ABSTRACT This article posits that bringing diversity to histories of rhetoric may require not only revising canons but also “unwriting” the narratives of Western civilization in which canonical figures have been cast. Two conventions of these narratives are of special significance: fixed identities and narrative coherence. Focusing on the cultural contexts of Aelius Aristides’ “Regarding Sarapis,” we suggest that these conventions obscure the cultural differences that were always there.

The phenomenon of the Octalog came into being at the 1988 CCCC when James J. Murphy, with support from Theresa Enos and Stuart Brown, proposed and chaired a roundtable composed of eight distinguish...

Abstract This article examines points of convergence between Pierre Bourdieu's concept of the habitus and ancient and modern depictions of art as a model of knowledge. My discussion of art is intended to engage on-going conversations on rhetorical invention and to raise new questions concerning the relationship between invention and cultural critique. Notes 1. See Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition. 2. Young maintained heuristics could be used “for carrying out many phases of composing, from the formulation of problems to various kinds of editing…” (135). 3. See Young and Becker's “Toward a Modern Theory of Rhetoric: A Tagmemic Contribution” and Lauer's exchanges with Berthoff. 4. Bourdieu provides the following definition of the habitus: “The structures constitutive of a particular type of environment (e.g. the material conditions of existence characteristic of a class condition) produce habitus, systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is as principles of the generation and structuring of practices and representations which can be objectively ‘regulated’ and ‘regular’ without in any way being the product of obedience to rules, objectively adapted to their goals without presupposing a conscious aiming at ends or an expressive mastery of the operations necessary to attain them and, being all this, collectively orchestrated without being the product of the orchestrating action of a conductor” (72). 5. Using the analogy of the game, Bourdieu explains that “those who are caught up in them have little interest in seeing the game objectified.” The paradox, Bourdieu observes, is that those who are not caught up in the game “are often ill-placed to experience and feel everything that can only be learned and understood when one takes part in the game…” (189). See also p. 164. 6. “The truth of doxa is only ever fully revealed when negatively constituted by the constitution of a field of opinion, the locus of the confrontation of competing discourses—whose political truth may be overtly declared or may remain hidden, even from the eyes of those engaged in it. … The critique which brings the undiscussed into discussion, the unformulated into formulation, has as the condition of its possibility objective crisis, which, in breaking the immediate fit between the subject structures and the objective structures, destroys self-evidence practically” (Bourdieu 168–169).

