218 RHETORICA Nancy S. Struever, Rhetoric, Modality, Modernity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009. 158 pp. ISBN 9780226777481 This book is not easy to characterize. In Rhetoric, Modality, Moder­ nity Nancy Struever shapes over a decade of methodological reflection on Hobbes, Vico, Peirce, and Heidegger into a bold historical argument about the limits of philosophy and our most basic modes of being. Methodologi­ cally Struever is closest to C. S. Peirce on beliefs that generate habits of action and Bernard Williams on the limits of philosophy, but ultimately her project exceeds both because it mobilizes rhetoric first, and thus it narrates from the margins with utterly novel results for our understanding of rhetorical topics, inquiry modes, politics, and history. Within the field of rhetorical studies per se Struever's work is polemic in so far as it argues the contempo­ rary historiography of rhetoric is "the location of speculative vigor" rather than the practice (p. 98). In terms of rhetoric and philosophy the work of Michel Meyer is probably closest, though Struever's historical erudition dis­ tinguishes her work along with uncommon familiarity in Anglo-American, French, German, and Italian scholarship. Though she wastes no time rehears­ ing the standard intellectual biographies or reviewing the marginal literature, Struever builds crucial elements of her argument from the ground up, defin­ ing her terms carefully and summarizing periodically'. When Struever tells us "any study of modality must attempt to deal with rhetorical operations; any rhetorician must refine his definitions of modalitv" (p. 73) we must take her seriously indeed. Struever gives us a fresh Hobbes and Vico, now central to the modern project understood in terms of new styles of inquiry, while at the same time explaining why Hobbes and Vico have been marginalized in a tradition of political philosophy that starts from the presuppositions of moral rectitude. On Struever's polemic reading, Hobbes and Vico "could challenge, from within the Anglophone, or Western, discussion, the begged questions of the hegemonous terms and propositions: an exasperating hegemony that seems planetary" (p. 66). Discreet references to "tolerance, complexity" (p. 67) distinguish her treatment of these "pessimistic" figures—especially Hobbes—from the Straussian trajectory most recently articulated in Brian Garsten's Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgnieiit, but more could be said. Along the way Struever takes a stab at theoretical debates around agency, showing cleverly with Hobbes how "will" is procedural and how the "impersonal" does not mean without personality (pp. 42, 54). Starting with Hobbes' crucial bridge concept "natural logic" (p. 33) Struever articulates the relationship between life science, rhetoric (as social science broadly understood), and modality (typically associated with ab­ stract domains of logic, mathematics, grammar theory). But how is Struever's life science (p. 15) distinguished from the Lebensphilosophie ridiculed by Heidegger in his rhetoric lectures that provide Struever a critical touch­ stone (Grundbegriffe der aristotelischen Philosophic: Marburger Vorlesun^ Som­ mer Semester 1924)7 Struever offers a nice explanation when she shows how Reviews 219 the animal account for Hobbes "reveals another, possible world of great explanatory value; its force trumps, its plots encompass narratives of Hu­ manistic capacity" (p. 18). In other words the human/non-human is topical (among other things), not just a matter of some extra-physical vitalis. We get another intriguing formulation when Struever writes "the web of political life is an emotional, but also a problematic, uncertain texture" (p. 19) sug­ gesting how a vibrant life science would make room for political possibility undeterred by the human/nonhuman divide. Thus Struever clearly moves beyond statistics and philosophical modality insofar as the field is subject to evaluation: "Possibility as realized in time, fills time: gives it significance and pathos in the accounts of the direction and force of civil movements" (p. 71). Fields of possibility are subject to "the essential rhetorical task of praise and blame" (p. 73) which is to say epideictic. And with this turn to epideictic rhetoric we are reminded of a traditional claim critiqued by Jeffrey Walker in Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity: prag­ matic discourse or what can be seen as civic oratory is the primary form of rhetoric in its preconceptual state, before it emerges into history...

Reviews 211 caught on principally because a privileged class of moderate gentlemen enjoying the spoils of the Scotch commercial economy desired entrance into and the ability to participate in British high society" (p. 106). Really? When did early capitalists get so dense? Was there no other advantage to belletrism, perhaps something related to the concrete economic situation of the Scots or the Americans? Apparently not. Needless to say, if there is a moment when Longaker s history gets reductive, it is in his handling of this movement which other scholars, such as Lois Agnew and Arthur Walzer, have shown to be far more dynamic While it is true that much of this work was published subsequent to Longaker's book, I, for one, found myself frustrated with the often dismissive tone Longaker took with Scottish thinkers, especially Blair and Karnes who were often described as "genteel" as if that were some affront. It is worth pointing out that the term "genteel" did not acquire its present day negative connotations in the United States until late in the nineteenth century. Then again, perhaps that label was part of a deliberate rhetorical strategy by Longaker to chastize scholars invested in the present day republican revival and Longaker certainly has a point there. These questions aside, Longaker's work suggests a number of important ways research in the field can and should be pursued. The republican theory Longaker examines was a cosmopolitan phenomenon that not only manifested itself in multiple forms within the United States but throughout much of Europe. 1, for one, hunger to see comparative work on republican pedagogy within the United States and other countries, like France, who were swept up in eighteenth-century republican thought. Paul Dahlgren Georgia Southwestern State University Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion: A Defense of Rhetoric and Judgment. Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2006. 276 pp. ISBN 0-674-02168-1 Selected by the National Endowment for the Humanities to give the 1992 Jefferson Lecture, Bernard Knox was interviewed by NEH's Chairman, Lynne Cheney. Cheney expressed dismay at Knox's praise of the sophists: the sophists were the bad guys; they made the weaker case appear the stronger; they were relativists and skeptics. Only someone who believes in absolute truth, like Plato, can make the world safe for democracy (Humanities 13 (1992): 4-9, 31-36). Bryan Garsten's Saving Persuasion could have helped Cheney tell a more defensible, and indeed interesting and important story, but without the moral she wanted to draw. Garsten makes the case for a politics of persuasion by examining the intellectual roots of the modern suspicion of persuasive rhetoric and then challenging them, pointing the way toward an understanding of deliberation in which rhetoric plays a central role (p. 4). 212 RHETORICA In the first half of the book, Garsten examines three anti-rhetorical thinkers who contributed to the social contract tradition and thus to modern liberalism. Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant all saw rhetoric as the enemy of both personal autonomy and political freedom. While their attacks on the rhetoric of religious enthusiasm, the rhetoric of factions, and the rhetoric of egotistic subversion make possible modern republicanism and democracy, their success had a price. Therefore the second half of the book turns to Aristotle and Cicero for understandings of rhetoric that do not reduce to the sophistic that so exercised Cheney. This is not a defense of the ancients against the moderns. Garsten instead aims at formulating a distinctively modern idea of rhetoric and deliberation that responds to the challenges of Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant. In the Rhetoric Aristotle rejected the idea that the sophist had a unique and powerful faculty. In modern considerations of persuasion, the worry is that conscience or revelation gives a unique and powerful source and content of judgment. As Garsten notes, Cicero argues that rhetoric brought people out of the state of nature into a civil state, while Hobbes sees powerful orators doing the opposite, making people more unsociable (p. 35). Why were these early modern thinkers so opposed to rhetoric? First, they saw the damage caused by rhetorically powerful religious enthusiasts, but their aversion goes deeper. "Liberalism's aversion to persuasion is...

Reviews 201 style demonstrated a facility with his language that went beyond what someone untrained in rhetoric would have been able to produce" (p. 169). He advances this claim in order to prove that a rhetorical analysis of the structure goes a long way toward establishing the authenticity and integrity of the Aducrsits Indneos. I find Dunn s arguments regarding authorship persuasive because of his rhetorical analysis, despite the fact that his critical modus operandi is formalistically tedious and to some extent mechanistic. This approach serves Dunn s purpose of reflecting on authorship, but the rhetorical insights are wooden and not especiallv perceptive. Thomas H. Olbricht Pepperdine University Frédérique Woerther, ed., Literary and Philosophical Rhetoric in the Greek, Roman, Syriac, and Arabic Worlds (Europea Memoria Series 2, Vol. 66). Hildesheini, Zurich, and New York: Georg Olms Verlag, 2009. 327 pp. ISBN 978-3-487-13990-6 Historians of rhetoric are well aware that in pre-modern eras, there was extensive contact between Europe and the Arabic world. Some of this contact (e.g., Arabic commentaries on Aristotle's Rhetoric) has been extensively discussed for a long time, but some of those discussions are now out of date and other relevant areas have remained largely unexplored. The collection of essays reviewed here, in English and French, is designed to take one topic that has proved important in both European and Arabic rhetoric and in the contact between them and to provide a comprehensive overview of the topic in light of what is now known about it. The collection begins from one of the key commonplaces in rhetorical history, that rhetoric oscillates between two key poles: one philosophical, in which the emphasis is on the relationship between rhetoric and knowledge, and one literary, in which the emphasis is on style. Or, to say it a bit differently, the rhetorician can focus on the truth value of what is said and on the validity of propositions or on the verbal embellishment of rhetorical statements. This book was born at a conference on "Literary and Philosophical Rhetoric in the Greek, Syriac, and Arabic Worlds" which was organized by Frédérique Woerther in Beirut on 3-4 July 2006, where ten of the essays were originally presented. Woerther is to be commended, however, for not taking the easy way out and simply publishing those ten essays. She has added four more papers that fill in some obvious gaps in what the conference covered. The result, unlike many volumes of conference proceedings, is a book that offers reasonable coverage of its subject. The first seven of the fourteen essays cover Greek and Roman rhetoric. This section begins with a short but incisive piece on Plato by Harvey Yunis 202 RHETORICA which offers some interesting comments on how Plato uses various literary devices to convert readers to philosophical values and to inculcate philo­ sophically defensible method. Pierre Chiron drew what is perhaps the key assignment in this section, the treatment of Aristotle's Rhetoric, since this is the text which would prove so influential for the second half of the vol­ ume. Focusing on epideictic and on diction, Chiron shows how Aristotle diminishes the distance which separates rhetoric and literature. Next Niall R. Livingstone presents a nicely nuanced paper which recognizes the sub­ tleties and complexities of Isocrates' ideas in this area. As Livingstone puts it, "[intellectually and stylistically, Isocratean philosophia achieves validation by representing itself as the artistic crystalisation of the public sphere: the mid-point both between self-seeking sophistry and elite philosophical ob­ scurantism, and between the vulgar point-scoring of the lawcourts and the meretricious entertainment-value of poetry" (p. 54). Frédérique Woerther glances forward toward the second section of the volume in her essay, which focuses on how Hermagoras of Temnos and al-Fârâbï preserved and inter­ preted the traditional connections among rhetoric, logic, and politics, show­ ing that in the end, rhetoric and poetics allow a general public that is not able to understand rigorous argumentation to grasp the results of scientific discoveries. David Blank in turn discusses Philodemus, whose work is in the process of being reconstructed on the basis of papyri found...

