Research Article| February 01 1987 Hermeneutics and the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition Kathy Eden Kathy Eden 454 Riverside Drive, 4A, New York, NY 10027 Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1987) 5 (1): 59–86. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1987.5.1.59 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 Kathy Eden; Hermeneutics and the Ancient Rhetorical Tradition. Rhetorica 1 February 1987; 5 (1): 59–86. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1987.5.1.59 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1987, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1987 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

(1987). Aristotle's “special topics”; in rhetorical practice and pedagogy. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 17, No. 1, pp. 61-70.

An Early Commentary on the “Poetria Nova”; of Geoffrey of Vinsauf. Marjorie Curry Woods, ed. New York and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1986. Pp. Ixvi + 505. Studying Writing: Linguistic Approaches. Charles R. Cooper and Sydney Greenbaum, eds. (Written Communication Annual, Vol. 1.) Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc. Rhetoric and Praxis: The Contribution of Classical Rhetoric to Practical Reasoning. Edited by Jean Dietz Moss. Washington, D.C.: Catholic U of America P, 1986, Pp. xi + 172.

The argument of this book is that the earliest tradition of Western rhetoric, the classical perspective of Aristotle and Cicero, continues to have the greatest impact on writing instruction--albeit an unconscious impact. This occurs despite the fact that modern rhetoric no longer accepts either the views of mind, language, and world underlying ancient theory or the concepts about discourse, knowledge, and communication presented in that theory. As a result, teachers are depending on ideas as outmoded as they are unreflectively accepted. Knoblauch and Brannon maintain that the two traditions are fundamentally incompatible in their assumptions and concepts, so that writing teachers must make choices between them if their teaching is to be purposeful and consistent. They suggest that the modern tradition offers a richer basis for instruction, and they show what teaching from that perspective looks like and how it differs from traditional teaching.

Historically considered, the concept of the topic sentence seems to be related to the concept of the topoi in classical rhetoric-in the sense of a topos or topic as subject matter treated in a speech or a portion of a discourse, as a method of reasoning about a subject, and as a place or heading from which arguments are drawn. All of these senses of the word seem to have been maintained in the kind of advice given by 19th-century textbook writers about methods of constructing paragraphs. In order to construct a paragraph, the advice goes, the writer should embody the main idea of the paragraph (its subject) in a topic sentence. Then, drawing upon a list of commonplace methods of reasoning about the subject (in the form of headings, such as comparison, contrast, and cause and effect, that label relationships), the writer should develop the central idea contained in the topic sentence into a unified and coherent paragraph. This connection between the topic sentence and the classical topoi is eminently suggestive, but however interesting it may be, the fact is that as an independent concept the topic sentence did not begin to emerge until the mid-19th century. It first appeared in Alexander Bain's discussion of the paragraph in 1866, and it attained fuller development in the late 19th and early 20th century. But the 19th-century conception of the topic sentence has come under considerable attack in recent years because of its deductive origins and because one kind of research has revealed that many contemporary professional writers do not use topic sentences in their writing. I would like to argue, however, that in some kinds of writing the topic sentence can be a valuable rhetorical strategy because it can help writers to organize their ideas and it can help readers to follow the logical development of the writer's ideas. As a means of developing my argument, I would like to look briefly at the origin and development of the concept of the topic sentence, consider the criticisms that have been made of the topic sentence in the 20th century, and then, drawing upon readability research that discusses the topic sentence and schema theory, argue that this kind of research supports the value of using topic sentences in expository prose.

As a concept of rhetoric in technical writing, relevance involves an awareness of time. The report deals with the past; the manual, with the present; the proposal, with the future. To be considered relevant, however, all the modes of technical writing must relate to the present reality of the audience. Writers must recognize this need not only as it influences grammar and style but also as it affects larger concerns of organization and tone. Realizing that the temporal classification of modem reports, manuals, and proposals correlates with Aristotle's designation of forensic, epideictic, and deliberative discourse, technical writers can discover a body of rhetorical theory on which to base choices about selection, arrangement, and presentation of subject matter.

