John T. Kirby
8 articles-
Abstract
This essay explores a nexus of related concepts—authorship, authenticity, and authority—as they impinge upon one another and on the experience of reading, particularly in the case of “canonical” authors such as Aristotle. Aristotle’s own Rhetoric and Poetics are considered together in light of these concepts, as well as in terms of seven constraints that operated upon Aristotle as a thinker and writer. Twentieth-century theories of reading are adduced in an examination of the rhetorical dimensions of Aristotle’s own notion of authorship. The essay also examines the rhetorical forces entailed in the editing and publication of authors known only from ancient manuscripts, and in the reading of legal and sacred texts.
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Abstract
This essay explores a nexus of related concepts—authorship, authenticity, and authority—as they impinge upon one another and on the experience of reading, particularly in the case of “canonical" authors such as Aristotle. Aristotle’s own Rhetoric and Poetics are considered together in light of these concepts, as well as in terms of seven constraints that operated upon Aristotle as a thinker and writer. Twentieth-century theories of reading are adduced in an examination of the rhetorical dimensions of Aristotle’s own notion of authorship. The essay also examines the rhetorical forces entailed in the editing and publication of authors known only from ancient manuscripts, and in the reading of legal and sacred texts.
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Research Article| January 01 2006 Teaching and Scholarship in Classical Rhetoric: a Classicist's View John T. Kirby John T. Kirby University of Miami Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Advances in the History of Rhetoric (2006) 9 (1): 151–160. https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2006.10557265 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 John T. Kirby; Teaching and Scholarship in Classical Rhetoric: a Classicist's View. Advances in the History of Rhetoric 1 January 2006; 9 (1): 151–160. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/15362426.2006.10557265 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 © 2006 by the American Society for the History of Rhetoric2006the American Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
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Short Reviews: Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Democratic Athens, by Harvey Yunis, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition, by Janet M. Atwill, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, by Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy, Language and Society in Early Modern England, by Vivian Salmon, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner and Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, by Alan G Gross and William M. Keith ↗
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Research Article| August 01 1999 Short Reviews: Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Democratic Athens, by Harvey Yunis, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition, by Janet M. Atwill, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, by Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy, Language and Society in Early Modern England, by Vivian Salmon, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner and Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, by Alan G Gross and William M. Keith Harvey Yunis,Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Democratic Athens (Ithaca, NY: Comell University Press, 1996) xv + 316pp.Janet M. Atwill,Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1998) 265pp.Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy eds. Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, Mnemosyne Supplement 168 (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1997) xxvii + 249 pp.Vivian Salmon,Language and Society in Early Modern England (The Netherlands: John Benjamfris, 1996) 276 pp.Quentin Skinner,Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996) xvi + 477 pp.Alan G Gross and William M. Keith eds. Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science (Albany: SUNY Press, 1997) 371 pp. Michael Svoboda, Michael Svoboda C/O The Joanne Rockwell Memorial House, 1910 E. Jefferson Street, Baltimore, Maryland 21205, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar James Fredal, James Fredal Department of English, 164 W. 17th Avenue, The Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar John T. Kirby, John T. Kirby Program in Comparative Literature, Purdue University, SC 1354, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Linda C. Mitchell, Linda C. Mitchell Department of English, One Washington Square, San Jose State University, San Jose, California 95192-0090, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Wade Williams, Wade Williams Department of English, The University of Puget Sound, 1500 North Warner, Tacoma, Washington 98416, USA Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Judy Z Segal Judy Z Segal Department of English, University of British Columbia, #397-1873 East Mall, Vancouver, British Columbia, V6T1Z1, Canada Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1999) 17 (3): 331–346. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1999.17.3.331 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Michael Svoboda, James Fredal, John T. Kirby, Linda C. Mitchell, Wade Williams, Judy Z Segal; Short Reviews: Taming Democracy: Models of Political Rhetoric in Democratic Athens, by Harvey Yunis, Rhetoric Reclaimed: Aristotle and the Liberal Arts Tradition, by Janet M. Atwill, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, by Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy, Language and Society in Early Modern England, by Vivian Salmon, Reason and Rhetoric in the Philosophy of Hobbes, by Quentin Skinner and Rhetorical Hermeneutics: Invention and Interpretation in the Age of Science, by Alan G Gross and William M. Keith. Rhetorica 1 August 1999; 17 (3): 331–346. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1999.17.3.331 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 Copyright 1999, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1999 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
