A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism

A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism offers the first major survey in two decades of the field of rhetorical studies and of the practice of rhetorical theory and criticism across a range of disciplines. The contributions are written by leading scholars from a variety of different fields and have all been specially commissioned for this volume. They focus on specific works, problems, or figures, pursuing theory and criticism from an engaged and practical perspective. The volume also includes an overview of rhetorical traditions, providing examples of rhetoric from ancient times to the present day. Designed to be accessible to a range of students and scholars, A Companion to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Criticism elaborates in fascinating ways just what it means to ′think like a rhetorician.′

Notes on Contributors. Introduction. Acknowledgments. . Part I: Rhetoric in Its Place and Time . 1. Introduction: Contingency and Probability (Dilip Parmeshwar Gaonkar). 2. The Politics of Deliberation: Oratory and Democracy in Classical Athens (David Cohen). 3. Text and Context in the Roman Forum: The Case of Cicero′s First Catilinarian (B. A. Krostenko). 4. A Conversational Opener: The Rhetorical Paradigm of John 1:1 (Marjorie O’Rourke Boyle). 5. Continental Poetics (Arthur Kinney). 6. ‘His tail at commandment’: George Puttenham and the Carnivalization of Rhetoric (Wayne A. Rebhorn). 7. Rhetorical Selfhood in Erasmus and Milton (Thomas O. Sloane). 8. Rhetoric, Rights, and Contract Theory in the Early Modern Period (Victoria Kahn). 9. The Philosophy of Rhetoric in Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric (Joel C. Weinsheimer). 10. The Rhetorical Legacy of Kenneth Burke (Herbert Simons) . Part II: Rhetoric’s Favorite Places . 11. Topics (and deliberation): Exemplifying Deliberation: Cicero′s De Officiis and Machiavelli′s Prince (Wendy Olmsted). 12. Deliberation (and topics): Cultivating Deliberating: Mindfully Resourceful Innovation In and Through the Federalist Papers (David Smigelskis). 13. Ethos: Socrates Talks Himself Out of His Body: Ethical Argument and Personal Immortality in the Phaedo (Eugene Garver). 14. Pathos: Rhetoric and Emotion (James Kastely). 15. Analogies, Parables, Paradoxes: Get On Down: Plato’s Rhetoric of Education in the Republic (Kathy Eden). 16. Style: The Rhetoric of the Aphorism: Gary Saul Morson (Northwestern University). 17. Argumentation: What Jokes Can Tell Us About Arguments: Thomas Conley. 18. Commonplaces: Sensus Communis: John Schaeffer (Northern Illinois University). 19. Judgment: Arts of Persuasion and Judgment: Rhetoric and Aesthetics (Anthony J. Cascardi) . Part III: Rhetoric and Its Critics . 20. Epiphany and Epideictic: The Low Modernist Lyric in Robert Frost (Walter Jost). 21. Lolita: Solipsized or Sodomized?; or, Against Abstraction—in General (Peter Rabinowitz). 22. Narrative as Rhetoric and Edith Wharton’s "Roman Fever": Progression, Configuration, and the Ethics of Surprise (James Phelan). 23. ‘Mind the Gap’: W. G. Sebald and the Rhetoric of Unrest (Adam Zachary Newton). 24. Rhetoric in the Wilderness: The Deep Rhetoric of the Late 20th Century (James Crosswhite) . Part IV: All in Good Time – and Timing . 25. Aristotle’s Rhetoric and Bakhtin’s Discourse Theory (Don Bialostosky). 26. Reviving the Rhetorical Heritage of Protestant Theology (Stephen H. Webb). 27. Rhetoric: Time, Memory, Memoir (Nancy S. Struever). 28. Rhetoric in the Law (Robert Burns). 29. Rhetorical Hermeneutics Once Again: or, Phronesis Unwrapped (Steven Mailloux). 30. Rhetoric and Poetry: How to Use the Inevitable Return of the Repressed (Charles Altieri). 31. My Life with Rhetoric: From Neglect to Obsession (Wayne C. Booth). Index.

Walter Jost teaches in the English Department at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. Wendy Olmsted teaches in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago.

"Walter Jost and Wendy Olmsted have produced a remarkable volume that serves equally well as an introduction to rhetorical studies and as a reference work for specialists. The range of the essays and the credentials of the contributors mark the book as important, but its most notable feature is the conception and development of a general work on rhetoric that remains connected with specific texts, historical contexts, and material circumstances ... The result is a volume impressive in its parts and invaluable in its totality – a must read." Michael C. Leff, Northwestern University