Historical Rhetorics

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This page will serve as the homepage for a book in Historical Rhetorics following a graduate seminar at the University of South Florida in the Fall of 2009. Since the purpose of the course centers on exploring the various and conflicting definitions of rhetoric throughout classical and modern history, this page should maintain a neutral point of view (in accordance with Wikibooks' core policy).

The dominant definition of rhetoric stems from Aristotle: "let rhetoric be an ability, in each case, to see the available means of persuasion." While the idea of persuasion has a powerful place in the history of rhetoric, it differs significantly from Sophist, Roman, and Christian conceptions of rhetoric. Thus, this course will attempt to place the definition of "persuasion" alongside other conceptualizations of rhetoric's purpose. Further, the course's concluding examination of Ramus, Blair, Campbell, and Whatley will address how and why critical appreciation for epistemic rhetoric sharply declines as the Enlightenment rises.

Graduate students participating in the Fall 2009 course will be required to compile annotated bibliographies on important secondary articles. Those annotations will be transformed into pages for this wiki. My long term goal is to make this a sustainable resource for other graduate and undergraduate courses covering the history of rhetoric. Please forgive any omissions in the secondary sources listed below. For the first semester running this project, I have chosen to emphasize journal articles instead of either complete books or chapters in anthologies.

Below is a rough outline for the Calender the Fall 2009 that will act as the table of contents for the longer book project. As the semester rolls on, I hope that students will come back to this page and create links to their brief summaries of significant articles (and "hope" should be heard in that professorial tone of "I hope they also will consider handing in their final paper and attending every class session").

• Plato's Battle Against an Oral World
• Plato's Relationship to Rhetoric
• Sophists Old and New
• The Big Aristotle
• A Little Aristotle and the Other Socrates
• Cicero's Public and the Greek Tradition
• Should We Read Quintilian?
• Rhetoric's Medieval Resurgence
• The Death of Rhetorics of Substance
• Rhetoric During the Birth of the Modern University

[edit] Chapter Nine: The Death of Rhetorics of Substance

• Ong, Ramus: Method and the Decay of Dialogue

Relevant Secondary Sources

Sharratt, Peter. “Ramus 2000.” Rhetorica 18.4 (2000): 399-455.

[edit] Chapter Ten: Rhetoric (and Composition?) During the Birth of the Modern University

• ed. Golden and Corbett, The Rhetoric of Blair, Campbell, and Whatley

Relevant Secondary Sources