic engagement and...

RHETORICA 108 from "the people", the tabloids, the dirty political infighting. Rhetoric awaits its Disraeli who can persuade the appropriate personages to bring rhetoric back to the life that damaged it in the first place, the life that is its life, for better or worse or otherwise. BRUCE KRAJEWSKI Laurentian University Craig Waddell, ed., Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and the Environment, Landmark Essays 12 (Mahwah, NJ: Hermagoras Press-Lawrence Erlbaum, 1998) xix + 239 pp. The eleven essays reprinted in this collection map the ecotone where rhetoric and environmental politics meet. Though individual essays resist easy classification, the collection reveals important focuses of work in this sub-field. Several essays trace and evaluate characteristic lines of argument in environmental policy debates. In the lead essay, for instance, Robert Cox glosses Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca's account of the locus of the irreparable in The New Rhetoric, drawing out the strategic and ethical implications of, among other deployments of this locus, "forewarnings" of irreparable damage to the environment. Jonathan Lange analyzes five characteristics of the "logic of interaction" between the timber industry and environmentalists engaged in the debate over protecting Northern spotted owl habitat in old growth forests. Other essays study (mis)constructions of audience. Craig Waddell argues that Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb failed to "reconstitute" its audience because it did not articulate "a more comprehensive [ecocentric] framework" to replace egocentric and anthropocentric ethical frameworks (p. 68), while Tarla Rai Peterson and Cristi Choat Horton study ranchers' sense of stewardship for the land "to show how communication that responds attentively to an audience's perspective can assist in retrieving potential points of affiliation among diverse groups" (p 168). Reviews 109 Still other essays focus on the ethos of environmental advocates. M. Jimmie Killingsworth and Jacqueline S. Palmer consider the charge of hysteria lodged against Rachel Carson and other environmentalists, arguing that the "environmentalist and the nature writer, in becoming 'voices for the earth'...represent the return of the repressed, the coming into consciousness of that which, having been avoided for far too long, has created an illness within the mind-body system of earthly existence" (p. 37). However, they note that "like any political position, environmentalism seeks to restrict access to certain subject positions just as surely as it opens access to others" (p. 50), and like Peterson and Horton, they warn against this exclusionary tendency. Finally, some essays view environmental debates through wide cultural lenses. For instance, Christine Oravec argues that the debate over damming Hetch Hetchy valley in Yosemite National Park was settled not so much by the explicit arguments of the conservationists and preservationists engaged in the debate as by the alignment of conservationists' arguments with "prevailing presumptions concerning the nature of the 'public' and its relationship to the natural environment", presumptions characteristic of early twentieth-century Progressive politics (p. 17). All of these essays conceive of environmental rhetoric in deliberative terms, focusing on conflicts over public policy (individual essay titles bristle with terms such as "controversy", "confrontation", "conflict", "dispute", and "opposition" or evoke contentious deliberative situations). Accordingly, this collection provides an excellent introduction to rhetorical studies of environmental policy debates. But readers should keep in mind that there are more discourses on earth than can be studied from any one perspective. The disciplinary rhetoric of environmental sciences and the epideictic rhetoric of much American nature writing are just two of the landscapes that lie for the most part beyond the bounds of this particular map. H. Lewis Ulman The Ohio State University ...

Reviews 445 L. L. Gaillet ed.z Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences (Mahwah, N.J.: Hermagoras Press, 1998) xviii + 238pp. Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences, edited by L. L. Gaillet and introduced by Winifred Bryan Horner, offers up an eclectic collection of conference papers on eighteenth and nineteenthcentury rhetoric delivered originally at the 1995 ISHR meeting in Edinburgh. Save one, the contributors to this handsome volume in Jerry Murphy's Hermagoras Press Series all represent North American colleges and universities. The chapters are divided somewhat unevenly into two parts, thirteen papers on "Reexamining Influential Figures" and four papers on "The Rhetoric of North American Composition". Among the papers that stand out in the first grouping is Susan Jarratt's "Ekphrastic Rhetoric and National Identity in Adam Smith's Rhetoric Lectures". Applying ekphrasis as the "verbal descriptions of visual representations", Jarratt looks at Smith's own example of historical description, Jan Steele's Het offer van Iphigenia (The Sacrifice of Iphigenia), in order to illustrate Smith's rhetorical lesson in lecture 16 as "a reiteration of the use of visual arts by ancient rhetoricians". Constrained from supplying full responses to a series of critical cultural identity questions that launch the essay, Jarratt nevertheless supplies an imaginative portrayal of Smith's belief in what Jarratt characterizes as the "usefulness of visual theories for interpreting rhetorical texts". Herman Cohen's "Rhetoric and Freedom in the Scottish Treatment of the History of Rhetoric" and Linda FerreiraBuckley 's "'Scotch Knowledge' and the Formation of Rhetorical Studies in 19th-Century England", serve this volume title well in terms, respectively, of explicating Blair's rhetorical appraisal of "Roman rhetoric" and "Greek eloquence" in succinct contrast to that of Charles Rollin's appraisal at the College Royale in Paris, and in terms of demonstrating the careful results of archival investigation into the curriculum at University College, London, results which detail the "formative influence of Scottish education...on post-secondary English studies in England". Murray Pittock, the lone U.K. representative, weaves an enjoyable essay that frames a broad enlightenment context for the importance and impact of Scotland's student debating clubs and 446 RHETORICA societies as well as speculates briefly upon the ripple-effect upon modern speech curricula in the States. Also noteworthy in Part I are Don Abbott's findings on Blair's reception "abroad", Gary Lane Hatch's careful consideration of Blair's students' notes, and Sandra Sarkela's cogent analysis of sermons delivered in opposition to colonial independence. Notable in Part II, Beth Hewett and Andrea Lunsford, respectively, re-assess the impact of Samuel P. Newman's A Practical System of Rhetoric and Alexander Bain's rhetorics upon pedagogical practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in U.S. colleges and universities. Although arguing that Newman exhibits "a more modern understanding of composition pedagogy" than we might expect, Hewett acknowledges his modest "influence". Lunsford's depiction of Bain's impact is extended here with revealing reconsideration of Bain's autobiography that reinforces his "devotion to students' access to education". The terrain covered in this collection will appear familiarly to scholars in the field. Students of the subject will gain a foothold understanding of the broad impact of Scottish rhetoric that should lead to further discussion and inquiry. Unfortunately, there is no colloquy between or among authors of these chapters to spark further debate, for example, about competing channels of influence upon rhetoric in the early American colleges. Paul Bator Stanford University ...

