Research Article| August 01 1998 The Reader's Figure: Epideictic Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, Racine and Pascal Richard Lockwood, The Reader's Figure: Epideictic Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, Racine and Pascal (Geneva: Droz, 1996) 310 pp. Peter France Peter France Department of French, 4 Buccleuch Place, Edinbugh 8, United Kingdom. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1998) 16 (3): 312–314. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1998.16.3.312 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 Peter France; The Reader's Figure: Epideictic Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, Racine and Pascal. Rhetorica 1 August 1998; 16 (3): 312–314. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1998.16.3.312 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 1998, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1998 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

RHETORICA 312 In chapter 11, "Philosophy and rhetoric", Stephen Halliwell considers the debate between rhetoric and philosophy along the lines suggested in several of Plato's and Aristotle's works. Although both Plato and Aristotle consider rhetoric "philosophically", Halliwell argues that Plato imposes on it the demands of his ethical and political standards while Aristotle accepts the commonsensicalness of rhetorical practice all along reinforcing it with the technical equipment that rendered it an intellectual force of consequence. In the final chapter, "The Canon of the Ten Attic Orators", Ian Worthington reconsiders the dating, the authorship, and the intellectual background of the canon of the Attic orators and concludes that both the rationale and character of the canon are unsatisfactory if only because they hamper scholarly efforts to study and assess the orations of those orators who are excluded. John Poulakos Richard Lockwood, The Reader's Figure: Epideictic Rhetoric in Plato, Aristotle, Bossuet, Racine and Pascal (Geneva: Droz, 1996) 310 pp. Epideictic has always been the joker in the pack. Where deliberative and judicial eloquence can be fairly readily defined, and their function briefly summarized, epideictic continually poses problems. In the first place, what is it? The demonstrative genre, we are told, is that in which the orator (or writer) attributes praise and blame. But this narrow definition is quickly expanded into something much more amorphous—epideictic comes to be the gathering up of all speech acts which are not deliberative or forensic, sometimes including the didactic or academic (as in the volume under review), and not infrequently spilling out to include all speaking whose purpose is not obvious, including, as the writing "for nothing" which came to be called literature. For the question "who does what to whom in epideictic" is by no means straightforward, as Richard Lockwood makes abundantly clear in this densely written and interesting book. Quintilian saw it as aiming solely at delighting its audience", Reviews 313 with the further aim of enhancing the "honour and glory of the speaker". The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary defines it as "intended or serving to display oratorical skill". It is thus a form of entertainment, a performance meant to gather in applause. But of course there are other views. A speech of praise, for instance, is not necessarily a piece of self-indulgence or flattery. Many historians of the subject have written of the potential civic function of epideictic for inculcating values and creating social consensus. As Aristotle put it, "to praise a man is...akin to urging a course of action". Even Plato, with his sharp eye for the deceits of rhetoric, allows room in his republic for "hymns to the gods and encomia to good men". So what is going on in epideictic? The strength of Lockwood's study is that it homes in on these tensions within the genre. He argues that this type of speech or text carries within it a doubleness, and thus, even more clearly than other rhetorical performances, creates a double figure of the listener or reader, who can at the same time admire the orator and admire the thing praised. It is this doubleness, he claims, that accounts for the powerful effects of epideictic, effects that in the examples he gives are not infrequently unsettling, often fruitfully so. One of the most important points stressed here is the vital role played in epideictic by metadiscursive elements—those points at which the orator or writer reflects as he goes along on what he is doing. In an interesting preliminary, this tactic is seen at work in the Gettysburg Address, where "five full sentences out of ten discuss Lincoln's own act of speaking, and the rest focus largely on the parameters of its context" (p. 19)—the speech in other words is largely about "how to give speeches and how to listen", and in so doing seeks to create what Lockwood calls the "figure" of the reader/listener. In other words, theory and practice are closely interwoven, and there can be no question of a simple dualism whereby the naive take the bait while the sophisticated reflect critically on it; all readers and listeners are involved in the perils and pleasures of...

Abstract: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the enemy of books and civilized learning, might seem poles apart from Quintilian, who was so popular in France in the eighteenth century. Nevertheless, although there are only small traces of direct contact between the author of Émile and the Institutio, comparison between the two works is illuminating. Both are large-scale educational treatises embodying a vision of humanity. The important common ground between them concerns the importance of early childhood, a certain moral idealism, and the prfrence for a manly form of speech. Significant divergences begin to appear in relation to three major areas of concern: citizenship and the public life, the relation of words to things, and the question of acting, imagination, and fiction. Je ne me lasse point de le redire: mettez toutes les leçons des jeunes gens en actions plustôt qu'en discours; qu'ils n'apprennent rien dans les livres de ce que l'expérience peut leur enseigner. Quel extravagant projet de les exercer à parler sans sujet de rien dire, de croire leur faire sentir sur les bancs d'un collège l'énergie du langage des passions, et toute la force de l'art de persuader sans intérêt de rien persuader à personne! Tous les préceptes de la rhétorique ne semblent qu'un pur verbiage à quiconque n'en sent pas l'usage pour son profit. Qu'importe à un Ecolier comment s'y prit Annibal pour déterminer ses soldats à passer les Alpes? (I never tire of repeating it: put ail your tessons for young people into actions, not speeches; let them learn nothing from books which they could learn from experience. What an insane idea to exercise them in speaking when they have nothing to speak about, to believe one can make them feel on their school benches the language of the passions and ail the force of the art of persuasion, when they have no interest in persuading anybody! All the precepts of rhetoric are pure verbiage to anyone who cannot see what use they are to him. What does it matter to a schoolboy how Hannibal set about persuading his soldiers to cross the Alps?)

Research Article| November 01 1988 Rhétorique et roman au dix-huitième siècle. L'exemple de Prévost et de Marivaux (1728-1742) Jean-Paul Sermain.Rhétorique et roman au dix-huitième siècle. L'exemple de Prévost et de Marivaux (1728-1742). (Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 233). Oxford: The Voltaue Foundation. 1985. 159 pp. Peter France Peter France Department of French, 4 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW Scotland. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1988) 6 (4): 419–421. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.4.419 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 Peter France; Rhétorique et roman au dix-huitième siècle. L'exemple de Prévost et de Marivaux (1728-1742). Rhetorica 1 November 1988; 6 (4): 419–421. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.4.419 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 1988, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1988 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Research Article| May 01 1988 Rhétorique et Poétique Chez les Formalistes Russes Peter France Peter France Department of French, 4 Buccleuch Place, Edinburgh EH8 9LW Scotland. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1988) 6 (2): 127–136. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.2.127 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 Peter France; Rhétorique et Poétique Chez les Formalistes Russes. Rhetorica 1 May 1988; 6 (2): 127–136. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1988.6.2.127 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 1988, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1988 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.