ly to students, but create an impression for some that the techniques are purely activities for fun, trivial interludes that don't contribute substantially to a finished paper. In addition, some teachers fear the freedom these techniques allow students and believe more controlled instruction is needed. On the other hand, structured heuristics such as Burke's Pentad and Young, Becker, and Pike's Tagmemic Grid provide systems to guide inquiry, but often are so abstract, acontextual and complex that they are difficult for students to apply and sometimes seem to intrude on rather than to aid the composing process. I Aware of problems with both approaches and having little time to present them fully, a majority of us, I would guess, take the middle road and briefly introduce students to invention techniques before quickly moving on to other concerns.2 Problems in reconciling free and structured heuristics have appeared in several articles.3 In the end, a number of theorists say that structure and freedom, reason and intuition, consciousness and unconsciousness aren't mutually exclusive: Each school of heuristics contains elements of the other. For example, free writing theorists Ken Macrorie and Peter Elbow advocate that after students use automatic or stream-of-consciousness writing, they should consciously seek patterns in their free writing-or in Elbow's words, an emerging center of gravity (20), which can then be used to generate and organize more discourse. And structuralist Richard Young points out the guiding, not dictating nature of heuristics. Young emphasizes that systematic heuristics do not always work consciously: Although more or less systematic, a heuristic search is not wholly conscious or mechanical; intuition, relevant knowledge, and skill are also necessary. A heuristic is an explicit strategy for effective guessing ( 135). Since the two approaches contain aspects of each other, there should be pedagogies that integrate both heuristics. But how? I believe a way of addressing the problem of how teachers can integrate free and structured inquiry effectively can be found in the classical progymnasmata, exercises designed to train the classical student in the art of inventio. While the classical tradition may suggest a rhetoric that is unduly prescriptive to some

Research Article| August 01 1986 Cicero in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Rhetoric Instruction Joseph S. Freedman Joseph S. Freedman Ross-Strasse 6, 6550 Bad Kreuznach, Federal Republic of Germany Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1986) 4 (3): 227–254. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.3.227 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Twitter LinkedIn Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Joseph S. Freedman; Cicero in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Rhetoric Instruction. Rhetorica 1 August 1986; 4 (3): 227–254. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.3.227 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1986 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This article studies the fate of scientific observations as they pass from original research reports intended for scientific peers into popular accounts aimed at a general audience. Pairing articles from two AAAS (American Association for the Advancement of Science) publications reveals the changes that inevitably occur in “information” as it passes from one rhetorical situation to another. Scientific reports belong to the genre of forensic arguments, affirming the validity of past facts, the experimental data. But a change of audience brings a change of genre; science accommodations are primarily epideictic, celebrations of science, and shifts in wording between comparable statements in matched articles reveal changes made to conform to the two appeals of popularized science, the wonder and the application topoi. Science accommodations emphasize the uniqueness, rarity, originality of observations, removing hedges and qualifications and thus conferring greater certainty on the reported facts. Such changes could be formalized by adopting the scale developed by sociologists Bruno Latour and Steven Woolgar for categorizing the status of claims. The alteration of information is traced not only in articles on bees and bears, and so on, but also on a subject where distortions in reporting research can have serious consequences—the reputed mathematical inferiority of girls to boys. The changes in genre and the status of information that occur between scientific articles and their popularizations can also be explained by classical stasis theory. Anything addressed to readers as members of the general public will inevitably move through the four stasis questions from fact and cause to value and action.

Research Article| May 01 1986 Reflections on Cicero in Nineteenth-Centuiy England and America Mary Rosner Mary Rosner Department of English, Bingham Hall, University of Louisville, Louisville, KY 40292, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1986) 4 (2): 153–182. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.2.153 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 Mary Rosner; Reflections on Cicero in Nineteenth-Centuiy England and America. Rhetorica 1 May 1986; 4 (2): 153–182. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.2.153 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1986 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| May 01 1986 Cicero in Theory and Practice: The Securing of Good Will in the Exordia of Five Forensic Speeches Paul Prill Paul Prill Department of Speech Communication, David Lipscomb College, Nashville, TN 37203, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1986) 4 (2): 93–109. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.2.93 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Paul Prill; Cicero in Theory and Practice: The Securing of Good Will in the Exordia of Five Forensic Speeches. Rhetorica 1 May 1986; 4 (2): 93–109. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.2.93 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1986, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1986 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Defining a rhetoric as a social invention arising out of a particular time, place, and set of circumstances, Berlin notes that no rhetoricnot Plato s or Aristotle s or Quintilian s or Perelman sis permanent. At any given time several rhetorics vie for supremacy, with each attracting adherents representing various views of reality expressed through a rhetoric.Traditionally rhetoric has been seen as based on four interacting elements: reality, writer or speaker, audience, and language. As emphasis shifts from one element to another, or as the interaction between elements changes, or as the definitions of the elements change, rhetoric changes. This alters prevailing views on such important questions as what is appearance, what is reality.In this interpretive study Berlin classifies the three 19th-century rhetorics as classical, psychological-epistemological, and romantic, a uniquely American development growing out of the transcendental movement. In each case studying the rhetoric provides insight into society and the beliefs of the people.