Avec la Rhétorique à Alexandre, nous disposons d’un témoignage très précis—et quasiment unique—sur la théorie de la persuasion telle qu’elle pouvait être développée dans la seconde moitié du IVe s. par un rhéteur professionnel influencé par la sophistique et l’isocratisme. Trop souvent lue avec des “lunettes” aristotéliciennes ou disqualifiée a priori par les anciens préjugés anti-rhétorique et anti-sophistique, cette théorie est la plupart du temps mal comprise, ignorée ou dédaignée. Notre premier objectif est de l’étudier par et pour elle-même, en tentant d’analyser son contenu et de dégager les conceptions épistémologiques et rhétoriques qui en constituent l’arrière-plan. Nous tentons ensuite de préciser la nature des liens qui unissent cette théorie à la pratique oratoire et à Aristote.

436 RHETORICA Takis Poulakos, Speakingfor the Polis: Isocrates' Rhetorical Education (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1997), xii +128 pp. Two ambiguities in Takis Poulakos's title provide a synopsis of the themes developed in this slim volume. In Isocrates' time and practice rhetoric was becoming domesticated; by performing classroom exercises students learned the art of speaking for—and not to—the polls. The rhetorical education designated as "Isocrates'" denotes both the rhetorical education Isocrates received and, Poulakos emphasizes, gleaned for himself; and the rhetorical education he crafted for his students. Perhaps the most innovative thesis advanced in Poulakos's re-reading of Isocrates' model speeches and teaching methods is the claim that the Athens Isocrates speaks for was moving away from an an elite, often xenophobic, hegemonic self conception at the end of Pericles' era and toward an acceptance of its diversity, and its need to negotiate with rather than conquer its neighbors. "Isocrates attempted to close the gap separating individual and collective interests as well as the gap separating Athenian and allied interests" (p. 53). Although Pericles' speechwriters were almost all foreigners, they crafted a discourse of Athenian superiority and homogeneity. Isocrates, the native Athenian, developed a curriculum based on assuming difference and thereby the necessity of creating commonality through training in character, agency, political, and social reform. In this, Poulakos locates Isocrates as a synthesizer of earlier divergent and often hostile rhetorical traditions, represented by Gorgias, Protagoras, and Plato. Poulakos traces the growing conceptualization of logos, oikos (as a domestic model for the city and for its discourse), agency, eloquence, reflection, deliberation, and education itself. These common places of Athenian speeches are preserved in Isocrates' speeches. As with Pericles' oration but with perhaps more deliberateness, each of Isocrates' speeches is a handbook of how to make a speech: once committed to memory each of the set themes and stock oppositions would transmit rhetoric about rhetoric and education about education to successive generations, transmitting a common language to an increasingly diverse Reviews 437 culture. Reversing the usual emphasis on the uniformity of classical rhetorical culture, Poulakos's discussions provide ample food for thought, and a number of contentions that readers will quarrel with, such as the claim that for Isocrates rhetoric resumes the role Plato had dreamed for it: "instruction in philosophy" (p. 9). The use of Greek is inconsistently accompanied by translations and transliterations, creating a sense that this is only half written for the Greekless reader. In the general project of reclaiming Isocrates as much more than a hack, Poulakos's work joins that of Kathleen Welch and others in reminding us that neither philosophy nor classics have been particularly kind to rhetoric. C. Jan Swearingen Texas A&M University David Roochnik, Of Art and Wisdom: Plato's Understanding of Techne (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1996) xii + 300 pp. Roochnik claims that the conventional view of Plato's texts that link techne with moral knowledge must be modified. According to Roochnik, moral knowledge cannot be analogous to techne without insurmountable logical problems resulting. Roochnik reads many of Socrates' arguments in Plato's early texts as proving that wisdom cannot be rendered technical. Because wisdom is not a techne, Plato wrote dialogues rather than technical treatises to illustrate the performance of nontechnical wisdom. The book is organized into four lengthy chapters accompanied by four useful appendices. Chapter one provides a thorough examination of the preplatonic meanings of techne in Homer, Solon, Aeschylus, Sophocles, the Hippocratic writings, Gorgias, Isocrates, and Anaximenes of Lampsacus. The chapter culminates with an examination of the rhetorical techne of the sophists to illustrate the claim that the sophists believe that moral knowledge could be taught as a techne. I note in passing that in his analysis Roochnik accepts the conventional accounts of the rhetorical technai of the sophists that Thomas Cole and I have been doing ...