Review Article| August 01 2000 Short Reviews: The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece, by Edward Schiappa, Political Allegory in Late Medieval England, by Anne W. Astell, The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric, by Christine Mason Sutherland and Rebecca Sutcliffe and Rhetorical Figures in Science, by Jeanne Fahnestock Edward Schiappa,The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), x + 230 pp.Anne W. Astell,Political Allegory in Late Medieval England (Ithaca: Comell University Press, 1999), xii + 218 pp.Christine Mason Sutherland and Rebecca Sutcliffe eds. The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 1999), vii + 279 pp.Jeanne Fahnestock,Rhetorical Figures in Science (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), xiv + 234 pp. Janet M. Atwill, Janet M. Atwill The University of Tennessee Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Sybil M. Jack, Sybil M. Jack University of Sydney Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Wendy Dasler Johnson, Wendy Dasler Johnson Washington State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Jean Dietz Moss Jean Dietz Moss The Catholic University of America Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2000) 18 (3): 343–354. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2000.18.3.343 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 Janet M. Atwill, Sybil M. Jack, Wendy Dasler Johnson, Jean Dietz Moss; Short Reviews: The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece, by Edward Schiappa, Political Allegory in Late Medieval England, by Anne W. Astell, The Changing Tradition: Women in the History of Rhetoric, by Christine Mason Sutherland and Rebecca Sutcliffe and Rhetorical Figures in Science, by Jeanne Fahnestock. Rhetorica 1 August 2000; 18 (3): 343–354. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2000.18.3.343 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 2000, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric2000 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Short Reviews Edward Schiappa, The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), x + 230 pp. In The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece, Edward Schiappa continues his questioning of the disciplinary status of rhetoric in the Classical period. The book is divided into three sections: Reconstructing the Origins of Rhetorical Theory, Gorgias and the Disciplining of Discourse, and Fourth-Century Disciplinary Efforts. In Part I, Schiappa challenges what he characterizes as a 17point , "standard account" of the history of rhetoric—with points ranging from the status of the Corax and Tisias story to the origins and uses of ρητορική. For the most part, George Kennedy is the author of the account Schiappa challenges, and these first chapters interrogate Kennedy's timeline as well as his categories of "traditional," "technical," and "philosophical" rhetorics. This section recapitulates Schiappa's well-known argument that Plato was responsible for coining the term ρητορική —most likely in the early fourth century BCE. By Schiappa's account, this "coining" was "a watershed event in the history of conceptualized Rhetoric in ancient Greece" (p. 23). Specifically, Schiappa maintains that before ρητορική was coined the "verbal arts" were "understood as less differentiated and more holistic in scope", and they did "not draw a sharp line between the goals of seeking success and seeking truth" (p. 23). Part I includes Schiappa's direct response to critics of his ρητορική argument. In Chapter Two, he draws on theorists from Kenneth Burke and Ferdinand de Saussure to Benjamin Lee Whorf and Michel Foucault to defend the significance of the act of naming that Schiappa maintains is embodied in the coining of ρητορική (pp. 23-28). Chapter Four includes a sharp critique of the ideological uses of the term "Sophistic rhetoric", in which Schiappa challenges the "wishful thinking" of those who "over-romanticize the relationship between 'the Sophists' and Athenian democracy" .343 344 RHETORICA (p. 55). He is particularly hard on those whom he accuses of sacrificing historiographical method to ideological theory construction—a practice that he argues leads to the problem of anachronism (p. 61). Part II consists of "three studies". The first study, large portions of which were previously published in Pre/Text, examines Gorgias's style. The second study, "Rereading Gorgias's Helen", picks up more explicitly the disciplinary concerns of Part I, as Schiappa argues that "certain persistent questions about Gorgias's Helen obtain different answers once the speech is repositioned as a predisciplinary text" (p. 115). More specifically, Schiappa maintains that "Gorgias significantly influenced the early theoretical articulation of the discipline of Rhetoric by theorizing about the workings of persuasive discourse" (p. 131). In the last study, Schiappa focuses on Gorgias's "On Not Being", examining the ways in which disciplinary senses of philosophy and rhetoric have influenced interpretations and evaluations of this muchdebated text. Like Part II, Part III consists of "three studies". The first chapter of this section examines early uses of the terms ρητορεία ("oratory") and ρητορεύειν ("to orate"). Schiappa's general argument is that the terms "were not used often or consistently enough" to justify the sense of disciplinarity stability conveyed when they are translated as "rhetoric" (p. 160). The next chapter, "Isocrates's Philosophia", attempts to define Isocrates's sense of the art of discourse, particularly as it contrasts with Plato's concept of "philosophy". This chapter has—somewhat surprisingly—a second function: "to provide a reading of Isocrates that attempts to locate him as one of the first philosophers in Western history to address the concerns that we now identify with Pragmatism" (p. 162). Part III concludes with a chapter co-authored with David Timmerman that addresses the motivations for and implications of the diverse forms of discourse Aristotle classified as "epideictic". Schiappa's arguments have yielded invaluable insights into some of the most recalcitrant debates in the history of rhetoric—in particular, the ancient contest between rhetoric and philosophy. I found that the structure of The Beginnings of Rhetorical Theory in Classical Greece sometimes obscured rather than foregrounded the significance of these insights. As Schiappa acknowledges in the Reviews 345 Preface, portions of the book have appeared in books and journal articles. The result is sometimes redundant as opposed to...

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Based on careful study of the Greek text and informed by the best modern scholarship, the second edition of this highly acclaimed translation offers the most faithful English version ever published of On Rhetoric. Updated in light of recent scholarship, the new edition features a revised introduction-with two new sections-and revised appendices that provide new and additional supplementary texts (relevant ancient works).