History of Rhetoric

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke. Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

Available now from Penn State University Press, with a foreword by Pat J. Gehrke.

Order here: https://www.amazon.com/Metanoia-Rhetoric-Authenticity-Transformation-Self/dp/0271085924/ref=sr_1_1?crid=DL9ENJNF09HO&keywords=ellwanger+metanoia&qid=1581529316&sprefix=ellwanger%2Caps%2C150&sr=8-1

Today, individual identities often undergo radical conversions that were thought to be fantastical only decades ago: transformations of race, sex, gender, and more. These transformations are of great interest to the public, as evidenced by the frequent coverage of trans issues and personal transitions of all kinds on television and in popular magazines. Caitlyn Jenner changes from a man into a woman. Rachel Dolezal changes from a white woman to a black one. It is not new that people attempt these renovations of identity – but what is new is the mainstream insistence upon the totality and truth of these transformations. And while race and gender are certainly different matters, the techniques used to signify them in rhetorical contexts are remarkable similar. The growing discourse on these topics indicates that we have perhaps arrived at a " trans-moment " – a cultural impasse with possibilities for new kinds of transformations to occur. This moment calls for a theoretical reconsideration of ethos, how it functions differently now than it has in the past, and how it is successfully communicated in new mediated contexts. Although people who testify to these transformations often posit their new ethos as self-evident, major renovations of personal identity require sophisticated rhetorical performances in order to win the recognition of others.

This Foreword, about robots, written in both poetry as well as prose, introduces the edited collection _Androids, Cyborgs, and Robots in Contemporary Culture and Society_, edited by Steven J. Thompson (IGI Global, 2018). The link on the thumbnail cover at
https://www.igi-global.com/book/_/179222 will take you directly to the published Foreword, which is open access. The attached PDF, sent directly to me from IGI-Global to use here, is presented with written permission of the publisher.

This essay analyzes the collective mnemonics embedded in the statistical discourse of Planned Parenthood’s 1955 conference, _Abortion in the United States_. Conferees recalled a culture that was diseased, remembered both through social data on abortion pathology and epidemiology. The essay conceptualizes how to think of social data as a collective memory of secrets that is incumbent to biopower, particularly regarding statistical anonymity as a form of strategic amnesia. Although primarily a study of this conference, the essay notes the broader importance of collective memory and secrecy for the study of biopower.

Цель предлагаемой статьи – дать общую характеристику отношению к ораторскому искусству, которое сложилось в элитарной культуре Средних веков. Автор показывает, что данное отношение было далеко не однозначным, и вскрывает причины этой сложности. Он утверждает, что помимо радикального отвержения риторики (более декларируемого в теории, чем осуществляемого на практике) исследуемая
культура имела опыт её христианской адаптации, суть которой, равно как и мотивы отказа от красноречия, описывается в работе.

This poem was written for a collection of expressions for and memories of Art Young, put together by the staff of the Pearce Center for Professional Communication for Art Young, Campbell Chair of Technical Communication and Professor of English at Clemson University. Art retired emeritus at the end of 2008, but has recently come back to share his wisdom in a few projects, including my new Writing in the Disciplines (WID) Initiative at Clemson University. I reproduce this poem here to honor him and his career of teaching students (and faculty) to think and write critically and creatively--"across and (using poetry) against the curriculum." Art, this one is for you.

How exactly did the British philosopher, Bertrand Russell, influence Bhimrao Ambedkar? This study examines possible interpersonal connections that they may have shared, as well as lines of textual influence from Russell to Ambedkar. While we find it doubtful that Russell and Ambedkar ever met or corresponded, we do find evidence of Ambedkar's pragmatism being shaped by Russell's writings.

If you want to contribute with an entry, please write to marco.sgarbi@unive.it

Gives accurate and reliable summaries of the current state of research. It includes entries on philosophers, problems, terms, historical periods, subjects and the cultural context of Renaissance Philosophy. Furthermore, it covers Latin, Arabic, Jewish, Byzantine and vernacular philosophy, and includes entries on the cross-fertilization of these philosophical traditions. A unique feature of this encyclopedia is that it does not aim to define what Renaissance philosophy is, rather simply to cover the philosophy of the period between 1300 and 1650.

Historians of rhetoric have long worked to recover women’s education in reading and writing, but have only recently begun to explore women’s speaking practices, from the parlor to the platform to the varied types of institutions where women learned elocutionary and oratorical skills in preparation for professional and public life. This book fills an important gap in the history of rhetoric and suggests new paths for the way histories may be told in the future, tracing the shifting arc of women’s oratorical training as it develops from forms of eighteenth-century rhetoric into institutional and extra-institutional settings at the end of the nineteenth century and diverges into several distinct streams of community-embodied theory and practice in the twentieth.