198 RHETORICA discussion in these essays, Stowers' A Rereading of Romans, Justice, Jews, and Gentiles provides outstanding examinations of Paul's uses of prosopopoieia, among other oral speech genres familiar to the auditors of the time. Similarly, Antoinette Wire's The Corinthian Women Prophets, a Reconstruction Through Paul's Rhetoric, among its other merits, suggests contextual sources for puns and humor in Paul's references to the veiling of women and to their prophetic speech. Philip Kern's Rhetoric and Galatians, Assessing an Approach to Paul's Epistles provides a good companion to the essays by Black and Watson in this volume in reviewing the numerous approaches to Paul's letters that are increasingly being combined with one another to both reconstruct the contexts and auditors of the New Testament gospels and epistles, and assess the innovations introduced into classical genres and understandings of the meanings they conveyed. Like Richard Burridge's What Are the Gospels?, studies of New Testament innovations and improvisations based upon clas­ sical models are provided in Jo-Ann Brandt's Dialogue and Drama, Elements of Greek Tragedy in the Fourth Gospel and Dennis E. Smith's Prom Symposium to Eucharist, the Banquet in the Early Christian World. These readings continue the examination of literary and rhetorical readings of the New Testament in conversation and sometimes in conflict with one another. Black and Watson have provided an examination of these current critical issues within and alongside reappraisals of Kennedy's work in a manner that does credit to their title: words well spoken. C. Jan Swearingen Texas A&M University Geoffrey D. Dunn, Tertullian's Aduersus Iudaeos: A Rhetorical Analysis. Patristics Monograph Series 19, Washington, DC: The Catholic Uni­ versity of America Press, 2008. xiv + 210 pp. ISBN 978-0-8132-1526-6 The Tertullian authorship of Aduersus Iudaeos has been disputed over the past two centuries. In this book Dunn argues that a rhetorical analysis of Ter­ tullian s Aduersus Iudaeos can resolve the uncertainties respecting its origins. He sets forth in an excellent manner the status of authorship assumptions, provides a detailed rhetorical analysis, and constructs a substantial case for all the parts of the manuscript being authored by Tertullian. He contends that the disputed last part was written before Tertullian's Aduersus Marcionem rather than being copied from it. Furthermore he declares that the Aduersus Iudaeos has been neglected because of doubts regarding its authen­ ticity. He points out that Robert Sider in his Ancient Rhetoric and the Art of Tertullian (1971) did not include the Aduersus Iudaeos nor did he list it in his catalog of Tertullian's writings. Dunn first addresses the differences of opinion regarding the text. He next explores the intended readership, and contends that "pamphlet" is Reviews 199 the best appellation because Tertullian's intent is advocacy (p. 28). Dunn's lhetoiical analysis consists of three aspects located in as many chapters, structure, argumentation, and style. The final chapter is in essence a summary of the arguments in the book. There is an extended bibliography, a general index, and a Scripture citations index. in the first chapter Dunn sets out a history of scholarly reflections on authorship and in the process supplies an important breakdown of those who doubt the integrity and authenticity of the Aduersus Iudaeos and those who support it. Those opposed were Krovmann, Dekkers, Aulisa, Semler, Burkitt, Quispel, Quasten, Neander, Akerman, Labriolle, Efroymson, Crosson, and Ev ans. Those accepting were Noeldechen, Grotemeyer, Harnack, Williams, Saflund, Trankle, Fredouille, Monceaux, Simon, Gager,Aziza, Moreschini, Schreckenberg, Barnes, and Otranto. Dunn along the way sets out the diverse nuances prov ided bv these authorities. Dunn ascertains that the authorship controversy is related to the recent concern ov er the degree of contact between Jews and Christians in early third century Carthage. Contemporary scholars are offering new clues that the contacts between Jews and Christians were considerable. Scholars who so argue include J uster, Simon, Krauss, Williams, Parkes, Blumenkranz, Wilken, Blanchetiere, Hornbury, de Lange, Wilson, and MacLennan. Other scholars, however, have claimed that anti-Jewish polemics were chiefly designed to assist the Christians in establishing "self identity," since Jews and Chris­ tians were going their own separate ways. These include Eiarnack, Barnes...

Reviews 215 Cicero, the priority of deliberative over judicial rhetoric, the particularity of practical judgment, and its ultimately controversial nature, usefully question contemporary theorists of deliberative democracy. The trouble with "public reason, as commonly understood, is that it aims at the unanimity of all reasonable persons. If one disagrees with the verdicts of public reason, then one convicts oneself of being unreasonable, which is not usually a welcome conclusion. In sum, this is an unusually ambitious and helpful book. I would want to rewrite slightly Garsten's judgments of Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant. To me, their rhetoric against rhetoric served useful progressive purposes, allowing people with a diversity of opinions to live together in circumstances that seemed to suggest that only unanimity, imposed or not, could save us from religious wars brought about by the rhetoric of certainty. Each found a way of combating the rhetoric of certainty without replacing it by skepticism. Looking back, they only succeeded in their task by severely limiting the workings of practical judgment. Aristotle and Cicero were both well aware of the dangers of civil war, yet thought we could avoid them from deliberating together, not through circumscribing the power of individual practical judgment. Neither the anti-rhetorical liberals nor the Greek and Roman rhetorical theorists Garsten discusses provide much comfort to those, like Cheney, who think that Platonic allegiance to an absolute truth is the condition for freedom and democracv. Hobbes, Rousseau, and Kant saw a rhetoric of certainty as the enemy of freedom, and Aristotle and Cicero constructed forms of rhetoric that separated themselves from sophistic without the need for support from belief in absolute truths. Garsten usefully makes history more complicated, and more practical. Eugene Garver Saint John's University Bjorn Hambsch, .. ganz andre Beredsamkeit': Transformationen antiker und moderner Rhetorik bei Johann Gottfried Herder (PJaetorikForschungen 17). Tübingen: Niemeyer, 2007,280 pp. ISBN 3484680172 What changed in the eighteenth century? What made literature around 1700 different from writing a century later? How was literature theorized at the beginning, and how was it theorized at the end of the century? These are questions literary historians have been asking for a long time. In the literary historiography of the German-speaking countries, they have traditionally been entwined with further questions about the development of a distinctively German literature and the postulate of a breakthrough to an authentically German literary culture. 216 RHETORICA The nationalist answer to these questions was that in the course of the century the chilly foreign classicism of the preceding era was overthrown by ethnocentric proto-romanticism, and its arid rationalism by a literature of feeling and sensibility And Germany—the Germany of the Sturm und Drang—was in the vanguard. Its self-liberation from neo-classicism and rationalism propelled its literature to the forefront of European culture, leaving other nations trailing in its wake. This heroic story was elaborated in German literary histories of the later nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth centuries. A key element in the story was the claim that the eighteenth century saw the demise of rhetoric as a system of thought governing both literary production and the criticism of literature. Rhetoric, a system of rules derived from antiquity and codified in the European revival of learning, was the vehicle through which a Latinizing and classicizing culture exerted its normalizing hegemony over the native genius of the modern age. The German champion who overthrew rhetoric and liberated his own nation's culture from its tyranny was Herder. He was the founding father of modern German literature, who by liquidating the inhibiting legacy of rhetoric unburdened a whole new generation of writers and thus made possible the literary flowering of the final third of the century. The old progressive story has proved remarkably tenacious, even if its more strident nationalist elements have naturally been censored out since 1945. Much has been done to challenge and correct it. But given Herder's crucial position in the story, it is clear that no revision would be complete until his relation to rhetoric was thoroughly re-examined. It is this much-needed task that Bjorn Hambsch has set himself in his new book. He has done an...

In this article I underline the outstanding importance given by medieval preaching arts to plastic resources, specifically to exemplum, simile, metaphor and facies. I give an historical framework better to distinguish in these between what is traditional and new. Thereby it is easier to recognize that, though these arts continue to look back at classical rhetoric, the new cultural environment makes them different, as in the incorporation of a new resource into the catalogue of rhetorical figures, facies. To demonstrate this, I take Latin texts from the as yet unedited Corpus Artium Praedicandi.

Reviews C. Clifton Black and Duane F, Watson, eds., Words well spoken: George Kennedy s Rhetoric of the New Testament (Studies in Rhetoric and Re­ ligion 8). Texas: Baylor University Press, 2008. xiii +253 pp. ISBN 1602580642 George Kennedy's importance to New Testament rhetorical criticism is that of groundbreaker, particularly for rhetorical scholars who are not Biblical scholars. Within the community of Biblical scholars, Kennedy's work introduced methods based upon classical rhetorical models that have been adapted, criticized, and sometimes replaced with alternatives. Duane Watson and Clifton Black's introductory essay provides a lucid guide to the range of rhetorica or the essays and are addressed in different ways by individual authors. An overarching recent debate has been the question of whether New Testament authors, particularly Paul, "knew" or "studied" rhetoric. A related issue has been the problem of identifying rhetorical and literary genres that make an appearance in the Christian scriptures, and related proposals that these categories be dispensed with entirely. To its credit, this collection presents the annoying alongside the enriching episodes in the debates. Following excellent essays on the history of Biblical rhetorical studies by Margaret Zulick and Thomas Olbricht, Duane Watson's "The Influence of George Kennedy on Rhetorical Criticism of the New Testament" explains past and present debates about New Testament epistolary rhetoric and narrative genres. Kennedy was among the first, he notes, to define and explore the difference between "the rhetoric of the historical Jesus and the rhetoric of Jesus as preserved in the Jesus tradition and the gospels." Watson characterizes a more recent formulation of this distinction developed by Gregory Bloomquist: "While historical Jesus research may give us greater critical certainty regarding the words and deeds of the historical Jesus, these words and deeds have to be understood as the picture that the historical Jesus wanted to present. They are a picture of the rhetorical Jesus but not of the historical Jesus" (p. 48). Watson also surveys the debates concerning Paul's rhetorical education that were provoked by Kennedy's New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism. To accept that there is no hard evidence that Paul or other authors of the Christian scriptures were educated in rhetorical schools introduces three Rhetorica, Vol. XXIX, Issue 2, pp. 195-231, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 15338541 . ©2011 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights re­ served. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintlnfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/RH.2011.29.2.195. 196 RHETORICA questions at the very least that bear not only upon Biblical studies but on classical and later rhetorical studies as well. First, what counts as evidence? Second, and related to the question of evidence, what is an author? Third, what does "educated" mean? Apart from Plato's representations, we have no evidence of Socrates' words; we must judge them through the lens of Plato's art. And what kind of evidence is the evidence of an artisan? Among New Testament authors, the question of rhetorical education comes up most often regarding Paul because his authorship is least questioned among the Christian scriptures. There seems to have been a person Paul and all the evidence we have suggests that he wrote his own letters. Or rather, according to the customs of the time, he dictated them, as the letters themselves state. Just as an authenticating narrative often appears at the beginning of Plato's dialogues, the scribe who wrote the letter is named in many of Paul's epistles. Words Well Spoken illuminates both the good news and the bad news among the answers to these questions of evidence, authorship, and rhetorical education. Clifton Black's essay on Kennedy's readings of the gospels provides a lucid survey of the major objections to Kennedy's work, particularly those of literary theorists and literary historians. According to these critics, Kennedy seems to want to reduce narrative gospels and speeches alike to, "logos, or logical argument, whereas the gospels tend more obviously towards ethos, the power of Jesus' authority" (p. 71). Essays by Blake Shipp, on...

