For the Advanced Student
Further readings for the advanced student in rhetorical theory. Page numbers in parentheses are from Bizzell and Herzberg (a rhetoric reader). Kennedy, Murphy and Hauser augment the primary readings quite nicely. I strongly recommend the Oxford University Press Encyclopedia of Rhetoric for fuller understanding of concepts that surface in the readings.
TEXTS: Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg, eds. The Rhetorical Tradition. Boston: Bedford Books, 1990.
Richard M. Weaver. Visions of Order: The Cultural Crisis of Our Time. Bryn Mawr, PA: Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 1995.
Kennedy, George A. Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition From Ancient to Modern Times. Chapel Hill: U North Carolina Press, 1980.
Murphy, James J. ed. ed. A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric. Davis, CA: Hermagoras Press, 1983. and Rhetoric in the Middle Ages. Berkeley: U of California P, 1974.
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Isocrates’ Antidosis (50-54); General Introduction and Introduction to Classical Rhetoric (1-37). Discuss with the student how to read a Platonic dialogue.
Pre-Socratic Rhetoric
Gorgias’ “Encomium to Helen” (38-42); Plato’s Gorgias (55-112).
Philosophic Rhetoric
“The Phaedrus and the Nature of Rhetoric,” Weaver (1054-65); Plato’s Phaedrus (113-43).
Aristotelian Rhetoric
Aristotle’s Rhetorica, Bks. I & II (144-94).
Additional readings: Robert Price. “Some Antistrophes to the Rhetoric.” Philosophy andRhetoric vol. 1 no. 3 (1968): 145-64.
Lloyd F. Bitzer, “Aristotle’s Enthymeme Revisited,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 45 (1959): 399-408.
Roman through Medieval Rhetoric
Cicero De Oratore (195-239); selections from De inventione and Topica ;
Quintilian Institutes of Oratory, Bk. II (293-334); St. Augustine (367-415); Boethius Books I & IV De topicis differentiis (Stump translation).
Additional Readings: Dorothy L. Sayers. “The Lost Tools of Learning,” James J. Murphy, “Saint Augustine and the Debate About a Christian Rhetoric,” QJS 46 (1960): 400-10. See also Murphy, 1974 (there’s a lot more to medieval rhetoric than meets the eye, but it’s easy to gloss over because not much new was happening then).
Renaissance and Enlightenment Rhetoric
Ramus (557-75); Bacon (622-68); Vico (711-27); Campbell (746-795); Blair (796- 827). *Philip Melanchthon is a significant figure here, and both the Augsburg Confession and the Book of Concord should be read as a rhetorical endeavor with much at stake.
Additional Readings: “Vico’s Rhetorical Model of the Mind,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 14 (1981): 152-67; Karl Wallace, “Aspects of Modern Rhetoric in Francis Bacon,” QJS 42 (1956): 398-406 and “Francis Bacon on Understanding, Reason and Rhetoric,” Speech Monographs 38 (1971): 79-91; Vincent M. Bevilacqua: “Philosophical Origins of George Campbell’s Philosophy of Rhetoric,” Speech Monographs 32 (1965): 1-12 and “Campbell, Vico, and the Rhetorical Science of Human Nature,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 18 (1985): 23-30.
Nineteenth Century Rhetoricians
Whately (828-58); Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent .
Additional Readings: Walter Jost’s Rhetorical Thought in John Henry Newman.
Jim Tallmon. “Newman’s Contribution to Conceptualizing Rhetorical Reason.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 25 (1995): 197-213.
Twentieth Century Rhetoricians
Introduction to 20th Century Rhetoric (899-923); I. A. Richards (964-988); Kenneth Burke (989-1041).
Additional Readings: Donald C. Bryant. “Rhetoric: Its Functions and Its Scope,” in Maurice Natanson and Henry W. Johnstone, Jr. eds. Philosophy, Rhetoric and Argumentation, (Penn State UP, 1965): 32-62.
Twentieth Century Rhetoricians II
Richard M. Weaver (1042-54); selections from Ideas Have Consequences; Foreward, Preface & Chpts. 1, 4 & 8 from Visions of Order.
Chaim Perelman (1066-1103)
Additional Readings: Foss, Foss & Trapp.