Research Article| August 01 1998 Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action Ian Worthington ed. Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London: Routledge, 1994) xi+277pp. John Poulakos John Poulakos Department of Communications, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15260, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1998) 16 (3): 308–312. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1998.16.3.308 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 John Poulakos; Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action. Rhetorica 1 August 1998; 16 (3): 308–312. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1998.16.3.308 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 1998, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1998 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract: Gorgias's Encomium to Helen presumes a similarity between verbal and visual art. Where language, envisaged as masculine, attempts a logical persuasion, the visual image, seen as feminine and disruptive, overwhelms the beholder and leads the mind astray. Gorgias's account of Helen takes as its starting point an interpretation of her role which originates in book three of the Iliad, where her beauty is seen as causing the Trojan war and inspiring Homer's epic. The tragic poets identify her with destruction. Gorgias proves her innocence, but only by transforming her from a volimtary subject to a passive object. Because Helen was overcome by eros caused by visual stimuli she cannot be held responsible for the consequences of her actions. In this assertion Gorgias has used verbal logic to delimit and overcome the emotional force of previous images of Helen.

Gorgias's Encomium to Helen presumes a similarity between verbal and visual art. Where language, envisaged as masculine, attempts a logical persuasion, the visual image, seen as feminine and disruptive, overwhelms the beholder and leads the mind astray. Gorgias's account of Helen takes as its starting point an interpretation of her role which originates in book three of the Iliad, where her beauty is seen as causing the Trojan war and inspiring Homer's epic. The tragic poets identify her with destruction. Gorgias proves her innocence, but only by transforming her from a voluntary subject to a passive object. Because Helen was overcome by eros caused by visual stimuli she cannot be held responsible for the consequences of her actions. In this assertion Gorgias has used verbal logic to delimit and overcome the emotional force of previous images of Helen.

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...

Reviews 329 communicating what he had to say to his various audiences. For this reason Anderson is also right in insisting on the use of ancient rhetorical theory and practice in the original languages. I would add that further help may be gained from the commentaries of the fathers of the Church and those later writers who were more familiar with rhetoric than most of use are, e.g. Melanchthon or the Jesuits, and also from modem rhetoric. In addition to a select bibliography and full indices, there is a useful, select glossary of Greek rhetorical terms (pp. 259-302 and 303-14). This is a most welcome contribution to the debate which has suffered a great deal from various kinds of confusion, a book itself well-planned and clearly argued, offering a good deal of help to those who are interested in this controversial subject. It is important because it also raises some general questions as regards the possibilities and limits of rhetorical criticism, and while I disagree with the author on a number of points, I do not hesitate to recommend it to the critical reader. C. Joachim Classen Kristoffel Demoen, Pagan and Biblical Exempla in Gregory Nazianzen. A Study in Rhetoric and Hermeneutics, coll. Corpus Christianorum, Lingua Patrum, 2 (Tumhout: Brepols, 1996) 498 PP· Cet ouvrage a parfaitement sa place dans la collection prestigieuse du Corpus Christianorum, non seulement parce qu'il y côtoie l'admirable Corpus Nazianzenum, mais parce qu'il fait progresser de façon décisive la connaissance des oeuvres de Grégoire de Nazianze et de sa manière de composer. Il comporte deux grands ensembles, un exposé constitué de deux parties, et un répertoire (p. 325-458). Il s'agit d'une analyse rhétorique de Vexemplum, qui va donc au delà du procédé stylistique, pour l'étudier comme moyen de persuasion. Cela implique une enquête sur la tradition rhétorique dont Grégoire est tributaire, ainsi que l'examen des jugements explicites et sous-jacents portés sur les 330 RHETORICA vecteurs des deux courants culturels que fait se rencontrer "le Théologien", l'hellénisme et ses (xûôoi, le christianisme et la Bible. Le livre est issu d'une Dissertation doctorale présentée à l'Université de Gent (Gand) en février 1993. L'introduction part de l'attitude ambiguë de Grégoire à l'égard de la tradition classique, pour esquisser une idée qui prendra toute sa force au terme de l'ouvrage: voulant rivaliser avec les écrivains non chrétiens, Grégoire sépare l'hellénisme de la religion; cette conception restrictive lui donne le moyen de reconquérir l'hellénisme (après la tentative anti-chrétienne de l'empereur Julien); K. Demoen illustre cette reconquête par l'usage rhétorique d'exemples pris dans la mythologie, dans l'histoire et dans la Bible. Les éléments de l'étude sont de nature narrative. Les sources, du côté grec, sont la mythologie, les légendes, l'histoire, les fables et, par ailleurs, les récits bibliques (épisodes historiques de l'Ancien Testament, paraboles du Nouveau Testament). Ne sont retenues que les "histoires" qui ont une fonction exemplaire. Dès le début est proposée une définition du παράδειγμα, distingué de μεταφορά, παραβολή, γνώμη, σύγκρισις, définition élaborée à l'aide des théories antiques analysées dans le premier chapitre (p. 33-50): "l'évocation d'une histoire (de la Bible ou de la tradition païenne) qui s'est réellement produite ou qui n'est pas arrivée, dont la matière ressemble ou est liée au sujet traité, qui est associée implicitement ou explicitement à ce sujet comme argument (preuve ou modèle) ou comme ornement, et qui prend la forme d'une narration, de la mention d'un nom, ou d'une allusion" (p. 25). Le corpus est fait principalement des poèmes de Grégoire, très hétérogènes, les oeuvres en prose intervenant surtout à titre d'illustration ou de confirmation. L'entreprise se situe (p. 26) dans la perspective érudite de la Συναγωγή; kai; έξήγησις de Cosmas de Jérusalem, scholiaste du VIIIe si...

