Abstract

Reviews 211 Now for a catalog of some possible objections. Since Dow places sub­ stantial weight on Rhetoric 1354a 13—"for it is only the proofs that belong to the art, other things are mere accessories" (p. 40)—his interpretation of Aristotle's Rhetoric is admittedly limited (p. 9). Dow can pay little attention to epideictic speech, for instance, or to the bulk of Rhetoric, Book III. At the same time Dow is invested in Aristotle's coherent "theory of the emotions" (p. 145), which obligates him to admittedly strained arguments including some speculation about what Aristotle "should hove said" when it comes to the passionate status of friendship and hostility, for instance (pp. 153-4, italics in the original). More lenient "dialectical investigations" of the pas­ sionate phenomena in question are studiously avoided when Dow goes to work (p. 145), and thus he is forced to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable. Aristotle's Book I carpenter's rule simile ("for one shouldn't warp the juror by bringing him into anger or envy or pity" as "that would be like someone warping the rule he is about to use" 1354a24-6) knocks up against the entirety of Book II and against Dow's principal claim about the legitimacy of passionate rhetoric. Finally, Dow's normative and representational take on Aristotelian emotion comes at a cost, including a social take on Aristote­ lian emotion that better explains how social status structures the emotions that Aristotle treats. (Konstan observes how, for instance, "the capacity for anger depends on status, and where power is unevenly distributed between men and women, anger will be similarly asymmetrical"; see The Emotions of the Ancient Greeks: Studies in Aristotle and Classical Literature, p. 60). All this is to say that Dow's philosophical mission has its disadvanta­ ges from the perspective of rhetoric per se. But I hope it is clear how Dow's orientation toward philosophical precision and coherence offers all sorts of new considerations for non-philosophers as well—far too many to mention in this brief book review. Dow's defense of rhetoric compels anyone inter­ ested to consider each careful step and conclusion, even if disagreement is the end result. The book thus invites just the sort of passionate deliberation Dow appreciates in Aristotle, and in this way Dow winds up appearing as just the sort of rhetorician he would endorse. Henceforth, scholars working on passion and persuasion in Aristotle's Rhetoric should look forward to debating Dow, as they will be obligated to do so in any case. Daniel M. Gross, University of California, Irvine Ray, Brian. Style: An Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy.Anderson, SC: Parlor Press; Fort Collins, CO: WAC Clear­ ing house, 2015. 264 pp. ISBN: 9781602356122 When people talk about style in rhetoric and composition, they often view it in dichotomous terms. On the one hand style is often viewed in the context of a very prescriptive grammarian tradition. On the other hand, style is talked about as a form of rhetorical composition. In Style. An 212 RHETORIC A Introduction to History, Theory, Research, and Pedagogy, Brian Ray successfully places style in the long history of rhetoric. Alongside Kate Ronald's essay ("Style: The Hidden Agenda in the Composition Classroom," 1999), Paul Butler's book (Out of Style, 2008), and Mike Duncan and Star M. Vanguri's edited collection (The Centrality of Style, 2013), Ray's book may be one of the most important written on style in the last twenty years. Style is broken up into nine chapters and ancillary materials, including a glossary and an annotated bibliography of major works for further reading. With a book that traces the history of style from Ancient Greece through contemporary scholarship on style, it is impossible to fully describe the text, but I will examine several key features of this book. Ray begins his work defining the major threads of stylistic definition and research. Since "style" is used in a multitude of ways (the author calls it "A Cacophony of Definitions"), Ray explores "the major modes of thought" (p. 16) pertaining to style together with their research avenues. For scholars approaching style for the first time, anyone...