Composition studies began to take its contemporary form only in the early 1960s. There is no unbroken theoretical tradition from classical rhetoric to the present, although scholars in composition studies have attempted to reinvent the work of earlier theorists as foundations for their own work.' Perhaps because of this discontinuity in the tradition and because composition studies has been constituted as a field so recently, there is also no dominant theory governing composition studies today. Some theorists seek the universal laws of composition, or at least a universally applicable method for investigating such laws, while others seek to understand discourse in its historical context. Not coincidentally, the period in which composition studies has developed has also been a period of theoretical upheaval in English studies, the parent discipline. Composition theorists have drawn on the contending literary theories of this period as much as on the rhetorical tradition in shaping their own debates. One reason for this influence of literary theory on composition theory is that almost every active scholar in composition studies today holds a degree in English literature, not in composition and rhetoric. This situation is changing as degree programs in composition proliferate, but the majority of faculty who design and teach in these degree programs were themselves trained as literary critics. Much important work in composition studies shows the influence of the scholars' literary training. For example, Mina Shaughnessy has subjected the essays of unsuccessful student writers to a sort of new-critical close-reading. She is thus able to show that the students' tortured sentence structures are actually attempts to make meaning, albeit meaning in an unfamiliar world, the academic. Elaine Maimon has analyzed as literary genres the various kinds of academic discourse, thus uncovering their knowledge-generating conventions. Ann Berthoff has generalized a theory of the poetic imagination, derived primarily from the work of I. A. Richards, to explain all attempts at making meaning in language. Composition specialists have not only used literary training in their own work but also urged on their students a kind of literary close-reading ability as a means to develop the students' own writing. Pedagogy such as that of Peter Elbow and Ken Macrorie assumes that the same critical eye that allows the

(1985). Aristotle, Hegel, and argumentum ad hominem. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 15, No. 3-4, pp. 131-144.

Research Article| February 01 1985 Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse Edited by Robert J. Connors,Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford. Carbondale, Illinois: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. 291pp. Susan Miller Susan Miller University Writing Program, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112, U.S.A. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1985) 3 (1): 71–75. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1985.3.1.71 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Susan Miller; Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse. Rhetorica 1 February 1985; 3 (1): 71–75. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1985.3.1.71 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1985, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1985 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| February 01 1985 The Masks of Rhetoric: Cicero's Pro Roscio Amerino Ann Vasaly Ann Vasaly Classics Department, 745 Commonwealth Ave., Boston University, Boston, MA, 02215, U.S.A. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1985) 3 (1): 1–20. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1985.3.1.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Ann Vasaly; The Masks of Rhetoric: Cicero's Pro Roscio Amerino. Rhetorica 1 February 1985; 3 (1): 1–20. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1985.3.1.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1985, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1985 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Up until the publication of Alexander Bain's English Composition and Rhetoric in 1866, most American college textbook rhetorics were organized around belletristic discourse classifications; that is, they divided up the subject of writing into established literary forms such as orations, history, romance, treatises, sermons, and the like. Bain's textbook brought about what we now, thanks to Thomas Kuhn, refer to as a paradigm shift, sweeping away these belletristic schemes and substituting five forms-Description, Narration, Exposition, Persuasion, and Poetry-that, with the exception of Poetry, have survived up to the present in Freshman Composition and are known in the trade as the Modes of Discourse. 1 In recent years, however, another paradigm shift has been taking place, and Bain is now often held responsible for the impoverishment of rhetoric in the late nineteenth century.2 Regrettably, in the campaign to undo the damage he did, little attention has been paid to his intellectual milieu or to the question of why he did what he did, with the result that the true historical importance of the modes has been obscured. The most noteworthy feature of Bain's English Composition and Rhetoric-and the reason perhaps for its popularity among his contemporaries-may be its reliance upon the scientific thought of the day. During the previous century in Bain's native Scotland, Adam Smith, George Campbell, Hugh Blair and Joseph Priestley had sought to redefine the basic aims of rhetoric, largely in an effort to accommodate the increasingly prestigious natural sciences. As Wilbur Samuel Howell has argued, the classical rhetorical systems offered little guidance to the scientist in presenting his discoveries to the learned community and to the public at large: they conceived of persuasion as an appeal to commonplaces rather than facts, they depended for methods of proof on the logic of deduction rather than induction, they encouraged the use of ornamental figurative devices rather than plain statements, and in general they were designed for popular exhortation rather than for disseminating fresh knowledge.3 In his Essay concerning Human Understanding (1690), Locke points the way to-