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...

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...

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 classical rhetoric per se in England from the seventh through the eleventh centuries: Knappe demonstrates convincingly that the sources of "rhetorical" instruction available in early medieval England invariably belong to the grammatical tradition. RHETORICA 234 The study is divided into four large parts. Part I raises the central problem of the different traditions of classical rhetoric, surveys and critiques previous research on classical rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England, and concludes with a brief overview of the book’s goals and procedures. In Part II, Knappe sketches the major developments in the teaching and transmission of rhetoric in late antiquity, with particular emphasis on the ways in which the teaching of the figures was incorporated into grammatical textbooks, such as that of Donatus; into other works, notably Cassiodorus's Expositio psalmorum, that may have been used in teaching grammar; and, along with the progymnasmata, into a grammar instruction that was broadened to include not only "correct" but also "good" speaking and writing and even the production of texts. The heart of the book documents the reception of the traditions of classical rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon England. Drawing on the evidence of surviving insular manuscripts, book lists, and contemporary testimony, Knappe concludes that the Anglo-Saxons appear not to have participated in the transmission of ancient rhetorical texts. Even the single work by an Anglo Saxon author that is directly based on such texts, Alcuin's Dialogus de rhetorica et de virtutibus, was written and circulated on the Continent. In his panegyrical verses on York, Alcuin claims that archbishop Alberht taught Ciceronian rhetoric; but if this is true, no other traces of that teaching survive. By contrast, Knappe finds abundant evidence for the availability and use of grammatical texts with rhetorical contents. In considerable detail, she shows that texts such as Bede's Liber de schematibus et tropis, Elfric's grammar, and Byrhtferth's Manual derive their treatments of the figures exclusively from grammatical sources. Part IV approaches the question of influence from the perspective of text production, especially in the vernacular. Although Knappe is able to make some distinctions regarding rhetorical techniques—for example, writers of prose prefer figures that enhance clarity and accuracy, whereas writers of verse are more likely to employ figures for aesthetic effect—the considerable overlap with native Germanic traditions makes it impossible in most cases to prove that a given passage was influenced by rhetorical doctrines taught in the context...

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...

RHETORICA 230 unify. As in the past, he continues to argue for the multiple moments of composition theory. George Pullman Georgia State University Kathy Eden, Hermeneutics and the Rhetorical Tradition: Chapters in the Ancient Legacy and Its Humanist Reception (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), 119 pp. Those interested in the evolution of particular discursive practices that helped shape antiquity, especially the theoretical relationship between reading and interpretation, will benefit from this study in locating classical antecedents that ally rhetoric and hermeneutics. Unlike most studies of hermeneutics that spring from the Germanic tradition of Schleirmacher and Dilthey or the recent perspectives of Gadamer or Riceour, this study prizes the rhetorical precedent of an ancient mode of reading, known as interpretatio scripti, as crucial to the development of the field study of hermeneutics. By tapping into this rhetorical tradition largely overlooked in philological studies, Eden historically discerns and synthesizes a convincing case for the recognition and study of interpretatio scripti as a meaning making agent common to both the rhetorical and hermeneutical enterprises that have gained renewed prominence in humanistic inquiry today. In what may be the most valuable portion of the book, the first chapters construct the significance of interpretatio scripti as a model of reading that Roman rhetoricians inherited—from the Hellenistic rhetorical tradition—as "a loosely organized set of rules for interpreting the written materials pertinent to legal cases" (p. 7). As a point of origin, Eden moves decisively to Cicero, particularly De inventione and De oratore, in contextualizing how transforming character of interpretatio scripti often complicates treatments of proof and style in his rhetorical manuals, and plays a deciding role in appropriating legal arguments between the intention (voluntas) and the letter (scriptum) of an author or text under scrutiny. Interpretation, to Cicero, is understood in terms of controversy; thus interpretation theory (and by later implication Reviews 231 hermeneutics) finds a habitual home in rhetorical theory. Eden notes that while Cicero was not the first one to do this, his work has enjoyed the widest reception and can be seen as a generative point from which to track the influence of interpretatio scripti in her book's subsequent chapters. Such a discursive heredity becomes convincing as Eden links the interpretive principles of interpretatio scripti to the classical arts of poetry and grammar as seen through Plato, Aristotle and Plutarch. The prerequisite study of grammar, in classic times, is seen to develop similar concerns as its rhetorical counterpart in the coordinating and complementary notions of decorum and oeconomia which prove crucial in "underlying the hermeneutical concept of contextualization, historical and textual, respectively" (p. 41). Eden extends her coverage of the influence of interpretatio scripti through the Christian appropriation of classical culture, in Basil, Paul and most notably in Augustine. Amidst this backdrop of Patristic hermeneutics, Eden achieves a fine sense of dialogue between the concepts of Cicero, Quintillian and Augustine, and accommodates both a spiritual and historical order that extends into the rehabilitating humanism of Erasmus. Though less substantial than the first part of the book, the final few chapters bring the selected work of Philip Melanchthon and Flacius's Clavis scripturae sacrae into the interpretive landscape as a whole. In the end, this book serves a vital role in establishing the credibility of classical scholarship in legitimizing what Ricoeur would call the hermeneutics of tradition. As a centerpiece in the debate between the role of equity and spirit in the ancient act of reading, interpretatio scripti emerges as a meaningful landmark in charting the never-ending task of interpretation, and suggests an expansion in the intellectual history of both hermeneutics and rhetoric. As an instalment in the Yale Studies in Hermeneutics, this book works an effective balance between written economy and great scholarly depth. Such a stylistic blend should provide ample access points for both experts and novices interested in theories of interpretation, antiquity and rhetoric. RICHARD A. MILLER Bowling Green State University ...

