Abstract

readers a philosophical endorsement of rhetoric, an argument for narrative, a hypotactical defense of parataxis, and a serious discussion of playfulness. The one exception to this cryptodialectical commentary is Jarratt's second chapter. There she skillfully avoids the binary trope of mythos-logos, rejects convincingly the logic of linear historical progress, and demonstrates nicely how the sophistical affinity for nomos shifts our attention from a questionable and outdated dichotomy to a field large enough to include both binary terms and meaningful enough to transcend their differences. Dismissing neither mythos nor logos, nomos appropriates both, and in so doing invents something other that problematizes the already familiar. Unfortunately, the story of nomos is only half of a larger sophistical story. The other, opposing half, the story of physis, finds itself associated only with the philosophers. Insofar as Antiphon's and Hippias' arguments for physis support part of her agenda, this omission or misassociation is all the more perplexing. In the 1850's George Grote observed that the sophists were the mainstream intellectuals in their culture and Plato an eccentric reformer. True, many historians of philosophy reversed this historical reality, making Plato the intellectual king and the sophists his unworthy subjects. Now Jarratt urges historians of rhetoric to give the sophists, women, and teachers of English composition a more prominent role in the new histories of rhetoric. Recent works by Vickers, Conley, and Bizzell are already doing what she is urging. If Jarratt is looking for more recognition as a historian of rhetoric, a feminist intellectual, and a teacher of college composition, she has a great deal more support than she may realize.