Book Review| November 01 2016 Review: Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, edited by Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, and Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, by Raffaella Cribiore Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, eds., Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, Oxford, 2013. 420 + x pp. ISBN: 9780199654314Raffaella Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, Ithaca: Cornell, 2013. 260 + x pp. ISBN: 9780801452079 Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker Dept. of Rhetoric & Writing University of Texas at Austin Mailstop B5500 Austin, Texas 78712 USA JSWalker@austin.utexas.edu Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2016) 34 (4): 460–465. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2016.34.4.460 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jeffrey Walker; Review: Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, edited by Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, and Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, by Raffaella Cribiore. Rhetorica 1 November 2016; 34 (4): 460–465. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2016.34.4.460 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. © 2016 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

460 RHETORICA readings of major sixteenth and seventeenth century works. The book is also an excellent jumping-off point for future research, and Acheson s spe­ cific insights relating to the four particular modes of brainwork the book deals with and the work's broader project of finding productive crossmodal correspondences will certainly be productive for many working in the Renaissance. Chris Dearner, University of California, Irvine Christos Kremmydas and Kathryn Tempest, eds., Hellenistic Oratory: Continuity & Change, Oxford, 2013. 420 + x pp. ISBN: 9780199654314 Raffaella Cribiore, Libanius the Sophist: Rhetoric, Reality, and Religion in the Fourth Century, Ithaca: Cornell, 2013. 260 + x pp. ISBN: 9780801452079 Recently I was looking at an early 15th-cenury manuscript copy of a 14th-century Greek "synopsis of rhetoric" in the Austrian National Library in Vienna. Christian Walz, in the preface to his 1832 edition of this text, says that he has not seen the Vienna manuscript, but cites an 18th century scholar who cites a 17th century scholar who has (Walz vol. 3, pp. 465-466). It occurred to me that I might have been the first person since the 17th century to actually open the Vienna manuscript and read it. True or false, there's a certain roman­ ticism in such experience, and a certain pleasure: the intrepid academic, decoder of texts, historian and rhetorician, paddles alone upriver past ruins and jungles, armed with machete, flashlight, and a pencil sharpener, into the world that time forgot. Heureka; I havefound it; houtos ekeinos; this is that. Thus I am happy with both books on review here. Both offer new per­ spective^) on an insufficiently studied part of rhetoric's ancient history— four fifths of it, in fact: the roughly eight centuries from the Hellenistic age to the end of the ancient world. Both books, moreover, offer a case wellgrounded in the available evidence and delivered in a (mostly) clear, accessi­ ble style. In short they have many virtues, and are a pleasure to read. Let's paddle upriver a little way. I'll start with Kremmydas and Tempest. i. Hellenistic Oratory and the Myth of Decline At stake throughout this volume is the pervasive myth that rhetoric, or more precisely oratory (rhetoric-al performance), "declined" in the Hellenistic age, the period conventionally dated from the death of Alexander (in 322 BCE) to the defeat of Antony and Cleopatra at the battle of Actium by the soon-to-be emperor Augustus (in 31 BCE). The myth presumes that Reviews 461 rhetoric is the art of practical civic discourse embodied in the speeches of the foui th-centui y Attic Orators, especially Demosthenes, and that it flouris­ hes in democratic polities and languishes under autocratic rule. There are no preserved examples of Hellenistic oratory, which prompts an inference that little or nothing worth preserving was produced. Rhetoric (says the myth) had lost its civic role and was reduced to "merely" epideictic and literary functions for most of the next three centuries. Elsewhere I have argued against the "decline" story, mostly on probabi­ listic and definitional grounds (Rhetoric & Poetics in Antiquity, Oxford 2000, ch. 3). One can make epideictic/panegyric discourse the paradigmatic ("cen­ tral," "primary") form of rhetoric, as do Chaim Perelman and Kenneth Burke, in which case "rhetoric" seems to have enjoyed a great flourishing in the Hellenistic age. But even if we define rhetoric as the art of the Attic Orators, the fact is that it continued to play an important civic role. Law-courts contin­ ued to be busy, city councils continued to meet, kings and governors engaged in deliberative discourse with their advisors (if they were wise), inter-city diplomacy involved embassies and large amounts of written correspondence and chanceries to manage it, and so on. The needs of empire created jobs in the imperial bureaucracv, for which a rhetorical education was required, and there were municipallv sponsored ("public") as well as independent ("private") schools to serve the need in cities large and small, as can he seen in the papyrus fragments of boys' rhetorical exercises found at Oxyrhynchus and other prov incial towns in Hellenistic Egypt. Schools of rhetoric multi­ plied and throve. There were significant advances too in rhetorical theory...