High-modernist writers professed a disdain for rhetoric and yet found it hard to escape. They scorned the artifice of traditional, overt rhetoric and they did not wish to acknowledge that all communication is rhetorical, whether frankly or covertly. They especially distrusted “persuasion by proof” just as they distrusted traditional religion, aversions which had significant consequences for modernist literature. Modernists such as Pound favored poetry over the more frankly rhetorical genre of fiction. They valued the poet’s privilege, first articulated by Aristotle and later by Sidney, of writing only of possibilities and therefore escaping the constraints of rhetoric and of historical veracity. Nevertheless, in order to justify their poetics, these modernists developed the concept of poetic belief first popularized by Matthew Arnold and elaborated upon by I. A. Richards and T. S. Eliot. Ultimately that modernist poetics became not only a substitute for religion but a new form of the rhetoric which modernists had hoped to avoid. The poetic theory helped the literature create a covert religious rhetoric that frequently denied its own existence in a ploy for audience belief.

Lucia Calboli Montefusco c Omnis autem argumentatio...aut probabilis aut necessaria esse debebit (Cic. lnv. 1.44) icero's most technical treatment of argumentatio is to be found in the first book of De inventione.' This treatment is divided into three sections. First, Cicero lists the adtributa personis and the adtributa negotiis, that is those loci argumentorum from which the orator has to draw his argumenta, second, he distinguishes between necessaria or probabilis argumentatio, and third, he considers induction and deduction as forms of arguments. In accordance with the dialectical method, each section begins with a dichotomy: (1) lnv. 1.34 omnes res argumentando confirmantur aut ex eo, quod personis aut ex eo quod negotiis est adtributum ("all propositions are supported in argument by attributes of persons or of actions") (2) lnv. 1.44 omnis autem argumentatio, quae ex iis locis, quos commemoravimus sumetur, aut probabilis aut necessaria esse debebit ("all argumentation drawn from 1 As Cicero himself announces (lnv. 1.34; cf. 1.49), he first wants to give a general overview of the tools of argumentation, shifting to the second book the treatment of the topics for the singula genera causarum. In his later works we do not find such a detailed discussion of the logical means of persuasion, although Antonius in the long passage of De oratore concerned with rational persuasion (docere) takes on the task of providing precepts for argumentation (De Orat. 2.11575 ). Cicero's interest, however, is there focused on the topics and particularly on the distinction, which, apparently recalling Aristotle's distinction between ttlgtcis cvtcxvoi and iriaTcis aTexvoi, contrasts those loci which non excogitantur ab oratore with those which, on the contrary, are tota in disputatione et in argumentatione oratoris. Only a few sections later, still in the second book of De oratore, Cicero briefly hints at the deductive mode of inference (De orat. 2.215 'aut demonstrandum id, quod concludere illi velint, non effici ex propositis nec esse consequens'); for similar allusions cf. also Brut. 152, Orat. 122, Part. 46,139. 2 English translations of Cicero's De inventione are taken from the edition of H. M. Hubbell in the Loeb Classical Library. ________ __ ____________________© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XVI, Number 1 (Winter 1998) 1 RHETORICA 2 these topics which we have mentioned will have to be either probable or irrefutable") (3) Inv. 1.51 omnis igitur argumentatio aut per inductionem tractanda est aut per ratiocinationem ("all argumentation, then, is to be carried on either by induction or by deduction") Leaving aside the first section on the topics, I would like to focus on sections (2) and (3) to underline some similarities, but also many differences, between the text of De inventions and Aristotle's Rhetoric. The relationship between these works is difficult indeed, because of the heavy Stoic influence on Cicero and because Hellenistic rhetorical handbooks served as sources for this youthful work of Cicero. Cicero says that he wants to limit himself to the rhetorical aspects of argumentatio because its philosophical rationes, which go beyond the needs of the orator, "are intricate and involved, and a precise system has been formulated" (Inv. 1.77; cf. 1.86). This statement is important because it shows that Cicero could also draw material from philosophical sources. And in a way he did so when he supplied precepts for both inductio and ratiocinatio, because this subject, "necessary to the highest degree", had been, he says, "greatly neglected by writers on the art of rhetoric" (Inv. 1.50). But we should be cautious about the truth of this claim. Referring to ratiocinatio, Cicero actually says that it was a form of argument which was "most largely used by Aristotle ... and Theophrastus, and then was taken up by the teachers of rhetoric who have been regarded as most precise and accomplished in their art" (Inv. 1.61). Who are these accomplished and skilful teachers of rhetoric (rhetores elegantissimi atque artificiosissimi)? They are likely to be the Hellenistic masters, probably the same ones who, some sections later, appear to have been no less interested in rhetorical argumentation than Cicero himself, although he claims to have written down its precepts more...

