Recently, genre studies have become increasingly important in the area of rhetorical criticism. This method of analysis is based on the assumption that rhetorics vary situationally, like situations will produce like rhetorics, antecedent rhetorical events significantly affect the creative product, and analogy is more important than anomaly when…

Investigates the interrelation of the histories of rhetoric and literary studies by examining in detail the writings of Victorian sage Walter Pater. (SR)

The interpretation of the history of rhetoric was the subject of the seminar reported in this document. After a preface and a discussion of the "promise" of rhetoric, abstracts of seminar presentations are grouped under the headings of rhetoric and culture, rhetoric and philosophy, methodological considerations, and discourse analysis.…

The problems created by the competing claims of various schools of criticism for a unified view of meaning are examined in this book. Chapters deal with the following topics: the problem of the plurality of modes, Ronald Crane and the pluralism of discrete modes, Kenneth Burke's multiplication of perspectives, history as criticism and the…

Reacting to the tradition which has reduced rhetorics to summaries of rules and principles, this book presupposes that Plato's "Phaedrus," Aristotle's "Rhetoric," and Cicero's "De Oratore" cannot be reduced to summary information or pedagogical advice. The book considers that these works, on the contrary, along with…

Critical discussions of reader reaction are often only disguised discussions of author intention. (JH)

The theme of the doctoral honors seminar reported here was the reappraisal of rhetorical research. After a preface and the seminar's keynote address about the ten negative commandments for the rhetorical historian, abstracts of seminar presentations are grouped under the headings rhetoric and culture, rhetoric and philosophy, and discourse…

Examines the roots of the modern language arts curriculum in Canada. Claims it is based on nineteenth-century interdependence of studies in rhetoric, history of the English language, and literature. And asserts that this curriculum was designed to develop rhetorical and critical sophistication. (JK)

Studies the fifty year period of the Benedictine Revival (970-1020) focusing on the sources and manuscripts available to Aelfric, a leading prose writer of the time. (MH)

Presents an exchange between two English professors who offer opposing perspectives on the profession of English. Covers arguments on the understanding of theory, literary history, reading, curricular design, and pedagogy through the examination of Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Minister's Black Veil." (MM)

Describes and recommends Cicero's ironic approach to understanding competing theories of genre as a paradigm for the study of rhetorical theory. (MS)

Suggests that during the fifth and fourth centuries B.C. the encomium was not a rigid rhetorical genre, but a normative type both stable and elastic. Compares Gorgias and Isocrates' encomia of Helen. (MS)

Discusses the growing division between history and criticism in the study of public address. Reassesses the relationship between history and criticism with respect to intrinsic and extrinsic analysis, the role of evaluation in rhetorical scholarship, and the nature of critical and historical method. (JMF)

Suggests that a poetic writing of traits, inviting readers to seek meaning in a poem's visual form, rests on a myth of the portrait in which marks of a written language are drawn directly from nature. (DF)

Explores how argumentation in the eighteenth-century miracles controversy (a century-long debate in Britain over the reasonableness of revealed religion) exhibited a controlling concern for procedural considerations. Discusses how the Deists and the Orthodox apologists used their argumentative force to advance rival methods for evaluating miracle…