JAC Volume 9

In recent years, prominent philosophers, rhetoricians, and literary critics have reassessed the relevance of classical rhetoric to modem pedagogy, presented competing versions of classical theory, and recast classical rhetoric in postmodern critical theory. Clearly, the time is right for a textbook that takes into account these new understandings and broadened conceptions of classical rhetoric, once defined mainly in terms of the formulaic Ad Herennium. Unfortunately, Professor Homer has decided not to write that book. She does, however, give students her understanding of the relationship between standard classical terms and the standard elements of modem academic writing—an understanding that offers students “a vocabulary for talking about writing,” along with practice, examples, and readings.

The twenty-page “Introduction to Classical Rhetoric” that begins the book presents two major uses for rhetoric in Antiquity: (1) as a demonstration of the “duty of world citizenship,” and (2) as the “road to wealth, power, and influence.” The debate over whether rhetoric is a moral force or a tool of personal ambition continues today, and Homer seems to respect both sides: she says, on the one hand, that “through rhetoric, we must continue to examine moral values and to question right and wrong,” and on the other, that “it was [and is] nothing less than imperative for anyone who aspired to a position of influence to learn . . . the art of rhetoric” (4,2). Thus, Homer’s introduction recalls the discussion begun by Callicles and Socrates in the Gorgias; she asks students to understand that “skill with spoken and written language still brings power” (2), while they consider the different kinds of power that rhetoric can afford.

Throughout the text, Homer introduces potentially unfamiliar terms associated with classical rhetoric (such as Gorgias, hypocrisis, inventio), along with their correct pronunciation. These terms are further defined in a glossary, illustrating Homer’s contention that an “acquaintance with classical rhetoric and the great philosophers who conceived it is part of literacy in its fullest sense” (xi). This association of literacy with the inculcation of a canonical lexicon recalls classical Roman schooling, certainly, and it also enters the current debate about “cultural literacy” on the E.D. Hirsch/Allan Bloom side.

Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition is divided into five parts, corresponding to the canons of Roman rhetoric: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and presentation. The largest section (seven chapters) treats invention and includes an interesting emphasis that will be less apparent to writing students than to teachers who identify invention with exploration and discovery. Homer does not feature invention-as-exploration, as Aristotle does in the Rhetoric, choosing instead the Roman identification of invention with organization or arrangement that we find in the Ad Herennium and the more formulaic works of Cicero. For instance, in the first of two chapters on “Discovering Ideas,” Homer presents “definition” as “the organizing principle of a full-length essay” (89); she presents “classification and division” as “ways of clarifying a subject for a reader” (99), and equates them with partitio, which is—as Homer says elsewhere (11)—also a Roman canon of arrangement. The readings that conclude both chapters on the topics of invention present the topics as the organizing principles of finished discourse. After this substantial attention to invention as arrangement, Homer follows the Ad Herennium by keeping quite brief (about twenty pages) the section explicitly devoted to arrangement

At times, Homer’s attempts to propose correspondences between classical rhetoric and modern writing seem imprecise or forced. For instance, in a chapter in the section on invention, she presents description and narration as modern forms of “inartistic proof,” after explaining that, for Aristotle, artistic proof comes from “outside sources.” Thus, because description and narration record outside events, they are modern species of inartistic proof. It is probably more accurate to define Aristotle’s inartistic proof as evidence unmediated by rhetorical strategy. It follows that description and narration are certainly not inartistic; as Homer says, description is “controlled by the writer’s overall purpose,” with details selected and arranged deliberately.

Rhetoric in the Classical Tradition is a very conservative book, both in its conception of classical rhetoric and its inattention to innovations in composition theory and pedagogy. Professor Homer gives substantial and long­standing advice on narrowed topics, thesis statements, topic sentences, comparison and contrast, cause and effect, and logical fallacies in the chapters on invention; she adapts the seven-part Roman arrangement to the essay in the section on arrangement; and she gives definitions and examples of eleven tropes and six schemes in the section on style. Also, she summarizes library basics in the section on memory (proposing that libraries and data­bases are modem memory banks); and she illustrates standard formats for academic writing in the section on presentation.

In short, Homer’s concentration on Roman technical rhetoric (setting aside less systematic and more philosophical classical rhetorics) corresponds with her focus on the technical elements of college writing—elements whose dominance continues to be questioned by those for whom discourse is an epistemic process rather than an assemblage of relatively fixed parts.