Abstract Although hailed by historians and political scientists as a pivotal moment in the reestablishment of U.S.-Sino relations, President Richard Nixon’s 1972 trip to China has received little attention from rhetoricians. The toasts and speeches Nixon presented during his trip are important rhetorical artifacts as they illustrate the intricate relationship between diplomatic and epideictic rhetoric. Nixon adroitly employed epideictic diplomatic rhetoric during his 1972 trip to convey diplomatic aims and accomplish deliberative objectives. In so doing, he created a new, positive definition of U.S.-Sino relations, which rhetorically bridged the ideological differences that had separated the nations for more than two decades.

Abstract The Stoic is often seen as the forerunner of Adam Smith's market man of morals, but others have suggested that the sophist played a role in the formation of market morality and political economy. This article traces Smith's treatment of ancient sophists and his use of the term sophistry in the Wealth of Nations. Smith praised ancient sophists for their effective didactic oratory and their ability to make money through teaching. Smith criticized arguments as sophistic when they promoted monetary advantage for a few over and above the principle of competition. This varied reception of sophists and sophistry suggests a keen understanding of the rhetorical tradition and its capacity to influence the development of the discourse of political economy. Smith's use of sophistry and reference to the sophists invites a deeper awareness of the essential vitality of effective argumentation for Smith's “system of natural liberty.”

AbstractTo the ancient mind, magic was a powerful force to be subjected to or to control. Egypt, more than any other early culture, stressed the importance of intellectual agency as the antidote to the imperfection perceived between foundational thinking and anti-foundational speaking. Just as rhetoric seeks to express the conceptual ideal pursued by philosophical inquiry, these earlier thinkers stressed magical language as the key to unlocking the power of the cosmos. This article will explore the Ancient Egyptian concept of rhetorical magic as a practical wisdom that allows an individual to function fully within the boundaries established by a perceived cosmic order. The Ancient Egyptians applied rhetorical magic to ease the dissonance felt between intellectual engagement and the semiotically saturated cosmology in which they dwelt. These same ancient rhetorical practices hold promise in assisting our own attempts to navigate a world inundated with information.

Book Review| February 01 2011 Review: Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, by Ruth Webb Ruth WebbEkphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2009. 238 pp. ISBN 9780754661252. Rhetorica (2011) 29 (1): 113–115. https://doi.org/10.1525/RH.2011.29.1.113 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 Review: Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice, by Ruth Webb. Rhetorica 1 February 2011; 29 (1): 113–115. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/RH.2011.29.1.113 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. © 2011 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved.2011 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Rhetorical patterns used by Westerners may differ from those of other cultures. Still, little is known about Nyāya, India's rhetorical methodology. This essay relates rhetorical patterns in Aristotle's enthymeme and paradeigma to Nyāya's pratijñāa (claim/promise), hetu (reason), and dṛṣṭānta (example). Though superficially similar, the Greek/Western rhetorical patterns invoke interlocking statements based in a general statement, while the Indian approach uses a dominant analogical image to connect claim and reason. Focusing on a historical interaction where a Westerner missed key elements of Indian persuasion because of his Aristotelian presuppositions about argument, the essay illustrates the crucial need to understand differing rhetorical patterns for successful cultural dialogue.

In this article I shall concentrate on ten lines in Plato's Gorgias (449c9–d9) dealing with what has come to be known as “rhetoric's materia question.” By taking Gorgias as a representative of the first stages of rhetoric in ancient Greek thought, and by a close analysis of Socrates' move in the above section, I shall pinpoint exactly where Plato located rhetoric in the consciousness of Gorgias, and by this offer a new perspective on one of the hot questions in secondary literature nowadays—the origin of ἡ τέχνηῥητοριϰή.

Individual agency is necessary for the possibility of rhetoric, and especially for deliberative rhetoric, which enables the composition of what Latour calls a good common world. Drawing on neurophenomenology, this essay defines individual agency as the process through which organisms create meanings through acting into the world and changing their structure in response to the perceived consequences of their actions. Conceiving of agency in this way enables writers to recognize their rhetorical acts, whether conscious or nonconscious, as acts that make them who they are, that affect others, and that can contribute to the common good. Responsible rhetorical agency entails being open to and responsive to the meanings of concrete others, and thus seeing persuasion as an invitation to listeners as also always agents in persuasion.

Christopher Tindale has for some time been a not-particularly-dark champion of the proposition that the rhetorical dimension of argumentation cannot be ignored. Books such as Acts of Arguing (1999)...

Rhetorical patterns used by Westerners may differ from those of other cultures. Still, little is known about Nyāya, India’s rhetorical methodology. This essay relates rhetorical patterns in Aristotle’s enthymeme and paradeigma to Nyāya’s pratijñā (claim/promise), hetu (reason), and dṛṣṭāntn (example). Though superficially similar, the Greek/Western rhetorical patterns invoke interlocking statements based in a general statement, while the Indian approach uses a dominant analogical image to connect claim and reason. Focusing on a historical interaction where a Westerner missed key elements of Indian persuasion because of his Aristotelian presuppositions about argument, the essay illustrates the crucial need to understand differing rhetorical patterns for successful cultural dialogue.

108 RHETORICA thinkers? No wonder Kirby opines “Quot lectores, tot Platones": There are as many Platos as there are readers of him. McCoy's reading of various dialogues is "partial" both in the sense of partisan and less-than-the-whole. But so are all readings of Plato. To disagree with McCoy over particulars strikes me as simply reflecting the fact that her Plato is not my Plato. I suspect many readers may be persuaded that the most consistent means by which Plato distinguishes sophists from philosophers is by their moral purpose without accepting that Plato's account is true (something McCoy does not claim), and perhaps insisting that the most compelling reading of certain dialogues requires us to accept that Plato did, in fact, try to distinguish the two on other grounds, including by method and doctrine. It is to McCoy's credit that she demonstrates familiarity with a broader body of literature than most philosophers who deal with Plato. Readers of Rhetorica will appreciate McCoy's account as a healthy counterpart to the long tradition ofbooks by philosophers that take every opportunity to equate sophists and rhetoric to the detriment of both. Her book should encourage historians of rhetoric who have not examined certain dialogues as part of the canon of rhetorical theory to include a greater variety of Plato's texts. Lastly, by portraying Plato as a sophisticated rhetor, McCoy facilitates a more candid assessment of what she describes as his most consistent theme. After all, if one does not believe in the forms (that is, if one is not a Platonist), then the only difference between sophist and philosopher is the latter's authentic concern for other people. The fact that Plato's rhetoric privileges Socrates in this regard no longer seems a compelling reason for us to do the same. Edward Schiappa University ofMinnesota Casper C. de Jonge, Between Grammar and Rhetoric: Dionysius of Hali­ carnassus on Language, Linguistics and Literature (Mnemosyne Supple­ ments 301), Leiden: Brill, 2008. xiii + 456 pp. ISBN 9789004166776 Dionysius of Halicarnassus was a Greek intellectual active in Rome in the last decades of the first century bce. Not all of his writings have survived, but those that do include (as well a lengthy work on Roman history) a substantial and interesting corpus of literary and rhetorical criticism, including studies of the classical orators and Thucydides, and a treatise on style (On Composition). Modern scholarship has often treated him with scant respect, but he has begun to be taken more seriously in recent decades. Building on that work, and contributing a distinctive anci original approach of his own, de Jonge has achieved a remarkable further advance in our understanding. His focus is on Dionysius' integration of ideas from the whole range of language disciplines—philology, technical grammar, philosophy Reviews 109 and rhetoric; metrics and musical theory also make appearances, though they are less central to de Jonge's enquiry. After an introductory chapter, de Jonge examines Dionysius' general conception of the nature of language; his treatment of the grammatical theory of the parts of speech, and his critical application of this theory; the theory of natural word-order; similarities and differences between poetry and prose; and Dionysius' use of experimental alterations to word order (metathesis, or "transposition") as a tool of practical criticism. One of the study's aims is to use Dionysius as a source for the state of the language disciplines in the late first century (for the most part known only from sparse fragments), and in particular to illustrate the close connections between these disciplines. But in reconstructing the intellectual context of Dionysius' work, de Jonge prudently resists the temptations (traditionally irresistible to classicists) of Quellenforschung: "instead of assigning partic­ ular passages from Dionysius' works to specific 'sources', I will point to the possible connections between Dionysius' discourse and that of earlier and contemporary scholars of various backgrounds" (pp. 7-8). This restraint does not preclude good observations on specific influences: in particular, there is a powerful argument for the view that Dionysius had read, and been influenced by, Cicero (p. 15, pp. 215-16). A second methodological commitment is the adoption of an "external rather than an...