Treating key rhetors, genres, settings, and movements from the early republic to the present, these essays collectively challenge and complicate many previous claims made about the stability and development of gendered public and private spheres, the decline of oratorical culture and the limits of women’s oratorical forms such as elocution and parlor rhetorics, and women’s responses to rhetorical constraints on their public speaking. Enriching our understanding of women’s oratorical education and practice, this work makes an important contribution to scholarship in rhetoric and communication. Chapters include:

Introduction: American Women Learn to Speak: New Forms of Inquiry into Women’s Rhetorics —David Gold and Catherine L. Hobbs
1. “By Women, You Were Brought Forth into This World”: Cherokee Women’s Oratorical Education in the Late Eighteenth Century —M. Amanda Moulder
2. “A Vapour Which Appears but for a Moment”: Oratory and Elocution for Girls during the Early American Republic —Carolyn Eastman
3. Speaking and Writing in Conversation: Constructing the Voice of Eleanor Parke Custis Lewis —Annmarie Valdes
4. Negotiating Conflicting Views of Women and Elocution: Almira Hart Lincoln Phelps, Florence Hartley, and Marietta Holley —Jane Donawerth
5. “To Supply This Deficiency”: Margaret Fuller’s Boston Conversations as Hybrid Rhetorical Practice —Kristen Garrison
6. “God Sees Me”: Surveillance and Oratorical Training at Nineteenth-Century St. Mary-of-the-Woods in Indiana —Elizabethada A. Wright
7. The Arguments They Wore: The Role of the Neoclassical Toga in American Delsartism —Lisa Suter
8. Womanly Eloquence and Rhetorical Bodies: Regendering the Public Speaker through Physical Culture —Paige V. Banaji
9. Rethinking Etiquette: Emily Post’s Rhetoric of Social Self-Reliance for American Women —Nancy Myers
10. “Remember the World Is Not a Playground but a Schoolroom”: Barbara Jordan’s Early Rhetorical Education —Linda Ferreira-Buckley
11. Learning Not to Preach: Evangelical Speaker Beth Moore and the Rhetoric of Constraint —Emily Murphy Cope

This 1996 essay (published 1998) on how to improve Latin pedagogy is reproduced here with minor changes. Early modernity's humanist approaches to the teaching of Latin have much to offer us, and they can help us to counter the deficiencies of the philological approaches that have long been dominant in the field. The clue to the improvement can by found in an appendix to a 1956 book where the author, George Ganss, discusses the history of Latin teaching.

This article defends the “rhetorical chorus” as a useful method for
recovering women’s voices in the history of rhetoric. As distinct
from the more amorphous term “collaboration,” which designates
any act of cooperation in the production of rhetorical texts, the
“chorus” offers a more nuanced way to identify and map the
recording, preservation, appropriation, and alteration of works
originally dictated by women rhetors. Using The Book of Margery
Kempe as an example, the study traces both homophonic and polyphonic relationships between the lead voice of Margery and the voices of her scribes and annotators.

This is an advance copy. Please contact me if you are unable to access the final version of the paper.

This essay argues that medieval bestiaries are dependent on and best understood through a process of rhetorical hermeneutics indebted to Augustine’s theory of interpretation. The essay suggests that texts such as the Aberdeen Bestiary leverage the instability of allegorical and the clarity of tropological representation to blur the line between human and nonhuman,encouraging the reader to reflect on predatory human-animal relationships and act to reduce actions that impact the natural world.

Printed letter writing manuals began to appear in English during the second half of the sixteenth century. Up to this time, English men and women had to rely on handbooks in Latin, on imported Continental books predominantly in French and Italian, or on manuscript writing aids, which they had either assembled themselves or had others copy for them. These early printed manuals give us an opportunity to discover how ordinary citizens got help with writing, and to what branches of letter writing theory and practice they looked. Even a cursory examination of the texts reveals that the Humanist tradition of epistolography was strong, providing the theoretical base for each of the books; closer reveals that elements from the tradition of the ars dictaminis, the medieval art of letter writing, are also present in the most popular works. Such a combination suggests that vernacular readers were looking for guidance both from the prestigious Latin Humanist culture as well as the more practical dictaminal tradition.