Book Review| March 01 2016 A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome. By Kathleen S. Lamp. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2013; pp. xvi + 195. $49.95 cloth. Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2016) 19 (1): 166–169. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0166 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jeffrey Walker; A City of Marble: The Rhetoric of Augustan Rome. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 March 2016; 19 (1): 166–169. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.19.1.0166 Download citation file: 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 Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2016 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2016 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

This useful, clearly written, and highly satisfying book is Laurent Pernot’s second major English-language contribution to rhetorical scholarship, after his 2005 Rhetoric in Antiquity (originally La rhétorique dans l’antiquité in 2000). Here Pernot builds on work from his earlier career, in particular his 1993 La rhétorique de l’éloge dans le monde gréco-romain.The point of departure, in Chapter One, is the striking proliferation of epideictic genres in later antiquity—or, at least, the number of genres recognized as “epideictic” by rhetoricians, rhetors, and their audiences. Whereas Aristotle has a limited notion of the epideictic “genus,” by Menander Rhetor’s time, roughly the late third century, the category has evolved to include a wide range of genres, each with its own distinct (if overlapping) inventional topoi. The list includes the traditional funeral speech (epitaphios logos) and the festival speech (panēgyrikos logos) as well as various kinds of encomia in praise of individuals, cities, harbors, aqueducts, and so on. There is also the imperial oration, the birthday speech, the nuptial speech delivered outside the bedroom door, the welcome-speech to an arriving official as he stepped ashore, and the farewell speech when he left. There were also forms of speech that took the functions of ancient poetry, such as the victory-speech (the epinikios logos), a prose equivalent to Pindar’s odes for victorious athletes, or Aelius Aristides’ “hymns” and “monodies” in prose (see Regarding Sarapis). At the same time a number of ancient, poetic forms persisted, such as hymns to the gods and mythic narratives (e.g., the Dionysiaca, a 48-book epic poem about the god’s conquest of India), and these were called “epideictic” too.And so on again. I have not yet even mentioned Hermogenes of Tarsus’ classification of all poetry, history, and philosophy as “pure panegyric,” i.e., as epideictic rhetoric (On Types of Style 2.12). Further, as Pernot suggests in Chapter Three (97–99), encomiastic or parainetic praise might function as an important element in practical deliberative and judicial discourse, and even as a kind of deliberative discourse in itself. (Parainesis praises ethical virtues and exhorts the listener to observe them, as in Isocrates’ To Nicocles.) While Pernot may not be willing to go that far, we do find confirmation in Byzantine lists of model texts for imitation, in which Plutarch’s Moralia (Ta Ēthika) stand as examples of the “deliberative” genre.Pernot’s basic point in Chapter One is that the “rise of epideictic” to ascendency in later antiquity was an “irresistible” and “unstoppable” phenomenon (27) that the usual histories of rhetoric have mostly failed to understand. But if we set aside the usual assumption that epideictic is “mere” display, epideictic proves itself more creative and more vital—and more pragmatically consequential—than we tend to think.Pernot addresses this challenge in two main ways. The first is to define epideictic more precisely—to specify what is not epideictic. If, for example, we follow Aristotle’s audience-subject-time definition of the three (why three?) “genres” of rhetoric, it appears that there are two fairly specific kinds of practical civic speech addressed to judges in a well-defined civic space (a court of law, a council-hall, a public assembly), and besides these a third and vaguer kind, epideictic, which is not addressed to judges but to theōroi, “observers/spectators.” The audiences of the two practical genres (jurymen, councilors) are empowered to issue legally binding decrees (Socrates is guilty; send reinforcements to the expedition in Sicily). The theōros of epideictic, in contrast, is not empowered to issue binding judgments, but is concerned with observing a display (epideixis) of praise or blame in the present moment. Epideictic is defined in terms of lack.The argument would take too long to work out here, but the ultimate effect of that definition is to assign all speech not specifically addressed to judges in some sort of court or council-hall to epideictic. All speech, after all, implicitly blames and praises in some way. If you refute my argument you “blame” its defective reasoning; if you defend and confirm it, you “praise” the quality of its undeniable proofs. Even at the