Reviews 113 Ruth Webb, Ekphrasis, Imagination and Persuasion in Ancient Rhetorical Theory and Practice. Surrey, England: Ashgate, 2009. 238 pp. ISBN 9780754661252 The topic of ekphrasis has garnered much attention of late among classi­ cists, literary critics, and visual theorists—so much so that the bibliography on the subject has become unwieldy. Is ekphrasis a humble elementary exer­ cise in description? A w idely encompassing topos for the agon between word and image? An ancient nexus of speculation on the complexities of represen­ tation and the psychology of reception? Bringing together these perspectives and more, Ruth Webb's comprehensive treatment of ekphrasis from a rhetor­ ical point of view will be of interest to historians of ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric but may prove to be less than completely satisfying to those readers who have been following the critical explorations of the term of late. Webb begins with a strong argument: a proper understanding of ekphra­ sis should be grounded in the definition of the term offered in the rhetorical manuals of the imperial period, the 1st to the 5th centuries of the Common Era. Working closely with the Progynmasnmta of Theon, Ps.-Hermogenes, Aphthonios, and Nikolaos, as well as with rich material on the subject in the more advanced treatises by Quintilian, Ps.-Longinus, and Menander Rhetor, Webb insists that ekphrasis be considered in terms of effect rather than sub­ ject matter: it is "a speech that brings the subject matter vividly before the eyes" (Introduction and Chapter 1, "The Contexts of Ekphrasis"). She argues vigorously against a tendency she finds in modern criticism to see ekphraseis as descriptions of art works or as opportunities to explore ideas about the act of viewing in antiquity. Tier careful treatment of the handbook material— usefully presented in Greek and English in two appendices—focuses the reader's attention on enargeia. A vivid impression could be achieved through the detailed description, or narration, of many subjects, including activities such as battles, storms, plagues, earthquakes, and festivals, not only through descriptions of objects such as paintings, sculptures, and architectural won­ ders. Chapter 1 proceeds with historical evidence for a drift in scholarly treatments of ekphrasis away from the ancient rhetorical definition in the writings of nineteenth-century French art historians. A key moment of rupture in the mid-twentieth century for Webb is Leo Spitzer's appropriation of "ekphrasis" to designate a poetic genre. From here, writes Webb, "the rest is history," as ekphrasis is "catapulted" out of "the specialized domain of classical [sic] and archaeology into the world of English and Comparative Literature" (p. 35). The lapsarian tone of the narra­ tive at this point may startle readers who value interdisciplinary approaches to rhetoric and visual theorists who have left new critical poetics behind. The implication that all subsequent treatments of ekphrasis by literary scholars follow Spitzer's new critical lead is inaccurate and unhelpful (see p. 35 n. 63). In the penultimate chapter, Webb acknowledges recent writing on ekphra­ sis from classical scholars working on the ancient Greek novel (by Shadi Bartsch, Jas Eisner, Elelen Morales, Tim Whitmarsh, and others: see p. 178 114 RHETORICA and nn. 27 and 28). Influenced by literary theories such as semiotics, fem­ inism, and post-structuralism, these works, like those of scholars (notably W. J. T. Mitchell) from other humanities disciplines intersect in many ways with the perspectives developed later in Webb's book, but Webb does not pause to consider how they complicate the ancient vs. modern definitional agon driving her argument early on. As she aptly observes, "The connec­ tion between ekphrasis and the idea of visual representation ... runs deep" (p. 53), thus her lack of engagement with scholars exploring that very idea is puzzling. Webb is on firmer ground as she returns to a detailed examination of the treatment of ekphrasis in the handbooks (Chapter 2, "Learning Ekphra­ sis: The Progymnasmata). Emphasizing rhetorical production, she focuses on ekphrasis as "the exercise which taught students how to use vivid evocation and imagery in their speeches" (p. 53) rather than the static reproduction of set passages. Webb here makes an illuminating connection between ekphra­ sis and narrative, citing passages in which the speaker becomes...

In this article I shall concentrate on ten lines in Plato’s Gorgias (449c9–d9) dealing with what has come to be known as “rhetoric’s materia question.” By taking Gorgias as a representative of the first stages of rhetoric in ancient Greek thought, and by a close analysis of Socrates’ move in the above section, I shall pinpoint exactly where Plato located rhetoric in the consciousness of Gorgias, and by this offer a new perspective on one of the hot questions in secondary literature nowadays—the origin of ή τέχνη ρητορική.

Reviews Marina McCoy, Plato on the Rhetoric of Philosophers and Sophists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. $80.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780521878630. As the title implies, Marina McCoy's basic argument is that both philoso­ phers and sophists engage in rhetoric; her task is to describe how Plato differ­ entiates between philosophers and sophists by other means through a close reading of six dialogues: Apology, Protagoras, Gorgias, Republic, Sophist, and Phaedrus. Her basic thesis is straightforward: "Plato distinguishes Socrates from the sophists by differences in character and moral intention" (p. 1). Not only did Athenians have difficulty separating sophists from philoso­ phers, but Plato did as well: "There is no single method or mode of dis­ course that separates the philosopher from the sophist" (p. 3). Not only does Socrates rely on rhetoric, one cannot produce a consistent definition of "philosophical rhetoric" that can be distinguished from "sophistic rhetoric" (p. 4). Ultimately, what makes Socrates (and by extension, true "philoso­ phers") distinctive is a love of the forms and "his desire to care for the souls of those to whom he speaks" (p. 5). McCoy's first chapter is an excellent precis for the project as a whole. Chapter two provides a reading of Plato's Apology. She wisely does not ar­ gue for the historical accuracy of Socrates' speeches, but instead argues the treatise represents Plato's rhetorical defense of Socrates. Noting the use of standard forensic rhetorical devices (argument from probability, ethopoiia) and detailed argumentative parallels to Gorgias's Defense of Palaniedes, Mc­ Coy demonstrates the continuity of Socrates' speech with forensic rhetorical practices of his time. She contends that the Apology thereby acknowledges the difficulty in sorting out philosophical from sophistical practice. Nonetheless, what makes Socrates' rhetorical performance noteworthy is its moral aim of attempting to make Athenians more virtuous, even at the price of arousing "discontent and discomfort" (p. 20). Chapter three examines question and answer practices found in Pro­ tagoras. McCoy's modus operandi is similar to that deployed in chapter two: Protagoras is read to illustrate the similarities between Socrates and Protago­ ras, who both utilize question and answer techniques in a rhetorical manner, but McCoy also stresses how such techniques perform different ethical tasks depending on the moral purposes of the interlocutor. Of particular interest Rhetorica, Vol. XXIX, Issue 1, pp. 106-119, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 15338541 . ©2011 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights re­ served. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions website, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintlnfo.asp. DO1: 10.1525/RH.2011.29.1.10b. Reviews 107 in this chapter is McCoy's discussion of how Protagoras and Socrates enact different ethics of listening. Chapter four visits the text most familiar to those reading Plato to un­ derstand his approach to matters rhetorical—the Gorgias. Despite the fact that Socrates lays out a clear and systematic description that distinguishes Philosophy from Rhetoric in this dialogue, McCoy contends that these are merely “apparent abstract distinctions" and that "no single distinction made in that dialogue adequately characterizes the difference between philoso­ phy and rhetoric ' (p. 21). Rather, Socrates enacts the distinction by demon­ strating goodwill toward his interlocutors, responsibility for one's words or "frankness of speech," a commitment to knowledge, and a willingness to be self-critical about one's own practices. McCoy concludes the chapter by stating the Gorgias "does not reject rhetoric as such but instead connects good rhetoric to the possession of these philosophical virtues" (p. 110). Chapter fix e engages the Republic to argue that Plato presents sophists as "incomplete" philosophers. Though both sophists and philosophers are freed from the chains of the infamous cave and skeptical of received opinion, only philosophers are oriented toward the forms. Plato portrays the philoso­ pher as preferable not because philosophers can reason better or practice dialectic, but because of a commitment to the forms. Thus, while dialectic may be presented as the highest intellectual art (Republic 532a), what makes it philosophical is a belief in the forms. Chapter six prov ides a reading of the late dialogue, Sophist...

Reviews 115 in more advanced rhetorical practice. Webb s contention that the persuasive force of ekphrasis is a matter of the orator eliciting predictable responses from listeners based on widely accepted cultural conventions (pp. 109, 122, and passim) is certainly demonstrable but does not allow much scope for con­ testation. This view has an unfortunate resonance with an assumption Webb seeks to overturn, namely that ekphraseis tend to be predictable set pieces and that epideictic speeches in particular—a fertile ground for ekphrastic rhetoric—are usually "a catalogue of platitudes" (p. 164). On the other hand, her observations about the use of ekphrasis in orations to "cast a particular light (or chroma, 'colour' or 'gloss')" on the case at issue and to turn spectators into witnesses through the artful use of vivid detail (pp. 145-65) contribute to a vision of ekphrasis as far more than "decorative digression" (p. 158). It is difficult to do justice to the wealth of primary and secondary material arrayed in Webb's book on this multi-faceted rhetorical subject. Her impressive learning and obvious passion for the material are on abundant display; particularly notable is her familiarity with French scholarship. But this wide reach can frustrate an interested reader: a great deal of ground is covered here rapidly, with subjects such as "Ekphrasis and Interpretation" (pp. 145-46), "Ekphrasis as Fiction" (pp. 168-69), and "Statues and Signs" (pp. 186-87) treated in one or two paragraphs. The net effect is at times like standing too close to a mosaic: hundreds of tiles spark with color but the pattern is difficult to discern. In her Preface Webb acknowledges the constraints of space which prevented extended analyses of examples (p. xiii). A few such analyses would have been welcome. But the book succeeds in achieving the author's primary goal: elucidating the main sources for ekphrasis and enargeia. Although rhetoric scholars may find some points in this rhetorical treatment of ekphrasis familiar, they will appreciate the close attention paid to rhetorical handbooks and the wealth of material concerning ekphrasis accumulated here. Susan C. Jarratt University of California, Irvine Pernille EEarsting and Jon Viklund, eds., Rhetoric and Literature in Linland and Sweden, 1600-1900 (Nordic Studies in the History of Rhetoric 2), Copenhagen: Nordisk Netvaerk for Rhetorikkens Historie, 2008. ISBN 9788798882923 This is the second collection of studies produced by NNRH. It is not available in bookstores, but is available online at http://www.nnrh.dk. There are eight papers published here, arranged roughly in chronological order, beginning with Mats Malm s Rhetoric, ^/locals, and Patriotism in Early Swedish Literature: Georg Stiernhielm's Hercules (1658)." Here (pp. 126 ), Malm argues that the Hercules by Stiernhielm (1598-1672) is more than 116 RHETORICA just an allegory about the choice between virtue and vice, the traditional interpretation of the Hercules at the crossroads story. It is also an allegory about good style and bad style, and hence should be read as an allegory of importance to the teaching and practice of rhetoric. The second paper is "Apostrophe and Subjectivity in Johan Paulinus Lillienstedt 'sMagnus Principatus Finlandia (1678)" (pp. 27-65), by Tua Korhonen. This Finlandia, a versified oration of 379 verses in Classical Greek hexameters (of which Korhonen provides the first translation into English, pp. 52-61) is a classical epideixis of Finland, but his use of apostrophe and self-referential passages shows that Lillienstedt (1655-1732) transcends the limitations of his classical models, adapting the genre to quite different cultural conditions prevailing in 17th-Century Scandinavia. Hannu K. Riikonen's "Laus urbis in Seventeenth Century Finland: Georg Haveman's Oratio de Wiburgo and Olof Hermelin's Viburgum" (pp. 67-85) is the third paper. Hermelin's Viburgum is one of the elegiac poems describing 101 towns in the Kingdom of Sweden in his Hecatompolis Suiorum (1691 or 1692), seen by many scholars as one of the finest examples of Nordic neo-Latin poetry from the 17th Century. About three years after the publication of Hecatompolis, one of Hermelin's students at the University of Tartu, Georg Haveman, delivered an oration in praise of Vyborg, a town on the Finnish-Russian frontier. Both Hermelin's elegy and Haveman...