This course will examine what American pragmatism—both as a tradition of thought and as a method of inquiry—has to offer those engaged in the study of rhetoric. We will examine the thought of classical and modern pragmatists in an attempt to figure out what pragmatism means for theories of rhetoric and communication, ideal senses of community, the art of rhetoric, leadership, as well as method in the study of communication. Attention will be paid to the advantages pragmatism might offer as a guiding theory compared to standard approaches to the study of rhetoric. The thought of Charles S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and Richard Rorty will assume particular prominence in this course. We will also look at contemporary pragmatists in rhetoric, communication studies, philosophy, and beyond to see how they engage the ideas of rhetoric and communication. Students will be expected to emerge from this course with a grasp of the basic problematics driving classical and modern pragmatism, as well as how these relate to issues in rhetoric and in communication studies. Students are encouraged to link pragmatism to their particular research interests, practices or artifacts, or methods of study in the course's culminating research paper assignment.

Many histories of science have been written, but A New History of the Humanities offers the first overarching history of the humanities from Antiquity to the present. There are already historical studies of musicology, logic, art history, linguistics, and historiography, but this volume gathers these, and many other humanities disciplines, into a single coherent account.

Its central theme is the way in which scholars throughout the ages and in virtually all civilizations have sought to identify patterns in texts, art, music, languages, literature, and the past. What rules can we apply if we wish to determine whether a tale about the past is trustworthy? By what criteria are we to distinguish consonant from dissonant musical intervals? What rules jointly describe all possible grammatical sentences in a language? How can modern digital methods enhance pattern-seeking in the humanities? Rens Bod contends that the hallowed opposition between the sciences (mathematical, experimental, dominated by universal laws) and the humanities (allegedly concerned with unique events and hermeneutic methods) is a mistake born of a myopic failure to appreciate the pattern-seeking that lies at the heart of this inquiry. A New History of the Humanities amounts to a persuasive plea to give Panini, Valla, Bopp, and countless other often overlooked intellectual giants their rightful place next to the likes of Galileo, Newton, and Einstein.

The Modern Language Association's Division on the History and Theory of Rhetoric and Composition had invited me to contribute a paper on the topic of "Rhetoric as a New Paradigm for English Studies" for the 2014 annual meeting of the MLA in Chicago. While the other participants at the session, Douglas Hesse (University of Denver), Peter Leslie Mortensen (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), and Michael Bernard-Donals (University of Wisconsin, Madison), focused on illustrative examples of the cultural work rhetoric can do within the "English" paradigm, my own proposition as the only "English literature" person now at a major technological research institution turned out somewhat more radical. My thought experiment asked whether we need "English" departments at all, extending previous deliberations published in the Chronicle of Higher Education.

The Handbook of Argumentation Theory provides an up to date survey of the various theoretical contributions to the development of argumentation theory for all scholars interested in argumentation, informal logic and rhetoric. It describes the historical roots of modern argumentation theory that are still an important theoretical background to contemporary approaches. Because of the complexity, diversity and rate of developments in argumentation theory, there is a real need for an overview of the state of the art, the main approaches that can be distinguished and the distinctive features of these approaches.

The Handbook covers classical and modern backgrounds to the study of argumentation, the New Rhetoric developed by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca, the Toulmin model, formal approaches, informal logic, communication and rhetoric, pragmatic approaches, linguistic approaches and pragma-dialectics.

The Handbook is co-authored by Frans H. van Eemeren, Bart Garssen, Erik C.W. Krabbe, A. Francisca Snoeck Henkemans, Bart Verheij and Jean H.M. Wagemans, who are a coherent and prominent writing team whose expertise covers the whole field. The authors are assisted by an international Editorial Board consisting of outstanding argumentation scholars whose fields of interest are represented in the volume.

James Watts uses rhetorical analysis for this detailed exposition of Leviticus 1-10. In dialogue with a wide variety of contemporary scholarship on Leviticus, this commentary also engages the history of the book’s interpretation and the history of Jewish and Christian ritual practices. Leviticus’s rhetoric aimed to persuade ancient Israelites to make offerings to God. It legitimized the monopoly of Aaronide priests over Israel’s offerings and over determining correct ritual practice. The priests in turn established the Torah containing Leviticus as the authoritative text of Israel’s religion. Rhetorical analysis of Leviticus thus leads to new insights into the role of priests in raising the Pentateuch to the status of scripture and in shaping the biblical canon. It also calls attention to the role of ritual rhetoric in the polities of later Jewish and Christian groups, despite the fact that neither religion makes animal offerings as Leviticus 1-10 mandates.

