JAC Volume 4

Many writing instructors, even those who do not consider themselves composition specialists, wish to acquire at least a rudimentary understanding of rhetoric. If you fall into this camp, you will welcome the publication of The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric as a significant addition to the scholarly apparatus it surveys. This is a companion volume to Historical Rhetoric: Annotated Bibliographies (G. K. Hall, 1980), which Professor Homer also edited, and some of her former contributors reappear. The present collection offers six bibliographical essays, most by formidable scholars: Richard Leo Enos on the classical period, James J. Murphy on the Middle Ages, Don Paul Abbott on the Renaissance, Professor Horner on the eighteenth century, Donald C. Steward on the nineteenth, and James L. Kinneavy on the twentieth. Like the earlier volume, this one concentrates on materials available to the English reader. Each essay surveys both primary and secondary materials, suggests directions for future research, and concludes with a bibliography, chiefly of works cited. Most of the essays are informative enough to double as brief introductions to the rhetoric of their periods. The volume as a whole is indexed by primary authors and titles and by secondary authors.

As you might expect, the scholarship in classical rhetoric is vast. Fortunately, thanks in part to the interest generated in the sixties by the publication of George Kennedy’s The Art of Persuasion in Greece and Edward P. J. Corbett’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modem Student, a good portion of this scholarship—good both in quantity and quality—is in English. Richard Leo Enos offers a concise and thoughtful overview not only of the most useful editions and English translations but also of the most valuable reference sources and commentaries.

Under Primary Works he treats the major figures such as Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero and many minor ones as well. Under Secondary Works he covers previous literature reviews, reference works and bibliographies, historical studies, and works devoted to specialized concepts and specific rhetoricians. A few recent works are of special particular value to non-specialists. A good annotated bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, compiled by Enos himself, appears in Historical Rhetoric. Three volumes by George Kennedy—The Art of Persuasion in Greece (1963), The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (1972), and Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modem Times (l980)—constitute the standard history. Given the introductory nature of the volume, Enos might have included an annotated list of journals which regularly publish articles on classical rhetoric, but this omission is his essay’s only shortcoming.

Since interest in medieval rhetoric has revived largely because of the efforts of James J. Murphy over the last dozen years or so, it’s not surprising that his essay here is impeccable. The chief difficulty facing scholars in this period is the unavailability of primary texts. Although two collections of translations appeared early in the seventies, Murphy notes that “fewer than a dozen of the three-hundred-odd known treatises [on preaching] are available in English” and only one letter-writing manual—of about four hundred known—has been translated into English. Secondary material is in better shape. There is a standard history, Murphys own Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance (1974), and two good bibliographies have appeared, Murphy’s Medieval Rhetoric: A Select Bibliography (1971) and that by Luke Reinsma in Historical Rhetoric. The latter is probably more useful to newcomers to the field.

As Don Paul Abbott shows, the study of Renaissance rhetoric is in much the same state as that of medieval: interest has been renewed but much remains to be done, beginning with textual work. Although several facsimile collections exist, we need modern critical editions of the great majority of English Renaissance rhetorics and English translations of non-English works. The latter are particularly needed, according to Abbott, so that the influence of the northern European humanists can be evaluated and balanced against that of Ramus. The relationships of rhetoric to various institutions, such as education, law, and politics, also need further investigation. The standard history here, though Abbott faults it for slighting literary rhetoric, is Wilbur S. Howell’s Logic and Rhetoric in England, 1500-1700 (1956). James J. Murphy’s Renaissance Rhetoric: A Short Title Catalogue of Works on Rhetorical Theory from the Beginning of Printing to A. D. 1700 offers a “Select Basic Bibliography of Secondary Works on Renaissance Rhetoric” (1981) which can be supplemented by Charles L. Stanford’s annotated bibliography in Historical Rhetoric.

Even those who don’t wish to pursue the history of rhetoric back to classical or neo-classical antecedents may take an interest in eighteenth-century rhetorical theory, for many features of current writing pedagogy can be traced directly to the work of rhetoricians such as Hugh Blair and George Campbell. Moreover, one of the major strands of eighteenth century rhetoric, the belletristic, shifted the focus of rhetorical theory from the writer to the reader and so led to the evolution of rhetoric into literary criticism. Opportunities for original contributions are many. The study of eighteenth-century rhetoric has been hampered less by the unavailability of primary works than by simple lack of scholarly activity: Horner notes that “almost all of the work on eighteenth-century rhetoric was done in speech departments in the late 1960’s.” A good place to begin study is Wilbur S. Howell’s Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric (1971), which describes and analyzes in great detail most of the major works of the period. Professor Horner offers an annotated bibliography of both primary and secondary materials in Historical Rhetoric.

Perhaps no period of rhetoric has been more poorly served by scholars than has the nineteenth century: Donald C. Steward complains “that the most notable feature of scholarship in nineteenth-century rhetoric is its relative absence” and notes that although a few important works have had modern editions, "primary materials are scattered and in generally poor shape." No one has written a history of nineteenth century rhetoric, but Steward does a good job here of tracing its various strands: the lingering classical tradition, the elocutionary movement, the “psychological-epistemological” rhetoric of Richard Whately, belletristic rhetoric, and practical rhetoric. The last strand, exemplified by the work of Alexander Bain, is of particular interest today because it led to the “current-traditional” rhetoric which until very recently dominated writing pedagogy in America. An annotated bibliography of both primary and secondary sources, also by Professor Steward, appears in Historical Rhetoric.

I suppose that the typical writing instructor will be most interested in this volume’s final chapter, James L. Kinneavy’s survey of twentieth-century rhetoric. Many disciplines now study rhetorical concerns, and Professor Kinneavy displays extra-ordinary erudition in his attempt to pull together all the lines of investigation. Still, he is forced to be highly selective, and the list of “very legitimate areas of rhetoric” that he decided to omit from consideration is extensive enough to make you pause: “marketing, managerial rhetoric, discussion and debating techniques, interviewing, oral interpretation, film and radio and television products (as such), literary theory and criticism, linguistics, general semantics and modern linguistic semantics, narrative theory, theory of description, axiology, logic, and the philosophy of science . . . . entire areas of modern psychology, such as learning theory and cognitive science . . ..  But the list of topics he does cover remains impressive, ranging from “Communication Theory, Hermeneutics, and Pragmatics” to “Propaganda, Political Rhetoric, and Commercial Advertising” to “Rhetorical Criticism” to “Rhetoric and the Teaching of Composition.” It’s disheartening to consider how little English departments have contributed to the “unmanageable mountains” of material Kinneavy sifts through, and the chief value of his essay may lie in widening the writing instructor’s notion of the scope and nature of modern rhetoric. Although readily available, both primary and secondary material in twentieth-century rhetoric is widely dispersed, conceptually as well as geographically, and there is neither a standard history nor a comprehensive bibliography (Historical Rhetoric offers bibliographies only through the nineteenth century). However, a number of indices make it possible at least to keep track of rhetorical materials: chief among these are the Index to Journals in Communication Studies Through 1979, edited by Ronald J. Matlon; the monthly Current Index to Journals in Education; the Arts and Humanities Citation Index; and the Social Sciences Citation Index.

The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric is a important book to know about, and it’s one of the few tools overlooked by Patrick Scott and Bruce Castner’s “Reference Sources for Composition Research: A Practical Survey,” College English 45 (1983):756-768. Have your library purchase this volume or order a copy for yourself. It belongs on your shelf beside Tate and Corbett’s Teaching Composition: 10 Bibliographical Essays.