Research Article| August 01 1997 History as Rhetoric: Style, Narrative, and Persuasion Ronald H. Carpenter,History as Rhetoric: Style, Narrative, and Persuasion (Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1995). S. Michael Halloran S. Michael Halloran Department of Language, Literature, and Communication, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY 12180-3590, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1997) 15 (3): 347–349. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1997.15.3.347 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 S. Michael Halloran; History as Rhetoric: Style, Narrative, and Persuasion. Rhetorica 1 August 1997; 15 (3): 347–349. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1997.15.3.347 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 1997, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1997 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract: Pronuntiatio teaches charaeter creation and analysis. Because the rhetorical curriculum in the British Renaissance considers pronuntiatio essential, retains the educational goal of facilitas, treats every “text” as a declamation, and depicts inventio, dispositio, elocutio, and memoria in behavioral metaphors with rules mirroring those of pronuntiatio, Renaissance rhetoric is in practice an art of behavior centrally concerned with decorum. This connection between Renaissance rhetoric and ethics suggests a defense for the claim that the good orator is the good man and expands the domain of rhetoric from an art of expression, composition, or persuasion to an art of character-fashioning.

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...

344 RHETORICA and yet know all it takes to be American" (p. 245). In the Afterword, Clark and Halloran reiterate that one of their inten­ tions in editing this volume was to encourage more narratives of the histo­ ry of rhetorical theory and practice in the nineteenth century. In its poten­ tial for encouraging additional studies and new theories of cultural and public discourses, this volume has certainly taken a considerable step toward fulfilling its editors' hopes. Rosa A. Eberly Science, Reason, and Rhetoric, eds. Henry Krips, J. E. McGuire, and Trevor Melia (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995). This volume of twelve essays and six comments treats a continuingly provocative subject. The book, the product of a conference convened to inaugurate a new program in the rhetoric of science at the University of Pittsburgh, offers some illuminating discussions of the varied appearances of rhetoric in the practice of science. That practice the editors describe carefully in the introduction to the volume. Describing three possible approaches to science, they seek to adopt the third: studies which would "stress the variety and complexity inherent in the production of scientific knowledge and also the attendant human contexts within which science is made and established." Thus they would accept even "accounts of science that are patently not rhetorical." The paths not chosen include a Gorgianic view—science, unable to produce truth, develops strategies of inquiry and uses rhetoric to construct tropes and audiences—and the view that science is sub specie rhetoricae. The book promotes reflection about the relation of rhetoric and science, but, unfortunately, it contains no index to facilitate the examination of concepts, terms, and names. My focus here will be on what seems to me to be the contribution of the volume to rhetoric of sci­ ence studies and on the problems presented by the ahistorical approach of some of the essays. From the editors' introduction, it should not be surprising that the nature and practice of science is the focus of the volume. The nature and practice of rhetoric as an art in itself, however, receives little attention. Most authors proceed as if rhetoric is simply a familiar term without a his­ tory or a discipline, but whose presence in science should be remarked upon. This curious approach is exemplified in the lead-off essay by Stephen Toulmin, the title of which, "Science and the Many Faces of Reviews 345 Rhetoric, would seem to promise to furnish the necessary background. In an attempt to bridge the gap envisioned by philosophers between the polar extremes of rhetoric and rationality, Toulmin turns to the Organon of Aristotle to illustrate the varied and overlapping types of reasoning prac­ ticed by human beings. But his account disappoints by its brevity. In his survey of the Organon, although he makes brief initial reference to the Analytics and the use of dialectical or topical reasoning in science, he then moves on to rhetoric, failing to treat Aristotle's conception of rhetoric or to remark on its relation to dialectic, a point that would seem to illuminate both science and a rhetoric of science. He intends, he says at the end of his seven-page essay, only a "'clearing away [of] the underbrush,"' making no attempt to discuss "questions about the rhetoric of science, or about scien­ tists as rhetors." J. E. McGuire and Trevor Melia, whose responses to Alan Gross's The Rhetoric of Science (1990) have appeared twice in Rhetorica, again reply neg­ atively to Gross's view that science is merely rhetorical invention and rep­ resentation, always relative to time and place (p. 77). Neither foundationalists nor nonfoundationalists, they position themselves as minimal real­ ists, seeing the actual practice of science as constitutive of science. They argue for a "proportionalizing rhetoric" (one that presumes a balance between representation and investigative practice) which would reflect "the proportionalizing strategies of scientific fallibilism" (p. 86). Several studies attend to sociological aspects of rhetoric. Trevor Pinch, in his analysis of the presentation of the Cold Fusion Process, demonstrates the importance of analyzing spoken rhetoric within its con­ text as a means to understanding both the presentation and reception of science by different audiences. Steve Fuller calls for...

Pronuntiatio teaches character creation and analysis. Because the rhetorical curriculum in the British Renaissance considers pronuntiatio essential, retains the educational goal of facilitas, treats every “text” as a declamation, and depicts inventio, dispositio, elocutio, and memoria in behavioral metaphors with rules mirroring those of pronuntiatio, Renaissance rhetoric is in practice an art of behavior centrally concerned with decorum. This connection between Renaissance rhetoric and ethics suggests a defense for the claim that the good orator is the good man and expands the domain of rhetoric from an art of expression, composition, or persuasion to an art of character-fashioning.