Abstract Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse, ed. Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford (Carbondale, Ill.: Southern Illinois Univ. Press, 1984). 291 pages. Student Writers at Work: The Bedford Prizes, edited by Nancy Sommers and Donald McQuade (Boston: Bedford Books, 1984). James M. McCrimmon, Writing With a Purpose, 8th edition by Joseph F. Trimmer and Nancy I. Sommers (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1984). 752 pp. Joyce S. Steward and Marjorie Smelstor, Writing in the Social Sciences. Scott, Foresman and Company, 1984. 340 pages.

Research Article| August 01 1984 Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors by George Kennedy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. pp. xvii + 333. Thomas Conley Thomas Conley Department of Speech Communication, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1984) 2 (2): 195–204. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1984.2.2.195 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 Thomas Conley; Greek Rhetoric Under Christian Emperors. Rhetorica 1 August 1984; 2 (2): 195–204. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1984.2.2.195 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1984, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1984 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Verbal Style and the Presidency: A Computer‐Based Analysis. By Roderick P. Hart. Orlando, Florida: Academic Press, Inc., 1984. The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric. Winifred Bryan Horner, Editor. Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1983. Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse. Ed. Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford. Carbondale and Edwardsville, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1984. Orality and Literacy: The Technologizxng of the Word. By Walter J. Ong, S. J. London and New York: Methuen, 1982.

(1984). The enthymeme: A brief bibliography of modern sources. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 14, No. 3-4, pp. 159-162.

Most rhetorical history has concerned itself with the theory of argumentative discourse as it developed from classical to modern times. This essay traces a parallel but much less investigated strand of rhetorical history: the theory and practice of explanation. The slow growth of a body of knowledge about how information could best be communicated without necessary reference to overt persuasion is followed from Aristotle's Rhetoric through the beginnings of a theory of written discourse in the American nineteenth century. A later continuation of this essay will trace explanatory rhetoric into modern times.

Research Article| November 01 1983 Gorgias' Encomium to Helen and the Defense of Rhetoric John Poulakos John Poulakos The Pennsylvania State University, Delaware County Campus, 25 Yearsley Mill Road, Media, PA, 19063, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1983) 1 (2): 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1983.1.2.1 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John Poulakos; Gorgias' Encomium to Helen and the Defense of Rhetoric. Rhetorica 1 November 1983; 1 (2): 1–16. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1983.1.2.1 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1983, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1983 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

(1983). Teaching the enthymeme: Invention and arrangement. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 38-50.

Research Article| May 01 1983 The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius Michael C. Leff Michael C. Leff Vilas Communication Hall, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI, 53706, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1983) 1 (1): 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1983.1.1.23 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 Michael C. Leff; The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius. Rhetorica 1 May 1983; 1 (1): 23–44. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1983.1.1.23 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1983, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1983 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Preview this article: Forensic Rhetoric and Invention: Composition Students as Attorneys, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ccc/34/1/collegecompositionandcommunication15294-1.gif

Abstract Aristotle on Political Reasoning: A Commentary on the “Rhetoric.” Larry Arnhart. DeKalb, Illinois: Northern Illinois University Press, 1981, pp. ix + 230. Cloth: $18.00.

(1983). Systems of explanation: Aristotle and burke on ‘cause’. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 13, No. 1, pp. 41-57.

How do you communicate clearly to a reader without boring him? How do you prod his imagination without confusing him? The answer, I suppose, is to be a highly skilled writer and work very hard at your craft. But while there may be no simple and absolute rules for effective communication, there is an art called rhetoric that can help. I offer the following brief passage from Aristotle's words about rhetoric in the hope that some who are unfamiliar with that ancient art may be moved to read further. A good starting point would be Readings in Classical Rhetoric, edited by Thomas W. Benson and Michael H. Prosser (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1969). As you read, bear in mind that this is a translation from a Greek text thought by scholars to be lecture notes – perhaps those of Aristotle himself, perhaps those of one of his students. Consider whether notes from any lectures you have given or attended are likely to look this insightful and clear 2300 years hence. Then notice Aristotle's very subtle understanding of how verbal style can shape an audience's awareness of what is being communicated.

(1982). Aristotle's concept of ethos, or if not his somebody else's. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 58-63.

(1982). Quintilian's value for modern composition theory and teaching. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 12, No. 2, pp. 95-104.

