Abstract
RHETORICA 308 these six essays demonstrate the breadth, status, and versatility of rhetoric as a field of inquiry, study, and practice. In their introductory essay, Bennett and Leff remark, "Working quietly against the grain of a specialized [academic] culture, Murphy has opened a conduit between historical scholarship and the classroom" (4). A lengthy bibliography of Murphy's publications and work in progress, contributed by Winifred Horner, follows the Preface. Like Murphy's own contributions to the field, the essays collected in Rhetoric and Pedagogy successfully "hold historical scholarship and current pragmatic interests in a useful relationship to one another" (4). By their own interest in bridging historical scholarship and current teaching practice, the contributors to this Festschrift honor Murphy's legacy and continue his work. Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard Ian Worthington ed. Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London: Routledge, 1994) xi+277pp. This collection of twelve essays is interesting for three reasons. First, it constitutes one more sign that rhetoric is undergoing a veritable renaissance. Second, it shows that classics, a discipline once indifferent or hostile to the rhetorical enterprise, is now willing to join other disciplines in recognizing rhetoric as a major force in the shaping of western culture (nine of the contributors to this collection are classicists). Third, and most important, this volume does not concern itself with rhetoric in isolation. Rather, it examines its many intersections with such genres as politics, history, law, epic, tragedy, comedy and philosophy. The various treatments of the particular intersections combine traditional and new insights, and open the path to many provocative questions. Likewise, they generally invite reflection and criticism. More importantly, however, the collection as a whole points to a maximalist project that takes rhetoric beyond the orators, who practised it and the philosophers, who discussed Reviews 309 it. In so doing, it suggests that richer understandings can be had when placing rhetoric at the center of the Hellenic culture and crossing it with other genres (i.e. epic, tragedy, comedy, history). In this regard, the collection recommends itself in its entirety much more than any one of its chapters. The common framework that all contributors share comes from the distinction as well as the connection between rhetoric as the study, and oratory as the practice of persuasion. According to the editor, "The aim of this book is to bring together...discussions of the relationship of Greek oratory and rhetoric to a variety of important areas and genres, at the same time reflecting new trends and ideas now at work in the study of rhetoric" (ix). In the first chapter, "From orality to rhetoric: an intellectual transformation", Carol Thomas and Edward Webb trace the emergence of rhetoric along the orality-literacy continuum. Relying on but also refining the work of George Kennedy, Eric Havelock, Walter Ong and Thomas Cole, the authors point out that even though rhetoric benefited from the contributions of literacy it nevertheless retained its initial oral character. This chapter examines rhetoric along the registers of composition, delivery, and analysis, and pays attention to four features: uses, persuasive intent, magical aura, and the speaker's esteem. In chapter 2, "Rhetorical means of persuasion", Christopher Carey argues that of the three Aristotelian pisteis, pathos and ethos are more indirect while the third, logos, is a more direct means of persuasion. Carey illustrates the uses of pathos and ethos in the actual speeches of orators such as Demosthenes, Aeschines and Lysias, and concludes that Aristotle's distinctions are considerably "neater" than their actual use shows. In chapter 3, "Probability and persuasion: Plato and early Greek rhetoric", Michael Gagarin seeks to minimize the Platonic influence on our understanding of classical Greek rhetoric. His thesis is that Plato's widely accepted claim that the orators prefer probability over the truth is demonstrably wrong. Gagarin reviews the uses of probability arguments in the surviving speeches of orators and sophists and finds no evidence supporting Plato's claim. Gagarin's study shows convincingly that the orators generally value truth; however, they resort to probability when RHETORICA 310 the truth of a case is unknown, unclear, or subject to differing interpretations. In chapter 4, "Classical rhetoric and modem theories of discourse", David Cohen takes a brief but...
- Journal
- Rhetorica
- Published
- 1998-06-01
- DOI
- 10.1353/rht.1998.0016
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