level of word choice, to state the obvious, every choice implies some evaluative attitude toward what is named, and thus implicitly blames or praises it. So we have a three-part classification of rhetorical genres consisting of two specific kinds of speeches (judicial and deliberative) and all other human language use (epideictic).Pernot’s basic remedy is to limit the notion of epideictic to encomiastic discourse: a more or less determinate genre (as codified, for example, in ancient progymnasmata manuals) whose evolution can be traced from a handful of early exemplars to the profusion we see later. This move has the virtue of keeping epideictic within the category of civic discourse. The encomium, the panegyric, and their derivatives are normally performed in some sort of sanctioned civic space or event, such as a state funeral, a religious festival, a celebratory homecoming for a victorious athlete, and so on, by a person specially commissioned for the job and considered worthy of it. The speech then worked to forge or refresh a communion of shared belief by eliciting approval for the praise bestowed on the honoree—a rhetorical effect that often was more important than the honoree’s real character (see Leslie Kurke’s The Traffic in Praise).The second approach to the “unstoppable” rise of epideictic in later antiquity is mostly an extension of the first. We need to consider the socio-political structure of the Greco-Roman world, and the occasions and spaces it provided for public speech, in order to understand the proliferation of encomiastic genres. As I have argued elsewhere, we cannot explain the rise of epideictic merely by invoking the supposed “decay” of judicial and symbouleutic rhetoric. In fact, in every major town and city in the Roman Empire there were courts of law and council-halls, and these continued to be busy (if confined to local matters and restrained by procedural regulations and written law). To understand the rise of epideictic/encomiastic rhetoric, we must understand the role it played in sustaining the sense of a common culture shared by the far-flung, multiethnic elites that ran the Roman Empire (which one could argue was more like a multinational corporation than a modern state). From this perspective, the encomiastic culture of epideictic very effectively performed the role attributed in Cicero’s De Oratore to the “perfect orator.”Two quick remarks. One: identifying epideictic with civic encomia has many virtues, as noted above, but I wonder what happens to, for example, Hermogenes’ treatment of poetry, history, and philosophy as “pure” epideictic (panegyric)—as opposed to “practical” (civic) epideictic. These “pure” (meaning unmixed) types can be seen as also participating in praise and blame, and as forging or undermining different kinds of cultural communion. Two: the notion of sustaining a common culture among the Roman Empire’s administrative class—some of whom were Syrians, Greeks, North Africans, and so on—is very appealing, but I suspect that some readers will want to hear more about the less-irenic tensions in Greco-Roman culture and what role Hermogenes’ “pure epideictic” genres played in ideological insurgencies.From here I will be very brief. My water-clock has just about run out.Chapter Two, “The Grammar of Praise,” details the lists of topoi specified for different types of epideictic, offers a brief typology of speeches, and makes a list of characteristic figures (apostrophe, hyperbole, and comparative metaphor). Much of this will not be news for anyone familiar with Menander Rhetor, but it will be an excellent introduction for those who are not. The core argument, regarding epideictic as an instrument of communion, will be interesting to all.Chapter Three, “Why Epideictic Rhetoric?” takes on the traditional suspicion of epideictic as empty flattery and/or inconsequential display. Most of the arguments of this chapter are reflected in the paragraphs above: epideictic rhetoric has persuasory functions that are socially and politically consequential. Perhaps what is most interesting in this chapter is Pernot’s account of the circumstances of epideictic performance in antiquity and, especially, his estimates of the length of epideictic speeches (82): for example, Aelius Aristide’s Regarding Rome takes about one hour to deliver; imperial panegyrics took 30 minutes. (The addressees, after all, were busy people.) This chapter is worth the whole book.Chapter Four, “New Approaches in Epideictic,” suggests directions for future research. These include an “anthropological” application of speech-act theory to the performative and ceremonial aspects of epideictic discourse, and the uses of silence and “veiled” discourse to communicate what might be dangerous to say, or to promote subversive “dissent and denunciation” instead of “communion.” This will, I suspect, be the preferred direction of many readers. Pernot, however, both acknowledges that preference and calls for “a little more patience” with epideictic as an irenic and utopian instrument of communion (99–100). It may not be a bad idea to consider it that way first.

