The mere meaning of the term ‘rhetoric’ is debatable, and the field of study to which it belongs – if not an art in its own right – has been contested from antiquity. In the introduction G. openly acknowledges this persistent debate as he surveys notions of rhetoric from Aristotle, Quintilian, Kant and Nietzsche. The debate is still not over as the motley approaches in this collection make evident.
After G.'s lively and extensive introduction, the arrangement of chapters is primarily diachronic, ranging from violence and speech in Homer to the Medieval and Renaissance reception of ancient rhetoric. The studies are divided into four sections: ‘An Archaeology of Rhetoric’; ‘The Field of Language’; ‘The Practice of Rhetoric’; and ‘Epilogues’. A fifth section provides appendices.
The first section looks to the emergence of rhetoric. It returns to the origins of the art of persuasion in Worman's chapter on verbal violence in archaic poetry and then considers its confrontational relationship with philosophy in the offering by Wardy. Heath's essay, the best of the bunch, is the capstone and succinctly leads the reader through the development of systematised rhetoric and looks at major rhetorical treatises from the Rhet. Alex. to Quintilian with compelling critiques along the way. In the end, he emphasises the practical pedagogical purpose of rhetorical handbooks and the paramount role it played in the organisational structure of these works.
Steel's chapter on the divisions of speech (perhaps better titled ‘The Divisions of Rhetoric’) ushers in the second section and shares much with the preceding chapter by Heath. She begins with a tantalising assertion that ‘by concentrating on areas of particular contestation, we can see how the increasing subdivision of rhetorical theory marks out areas of authority and anxiety in the practice of oratory’. The chapter falls short of meeting this challenge but it does offer a fairly straightforward discussion of invention, arrangement, memory, delivery and style and how these topics are handled (or omitted) by various rhetoricians. Heath and Steel both speak about the codifications of rhetoric and frequently reproduce each other's material (in subsequent chapters the editor is loath to cite one without the other). Both essays could have benefited from considering the ways in which published speeches also engaged with and directly challenged systematised rhetoric, but overall these two chapters are clearly written and accessible. Students new to the history of rhetoric will find the pairing helpful. G., as the editor, makes sure to connect his article to many of the others in volume. His piece explores how Quintilian's massive tome on rhetorical theory creates a compelling discourse through exemplifying the precepts it preaches. G.'s background in performative speech, gender theory and sociology comes to bear as he analyses the power of rhetorical education in the fashioning of Romanitas. His suggested reading section neatly pairs ancient with modern sources. I also enjoyed the informed socio-cultural approach of Connolly's chapter on rhetorical education and symbolic violence. Starting from Isocrates, she deftly handles ancient sources from Plato, Cicero, Quintilian and Seneca with theories from Bordieu, Althusser and Butler. She typifies a growing, fruitful approach to ancient rhetoric.
The third section begins with Hesk's article on Aristotle's three types of rhetoric. While a helpful summary of deliberative, forensic and epideictic rhetoric, it is a cautionary example of the shortcomings of mapping any individual speech onto rhetorical categories. Rosenbloom and Wohl both explore similar topics in Athenian rhetoric and society. Rosenbloom takes a persuasive look at the way Athenian comedy and tragedy critically portray rhetoric and democratic speech regimes (though he goes too far in gesturing to a rhetoric isolated from education and cultural capital). Wohl begins her essay from some of the same sources as Rosenbloom but takes a different tack altogether. Her argument that a critique of rhetoric can expose ‘the underlying syntax of the city's democratic ideology’ is deeply rooted in sociological theories of language – a credible approach that suggests more can be done here. The chapters by Dugan and Batstone, on the other hand, focus on Roman rhetoric and literature. Dugan's contribution makes explicit the ways in which the notion of the res publica was constantly defined and redefined in political discourse; students of Cicero will find it useful. Batstone's article is more a series of observations about rhetoric (broadly defined) and persona. His analysis of legal argument in Plautus has merit, but he does not cite relevant secondary sources (e.g. he almost summarises Geffcken on the Pro Caelio without any mention of her). The final chapter in this section is Goldhill's excellent ‘Rhetoric and the Second Sophistic’. After a short introduction to the period and its educational system, he discusses the importance of language, rhetoric and rhetorical education for self-fashioning and cultural ascendency through three case studies from Lucian, Achilles Tatius and Dio Chrysostom.
The final section is brief. The first two essays focus on the reception of classical rhetoric in Christianity and medieval Europe. Penner and Vander Stichele explore the development of Christian rhetorical discourse with good observations on the ability of rhetoric to broaden or re-define social groups on the one hand and to reinforce conservative social norms on the other. The background of the authors and the paper's intended audience are obvious in the terms left undefined (e.g. ‘scripturization’) or in the classical terms defined more loosely than I would prefer (e.g. exemplum and auctoritas), but the essay adopts an intriguing socio-cultural perspective. Mack presents a sober survey of the adoption, adaptation and change of classical rhetoric in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Europe with some case studies. The third essay is Henderson's retrospective on the volume, in which he comments on the companion's overall structure and aims in his well-known, idiosyncratic style.
I am generally sceptical of the value of these companions and their proliferation. The non-specialist audience that these productions purport to serve is often nebulous. In particular here, some articles target the student newly exposed to rhetoric; others could be stand-alone articles in their own right while others still seem to fall between the cracks. That being said, there are some good contributions. On the whole, it offers the reader not so much an overview of ancient rhetoric as of the varied approaches that modern scholarship is bringing to its study. The more conservative, straightforward articles (and especially the two appendixes on rhetorical terms and prominent individuals) will aid the undergraduate confronting ancient rhetoric for the first time. Accordingly, the writing is refreshingly jargon-free and when uncertain terminology appears, most of the authors explain it fully. For the more innovative approaches to rhetoric in this volume, however, the reader would be well-served by a passing familiarity with some of the sociological and cultural theories prevalent in modern literary theory: chiefly those of Bordieu, Foucault, Žižek and Butler. Some authors explicitly draw attention to such interpretative frameworks, but for others its unnamed presence hides just below the surface. As G. rightly notes in the introduction, a book on ancient rhetoric will inevitably ‘take on the characteristics of an introduction to ancient society in general’. The best chapters are those with this strong socio-cultural element. As with many compendia the quality is not consistent. If these essays are intended to offer a launching point for students, it is particularly frustrating when contributors do not cite their sources or situate their observations within current scholarship. For those that do provide citations, footnotes for those secondary sources are vague at times; the pertinent passages from edited or lengthy volumes could often be more neatly identified. Also, the editor could have more closely harmonised terminology, for example stasis theory vs status theory. Nevertheless, it is a welcome contribution to classical scholarship for students and those interested in the contemporary (yet wide-ranging) approaches to the study of ancient rhetoric.