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Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara ed. by Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy ↗
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Reviews 335 begins. And she never fully answers the question posed by the structure of the book. How does a revised understanding of rhetoric as an "art of intervention" help us to rethink current humanities institutions, canons, or curricula? The title and structure of the work invite us to expect some lines of inquiry that don't appear. Anyone looking for specific applications of rhetoric as techne to an emancipatory or interventionist pedagogy might be disappointed. But those looking for careful readings, particularly of Aristotle—in the Rhetoric and other works like the Analytics and the Nicomachean Ethics—that bear upon the relations between theoretical, practical and productive arts will be well repaid. Atwill shows the incommensurability in Aristotle between theory, whose end is static contemplation, and rhetoric (like all techne) whose end is realized only in the exchange between rhetor and audience. She is careful not to overstate the emancipatory goals of Protagoras or Isocrates, who were no more interested in redistributing political power or cultural capital than was Plato. And her focus on this ancient debate between theoria and techne helps us to see current debates within the humanities, as well as well-known ancient texts, in a new light. JAMES FREDAL The Ohio State University Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy eds, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, Mnemosyne Supplement 168 (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1997) xxvii + 249 pp. Prior to this new book by Dilts & Kennedy (hereafter DK), the most satisfactory scholarly edition of either the Anonymous Seguerianus (AS) or Apsines was to be found in the Rhetores Graeci of Spengel/Hammer (Leipzig: Teubner 1894). What we have now is a superb presentation of both treatises, in a carefully edited 336 RHETORICA Greek text furnished with critical apparatus, an accurate en face translation, and a running commentary. DK also provide historical and textual introductions and a bibliography. There is something for everyone here: the philologist will spend many happy hours burrowing into the extensive apparatus criticus; the Greekless reader may read the treatises in modern English translations; and the rhetorical theorist will find much to ponder, in both text and comments. Readers of Kennedy's earlier work will already know about these ancient treatises. Kennedy had signaled the importance of both, as early as The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (1972), and again in Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (1983) and A New History of Classical Rhetoric (1994). These late-antique Greek treatises form part of the didactic tradition of declamation cultivated in the Second Sophistic. Both begin by demonstrating allegiance to what Solmsen labeled the moria logou tradition; that is, their disposition of the material is based on the parts of the oration: proem, narration, pisteis or proofs, and epilogue.1 This in fact is a fair skeletal outline of the AS, which does, however, show some Aristotelian and Stoic influence as well. The treatise is especially valuable as a compendium of the work of various theorists of the period, including Alexander son of Numenius, [?Aelius] Harpocration, the followers of Apollodorus of Pergamum, and one Neocles. The AS is of course anonymous, but we know2 something more about the author of the second treatise in DK. Valerius Apsines of Gadara is praised by Philostratus (2.628), and may be dated to the late second/early third century CE. His treatise, more than the AS, is intended specifically for the instruction of declamation. His list of the moria logou is more elaborate than that in the AS, as it includes proem, prokatastasis (preparation for the proof), narration, enthymemes, kephalaia ("headings"), and epilogue. The Greek texts in DK are superbly careful and accurate. It is an apt adjudication of their quality, in fact, to say that they are a Friedrich Solmsen, The Aristotelian Tradition in Ancient Rhetoric", American Journal ofPhilology 62 (1941) pp. 35-50,169-190. Or thought we knew: for a dissenting voice see Malcolm Heath, "Apsines and Pseudo-Apsines", American Journal ofPhilology 119 (1998) pp. 89-111. Reviews 337 significant improvement over the already good texts of Spengel/Hammer. Fresh manuscript...
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Research Article| May 01 1997 Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Aristotelicum David J. Furley and Alexander Nehamas (ed.), Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Aristotelicum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xv + 322 pp. John T. Kirby John T. Kirby Program in Classical Studies, Coulter Hall, Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN 47907, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1997) 15 (2): 213–215. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1997.15.2.213 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 John T. Kirby; Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Aristotelicum. Rhetorica 1 May 1997; 15 (2): 213–215. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1997.15.2.213 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 1997, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1997 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.
