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Rhetoric in the European Tradition

Rhetoric in the European Tradition provides a comprehensive, chronological survey of the basic models of rhetoric as they developed from the early Greeks through the twentieth century. Discussing rhetorical theories and practices in the context of the times of political and intellectual crisis that gave rise to them, Thomas M. Conley chooses carefully from a vast pool of rhetorical literature to give voice to those authors who exercised the greatest influence in their own and succeeding generations. This book is valuable as both an introduction for students and a reference and resource for scholars in fields including literature, cultural history, philosophy, and speech and communication studies.

336 pages | 6 x 9 | © 1993

History: History of Ideas

Rhetoric and Communication

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations
1. Classical Greek Rhetorics
The Teachings of the "Sophists"
Plato
Aristotle
Isocrates and the Primacy of Eloquence
Rhetoric and Politics
Plato, Gorgias
Aristotle, Rhetoric
 
2. Hellenistic and Roman Rhetorics
Enkyklios paideia
"Stasis" in Rhetorical Invention
Cicero and the Ideal Orator
The Survival of Ciceronian Ideals
Greeks in the Roman World
[Cicero], Rhetorica ad Herennium
Cicero, De inventione
Quintilian, De institutione oratoria
 
3. Late Classical and Medieval Greek Rhetorics
Hermogenes’ Works
The Second Sophistic
Byzantine Rhetoric
 
4. Rhetoric in the Latin Middle Ages
Rhetoric in Augustine
Boethius
The First Renaissance of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: Alcuin
"The Age of Iron and Lead": Gerbert and Notker
Medieval "Ciceronianism"
Cicero in the Artes
Augustine, De doctrina christiana, Book 4
Alcuin, Disputatio de rhetorica
Notker Labeo, Nova rhetorica
William of Auvergne, De arte praedicandi
Robert de Basevorn, Forma praedicandi
 
5. Rhetoric and Renaissance Humanism
New Texts, Old Rhetorics
Trebizond and the Aldine Rhetores graeci
Erasmus and Luther
Revolutions in Rhetoric: Agricola and Peter Ramus
English Rhetorics: 1530-1600
Erasmus, Praise of Folly
Philip Melanchthon, Elementa rhetorices
Thomas Wilson, The Arte of Rhetorique
 
6. Rhetoric in the Seventeenth Century
Jesuit Rhetorics
Nicolas Caussin
Keckermann and Vossius
Philosophers and Rhetoric
Bacon and the New Style
Descartes and the "New Republic"
Lamy’s Rhetorique, ou l’Art de parler
Seventeenth-Century Perspectives
Nicolas Caussin, S. J., De eloquentia sacra et humana
Bartholomeus Keckermann, Systema rhetoricae
Gerhard Johann Vossius, Rhetorices contractae, sive partitionum oratoriarum libri V
Bernard Lamy, Rhetorique, ou l’Art de purler
 
7. Eighteenth-Century Rhetorics
Philosophy and Rhetoric: An Overview
Buffier and DuMarsais
Rhetoric and French Cultural Dominance
Eighteenth-Century British Rhetorics
The Elocutionary Movement
Rhetorics from the Hinterlands
G. B. Vico, Institutiones oratoriae
Claude Buffier, S. J., Traite de l’eloquence
Charles Rollin, Traite des etudes: De la maniere d’enseigner et d’etudier les Belles-Lettres
J. C. Gottsched, Ausfuhrliche Redekunst
Gregorio Mayans y Siscar, Retorica
George Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric
 
8. Rhetoric in the Nineteenth Century
Political and Social Transformations
England, Scotland, and Ireland
France and Germany
The United States and Canada
Spencer and Bain
Richard Whately, Elements of Rhetoric
Alexander Bain, English Composition and Rhetoric
 
9. Rhetoric after the Great War
Richards’ "Rhetoric"
Literature and Reform: The Early Burke
Ad Bellum Purificandum
Weaver’s Revolt against the Masses
 
10. Philosophers Turn to Rhetoric
Richard McKeon
Stephen Toulmin
Chaim Perelman
Jurgen Habermas
Conclusion and Summary
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation
Chronological Tables
Glossary
Index

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