I see a parallel between the illiteracy I witnessed while working in the court system and the challenges facing first-year writers at the university. In both cases, problems arise due to unfamiliarity with the discourse community into which one enters. In response, because much of the language governing composition and rhetoric is rife with place and journey metaphors (note the metaphor I just used of entering into a community, suggesting it is a place), I posit that ecocomposition theory may provide a fresh lens through which to view classical rhetoric. After providing a read of Aristotle’s Rhetoric focusing on issues of place and ecology, I offer how such theory, which I playfully term “EcoStotle,” might be applicable to a first-year composition course. The benefit to this approach to classical rhetoric and ecocomposition is that it is grounded in argumentation, thereby promoting literacy for our students, whatever discourse community they enter.

Contemporary Native American stand-up comedy is a form of epideictic rhetoric in the contact zone of the performance space, using generic conventions of stand-up comedy, traditional elements of Native humor, and Aristotelian strategies to challenge what audiences think they know about indigenous experiences in this land. Specifically, Howie Miller is one Native American stand-up comedian who constructs an epideictic performance in which entertainment, education, and assumptions collide.

In ''Argumentative Verteidgung'' Hoppmann develops a modern stasis theory.His starting point is to find a method to defend against moral allegations under reasonable conditions (p. 15).The idea is to have a rhetorical tool for a person who is accused of having violated a moral norm.The term of moral norm is left explicitly wide by Hoppmann in order to cope with cases also outside the legal field (p.15).The scope, therefore, includes successful defensive strategies in talk exchanges about moral misbehavior.An important assumption Hoppmann makes is that he sees the burden of proof on the accuser.This is in accordance with scholars in legal argumentation and their view of the specific burden of proof in norm regulated discussions.Hoppmann extends this idea to all situations of allegations concerning moral misbehavior (pp.21-25).In order to achieve such a modern model Hoppmann looks into two types of theoretical contributions to this topic.In chapter II, he works on classical theories in the finding of justice [klassische Theorien der Rechtsfindung].More specifically, he investigates the Toulmin model, legal syllogisms [Justizsyllogismus], and a specific model in criminal law theory [Deliktsaufbau im Strafrecht].In chapter III, he investigates classical stasis theories [klassische Stasismodelle].More closely, he focuses on the works of Hermagoras of Temnos, Auctor ad Herennium, and Hermogenes of Tarsos.Hoppmann uses these six theoretical models to induce vital and non-vital stasis points [Streitpunkte], which are key to the defense of a moral allegation.He sees them as vital because of the specific burden of proof placed on the accuser of moral misbehavior.By showing that one of the vital stasis points does not apply, the defender is successful.On the other hand, the attacker of the moral misbehavior has to show that all the vital points are applicable.The non-vital points come into play

Abstract As Crowley and Hawhee explain in Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students, debate as we know it today is nothing more than "spat, 'mere' theater" because conceptions of "opinion-as-identity stands in the way of rhetorical exchange." However, in Foucault's "Self Writing" and in Montaigne's Essais, another version of subjectivity in writing is conceptualized and practiced—one where the subject is constituted in practices at work in the care of the self. In this version of subjectivity, the productive exchange of ideas would be possible. Notes 1Thanks very much to RR readers Peter Elbow and Edward Schiappa for their careful readings, thoughtful comments, and support in the revision and publication of this article. 2That said, my work meets with an interesting danger: Though I hope that in narrowing my focus to Montaigne's essays, I might avoid generalizing the essay as a genre, or writing as a practice, and instead exercise the kind of specific attentiveness that is far better mastered by Foucault, I find resisting that move to generalize difficult, if not in some cases impossible. Despite this potential/inevitable failure on my part, my purpose here is to provide a different conceptualization of subjectivity in writing, one that could prove to be another way of potentially engaging other writers'/essayists' work, perhaps by future scholars. 3Consequently, the concept of the writer-as-agent is disrupted in Foucault's work, and as such, one implication is that this version of subjectivity takes seriously the idea that the writer is one subject being subjected by a number of forces (acting on the body, for example) and that the subject-on-the-page is necessarily something different. 4Though perhaps obvious, it's worth pointing out here that reconceptualizing essay-writing as a complex of practices subverts the idea of the inspired or innately talented essayist. If we writing teachers want to take seriously the idea that it can be taught, then this theory of subjectivity gives us a way to teach it as a complex of practices, as something other than an expressive art that the student writer is innately "either good at or not." 5Specifically, correspondence is addressed to a particular reader (usually a close friend) in an attempt to make the writer present to that reader so that the text can act as a (often ethical) guide for the reader. At least in terms of Montaigne's work, the reader was more generally conceived, and his project involved more than writing to guide, though that certainly could have been part of his purpose. 6This is not to say that Foucault does not take seriously the ownership of texts by their authors. For example, in "What is an Author?" his study of the author function does not involve any assumptions about the author-as-creator of the text or about the author manifested in the text. Rather, Foucault is most interested in the historical operations that are part of the author function, a function that does not invoke the privileging of an author's agency over/in a text but an enunciation of how the author's name provides a mode of "existence, circulation, and functioning of certain discourses" (211). For example, a text with the name "Montaigne" attached to it can be expected to be a prototype of the essay. It can be expected to be written in a meandering, contemplative mode, to quote many important, classical authors, to incorporate personal experiences, and to be relentlessly skeptical of its own claims. 7The similarities here in Foucault's articulation of self writing and Montaigne's description of being made by his book are very likely due, at least in part, to the fact that Montaigne was such an avid reader of Seneca's work––a writer who was very much invested in the self-disciplining practices in self writing. Montaigne goes so far as to write about the "Seneca in [him]" in his essay "Of Books" (297), and in the same essay, he states that the books from which he learned "to arrange [his] humors and [his] ways" are those of Plutarch and Seneca. (It is worth noting, too, that in the 2003 Penguin Edition of Montaigne's essays, translator M. A. Screech uses the verb control instead of arrange. See Michel de Montaigne: The Complete Essays. Translated and edited with an Introduction and Notes by M. A. Screech. As Foucault points out, "[T]he theme of application of oneself to oneself is well known [in Antiquity]: it is to this activity … that a man must devote himself, to the exclusion of other occupations" (Care 46). Montaigne, too, takes this occupation as seriously as the writers of Antiquity. He states, "For those who go over themselves in their minds and occasionally in speech do not penetrate to essentials in their examination as does a man who makes that his study, his work, and his trade, who binds himself to keep an enduring account, with all his faith, with all his strength" ("Of Giving" 504). 8I believe that this is a reference to a metaphor about beehives found in the opening paragraph of Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals, and this metaphor, perhaps unsurprisingly, also shows up in Seneca's writing. 9In "On Keeping a Notebook," Didion argues that we should use our notebooks to "keep in touch" with old selves, past experiences, seemingly fleeting ideas/images/feelings. She states, "It is a good idea, then, to keep in touch, and I suppose that keeping in touch is what notebooks are all about" (140).

Abstract Abraham Lincoln’s 1842 Temperance Address can be understood as an act of cultural criticism delivered in epideictic form in which the young politician demonstrated his leadership ability by presenting his political philosophy. Lincoln exploited the capacious indeterminacy of meaning afforded by the discourse of the flourishing temperance movement to address indirectly problems plaguing the American republic, namely incivility and slavery. Offering only hushed praise for Washington, Lincoln silenced the slaveholding founders so that the sensibilities of a new generation of men could be heard. Lincoln constructed a Whig manhood grounded in ideals of entrepreneurialism and restraint that demonstrated his fitness to lead his party and the Second American Revolution.

That a single author creates a rhetorical artifact is fundamental to traditional genre theory. This article draws on posthumanist notions of linguistic “citationality” in order to divest the epideictic rhetoric of the Minuteman Project of the fantasy of the original author. We argue that, in epideictic engagements, language is reinvigorated; it recurs and circulates infinitely, accumulating meaning in each new instantiation. Using a text with considerable ethical complexity, we examine three themes of particular interest to posthumanism: accountability/responsibility, the potential for (political) resistance, and community. Epideictic discourses tell us not only who to be, but how to be; from a posthumanist point of view, those constructs, we claim, are enfoldments of the exterior. By positing citationality as key dimensions of genre, and following the theoretical works of Jean-Luc Nancy and Giorgio Agamben, we explicate the significance of subjectivity as a rhetorical outcome of the social.

Peripatetic critic Demetrius has received little attention in rhetorical scholarship, but at the University of Chicago in the 1940s and 1950s, the use of On Style sparked debate among the English faculty, whose neo-Aristotelianism significantly articulated departmental direction. This tension centered on the use of the “forcible” style, and the subsequent debate gave rise to a faction of Chicago faculty who were sympathetic to the “New Rhetoric” of Kenneth Burke, who lectured there in 1949. This article demonstrates the significance of institutional context in the creation of critical positions, that these positions are often rhetorical responses to administrative, pedagogical, and political problems.

