Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks Eds. Carol S. Lipson and Roberta A. Binkley

With the call in Octolog II to look for rhetoric in cultural locations unpreviously examined, Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks attempts to explore rhetoric before and beyond the limited scope of Athenian rhetoric in ways that do not reify Athenian rhetoric as the apex of the ancient rhetorical tradition.  As the editors note in [...]

Manifesto for Social Histories of Rhetoric

Manifesto: Why Study and Write Social Histories of Rhetoric?”
If we define social histories as the histories of everyday lives which haven’t been typically represented in mainstream histories, then I am assuming social histories of rhetoric(s) pertains to the use of rhetorical practices by communities and members of communities who haven’t been typically represented in [...]

“Seeing Ancient Rhetoric, Easily at a Glance” James Fredal

In this article, Fredal, utimately concerned with limiting definitions of rhetoric for our postmodern world, defines rhetoric as “the exchange of meaning within  a social system through which meaning, culture, identity, knowledge and practice are produced and circulated” (183).  In defining rhetoric in this way, Fredal hopes to create a definition broad enough to encompass [...]

“Speech is a Powerful Lord” Johnstone

In this article, Johnstone confirms Gorgia’s assertions about the magical effects of oratory rhetoric in ENCOMIUM OF HELEN with evidence from contemporary research in pscyho-phisiology.  After presenting research positing that (as Gorgias understood and articulated) oral langauge has cognitive and emotional effects on a listener, and thus, psychological power, Johnstone concludes with a couple of claims that raise questions related to [...]

Summary of “Rhetoric and Civic Virtue” — Janet Atwill

In “Rhetoric and Civic Virtue,” Janet Atwill revisits the concept of “civic virtue” as it was conceived in fifth and fourth-century Greek political and philosophical thought and claims that civic virtue was in fact a contested term dependent on the model of political order—harmonia or isonomia—that one philosophically adhered to.   Atwill explains that harmonia was [...]

Summary “Choosing Between Isocrates and Artistotle” — Haskins

In “Choosing Between Isocrates and Artistotle,” Haskins attempts to dispel several assumptions that support and maintain Aristotelian rhetoric as the apex of the classical Greek rhetorical tradition.   Haskins worries that rhetoric students are being taught that classical rhetoric is a “single, monolithic paradigm;” in studying the rhetorical canon, teachers and students should attend to the [...]

Isocrates

Notes:
Opened first school of rhetoric in Athens.  One of Ten
Attic Orators.  Talent in speech writing for
publication, not delivery.   Style is antithetical and
symmetrical but not aural .
Developed periodic sentence.  Saw purpose of rhetoric
to address immediate practical problems rather than
search for absolute truth.  Rhetoric is tool of
investigation for probable knowledge and for moving
people to action for common [...]

Response to Edwin Black’s “Plato’s View of Rhetoric” and Charles Kauffman’s “The Axiological Foundations of Plato’s Theory of Rhetoric”

Working against the notion that Plato’s definition of rhetoric is inconsistent in Gorgias and Phaedrus yet in consensus that a single theme exists in Gorgias and Phaedrus, Edwin Black is determined to elucidate how rhetoric is defined in both of Plato’s texts.  Black points out that Plato is himself determined to reveal the nature of [...]