In Cicero’s great dialogue De Oratore, Antonius (one of the two main speakers) at one point delivers an instructive anecdote. I paraphrase:In his retirement Hannibal, the brilliant Carthaginian gen...

ABSTRACT Starting from a chance quotation in William Dean Howells' “Novel-Writing and Novel-Reading,” this essay reflects on the differences (and relations) between what classical tradition would call “grammatical” and “rhetorical” approaches to discourse—and, likewise, what might be called “hermeneutic” and “productive” approaches to rhetoric. The grammatical/hermeneutic approach is oriented towards reaching an understanding of what a text says or means, or what its argument is, while the rhetorical/productive approach is characterized by the questions, How was it done? and How can I do that? It is this latter approach—the orientation toward the cultivation of productive discursive skill—that disciplinarily makes rhetoric, as opposed to a variety of philosophy or literary criticism. This notion is further aligned, on one hand, with a revisionist “sophist's history of rhetoric,” and, on the other hand, with a “sophistic” approach to rhetorical education derived from the tradition of Isocrates.

Book Review| January 01 2006 Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in Ordinary Language Criticism Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in Ordinary Language CriticismJost, Walter Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Philosophy & Rhetoric (2006) 39 (2): 178–180. https://doi.org/10.2307/20697149 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jeffrey Walker; Rhetorical Investigations: Studies in Ordinary Language Criticism. Philosophy & Rhetoric 1 January 2006; 39 (2): 178–180. doi: https://doi.org/10.2307/20697149 Download citation file: 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 Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressPhilosophy & Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2006 The Pennsylvania State University2006The Pennsylvania State University Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Rhetorical Education in America, edited by Cheryl Glenn, Margaret M. Lyday, and Wendy B. Sharer. Tuscaloosa: University Alabama Press, 2004. 245 + xvi pp. Rhetorical Landscapes in America: Variations on a Theme from Kenneth Burke, by Gregory Clark. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2004. 181 pp. Gorgias: Sophist and Artist, by Scott Consigny. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2001. 242 pp.

Research Article| January 01 2005 Mime, Comedy, Sophistry: Speculations on the Origins of Rhetoric Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Advances in the History of Rhetoric (2005) 8 (1): 199–209. https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2005.10557253 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Twitter Permissions Search Site Citation Jeffrey Walker; Mime, Comedy, Sophistry: Speculations on the Origins of Rhetoric. Advances in the History of Rhetoric 1 January 2005; 8 (1): 199–209. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2005.10557253 Download citation file: 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 Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressJournal for the History of Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2005 by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric2005the American Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| January 01 2005 Michael Psellos: the Encomium of his Mother Jeffrey Walker Jeffrey Walker University of Texas at Austin Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Advances in the History of Rhetoric (2005) 8 (1): 239–313. https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2005.10557258 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jeffrey Walker; Michael Psellos: the Encomium of his Mother. Advances in the History of Rhetoric 1 January 2005; 8 (1): 239–313. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2005.10557258 Download citation file: 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 Scholarly Publishing CollectivePenn State University PressJournal for the History of Rhetoric Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. Copyright © 2005 by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric2005the American Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Abstract Michael Psellos' encomium of his mother, regarded by the twelfth-century scholar Gregory of Corinth as one of the four best speeches ever composed, exemplifies what the Byzantine rhetorical tradition thought “good rhetoric” was made of. The stylistic and aesthetic values usually attributed to Byzantine rhetoric seem insufficient to account for Gregory's opinion. This essay argues that, by offering a “figured” defense of his career as a “Byzantine Sophist,” Psellos' encomium functions as a culturally significant instance of antilogy, and thus reprises not only the forms of late-antique sophistic rhetoric, but also and more importantly its intellectual ideal, within the terms of Byzantine high culture.