340 RHETORICA to be monitored by the community and that is balanced by an ethics, psy­ chology, and political theory emphasizing isolated, estranged, and restive individuals (pp. 142-45). The image of the modern Lockean individual that Vogt advances is that of the chastened explorer, conscious of the perils of the voyage of discovery undertaken with imperfect tools, but confident in his ability to overcome as yet unknown challenges. Vogt attempts to formulate a strong version of Lockean modernity in order to shed light on what he terms "the strong attack on Lockean modernity" that he perceives in the work of Burke, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche (p. 6). In those thinkers there is, for Vogt, a more precise pessimism. In their hands, Locke's nautical metaphors entail a much greater risk of disorientation. In this reading, the Burkean sublime is a chaste riposte to Locke's cheerful analogizing, a critique of even a figural empiricism's ability to deal with the measureless. Vogt reads the marine paintings of Caspar David Friedrich and J. M. W. Turner to undermine the notion that maritime life is a storehouse of figures that stand for challenges overcome. Many of the things that Vogt has to say with regard to this strong attack on the strong version of Lockean modernity are suggestive. But it is not clear that a monograph on Locke was the best place to explore these complex issues with the sustained attention that they deserve. David L. Marshall Kettering University Juliet Cummins and David Burchell (eds.), Science, Literature and Rhetoric in Early Modern England (Literary and Scientific Cultures of Early Modernity Series), Aldershot (England) and Burlington (Ver­ mont): Ashgate, 2007. 241 pp. ISBN: 9780754657811 The intent of this collection of essays is to "present new insights" about the "interaction of science, literature and rhetoric" in the development, reception, and dissemination of scientific knowledge in early modernity. The studies emanate from a symposium of scholars held at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. The editors promise in the introduction a wide angled book that will encompass the cultural, political, and social elements of the new science. This has been accomplished to a large degree, even if at times the treatment is a bit parochial in its regional view of science and narrow historical perspective. In addition, rhetoric, left undefined, permits a diffuse sense of the term, and a vague notion that it pervades discourse. But despite these shortcomings, the book offers a rich, lively, innovative collection of essays that illuminate selected literary texts of the period. Several of the essays stand out for their clarity and scholarship. Peter Harrison's "Truth, Utility, and the Natural Sciences in Early Modern Eng­ land" avoids parochialism in its treatment of changing opinions regarding Reviews 341 natural science vis a vis the humanities. Harrison begins his essay with Sir Philip Sidney's weighing of knowledge for its moral usefulness and his elevation of the particular as key to understanding the universal in "The Defence of Poesy. Earlier the studia }iu matiitutis had revamped education for its social and moral utility as well (p. 17). The essay, with apt illustrations from the writings of the virtuosi and their commentators, shows that a similar moral evaluation was being applied to the study of natural philosophy in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The discipline was thought to aid in the development of virtue through the habits of careful study required of its practitioners. And it turned minds to regard the purpose of their labors as the betterment of mankind. Thus, the moral value of the philosophers' work eventually made the occupation socially acceptable, despite critics' ridicule of experiments performed at meetings of the Royal Society. With impressive erudition, David Burchell analyzes Hobbes' style and its debt to both Seneca and Cicero. His essay, '"A Plain Blunt Man'; Hobbes, Science, and Rhetoric Revisited," has only a tenuous connection to science, but it clarifies the relation of rhetoric to science in the period. Burchell successfully rebuts those who have claimed that Hobbes rejected rhetoric and adopted instead a "clear and perspicuous" style to foster better scientific debate. Burchell shows that Hobbes had, instead, a very broad knowledge of rhetoric and used different...

Situations calling for judgment give impetus to rhetoric's ability to “bring before the eyes” absent or unapparent persons, places, or things. Rhetoricians often attribute this aspect of rhetoric's power to phantasia, the capacity through which images of stimuli past, passing, or to come are generated and made present. This article proposes and pursues a conceptualization of “rhetorical transport” predicated on civic phantasia, a mode of distance collapse whereby rhetors move subjects or objects so as to enable or impede particular judgments. Rhetorical transport abounds in rhetorical practice, but this article focuses on its presence in Gorgias, Cicero, and Thomas Paine.

Abstract While traditional rhetoric missed opportunities for potent change in the New World, alternative rhetorical theory nonetheless existed. This essay argues that a play by renowned nun Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz is a source of protofeminist, New World rhetoric, prompted by multicultural seventeenth-century New Spain. Immensely respected by the dominant powers of Church and state, Sor Juana was also attuned to issues of nondominance because she was criolla and female. Her religiously orthodox Divine Narcissus is simultaneously a rhetoric of listening that rewrites classical rhetoric's focus on speaking within a community to attend to people at odds with one another. It highlights the need for Spaniards, criollas, and Mesoamericans to go beyond talking at one another, and instead listen with care. The Divine Narcissus is an important text in rhetorical theory, concerned with dominant and nondominant rhetors and audiences in early Mexican society. Notes 1See Merrim and Kirkpatrick on the echo; Stroud's Lacanian reading; Gonzalez, Granger-Carrasco, and Kirk on theology; and Merrim on narcissism. Like me, Ackerman emphasizes the theme of utterance and hearing voices, but stresses this as a means of encouraging an "interpretive devotion to Christ" (73). 2Work on rhetoric and listening is now being explored by rhetoricians such as Royster, Krista Ratcliffe (see "Cassandra," Rhetorical Listening), Michelle Ballif, and Gemma Fiumara. Wayne Booth is one of the few scholars to posit listening as an overlooked but traditional part of rhetoric. See also Cynthia Selfe's recent argument for composition studies to reclaim "aurality," "the reception and production of aural communications" (646, note 1). 3Naming indigenous groups is a fraught endeavor. Current scholarly practice favors using an ethnic group's name for itself when feasible; the specific group Sor Juana refers to here are the Mexica. I use Nahua (of which Mexica are a prominent subgroup) to refer to a wider group of Nahuatl speakers and their religious practices, and I use Mesoamerican as a general term for indigenous peoples of central Mexico and environs. While sensitive to the history of associating native with pejoratives like primitive, I use native as a neutral term for connoting indigenous inhabitants. 4For example, Flower suggests that in composition studies we teach students how to "speak up" and "speak against" but not "how to speak with others" (2). Her rhetoric of public engagement aims for intercultural dialogue in urban settings, often through "hybrid discourse" or nontraditional delivery (32). Ratcliffe investigates rhetorical listening as "a stance of openness that a person may choose to assume in cross-cultural exchanges" (Rhetorical Listening 1). Glenn examines how nondominant groups use silence, "as a rhetoric, a constellation of symbolic strategies" (xi). 5As an auto sacramental, The Divine Narcissus is a one-act play with a prefatory loa. While both are divided into scenes, the numbering of lines is consecutive throughout each respective unit, so my citations specify loa or auto and the line number only. This and subsequent citations from The Divine Narcissus (hereafter abbreviated DN in parenthetical citations) are from the first and only full English translation of the play, by Patricia Peters and Renée Domeier, now out of print. 6For poems in which Mesoamericans speak Nahuatl and Blacks speak their own dialect of Spanish and an African language, see Obras completas 2.14 (translated into English in Trueblood 125), 26, 39, 71, 94, and 138. Sor Juana's use of Nahuatl in these poems reflects a concern for native speakers that is also a rhetorical device, making parishioners feel the Church was also theirs. 7See Pratt's discussion of Guaman Poma's letter ("Arts"). 8Méndez Plancarte, one of the two twentieth-century editors of Sor Juana's collected works, argues against the possibility that this auto was used to explain doctrine or that it had a missionary goal of educating indigenous groups (Juana, OC 3.511). 9 Auto sacramental is a generic designation for a religious play that is often allegorical, and which typically during this period honored the Eucharist (Granger-Carrasco Ch. 1). 10Between 1691 and 1725, The Divine Narcissus was published in Spain several times in collections of Sor Juana's works. It was not reprinted again until 1924, in Mexico. 11Echo plays the part of "Angelic nature, fallen from grace." 12New Spain's literary scene was determined by Spain, where Narcissus was a "ubiquitous" literary presence from the fifteenth century on (Méndez Plancarte in Juana, OC 3.514). Both Méndez Plancarte and Paz aver that Sor Juana's play is not only different from but also far superior to Pedro Calderón de la Barca's play (Juana, OC 3.lxxiv; Paz 351). 14 Yo iré también, que me inclina la piedad a llegar (antes que tu furor lo embista) a convidarlos, de paz, a que mi culto reciban. I offer my own translation because Peters's and Domeier's is quite off the mark: "And I, in peace, will also go/(before your fury lays them low)/for justice must with mercy kiss;/I shall invite them to arise/from superstitious depths to faith." Sor Juana's Spanish is more generous. There is no mention of "superstitious depths"; both Nahua and Spanish religious practices are referred to as cultos (forms of worship; cf. Loa 95, 178). 13My reading contrasts with Gerard Flynn's: "All in all, her attitude towards the Conquest seems neutral. She shows no recrimination for Zeal, and yet the pagan Occident and America are not ugly…. Sor Juana assents to both that which is Spanish and that which is Indian. The Conquest happened, and she accepts it" (74). 15Octavio Paz views Sor Juana's works as crucial to the early formation of criollo identity. It is only recently, though, that Sor Juana's works have been classified as literature of Mexico, not Spain (Granger-Carrasco 15). 16A similar multiplicity of identity is what Gloria Anzaldúa capitalizes on in her twentieth-century rhetorical theory for Mexican Americans. 17The Requerimiento demands allegiance to the Church as supreme ruler, but also tells Mesoamericans that Spaniards "shall not compel you to turn Christians, unless you yourselves, when informed of the truth, should wish to be converted to our holy Catholic faith" (Washburn 308). 18It is this aspect of language that Moraña attributes to Sor Juana, claiming that her "rhetoric of silence" (the capacity for words to persuade beyond their overt reference) is affiliated with the sublime (176). 19Sor Juana seems to be conflating rituals that apply to two different Nahua gods, Huitzilopochtli (god of the seeds) and Quetzalcoatl (to whom human sacrifices were made) (Sabat de Rivers 290–291). 20The incident is quite possibly apocryphal, and at the very least, sculpted to resonate with the stories of St. Catherine of Alexandria and the young Jesus in Luke 2:46–47. 21"An attitude of complete receptivity, of openness to 'any view or hypothesis that a participant seriously wants to advance,' still puts a woman, I believe, in a dangerous stance," Susan Jarratt cautions, quoting Peter Elbow (117). 22"Why is the Devil a woman?," Merrim asks of the play, and reconciles the dilemma by finding parallels between Satan and Sor Juana, who must also dissimilate because divine authorities restrict her voice (114). 23In Spanish, the last line cited here (line 1300) reads, "Suene tu voz a mi oído": "Make your voice sound within my hearing." Sor Juana is playing upon verse 2.14 of the Song of Songs: "Let thy voice sound in my ears" (Douay-Rheims version). The English translation given by Peters and Domeier does not change the meaning, and the use of pour manages to allude to the fountain into which Narcissus gazes. Additional informationNotes on contributorsJulie A. Bokser Julie A. Bokser is Associate Professor in the Department of Writing, Rhetoric and Discourse at DePaul University, 802 W. Belden, Chicago, IL 60614, USA.

In his avowedly Stoic De Officiis, Cicero publicizes the persuasive power of a conversational manner, a communicative style consonant with Stoicism's emphasis on human togetherness. The relationships between and among conversation (sermo), Stoicism, and rhetoric call for scrutiny, especially since in other works Cicero decries the uselessness of Stoicism to orators of res publica. By connecting Stoicism with sermo, and sermo with oratory-glory, Cicero fits Stoicism to Rome's political contours and also ushers future leaders of public affairs into both rhetorical and philosophical conversation—mild-mannered modes of discourse—during a politically turbulent time.

THE ACADEMY (AND OUR DISCIPLINE) has a love for grand figures. Any type of work with social movements is often seen through and discussed in terms of leaders who are easy to identify, and therefore, easily work as metonymic figureheads for their respective organizations. The speaker in this situation becomes the embodiment of the social movement, and s/he (and the organization s/he represents) is judged by hir ability to speak in accordance with the classic concepts of oratorical performance. Inevitably, this model conjures up images of a leader crafting an oration for public consumption in an offstage space; some text carefully crafted by the individual speaker working alone until the appropriate time of its release. It is easy to imagine all rhetoric, and especially unorthodox or polemic rhetorics, working in this way since it is comforting—it allows rhetoricians to make the unfamiliar familiar by pressing unusual or discomforting rhetorics into a Quintilian-like model of public performance.