Il Protagora presenta una struttura complessa per forma e contenuto ed è l’elaborata mise en scène di un dialogo tra Socrate e il sofista di Abdera. Uno dei temi di questo dialogo è il dialogo stesso come forma di comunicazione opposta all’incanto prodotto dai discorsi dei sofisti. In quest’opera il dialogos socratico si oppone al logos sofistico. Ma cos’è un “dialogo”, come funziona nelle relazioni reciproche tra dialoganti e che effetti produce in chi ascolta? Nel secondo prologo del Protagora Socrate stabilisce una analogia tra i cibi del corpo e quelli dell’anima, portando il discorso sull’anima dal lato di un determinismo psichico che mette in guardia circa la pericolosità delle tecniche sofistico-retoriche di chi, come Protagora, si professa capace di insegnare l’arte di parlare, di possedere la techne ton logon. Questo studio prende le mosse proprio a partire dall’analogia tra corpo e anima e segue questa prospettiva di analisi, una tra le molte, mettendo in evidenza il tentativo platonico di costruire una “scienza del dialogo” in analogia con la “scienza dei corpi”, la medicina.
Sul dialogo, inteso come oggetto di analisi, si innesta la questione della medicina dell’anima, tema che attraversa – si può dire – l’intera produzione platonica. Da questo punto di vista, si confrontano tre “saperi”, l’arte della sofistica della medicina e del dialogo, saperi che si richiamano a vicenda nel Protagora e più in generale nella filosofia platonica. Dai confronti testuali tra vari dialoghi platonici e i trattati medici del Corpus hippocraticum emerge un’immagine del dialogo come pratica comunicativa “sana”, che permette di riconoscere la corretta fisiologia dell’anima, del parlare e della città, e più in generale di individuare, tra le righe, quel “medico dell’anima” che solo è in grado di portare alla homologia le istanze psichiche di ogni individuo, gli interlocutori di un dialogo e i cittadini di una comunità politica che è innanzitutto comunità di parlanti e di ascoltatori.

Retrieved from unpublished manuscript remains, Arthur Schopenhauer’s Eristic Dialectics (1830-1831) has been largely ignored both by philosophers and rhetoricians. The work is highly enigmatic in that its intended meaning vacillates between playful irony and Machiavellian seriousness. Adopting an esoteric perspective, this article argues that the tract can be read as simultaneously operating on two levels: an exoteric, cynical one, according to which Schopenhauer accepts that people are going to argue irrespective of the truth and as a result provides tools for defeating one’s opponents, and a deeper, esoteric level, which functions not cynically but, in Peter Sloterdijk’s language, kynically, as a satirical unmasking of the cynical impulses animating the study and practice of argumentation, especially as evinced in the rhetorical-humanist tradition. Such an interpretation reveals that, while a minor work, Eristic Dialectics offers a sophisticated philosophical critique of “the art of persuasion.”

La présente contribution entend décrire le travail d’enquête
mené par le Groupe de recherche en rhétorique et en argumentation linguistique (GRAL) autour des archives scientifiques de Chaïm Perelman déposées à l’Université libre de Bruxelles. Plus précisément, le but est de montrer dans quelle mesure ce fonds documentaire constitue une occasion exceptionnelle de mieux comprendre l’oeuvre et la pensée de l’auteur du _Traité de l’argumentation_. Ainsi cet article propose une nouvelle lecture de la redécouverte perelmanienne de la rhétorique conduite durant les années 1940-1950. Il aborde deux problématiques cruciales : le libre examen et l’enseignement.

В статье предложен обзор работ, посвященных софистике (в том числе изданий фрагментов софистов) на русском языке, включая переводные издания, а также составлен критический библиографический обзор изучения софистики в западных исследованиях (преимущественно англо-американских) за последние 60 лет. Рассмотрены основные интерпретации учений Протагора и Горгия. Дан обзор некоторых современных дискуссий вокруг этих персонажей.
The article reviews a number of recent edition and translations of the Sophists’ fragments (including these published in Russia), and offers a critical bibliographic overview of the sophistic studies in the western (mostly Anglo-American) history of philosophy during
the last sixty years. It examines some interpretations of the doctrines of the Older Sophists (esp. Protagoras and Gorgias) and analyses the most conspicuous lines taken by contemporary
scholars in relation to these characters.

Учебное пособие призвано познакомить читателей с одной из уникальных областей историко-философского знания античности – эпохой софистики и наиболее ярким и сложным ее представителем Горгием Леонтийским. В пособии подробно представлены: обзор явления софистики в целом и основная проблематика учения Горгия, рассмотренная в контексте современных ему философских проблем, а также актуальные интерпретации его учения. В приложении впервые в русскоязычной литературе под одной обложкой собраны сохранившиеся фрагменты сочинений Горгия и их переводы, в том числе ранее не переведенный на русский язык пересказ трактата Горгия «О не-сущем, или о природе» из анонимного (псевдоаристотелевского) сочинения «О Мелиссе, Ксенофане, Горгии» – одного из двух сохранившихся развернутых свидетельств о трактате.
Предназначено для студентов, обучающихся по направлению «История философия» и гуманитарного профиля вообще, аспирантов и соискателей социальных и гуманитарных специальностей при изучении курса «История и философия науки», преподавателей, а также для широкого круга читателей, интересующихся философией, риторикой, историей и теорией аргументации.