In 1977 Donald Stewart startled his audience at the National Council of Teachers of English Convention by giving them a test.1 Not at all to his surprise, Professor Stewart found that although the teachers assembled devoted forty-five percent of their working time to teaching composition, hardly any of them recognized the names of twenty prominent rhetoricians or titles of works by those rhetoricians. Professor Stewart did not include Alexander Bain on his list, but had he done so very few of the writing teachers in his audience would have heard of Bain. Almost certainly, none would have read his books on composition and rhetoric. That such should be the case seems remarkable, for a great deal of what has been taught in traditional composition courses derives directly or indirectly from Bain's work. In an historical study of the paragraph written at the end of the nineteenth century, Edwin Lewis describes Bain's influence as formative. Indeed, Lewis claims that Bain's analysis of the paragraph was presented and defended with the same acuteness and grasp that made him perhaps the ablest writer on rhetoric since Aristotle.2 Bain's stock, however, has plunged since Lewis wrote those words. The revival of interest in rhetoric occurring during the last three decades has led us to call into question what Richard Young calls the current-traditional in the teaching of composition.3 For those challenging this paradigm and attempting to improve or replace it, Bain has become a popular whipping boy, identified with a rigidly prescriptive, product-centered system. Exactly who was Alexander Bain, and has his influence on our discipline been, on the whole, salutary or detrimental? When Bain died at the age of eighty-six in 1903, major newspapers throughout Britain and North America carried the news. The headline in the New York

Aristotle, Rhetoric I: A Commentary. William M. A. Grimaldi, S. J. New York: Fordham University Press, 1980, pp. viii + 362. $45.00. In the Arresting Eye: The Rhetoric of Imagism. John T. Gage. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Univ. Press, 1981. Pp. 183. Human Communication Theory: The History of a Paradigm. Nancy Harper. Rochelle Park, N.J.: Hayden, 1979. Pg. 320. The Writer's Work, Guide to Effective Composition. Dean Memering and Prank O'Hare. New Jersey: Prentice‐Hall, 1980. Pp. 474.

At the beginning of his Rhetoric, Aristotle reviews the state of current thinking and finds it lacking because it has not dealt with rhetoric's essential feature, proof. In the Rhetoric, Aristotle's professed mission is to correct this fault, to found rhetoric as an art through an examination of its essence. This concern for the essence of rhetoric-that which makes it to be what it is and not something else leads me to a familiar passage which I nominate as among the most fundamental in its significance for the way in which we read the Rhetoric. I refer to Aristotle's definition, offered in Book I. He states: Rhetoric may be defined as the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion. This is not a function of any other art. Every other art can instruct or persuade about its own particular subject-matter . . . But rhetoric we look upon as the power of observing the means of persuasion on almost any subject presented to us. . . 1 The part of this passage which the literature overlooks, for the most part, is Aristotle's indication that his definition refers to rhetoric's unique function. It is function, ergon, which I wish to discuss as holding enormous potential for our understanding of Aristotle's work, for understanding what he considered to be rhetoric' s essence. As you know, Aristotle abandoned Plato's theory of Forms. But in so doing Aristotle did not wish to relinquish the idea that one could get at definitions which would explain the essence of a thing.2 His notion of scientific knowledge turns, in fact, on being able to explain a thing's essence. Essence will be reflected in a true definition. Thus, since essence is so important, Aristotle wishes to make clear what it means and how we would discover it. Essence is not some additional component in a thing separate from material components. Nor can he say it is a material component either. So he rejects the tack of explaining essence in relationship to matter. Instead, he treats essence as the structure of a thing and links it with causality. Usually this linkage is with formal cause, and sometimes with efficient cause. For instance, the reason why some flesh and bone is cat is because it is structured by the form of cat. It is a cat because it is organized in a way that it can perform the function of cat-can realize its end-and so is influenced by its teleological striving for perfection.4 Similarly, a particular hunk of matter is human because it is organized or structured to achieve the end of humans-rational activity. As we are familiar, this is man's end. Why is it man's end? Because this is the function unique to man. Thus it is that Aristotle's discussion of the essence of anything gets tied to the crucial notion of function. And, by implication, the discussion of a thing' s function is simultaneously indicative of its essence.

These essays were originally presented on the program, Most Significant Passage in Aristotle's Rhetoric. The panel was sponsored by the American Branch of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric, chaired by Richard Leo Enos of CarnegieMellon University, and convened during the Speech Communication Association Convention in Anaheim, California, November 1981. These synoptic views are intended to serve as a basis for discussion of one of the most significant theoretical statements in the history of rhetoric.