In his avowedly Stoic De Officiis, Cicero publicizes the persuasive power of a conversational manner, a communicative style consonant with Stoicism’s emphasis on human togetherness. The relationships between and among conversation (sermo), Stoicism, and rhetoric call for scrutiny, especially since in other works Cicero decries the uselessness of Stoicism to orators of res publica. By connecting Stoicism with sermo, and sermo with oratory-glory, Cicero fits Stoicism to Rome’s political contours and also ushers future leaders of public affairs into both rhetorical and philosophical conversation—mild-mannered modes of discourse—during a politically turbulent time.

226 RHETORICA«non é forse in grado di riproporre ... ¡'atmosfera di amichevole e proficua discussione dell'incontro di Pavía» ma certo ne richiama efficacemente la memoria a chi fu presente e offre agli altri un valido strumento scientifico. Carla Castelli Universitá degli Studi di Milano Anónimo Segueriano, Arte del discorso político, edizione cri­ tica, traduzione e commento a cura di Dionigi Vottero, Alessandria: delPOrso editore 2004, vi + 572pp. ISBN 8876947507 Questa edizione dell'tfrs rhetorica dell'Anonimo Segueriano segue a breve distanza di tempo quella di Dilts-Kennedy (cfr. M. R. Dilts-G. A. Kennedy, Two Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, text and translation of the Arts of Rhetoric attributed to Anoni/mus Seguerianus and to Apsines ofGadara, Leiden-New York-Kôln 1998). Dionigi V., ricercatore di filología classica presso l'Université di Torino, ha dedicato lunghi anni alio studio di questo trattato e del suo anonimo autore, ma non ha potuto dare le ultime cure al volume perché è scomparso prematuramente. Della revisione finale dell'opera si sono occupati Lucio Bertelli e Gian Franco Gianotti (pp. V-VI). Non deve sorprenderé che nel breve volgere di pochi anni siano apparse due nuove edizioni dell'ars rhetorica dell'AS soprattutto perché nello stesso periodo si è ridestato un notevole e crescente interesse per la manualistica retorica tardo-imperiale, non piú considerata come una sterile stilistica destínala a ripetere gli schemi e le dottrine di été classica. Per giunta, il trat­ tato dell'AS si segnala per l'ampiezza dei suoi contenuti: presenta, infatti, un corso di retorica completo, organizzato secondo le parti del discorso, ed inoltre costituisce fonte indiretta utile a ricostruire il testo di alcuni manuali di grande rilievo nella tradizione retorica, purtroppo andati perduti. II manuale dell'AS si presenta, infatti, come un'esposizione della precettistica relativa alie parti del discorso, realizzata in base alia tradizione tecnografica prece­ dente; si fonda in particolare sui testi di Alessandro di Numenio, Neocle ed Arpocrazione, dei quali vengono riportate definizioni e dottrine. Rispetto alia scarna edizione di Dilts-Kennedy, quella di V. è senza dubbio piú completa e innovativa in termini di cura filológica e commento del testo. Davvero ponderosa è l'introduzione nella quale V. affronta i problemi piú spinosi relativi al testo: identité dell'autore, data di pubblicazione del trattato, struttura e finalité del medesimo. V. prende posizione in mérito a tutte le tematiche discusse, conducendo un'indagine molto rigorosa, suffragata da un notevole apparato di fonti che talora risultano essere troppo estese, appesantendo piuttosto che facilitando il loro utilizzo. Cosí Patillon, Anonyme de Séguier, Art rhétorique, texte établi et traduit par AL Patillon Reviews 227 (Paris. Les Belles Lettres, 2005), XCIX: «c est un travail solide et très (trop?) documenté au quel on se reportera utilement» . Si puô trovare un sunto delle principali argomentazioni proposte dallo studioso nella lecensione all edizione di V. a cura di R. Romano («Una nuova edizione critica dell'Anonimo Segueriano» , Vichiana 8 (2006): 144-50). Si rimanda ad essa per avéré un'utile scheda di lettura del volume. In questa sede, invece, si intende affrontare alcuni problemi fondamentali concernenti il testo dell'AS che meritano un ulteriore approfondimento in seguito alla pubblicazione da parte di Patillon di una nuovissima edizione critica del trattato, i cui risultati contrastano moite volte con gli esiti delLindagine di V. Appare dunque opportuno riesaminare alcuni punti dell'argomentazione di V. alla luce delle analoghe considerazioni proposte da Patillon. Titolo. La prima questione ad essere oggetto di controversia è il titolo del trattato dell'AS. La tradizione manoscritta reca il titolo τέχνη τού πολι­ τικού /.όγου ήτοι 0ικ7.νικού. V. ritiene doveroso espungere il riferimento al discorso giudiziario perché costituisce verosímilmente una glossa aggiunta al testo dal copista per specificare che i precetti del manuale non si limitano al solo discorso politico, ma interessano anche il genere giudiziario. Attraverso un'analisi rigorosa della tradizione retorica coeva all'AS, lo studioso con­ clude a ragione che l'espressione πολιτικός λόγος era di per sé sufficiente ad indicare il discorso oratorio in generale, ben al di là del semplice riferimento al genere deliberativo. Del resto, i manuali di Apsine, Ps. Aristide e una sezione del de ideis di Ermogene recano...

238 RHETORICA readings of a wide range of poems" but what she offers are read­ ings of details in passages, best grasped if the reader has nearby a copy of the poems from which the passages are drawn; and her "wide range" actually encompasses a scope of poetry and prose well beyond the writers named in her somewhat misleading title, per­ haps disappointing those readers expecting more concentration on the three poets while gratifying other readers seeking context. Finally, she slights the enthymeme, breezily conflating its characteristics with those of the syllogism; and it's improperly indexed, too. But these are minor matters, and they wither in the face of the importance of this book, the point of this review. If Sullivan's "ter­ rain" is vast, her browsing is neither aimless nor "sheeplike." Quite the reverse, she offers innovative, sustained, and illuminating rhetor­ ical analyses centering on a vital subject in our intellectual history: the conscience, once structured as a language and once considered dialogic in nature. Her effort "to read through the rhetoric" as well as her ability to share that knowledge with others teaches us much about our history and about our rhetoric, too. Thomas O. Sloane University of California, Berkeley Wendy Olmsted, Rhetoric: An Historical Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006,157pp. ISBN 1405117737; Denis Donoghue, On Eloquence, New Haven, London: Yale University Press, 2008, 197pp. ISBN 0300125410 Wendy Olmsted's Rhetoric: An Historical Introduction is a welcome addi­ tion to this field of study. As the introduction explains, her book is distinctive because it understands that rhetoric is "a practical art of deliberation" that is best "taught and learned through historically specific examples of argument and interpretation" (p. 1). She explores how the art of deliberation changes across time, from Aristotle to Jane Austen, from Roman oratory to contem­ porary legal training in the U.S. This is a wide-ranging book. It offers case studies of thinkers and writers who represent the changing fortunes of this art, including Aristotle, Cicero, Augustine, Machiavelli, Francis Bacon, John Milton, and Jane Austen. In its exploration of more recent work, the book's emphasis is on expositors of the rhetorical tradition in the U.S., including Wayne C. Booth, Stephen Greenblatt, Eugene Garver, Danielle S. Allen, and Edward H. Levi. The focus of this study develops from Olmsted's longstanding interest in inventio. She begins by exploring how Cicero adapts Aristotle's rhetorical Reviews 239 categories, ethos, pathos and logos, to give greater prominence to sympathy, and she considers how Augustine uses techniques of rhetorical invention to serve the ends of biblical interpretation. All later writers are judged in the light of this early history: thus, Jane Austen's "skill" in defining the values that shape Anne Elliot s world in Persuasion, and which prevent her from being heard, are "understood in terms of the classical (Aristotelian and Ciceronian) emphasis on common beliefs as the premises for rhetorical arguments" (p. 98). In addition, Olmsted understands that works concerned with the theory of rhetoric are also "works of rhetoric" (p. 1). This is one of the strengths of this book, as well as one of its innovations: Olmsted offers genuinely insightful and thought-provoking readings of the different ways in which Cicero, Machiavelli, and Bacon "use rhetorical topics to teach their readers how to deliberate about particular ethical and political dilemmas" (p. 48) and to challenge the wav they think. Thus, Olmsted not only attends to Cicero's rhetorical writings, De inventione and De oratore, hut also explores the rhetoric of his philosophical work, namely De offieiis, and in so doing she breaks down easy assumptions about Cicero's idealism, and Machiavelli's opportunism. Two of the most important topoi that Cicero explores, for example, are the "honourable" and the "expedient." Much of De offieiis is concerned with the relationship be­ tween them. But his understanding of these terms, and their relationship to each other, varies as a result of the examples he offers. He offers no easy definitions, but rather requires the reader to deliberate, to work out how to behave honourablv and expediently in different situations. Machiavelli shares this strategv of exploring, developing and challenging commonplace thinking with...

Book Review| February 01 2010 Review: Figuratively Speaking: Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin Towers, by Sarah Spence Sarah SpenceFiguratively Speaking: Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin Towers (London: Duckworth, 2007). 144 pp. ISBN 978–0–7156–3513–1. Rhetorica (2010) 28 (1): 108–110. https://doi.org/10.1525/RH.2010.28.1.108 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 Review: Figuratively Speaking: Rhetoric and Culture from Quintilian to the Twin Towers, by Sarah Spence. Rhetorica 1 February 2010; 28 (1): 108–110. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/RH.2010.28.1.108 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. © 2010 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved.2010 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This essay examines women’s commencement addresses presented from 1910 to 1915 at Vassar College. These addresses are significant because they reveal the students’ rhetorical education and the “available means” upon which these women drew in developing a public voice. By prompting reflection and the potential for change, the commencement addresses also demonstrate the civic importance of epideictic rhetoric.

This essay examines the beginnings of first-year writing programs in the academy and the early history of the essay to reveal how and why a particularly limiting range of allowable subjectivities entered into the writing classroom through the essay’s form. Most college first-year writing courses privilege a thesis-driven form of the essay that is much closer to Bacon’s (1592/1966) collection of essays, in contrast to those written by Montaigne (1575/1965), who is often referred to as the “Father of the Essay.” Reasons for this practice include the writing curriculum’s seeming alliance with classical rhetoric’s definition of both essay and student writer. The concept of ideology as conceived by Althusser (1968/1971) proves useful for understanding the essay’s implications in subjectivity formation. Although all essay forms are informed by ideology, the act of privileging thesis-driven forms in schooling practices can also privilege the practice of requiring students to take on subjectivities allowed only within those forms. Expanding the writing forms assigned within first-year writing programs can offer writers more open, contradictory possibilities for expressing authority, resistance, critical inquiry, creativity, and difference.