В статье приводятся аргументы в пользу того, что Горгий был хорошо известен своим современникам как философ, включенный в решение элеатовской проблематики. Горгий отнюдь не пародирует элеатов, а, серьезно включаясь в
обсуждение их основных позиций, выявляет и критикует слабые места в их рассуждениях. На этом основании тезис Горгия ouden estin предлагается понимать как «не-сущее существует», отказываясь от наиболее распространенной
интерпретации учения Горгия как радикального нигилизма. Для подтверждения этого положения привлекается текст платоновского диалога «Софист», ряд пассажей из которого и саму структуру изложения аргументов, последовательно повторяющую структуру «О не-сущем» Горгия, можно расценить как свидетельства в пользу именно такой трактовки главного тезиса Горгия.

e article discusses that Gorgias was well known to his contemporaries as a philosopher who had been solving specific Eleatic problems. e Gorgias’ philosophy was not a parody on the Eleatics, but the examination of the Eleatic topics via identifying and criticizing weak points in their arguments. erefore the Gorgias’s thesis ouden estin should be understood as “Nothing does exist” or “Nothing is something that exists”, thus denying common interpretation of his doctrine as a radical nihilism. To confirm this point we draw upon Plato’s Sophist, some passages of which and the structure of arguments, consistently repeating the structure of Gorgias’ On-Not Being can be considered as evidences in favor of such interpretation of this main thesis of Gorgias.

This study explores the religious advocacy of the " untouchable " reformer, Bhimrao Ambedkar, during the 1950s to expand what we know about the nexus between religion, force, and the quest for social justice. Unearthing the sources of Ambedkar's early references to John Dewey and pragmatism, this study argues that Ambedkar evinced an abiding concern over the role of force and violence in reform efforts. In his final years, Ambedkar addressed international audiences reconstructing Buddhism as an alternative to communism, a move that posited compassionate persuasion as the pragmatist answer to his early concerns over using force in pursuing social justice. [forthcoming in Journal of Religion 97 (2)]

Walter Fisher’s work on the rhetorical uses of narrative has been productive in that it has spawned valuable work on the status of narrative in communication, as well as incisive critiques of its claims concerning the relationship between narrative, truth, and good reasons.  Like any good theory, its richness comes at a cost.  While others point out the problematic entailments of narrative viewed as a paradigm of communication, this paper will focus on another important point implicit in the criticism that the narrative paradigm has received: is this account of good reasons descriptive or normative in nature?  Does it highlight a procedure that anyone can take to identify ideal values, or does it simply describe the procedure a certain audience may use to find (however incorrectly) good reasons for action or belief?  This paper will explore the reasons for reading the narrative paradigm in both of these directions, and ultimately argue that its utmost critical value lies as a descriptive account of how humans identify with narratives and the values they hold.

One of the main attractions of Aristotle's Rhetoric is the part of the work that deals with the pathê tês psychês – which have come to be called the affections of the soul or the emotions. Aristotle seems to assume that it is possible for a rhetorician to manipulate the feelings of his audience. The interest of these chapters mainly derives from the striking analyses of particular types of emotions; some of the thoughts Aristotle presents about anger, pity, shame and envy seem to be applicable down to the present day. At the same time, however, these chapters are somehow disappointing from a philosophical point of view, since most of the assumptions Aristotle makes about the nature of the emotions, about the impact of emotions on our judgment, and about how emotions come about are nowhere articulated – let alone argued for – in a coherent way. This lack of theoretical interest is typical of major parts of Aristotle's Rhetoric. It is has often been explained in terms of the pragmatic nature of such rhetorical manuals or handbooks. This is certainly part of the truth. Another part of the truth that I would like to add is this: in the first two books of the Rhetoric, we find the ambitious attempt to create a complete art of rhetoric mainly by means of dialectic: Aristotle applies and adjusts the dialectical inventory to the specific requirements of public speech, and draws up several catalogues of topoi that are meant to carve up the field of what is possibly persuasive. Obviously, it would be unfair to expect such an endeavor to engage in detailed theory-building.
I read versions of this paper in San Francisco (2012), Pisa (2013) and Paris, Nanterre (2017). It doesn't include references to scholarly literature etc. yet, but the main thesis is stable. David Konstan wrote a very valuable reply to this draft.