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Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Aristotelicum ed. by David J. Furley, Alexander Nehamas ↗
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Reviews 213 David J. Furley and Alexander Nehamas (ed.), Aristotle's Rhetoric: Philosophical Essays. Proceedings of the Twelfth Symposium Aristotelicum (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), xv + 322 pp. Scholarly fashions in classics come and go. There have been periods in history, for example, when Ovid was thought a poet superior to Vergil, and Statius, despite his relatively low stock today, is afforded a place of great honor in Dante's Purgatorio. Aristotle, (again in Dante) the "maestro di color che sanno," has had his own vicissitudes through the ages, and at different times, this or that individual treatise has had more or less ascen dancy. The Rhetoric is no exception in this regard, and I think it is safe to say that, in the past century or so, most scholars interested in Aristotelian philosophy per se have given both it and the Poetics far less attention than, say, the Metaphysics or Nicomachean Ethics. All of that is beginning to change. Superb new critical editions of both the Poetics and the Rhetoric (both by Rudolf Kassel) have appeared in the last thirty or so years; the old Cope/Sandys commentary on the Rhetoric has been, if not supplanted, then certainly supplemented by that of Father Grimaldi (on books I and II); two recent translations of the Rhetoric into English (with notes) have been published by Oxford University Press and Penguin Books—the former by George Kennedy, the latter by Hugh Lawson-Tancred; and there has even been something of a neo-Aristotelian renaissance in rhetorical theory, in The New Rhetoric of Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca. Of particular interest is the sustained and engaging philosophical analysis presented in Eugene Garver's recent Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994). Nor is this all. Amélie Oksenberg Rorty, continuing her series of col lections of essays on various works of Aristotle, has edited a collection on the Poetics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992) and one on the Rhetoric (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996). Yet another col lection of essays on the Rhetoric, edited by Alan Gross and Arthur Walzer, is due out soon. To the latter list we must also add the book under review here. I should say at the outset that its title is not otiose. That these are "philo sophical essays" means, precisely, that they have been written with a specifically philosophical cast, as proceedings of the triennial Symposium Aristotelicum (this twelfth one being the first to be held in the USA). I sur mise that this orientation will please some and disgruntle others; habent sua fata libelli, but this is particularly true in terms of the various uses dif ferent readers will want to make of any given book. The title of Jürgen Sprute's essay in this volume, "Aristotle and the Legitimacy of Rhetoric," 214 RHETORICA might serve (with a question mark) as a subtitle for the book as a whole: as Sprute remarks, "The fact that Aristotle treated rhetoric seriously, gave lectures on it, and wrote what has to be understood as an 'art of rhetoric' seems to have been a source of embarrassment to some modem readers [O]ne could perhaps have expected Aristotle to abstain from shallow things such as an art of persuasion" (p. 117). That, plus the fact that most modem philosophers (in the analytic tradition at least) have seen rhetoric and communication as less exalted topics of study than metaphysics or epistemology, or even logic, is perhaps what has deterred them from a more whole-hearted study of rhetoric (or of the Rhetoric) before now. It is to be hoped that this volume marks not mere token attention, but rather the beginning of a new era. The volume is arranged in four sections: "The Arguments of Rhetoric," "The Status of the Art of Rhetoric," "Rhetoric, Ethics, and Politics," and "Rhetoric and Literary Art." A number of those who attend ed the Symposium have contributed essays to this volume (and some of those who are not in this volume, are represented in Rorty's). Eight of the eleven essays in this volume are in English; the remaining three are in French (the one...
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Research Article| August 01 1990 The "Great Triangle" in Early Greek Rhetoric and Poetics John T. Kirby John T. Kirby Department of Classics and Comparative Literature, Purdue University, Stanley Coulter Hall, West Lafayette, Indiana 47907 Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1990) 8 (3): 213–228. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1990.8.3.213 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation John T. Kirby; The "Great Triangle" in Early Greek Rhetoric and Poetics. Rhetorica 1 August 1990; 8 (3): 213–228. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1990.8.3.213 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 Copyright 1990, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1990 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.