108 RHETORICA per una struttura non lineare, col ricorso sia a vere e proprie digressioni—ma decisive nella struttura complessiva del racconto—, sia alflash-forward, «che rappresenta le storie ancora non accadute rispetto all'esordio stesso» (p. 275). Infine, Yelocutio fa individuare le numeróse figure utilizzate da Tarantino, per il quale «i moment! verbali hanno la precedenza su quelli d'azione» (p. 244), mentre Yactio (Yautoritá dell'oratore), viene invocata per mostrare un'altra caratteristica típica del cinema di Tarantino, «la tendenza a riservarsi dei ruoli che considera imprescindibilmente interpretabili solo da se stesso» (p. 281). I saggi contenuti nel volume riescono—anche grazie alia loro alterita— a mostrare la vitalitá della retorica perfino in ambiti, come il cinema, cosi distanti dalla sua vocazione originaria. Perché, come osserva il curatore: «né le sue esclusioni né le sue redenzioni hanno impedito la pratica sui generis del pensiero-linguaggio retorico; il che, forse, é segno dell'imprescindibile attitudine umana alia persuasione, presentata o accolta come il momento del ragionevole, costituito dalla mescolanza di passione e intelligenza, che pre­ cede l'azione conseguente alie scelte volontarie dell'uomo stesso, compresa quella della ragione scientifica» (p. 7). Francesca Piazza Universitd di Palermo Sarah Spence, Figuratively Speaking: Rhetoric and Culture from Quin­ tilian to the Twin Towers (London: Duckworth, 2007). 144 pp. ISBN 978-0-7156-3513-1 Sarah Spence's most recent book, Figuratively Speaking, claims that figu­ rative language constitutes the chief way in which language discovers possi­ bilities for ethical action in "western culture" (p. 10). Although the book does not quite fulfill the ambitious goal of proving this claim, it illuminates the dis­ tinctive power in certain figures that make changes in emphasis and cultural meaning observable. The book argues that repetition, for example, has mi­ grated in modern times from "superficial ornamentation to deep structural principle ... It has progressed from a figure of speech to a figure of thought" (p. 19). Though sheer repetition can be deadening or coercive (Spence cites the Fox network on p. 35), repetition with a difference can change the angle at which to interpret an event. The fall of the Twin Towers dramatizes this point. Only after a plane hit the second tower did observers interpret the first crash as an attack. The strike on the first tower was difficult to categorize; the second validated an interpretation. This shift, along with the ironv of injunctions not to "look back" after the attack, initiates the study's inquiry. The book claims that the most salient figures for its study require one to "look back" (p. 33) from Quintilian's empire to Cicero's Republic, from the late Middle Ages' use of material figures to Augustine's privileging of the non-material, and to look forward from amplification in the late medieval Reviews 109 and eaily modem periods to chiasmus in Milton s and Montaigne's writings. Montaigne, foi example, iediiects attention from page to its marginal glosses and from book to writer, creating a shifting interplay between self and book. He asserts, "Everyone recognizes me in my hook, and my book in me" (quoted p. 119). Spence's argument focuses on figures that make change evident: "hesitation and correction" in ancient Rome, "dwelling on a point" in the medieval period, "chiasm in early modern writing," and repetition in modern television, hooks, and film (p. 16). Figuratively Speaking argues through many examples that figures move thought, undercutting anv strong distinction between figures of thought and figures of speech. She observes that for Quintilian figures of speech are closely related to figures of thought. Quintilian writes, "the same things are often put in different wavs and the sense remains unaltered though the words are changed, while a figure of thought mav include several figures of speech. For the former lies in the conception, the latter in the expression of our thought. The two are frequently combined, however ... It is ... generally agreed by the majority7 of authors that there are two classes of figure, namely figures ofthought, that is of the mind, feeling or conceptions, since all these terms are used, and figures of speech, that is of words, diction, expression, language or style" (Institutio Oratorio 9.1...

This article argues that the conceptualization of the notions of character and characterization in ancient rhetorical treatises can serve as a hermeneutical tool for the analysis of characterization in narrative literature. It offers an analysis of ancient rhetorical loci and techniques of character depiction and points out that ancient rhetorical theory discusses direct, metaphorical, and metonymical techniques of characterization. Ultimately, it provides the modern scholar with a paradigm for the analysis of characterization in (ancient) narrative literature.

In this interview Susan Jarratt reviews the trajectory of her scholarship and revisits some of the lessons learned from a variety of her projects while simultaneously drawing out historical and narrative continuities of seemingly disparate time periods and contexts. In doing so, she elucidates the value of scholarship as a political and instructive tool that can be usefully applied to both teaching and administration.

In the post-Civil War United States, several historically black colleges gave a central role to classical rhetoric in their curricula, and many of their students used its concepts to develop a distinctly black, oppositional public sphere.

Reviews Serena Zweimüller, Lukian, “Rhetorum praeceptor": Einleitung, Text und Kommentar (- Hypomnemata, 176). Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2008. 499 pp. ISBN 3-525-25284-6. Numerous publications on the history of rhetoric deal with their subject either in its totality or in certain cultural periods such as classical Antiquity or the Renaissance. By contrast the history of antirhetoric remains a yet unwrit­ ten desideratum. In spite of its title Samuel Ijsseling's monograph Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict (1976) provides only sporadic glimpses of this his­ tory which begins with Plato and the Sophists, reaches as far as Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment, and extends well into the twentieth century. It always, however, emerges in the context of philosophy, especially idealis­ tic philosophy, and later in the context of German Geistesgeschichte. These contexts have so far been the focus of existing studies of antirhetoric. Com­ pared with antirhetorical philosophers, Lucian of Samosata (b. ca. 120 AD), prominent representative of the so-called Second Sophistic Age, has been ne­ glected as a member in the chain of antirhetoricians. First "a pleader (Suidas) and later a travelling lecturer who practised the art of Sophistic rhetoric as far as afield as Gaul" (Oxford Classical Dictionary), Lucian, notorious as an eiron from other works, also displayed enough self-irony as to satirize the new Sophistic fashion in oratory. He engages in this (Menippean) satire in a piece entitled ΡΗΤΟΡΩΝ ΔΙΔΑΣΚΑΛΟΣ (in Latin: Rhetorum praeceptor; in English literally Teacher of Rhetoricians), which is rendered in English by A. M. Harmon in the fourth volume of his Loeb edition of Lucian's works (pp. 133-71) as Λ Professor of Public Speaking. Because no further edition with translation appeared after the one by Harmon, there was an editorial lacuna as well as one of scholarly criticism. Both lacunae have now been filled by the book of Serena Zweimuller, which originated as a 2007 Swiss doctoral dissertation at the University of Zurich. The content of the voluminous work is divided into six parts: 1. an introduction to the rhetorical and literary fashioning of the treatise together with an examination of its philosophical and comical elements on the basis of subtexts and analogous texts; 2. a short summary and structural-rhetorical analysis of Rhetorum praeceptor; 3. an outline of the level of education and the culture of oratorical performance in the age of the Second Sophistic; 4. on Rhetorica, Vol. XXVII, Issue 4, pp. 446-456, ISSN 0734-8584, electronic ISSN 15338541 . ©2009 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights re­ served. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Rights and Permissions w ebsite, at http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintlnfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/RH.200A27.4.44b. Reviews 447 pseudo-philosophers and ideal representatives of philosophy, together with parallels in Lucian s motifs of mockery; 5. text and translation; commentary; 6. the reception of Lucian's Rhetorum praeceptor by Willibald Pirckheimer and Desiderius Erasmus in the Renaissance. The Greek text is based on the Oxford edition of M. D. Macleod (Luciani opera. Tomus II (1974, reprinted 1993)), with a few different readings of certain textual variants that are indicated in the apparatus cnticus. As for the editor's German translation, not a single word is devoted to this topic, though the historical translation by the German classicist poet Christoph Martin Wieland (reprinted in the three-volume edition of Jurgen Werner (1981)) would have deserved one. The commentary elucidates both linguistic problems and the historical background of the text. This is often done with reference to the available research literature, as is evident, for instance, in the explanations of the important terms rhetor and sophistes on pp. 172-74. Here the point is justly emphasized that in the period of imperial rule the term sophistes by no means always carried negative connotations, though it could for the purpose of denigrating an opponent. This would, however, have been the right place to insert a digression on the Second Sophistic, since there is no introductory chapter where such a presentation would have been appropriate. Here the author could have made use of valuable studies on the history...

Résumé Outre exercice rhétorique et genre littéraire en soi, la déclamation a une troisième fonction, que l'on pourrait intituler “situational ethics”: le déclamateur doit se mettre dans la peau d'un caractère et répondre aux problèmes éthiques qui se posent pour ce caractère. Dans cette contribution il est montré, au moyen de la notion pietas, comment ces trois fonctions se présentent ensemble dans les Declamationes maiores.

Riassunto La IV Declamazione Maggiore pseudoquintilianea, un caso di mors voluntaria, è chiaramente influenzata da Seneca. Il rapporto intertestuale con Seneca filosofo può essere colto nei passaggi dell'argumentatio in cui il declamatore, che sostiene la necessità del suicidio, discute in generale il valore qualitativo del tempo, la vanità di una vita mal spesa, i vantaggi della mors opportuna. D'altra parte, il personaggio del figlio parricida presenta tratti tipicamente senecani: la percezione di una forza irrefrenabile che sorge dall'inconscio (nescioquid) e spinge il protagonista al delitto trova corrispondenze intertestuali nel Tieste e in altre tragedie di Seneca.

Zusammenfassung Der rhetorische Fundus eines römischen Schaudeklamators ist, verglichen mit dem eines Gerichtsredners oder Schuldeklamators, um ein effektvolles Instrument reicher: In bewusster Abkehr von der 〟lehrbuchgemäßen” Affektenlehre kann er das Publikum gerade dadurch gewinnen, dass er die Figuren, die er (narrativ und ethopoietisch) in seiner Rede vorstellt, rollenuntypisch 〟agieren” lässt. Das zeigt sich beispielhaft in den pseudo-quintilianischen Declamationes maiores 10, 12, 14 und 15. Das kreative Potential dieses Genres wird insbesondere an Declamatio maior 15 deutlich, in der der Deklamator sogar seine eigene Rolle spielerisch in Frage stellt: Die Rede wird so zum Ein-Mann-Theaterstück, in dem auch die Deklamatorenrolle nur eine unter mehreren personae ist.