Michael Psellos’ encomium of his mother, regarded by the twelfth-century scholar Gregory of Corinth as one of the four best speeches ever composed, exemplifies what the Byzantine rhetorical tradition thought “good rhetoric” was made of. The stylistic and aesthetic values usually attributed to Byzantine rhetoric seem insufficient to account for Gregory’s opinion. This essay argues that, by offering a “figured” defense of his career as a “Byzantine Sophist,” Psellos’ encomium functions as a culturally significant instance of antilogy, and thus reprises not only the forms of late-antique sophistic rhetoric, but also and more importantly its intellectual ideal, within the terms of Byzantine high culture.

Abstract Michael Psellos' heretofore untranslated synopsis of Hermogenean rhetoric, Peri Rhêtorikês, composed probably between 1060 and 1067, gives us a window into the state of rhetorical education in late Byzantium. The details of its inclusions, elisions, and amplifications suggest the ways in which Hermogenean rhetoric was understood and taught, at least by one uncommonly talented and influential rhetorician. The text suggests that Psellos may have found the pseudo‐Hennogenic On Invention —rather than On Stases or OnTypes of Style—most useful, most amenable to his efforts to revive an "Aristotelian"; rhetorical philosophy, and most relevant to actual rhetorical practices (including his own).

Reception Histories: Rhetoric, Pragmatism, and American Cultural Politics by Steven Mailloux. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998. 206 + xv pp. Kenneth Burke and the 21st Century, edited by Bernard L. Brock. Albany: SUNY Press, 1999. 292 pp. “We Are Coming”: The Persuasive Discourse of Nineteenth‐Century Black Women by Shirley Wilson Logan. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1999. 255 + xvi pp. Pandora's Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, by Bruno Latour. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999. 324 + x. The Rhetoric of Science in the Evolution of American Ornithological Discourse by John T. Battalio. Bayshore, TX: Ablex, 1998. 264 + xix pp. Essays in the Study of Scientific Discourse: Methods, Practice, and Pedagogy, edited by John T. Battalio. Stanford, Connecticut: Ablex Publishing Corporation, 1998. 264 pp.

Abstract: Traditional histories of rhetoric assume that the practical oratory of lawcourts and political assemblies is the “primary,” original form of rhetoric in its “preconceptual” or predisciplinary origins in archaic Greece. Hesiod's “Hymn to the Muses,” however, presents both prince and bard as practicing an art of psychagogic suasion, and presents the prince's discursive power as dependent on, and derived from, the paradigms of eloquence and wisdom embodied in the epideictic/poetic discourse of the bard: epideictic is the “primary” form of “rhetoric” in Hesiod's world. Hesiod's account agrees with what is known about the discursive practices of oral/traditional societies worldwide.

(1996). A new start toward the next millennium: A note from the editor. Rhetoric Society Quarterly: Vol. 26, No. 1, pp. 5-7.

Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol and Ritual in the Greco‐Roman Era by Donovan J. Ochs. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1993; xiv + 130pp. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students by Sharon Crowley. New York: Macmillan, 1994. 364 pages; glossary; time‐line of important moments in Greek and Roman rhetoric; bibliography; index. Landmark Essays on Kenneth Burke. Edited by Barry Brummett. Davis, CA: Hermagoras P, 1993; xix; 290 pp. Ramon Hull's New Rhetoric: Text and Translation of Llull's Rethorica Nova. Ed. and Trans. Mark D. Johnson. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1994; 1; 109. Thinking Through Theory: Vygotskian Perspectives on the Teaching of Writing by James Thomas Zebroski. Portsmouth, NH: Boynton/Cook P, 1994. 334 pages. A Social History of Truth: Civility and Science in Seventeenth‐Century England, by Steven Shapin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 1994. Pp. 483.

he generally prevailing concept of the enthymeme, or the one most frequent in the world of rhetoric and composition studies, tends to define it either as a of elliptical, informal based on probable rather than certain premises and on tacit assumptions shared by audience and rhetor, or as a of Toulmin argument, or as a general mode of intuitive reasoning representable in syllogistic or Toulminian terms, or, most simply, as the juxtaposition of any idea with another that is offered as a reason for believing it. All such thinking starts from Aristotle's famous dicta that the enthymeme is a kind of syllogism or rhetorical syllogism, and that rhetoric is a counterpart of dialectic (Rhetoric 1.1 [1355a]; 1.2 [1356b]; 1.1 [1354a]).' This prevailing definition, however, has recently been put in question (see in particular Conley, Enthymeme; Gage, Theory). And, as we will see, it is inadequate. In what follows, we will first reexamine the primary (and not exclusively Aristotelian) ancient sources from which a more adequate concept of the enthymeme can be derived. Then, we will consider the relevance of that concept to the analysis of modern discourse-specifically, to the analysis of Roland Barthes' The World of Wrestling and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Letter from Birmingham Jail, both of which appear in popular anthologies used in composition courses, and both of which provide good examples of modern-but unrecognized-enthymeming.

Preview this article: Comment and Response, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/53/2/collegeenglish9598-1.gif

Preview this article: Of Brains and Rhetorics, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/52/3/collegeenglish9663-1.gif

Preview this article: Aristotle's Lyric: Re-Imagining the Rhetoric of Epideictic Song, Page 1 of 1 < Previous page | Next page > /docserver/preview/fulltext/ce/51/1/collegeenglish11322-1.gif

Few will disagree, I think, if I say that twentieth-century discussion of the lyric has often granted little recognition, and sometimes none, to the role of argumentation. Indeed, the word itself may not appear at all: we are much more likely to be told, instead, that lyric poems contain-and we should emphasize the word contain--such things as subjects, ideas, themes, or even conceptual schemes, and we are just as likely to be told that none of these things are what the lyric is really all about. Such things belong to prose, and in the lyric are merely there, contained, as useful but dispensable accessories and props; the lyric dramatizes or expresses feeling. Or rather, it bodies forth image of the poet's thought as it moves through some phase or phases of an intensely felt experience (Hardy 1-2). It is essentially dramatistic or expressive, rather than, say, discursive, argumentative, or suasory-no matter how much, in the reader's experience, it may seem to operate discursively, as an argument intending to create, intensify, or change belief. The feeling's the thing. Or so that argument goes, or has gone. This is the average mainstreammodern view of lyric, the view most likely to be taken as a self-evident given in a typical account of this most protean mode of poetry. (Barbara Hardy, for example, is able to simply declare it, as an opening premise for her book, with virtually no recognition of a possible disagreement.) I believe that few will disagree, either, if I say that strong objections to this mainstream-modern version of the lyric are and have been available. We can argue, as did Yvor Winters, that lyric poetry, or any poetry, intends not only representation or embodiment of an or state of but also judgment or evaluation of human experience, and thus is necessarily suasory and involved with argumentation, or what Winters called exposition. Or we can argue, as Gerald Graff has done, that the logos and the pathos projected by a poem are necessarily related, as premise(s) and conclusion(s), what Graff calls ground and consequent: the ground provided by what is said, by logos, makes the speaker's represented state of feeling or act of mind both convincing and intelligible-as opposed, say, to self-indulgent, incoherent, and neurotic. Graff's line of objection, then, defines the lyric once more as a form of argument. We