Rhetoric thoroughly infused the world and literature of Graeco-Roman antiquity. This Companion provides a comprehensive overview of rhetorical theory and practice in that world, from Homer to early Christianity, accessible to students and non-specialists, whether within classics or from other periods and disciplines. Its basic premise is that rhetoric is less a discrete object to be grasped and mastered than a hotly contested set of practices that include disputes over the very definition of rhetoric itself. Standard treatments (...) of ancient oratory tend to take it too much in its own terms and to isolate it unduly from other social and cultural concerns. This volume provides an overview of the shape and scope of the problems while also identifying core themes and propositions: for example, persuasion, virtue, and public life are virtual constants. But they mix and mingle differently, and the contents designated by each of these terms can also shift. (shrink)

As we so often trip about and lose our breath over speaking precisely to "what is rhetoric?," it should come to no surprise that being asked what we want of rhetoric, of language, of an other moves us to fidget, even brings us to blush. But if we pause with these questions, lips parted without yet the words to answer, we may notice a peculiar craving that churns before the naming. We want of rhetoric—but what? We are (...) compelled toward rhetoric—whereto? We seek in rhetoric—for? If this desire, what Hannah Arendt calls an appetite for love for its own sake, refers to the will to "have and to hold," our love in/for/through rhetoric always seems to slip from capture. So much so that after a whirl of... (shrink)

Michele Kennerly's ambitious book sends a gust of fresh air through the field of ancient rhetoric. But that figure doesn't really suit her metaphorics—such a central aspect of the project. To hone in on these, we need to come down to earth—to the material substance of wax tablets and papyrus book rolls, and the bodies of text produced on them. Editorial Bodies is a study of the ways ancient Greek and Roman poets and orators engaged in working (...) on and over texts in a process of "recursive composing" with consequences exceeding any narrow considerations of grammatical niceties. As Kennerly explains at the outset through a careful etymological introduction, our English word... (shrink)

Michele Kennerly's ambitious book sends a gust of fresh air through the field of ancient rhetoric. But that figure doesn't really suit her metaphorics—such a central aspect of the project. To hone in on these, we need to come down to earth—to the material substance of wax tablets and papyrus book rolls, and the bodies of text produced on them. Editorial Bodies is a study of the ways ancient Greek and Roman poets and orators engaged in working (...) on and over texts in a process of "recursive composing" with consequences exceeding any narrow considerations of grammatical niceties. As Kennerly explains at the outset through a careful etymological introduction, our English word... (shrink)

The concepts of issue and status are more different than is currently assumed. Apart from differences between the classifications of statements they are related to, there are differences between their definitions. The respective functions of pleadings and of inventio account for most of these differences.

The present paper examines three parts of ancient school rhetoric: the issues, the topics, and the questions of style from the perspective of legal semiotics. It aims (1) to demonstrate the roles these have played and can play in the interpretation of legal discourses; and (2) to summarise what insights have been and can be gained from this classical tradition by contemporary legal research. It is argued that the promise of legal semiotics for rhetorical investigations is that it (...) may help to make sense of the functioning of the system of ancient rhetoric, and contribute to our understanding of how rhetorical tradition works, while the research of ancient rhetoric can explore a range of semiotic devices essential for lawyerly thinking, resulting in the knowledge of a richer framework of interpretation. (shrink)

The present article examines the role of narratives in rhetoric and jurisprudence, trying to understand the ancient system of ‘issues’ (staseis), an essential part of the rhetorical curriculum in antiquity, with the help of some basic notions of legal semiotics. After a brief reconstruction of the doctrine, I argue that narratives are essential to classical rhetoric, that the basic types of issues correspond to particular stories in and of the trial, and finally that the system of (...) class='Hi'>ancient rhetorical theory is capable of giving an account of the narrativisation of the pragmatics of the trial. Then I turn to a cause célèbre of Roman law, the causa Curiana, trying to show that not only the trial itself but also subsequent (ancient and modern) debates concerning the case were shaped by some grand narratives, and that stories about the trial are likely to return to the court, where they may become part of the story of the trial. (shrink)

