During the past fifty years, utopian studies solidified a functional definition of utopia in the Marxist tradition, which has encouraged a broad focus on social process rather than on content. In the liberal-humanist tradition, however, utopia is often treated as strictly a matter of form and content, particularly genre. I argue that the key to a functional definition of utopia in the liberal-humanist tradition is the Western tradition of rhetoric. Since its beginnings in ancient culture, rhetoric has been concerned with (...) verbal or symbolic persuasion using values and ideals of the audience. I explain how the utopian impulse is inherent in rhetorical theory from ancient to modern times, including examples from Plato, Cicero, eighteenth-century rhetoricians Hugh Blair and George Campbell, and modern rhetorician Kenneth Burke. I give a rhetorical reading of Mannheim and Bloch and suggest other areas of cross-pollination between rhetoric and utopian studies. (shrink)