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...

Nan Johnson demonstrates that after the Civil War, nonacademic or parlor traditions of rhetorical performance helped to sustain the icon of the white middle class as queen of her domestic sphere by promoting a code of rhetorical behavior for women that required the performance of conventional femininity. Through a lucid examination of the boundaries of that gendered rhetorical space - and the debate about who should occupy that space - Johnson explores the codes governing and challenging the American woman's proper rhetorical sphere in the postbellum years. While men were learning to preach, practice law, and set political policies, women were reading elocution manuals, letter-writing handbooks, and other conduct literature. These texts reinforced the conservative message that women's words mattered, but mattered mostly in the home. Postbellum pedagogical materials were designed to educate Americans in rhetorical skills, but they also persistently directed the American to the domestic sphere as her proper rhetorical space. Even though these materials appeared to urge white middle-class women to become effective speakers and writers, convention dictated that a woman's place was at the hearthside where her rhetorical talents were to be used in counseling and instructing as a mother and wife. Aided by twenty-one illustrations, Johnson has meticulously compiled materials from historical texts no longer readily available to the general public and, in so doing, has illuminated this intersection of rhetoric and feminism in the nineteenth century. The rhetorical pedagogies designed for a postbellum popular audience represent the cultural sites where a rethinking of women's roles becomes open controversy about how to value their words. Johnson argues this era of uneasiness about shifting gender roles and the icon of the quiet woman must be considered as evidence of the need for a more complete revaluing of women's space in historical discourse.

Miriam Brody. Manly Writing: Gender, Rhetoric, and the Rise of Composition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993. 247 pages. Carol J. Singley and S. Elizabeth Sweeney, eds. Anxious Power: Reading, Writing, and Ambivalence in Narratives by Women. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993. xxvi + 400 pages. Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran, eds. Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth‐Century America: Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993.281 pages. Donovan J. Ochs. Consolatory Rhetoric: Grief, Symbol, and Ritual in the Greco‐Roman Era. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1993. xiv + 130 pages. $29.95 cloth. Walter L. Reed. Dialogues of the Word: The Bible as Literature According to Bakhtin. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. xvi + 223 pages. Barbara Warnick. The Sixth Canon: Belletristic Rhetorical Theory and Its French Antecedents. Columbia: University of South Carolina, 1993. 176 pages. John Frederick Reynolds, ed. Rhetorical Memory and Delivery: Classical Concepts for Contemporary Composition and Communication. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1993. xii + 170. $19.95 paper. Edward M. White. Teaching and Assessing Writing. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey‐Bass Publishers, 1994. xxii + 331 pages. $34.95. Sharon Crowley. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. New York: Macmillan College Publishing Company, 1994. 365 pages. Victor Villanueva, Jr. Bootstraps: From an American Academic of Color. Urbana, IL: NCTE, 1993. xviii + 150 pages.

(1988). Reader‐response and the pathos principle. Rhetoric Review: Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 152-166.

Research Article| May 01 1986 The Rhetoric of Doubtful Authority: Deconstructive Readings of Self-Questioning Narratives, St. Augustine to Faulkner The Rhetoric of Doubtful Authority: Deconstructive Readings of Self-Questioning Narratives, St. Augustine to Faulkner by Ralph Flores, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 1984, pp. 9-172. Nan Johnson Nan Johnson Department of English, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, B.C., Canada V6T 1W5 Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1986) 4 (2): 187–193. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.2.187 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 Nan Johnson; The Rhetoric of Doubtful Authority: Deconstructive Readings of Self-Questioning Narratives, St. Augustine to Faulkner. Rhetorica 1 May 1986; 4 (2): 187–193. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1986.4.2.187 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 1986, The International Society for The History of Rhetoric1986 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

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