Reviews George A. Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xii + 301 pp. Françoise Desbordes, La rhétorique antique (Paris: Hachette, 1996), 303 pp. Ces dernières années ont vu se multiplier, en Europe et en Amérique, les ouvrages de synthèse, manuels, guides ou recueils, sur la rhétorique. Le marché éditorial en atteste : il y a un besoin croissant en ce domaine, pour la formation des étudiants et pour le perfectionnement des collègues. Les deux ouvrages recensés ici constituent des spécimens particulièrement distingués de cette production. Tout en étant synthétiques, ils restent rela­ tivement circonscrits, puisqu'ils portent, l'un et l'autre, exclusivement sur la rhétorique antique. Il est inutile de présenter George Kennedy aux lecteurs de Rhetorica. Membre fondateur de l'ISHR, George Kennedy a joué un rôle capital dans le regain de l'histoire de la rhétorique à partir des années 1960. Il a montré, à une époque où cela n'allait pas de soi, que la rhétorique antique n'était pas une vieillerie desséchée, vouée aux catalogues de figures, mais une nervure essentielle de la culture gréco-romaine. Trois livres majeurs, devenus des classiques, ont scandé son enquête : The Art of Persuasion in Greece (1963), The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (1972), Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (1983). Le présent ouvrage, A New History of Classical Rhetoric, fond ensemble ces trois livres, en les abrégeant. La partie de Greek Rhetoric ... qui portait sur Byzance n'a pas été reprise ; inverse­ ment, quelques pages ont été ajoutées sur la rhétorique latine de la fin de l'Antiquité, qui n'était pas évoquée dans les ouvrages précédents. Le petit livre sur le Nouveau Testament, fort apprécié des connaisseurs (New Testament Interprétation through Rhetorical Criticism, 1984), a été également mis à contribution. Tout ce travail de remaniement s'est accompagné, comme il se doit, d'un aggiornamento visant tant les références bibliographiques que cer­ taines questions de fond. Les chevauchements qui pouvaient poser prob­ lème ont été éliminés (à propos de Denys d'Halicamasse, traité à la fois dans The Art of Persuasion ... et dans The Art of Rhetoric ou des progymnasmata , traités à la fois dans The Art ofRhetoric ... et dans Greek Rhetoric La discussion a été partout réduite à l'essentiel : par exemple, le chapitre sur les orateurs attiques se concentre sur Lysias et Démosthène, les autres noms étant seulement énumérés. La bibliographie est restreinte, dans une très large mesure, aux publications en anglais. On pourra discuter, ici ou 211 212 RHETORICA là, des points d'érudition, ou contester telle vue cavalière (par exemple, p. 241, à propos du IIe siècle après J.-C. : « the intellectual exhaustion of the period » ). Mais là n'est pas l'important pour un ouvrage de ce genre. Ce qui compte, c'est que le lecteur dispose d'une histoire complète de la rhé­ torique antique, depuis les origines jusqu'au VIe siècle après J.-C., parfaite­ ment dominée, claire, bien informée. Elle servira de compendium ou de propylées vis-à-vis des ouvrages plus détaillés sur la question, à com­ mencer par ceux de George Kennedy lui-même. Françoise Desbordes rend hommage, dans sa préface, à « l'œuvre monumentale » de George Kennedy (p. 6). Elle a choisi, quant à elle, de poser d'abord la problématique de la rhétorique antique. Une première partie, intitulée modestement « Situation de la rhétorique », passe en revue les questions, antiques et modernes, que soulève l'art de la parole : notam­ ment, la définition de la rhétorique, le problème de sa valeur morale, son enracinement institutionnel (dans la cité, dans l'école), ses rapports avec l'environnement culturel (avec la philosophie, le christianisme, la dialec­ tique, la grammaire). Cet exposé frappe par sa puissance synthétique remarquable. Toutes les questions cruciales y sont réunies, admirablement expliquées en très peu de pages, et constituent une...

