The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition

Edited by Richard Graff, Arthur E. Walzer, and Janet M. Atwill
Afterword by Steven Mailloux

Subjects: Composition And Rhetoric Studies
Paperback : 9780791462867, 213 pages, January 2005
Hardcover : 9780791462850, 213 pages, January 2005

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Table of contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Richard Graff

PART ONE: Definitions: Traditional and New

1. Revisionist Historiography and Rhetorical Tradition(s)
Richard Graff and Michael Leff

2. The Rhetorical Tradition
Alan G. Gross

3. The Ends of Rhetoric Revisited: Three Readings of Lincoln's Gettysburg Address
Leah Ceccarelli

4. De-Canonizing Ancient Rhetoric
Robert N. Gaines

5. Rhetoric and Civic Virtue
Janet M. Atwill

PART TWO: Possibilities: Contemporary Rhetorical Occasions and the Tradition(s)

6. A Human Measure: Ancient Rhetoric, Twenty-first-Century Loss
Susan C. Jarratt

7. Teaching "Political Wisdom": Isocrates and the Tradition of Dissoi Logoi
Arthur E. Walzer

8. On the Formation of Democratic Citizens: Rethinking the Rhetorical Tradition in a Digital Age
William Hart-Davidson, James P. Zappen, and S. Michael Halloran

9. Civic Humanism, a Postmortem?
Thomas J. Kinney and Thomas P. Miller

10. Rhetoric in the Age of Cognitive Science
Jeanne Fahnestock

Afterword. Using Traditions: A Gadamerian Reflection on Canons, Contexts, and Rhetoric
Steven Mailloux

Contributors

Index

Interrogates the story of rhetoric promoted in standard historical accounts and reconsiders the relationship between rhetorical theory, practice, and pedagogy.

Description

The Viability of the Rhetorical Tradition reconsiders the relationship between rhetorical theory, practice, and pedagogy. Continuing the line of questioning begun in the 1980s, contributors examine the duality of a rhetorical canon in determining if past practice can make us more (or less) able to address contemporary concerns. Also examined is the role of tradition as a limiting or inspiring force, rhetoric as a discipline, rhetoric's contribution to interest in civic education and citizenship, and the possibilities digital media offer to scholars of rhetoric.

Richard Graff is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. Arthur E. Walzer is Professor of Rhetoric at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and the author of George Campbell: Rhetoric in the Age of Enlightenment, also published by SUNY Press. Janet M. Atwill is Associate Professor of English at The University of Tennessee at Knoxville and coeditor (with Janice M. Lauer) of Perspectives on Rhetorical Invention.