Abstract

432 RHETORICA Rhetorica ad Herennium and what are we to make of these differences? How useful pedagogically is Cicero's approach and how innovative is his interest in prose rhythm? Overall, however, F. has provided us with a book likely to prove a turning point in the appreciation of De Oratore by modern Anglophone scholars and students of rhetoric. Armed with this introduction and the translation of May and Wisse, teachers will now be able to incorporate the text into surveys of ancient rhetoric in a convenient and accessible fashion. They will find in the dialogue stimulating views on key rhetorical issues, as well as a number of original contributions to the established tradition. And in F.'s survey they will find a first rate elucidation of them.7 Jon Hall University of Otago, New Zealand J. Axer, ed. Rhetoric of Transformation, Osrodek Badari nad Tradycj$ z Antyczn$ w Polsce i Europie Srodkowo-wschodniej, Studies and Essays 6 (Warsaw 2003). This collection of essays, most of them presented at the 13th Biennial Congress of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric held in Warsaw in 2001, was published by the Centre for Studies on the Classical Tradition in Poland and East-Central Europe, of which Axer, past president of the society, has been director since its inception in 1991. Rhetoric, Axer observes in the book's preface, is emerging as an important element in public life in regions that have been undergoing radical social and political transformations in recent years. Accordingly, several of the essays bear on developments in Poland and Ukraine; and others concern Kenya, South Africa, Spain, and post-unification Germany. There are some additional papers dealing with rhetoric as part of a liberal arts education. All of the papers save one are in English. Poland is the subject of five of the papers. Cezar Ornatowski's "Rhetor­ ical Regime in Crisis: The Rhetoric of Polish Leadership, 1980-1988" (pp. 91-106) traces shifts in the rhetoric of formal public policy speeches ("ex­ 7There are a few minor typographical errors that I list here in case they can be remedied in a paperback version (which, one hopes, will not be long in appearing): p. 110, n. 18: ius needs to be italicised; p. 155: Pro Archia 19 in one line, pro Archie 21 in the next; p. 180: dianoia needs to be italicised; p. 214: 'Cicero s speech much have created a sensation ; p. 227: period needed at the end of the paragraph before the sub-heading "Thanking the People"; p. 265: period needed after "Caesar Strabo (3.146)"; p. 271: bracket after “abasio, 45" not needed; p. 272: period needed after "(3.156-66)". On p. 230, n. 32, the speech delivered Pro Rabirio in 63 was not the Pro Rabirio Postumo but the Pro Rabirio Perduellionis Reo. Reviews 433 poses") by Polish prime ministers from Eduard Babiuch through Jaruzelski (1981) to Rakowski in 1988. What we see there, Ornatowski writes, is disengagement from classic communist discourse and a move toward a more pragmatic, less ideological mode of "democratic" socialism; and Ornatowski show this in his examination of shifts in the controlling pronouns from the ambiguous "we" to the "personal" "I." Jerzy Bartminski, in "Where Are We? A New Linguistic Conceptualization of the National Space in Polish" (pp. 107-13), examines key terms marking a cultural shift in Polish self-perception from an East-orientation to one more distinctly to the West, rehearsing a long debate on what constitutes "Central Europe" and whether to define it as at the periphery of Europe, on the one hand, or of the (former) Soviet Union, on the other. Piotr Urbanski's "blow (Not) to Speak about the End? Rhetoric of Contemporary Polish Eschatological Sermons" (pp. 140-48) calls attention to the rhetorical incompetence of much Polish preaching that betrays poor seminary training and fails to stay in touch with new theological trends. Stanislaw Obirek S.J. explains how deeply held dogmatic beliefs made real communication (dialogue) impossible as they transform theology into ideol­ ogy in "Theology Tempered by Ideology: Peter Skarga S.J. (1536-1612) and Jan Wyszenski (1545-1620)." And Tomasz Tabako attempts to track the develop­ ment...