Reviews 219 J. O. Ward, Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary, Typologie des Sources du Moyen Âge Occidental, 58 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1995), 373 pp. Ward's work on Ciceronian rhetoric in treatise, scholion, and com­ mentary constitutes the fifty-eighth fascicule in a typological series whose aim is "établir la nature propre de chaque genre de sources (Gattungsgeschichte) et arrêter les règles spéciales de critique valable pour chacun." Despite the "centrality," as W. daims, of the art of rhetoric in mediaeval culture, no previous work has surveyed the relevant texts as a group. Texts transmitting Ciceronian rhetoric in mediaeval and Renaissance culture, however, resist classification as a single genre on account of their broad diversity of contexts and application. Therefore, W. restricts his examination to texts designed to impart "theoretical" as opposed to "applied" knowledge—that is, texts whose purpose is to instruct the student in the classical art of general persuasion. Included within this sub-division are texts devoted to colores, etc. Artes poetriae, artes dictaminis, artes praedicandi, and artes orandi, on the other hand, are exam­ ined separately by other scholars in fascicules 59, 60, and 61. At the outset of his work, W. leaves his reader in no doubt regarding the significance of a study of these texts. These texts not only offer an insight into mediaeval and Renaissance ideas about rhetoric and literary styles, but they also help to reveal the "didactic curriculum that must have come to influence most writers and articulate thinkers in the period." W., therefore, eschews the oblique angle from which most previous scholars, in their preoccupation with theological, dialectical, and grammatical issues or concerns, have traced the Fortleben of classical texts. By contrast, W. val­ ues the commentaries of the period as "intrinsically interesting artefacts of cultural history" providing evidence with which to "assess the role played in mediaeval and Renaissance culture by a hybrid ars rhetorica." After providing an extensive bibliography, W. engages in a stimulat­ ing discussion of various general issues. He advances cogent arguments, for example, to explain why the mediaeval and Renaissance treatment of generalized preceptive rhetorical theory is so heterogeneous, suggesting inter alia that the different types of text reflect the attitudes of society to the knowledge enshrined in that text, with commentaries canonizing the past text, thereby confining its progress, and treatises bearing much more the individual stamp of the transmitter. In recognition of the problems inher­ ent in assessing such a heterogeneous genre, W. creates his own division of the extant material into four rough (and occasionally overlapping) sub­ categories: 1) independent treatises; 2) commentaries and glosses on classi­ cal texts or on texts included in 1); 3) continuous or occasional comments, etc., in the form of interlinear / marginal glosses, etc.; and 4) paraphrases, 220 RHETORICA explications, or translations presented without texts themselves. The main section of the book is devoted to a survey of the extant rele­ vant material organized (on the whole successfully) according to the four sub-divisions noted above and within three chronological periods. By far the least successful portion of W/s work is his survey of the first chrono­ logical period, namely the fourth to the eleventh centuries, for the follow­ ing reasons. Firstly, the treatment of these centuries as though they consti­ tuted a homogeneous period seems to ignore certain clearly distinct politi­ cal and cultural phases. Secondly, insufficient relevant historical informa­ tion is provided for this "period" to establish a context within which the texts can be fully appreciated. Thirdly, the organization of W.'s survey breaks down when W., justifying his inclusion of late antique writers because of their strong influence in the mediaeval and Renaissance peri­ ods, concentrates almost exclusively on this later influence rather than on the creation and consumption of the texts in their own chronological con­ text. Fourthly, W. is forced to rely rather heavily in this section on palaeographical , codicological, and stemmatological evidence, with which he is clearly less at home than with historical evidence. In describing the ninthcentury manuscript Leningrad Publich. Bibl. F vel 8 auct. class, lat. as "unrepresentative" in the extent of its glossatory activity, for example, W. ignores the clear evidence of...

Reviews 213 David J. Furley and Alexander Nehamas (ed.), Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Aristotelicum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xv + 322 pp. Scholarly fashions in classics come and go. There have been periods in history, for example, when Ovid was thought a poet superior to Vergil, and Statius, despite his relatively low stock today, is afforded a place of great honor in Dante's Purgatorio. Aristotle, (again in Dante) the "maestro di color che sanno," has had his own vicissitudes through the ages, and at different times, this or that individual treatise has had more or less ascen­ dancy. The Rhetoric is no exception in this regard, and I think it is safe to say that, in the past century or so, most scholars interested in Aristotelian philosophy per se have given both it and the Poetics far less attention than, say, the Metaphysics or Nicomachean Ethics. All of that is beginning to change. Superb new critical editions of both the Poetics and the Rhetoric (both by Rudolf Kassel) have appeared in the last thirty or so years; the old Cope/Sandys commentary on the Rhetoric has been, if not supplanted, then certainly supplemented by that of Father Grimaldi (on books I and II); two recent translations of the Rhetoric into English (with notes) have been published by Oxford University Press and Penguin Books—the former by George Kennedy, the latter by Hugh Lawson-Tancred; and there has even been something of a neo-Aristotelian renaissance in rhetorical theory, in The New Rhetoric of Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. Of particular interest is the sustained and engaging philosophical analysis presented in Eugene Garver's recent Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Nor is this all. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, continuing her series of col­ lections of essays on various works of Aristotle, has edited a collection on the Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) and one on the Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Yet another col­ lection of essays on the Rhetoric, edited by Alan Gross and Arthur Walzer, is due out soon. To the latter list we must also add the book under review here. I should say at the outset that its title is not otiose. That these are "philo­ sophical essays" means, precisely, that they have been written with a specifically philosophical cast, as proceedings of the triennial Symposium Aristotelicum (this twelfth one being the first to be held in the USA). I sur­ mise that this orientation will please some and disgruntle others; habent sua fata libelli, but this is particularly true in terms of the various uses dif­ ferent readers will want to make of any given book. The title of Jürgen Sprute's essay in this volume, "Aristotle and the Legitimacy of Rhetoric," 214 RHETORICA might serve (with a question mark) as a subtitle for the book as a whole: as Sprute remarks, "The fact that Aristotle treated rhetoric seriously, gave lectures on it, and wrote what has to be understood as an 'art of rhetoric' seems to have been a source of embarrassment to some modem readers [O]ne could perhaps have expected Aristotle to abstain from shallow things such as an art of persuasion" (p. 117). That, plus the fact that most modem philosophers (in the analytic tradition at least) have seen rhetoric and communication as less exalted topics of study than metaphysics or epistemology, or even logic, is perhaps what has deterred them from a more whole-hearted study of rhetoric (or of the Rhetoric) before now. It is to be hoped that this volume marks not mere token attention, but rather the beginning of a new era. The volume is arranged in four sections: "The Arguments of Rhetoric," "The Status of the Art of Rhetoric," "Rhetoric, Ethics, and Politics," and "Rhetoric and Literary Art." A number of those who attend­ ed the Symposium have contributed essays to this volume (and some of those who are not in this volume, are represented in Rorty's). Eight of the eleven essays in this volume are in English; the remaining three are in French (the one...

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.