Theoretical interest in Perelman's thought is linked, for the main part, to the place he accords to the notion of argumentation, defined in his work in reference to the Greek philosophy, as represented by Plato and Aristotle, in contrast to the assertions of the sophists and rhetors. He separates the notion of demonstration and that of argumentation and supports his position on an analysis of the debates which were common in the sophistic and rhetoric period.It is in different ways (...) that the notion of argumentation comes into the work of Perelman. By taking up again the analysis of justice with the aim of removing the various strata of meaning which had accumulated on it as a result of the reductions of Plato and the dialectical analyses of Aristotle, Perelman showed that the theory of argumentation transcends the domain of right in which it is rooted and ought not be abandoned to lawyers only. Thus, he follows a train of thought to which he accords a certain nobilty in the name of the new rhetoric. This manner of considering the relationship of the moderns to the Greeks leads him to set up the notion of argumentation in his own texts, where it demonstrates a logical retreat which enables him to work back from Aristotle to Plato and from him to the rhetors and sophists, whose discourse is defined on the level of the self-referential.The exemplary character of Perelman's work is on account of this rehabilitation of argumentation in the old rhetoric which will be examined here. (shrink)

Biblical scholars have given diverse explanations for the Lamb of God metaphor in John 1:29 and 1:36. Most scholars are of the opinion that ‘amnos’ refers to the Passover lamb. This explanation is not obvious from the context of the Fourth Gospel. To understand the metaphor ‘lamb’ or ‘amnos’ of God, one should understand the transferable meaning of the figure or image. In this comparison, only the vehicle, namely the lamb, is given. What and who the lamb is stays open. (...) It can be anything within the limits of the other story elements that have the same qualities as a lamb. To uncover the communicative dynamics of the metaphor, the exegete must have insight into the meaning and function of the original metaphor. Rhetoric provides a clue for the interpretation of the metaphor, namely that it is a Lamb of God. Within the pericope other rhetorical clues like antithesis and varietas are also provided. These clues are important but do not explain the image of the lamb. In this study, these problems will be considered via another medium, namely Hellenistic art and imagesand their penetration into Judaism and Christianity during the 1st century CE. Hellenistic and biblical images will be used to give an alternative interpretation of the metaphor of the Lamb of God. (shrink)

Since we are dealing with acts of the imagination and of language which break with the cultural patterns of their particular period, we should think of rhetorics here in terms that are more generic and fate-laden than those associated with humanistic categories.

Cet ouvrage collectif se présente sous la forme de douze articles divisés en cinq parties thématiques. La première contient des contributions s’intéressant aux liens entre le religieux et la loi dans le cadre de la polis-religion. La deuxième est composée de deux articles se penchant sur la notion de rhétorique dans les textes rituels touchant à la magie. Viennent ensuite trois contributions étudiant la performance oratoire en rapport avec la sphère du religieux. La partie suivante envisage q...

In this eloquent book, Kathy Eden challenges commonly accepted conceptions about the history of hermeneutics. Contending that the hermeneutical tradition is not a purely modern German specialty, she argues instead that the historical grounding of modern hermeneutics is in the ancient tradition of rhetoric. Eden demonstrates how the early rhetorical model of reading, called interpretatio scripti by Cicero and his followers, not only has informed a continuous tradition of interpretation from Republican Rome to Reformation Europe but also has (...) forged such enduring hermeneutical principles as meaning, context, and literary economy. (shrink)

Examines the concept of the enthymeme in ancient Greek rhetoric, arguing that it is a technique of storytelling aimed at eliciting from the audience an inference about a narrative.

This dissertation argues that the disjunction between philosophical ontology and the commonsense universe in early Greek thinkers results in a concomitant incommensurability of language and the kosmos. When language and the world no longer stand in a relationship of one-to-one correspondence, the two related problems of unwritability and ineffability arise. ;I trace the linguistic consequences of the separation of the sensible and noetic worlds historically, from early Eleatic thinkers through Plato and neoplatonism . I argue that the tendency of modern (...) scholarship to construct philosophy, rhetoric, and poetry as distinct disciplines is not only historically inaccurate when applied to classical thinkers, but also obscures the unified and interdisciplinary character of the Greek inquiry into the nature of language and the world and the relationship between logos and kosmos. I conclude by examining the doxographical tradition to show that the model of Greek thought that I advocate is the one we find in ancient histories of philosophy and rhetoric. ;Although this dissertation concentrates on the relationship between philosophy and rhetoric in antiquity, it does have consequences for contemporary approaches to both disciplines. If philosophy and rhetoric have their origins in a unified science of logos rather than a war between sophists and philosophers, we no longer can justify our Balkanization of the two disciplines on historical grounds. Poetry, philosophy, and rhetoric all are concerned with language and its relationship with the world, and just as it is not particularly advantageous to divide the world into warring nations, so it is equally unproductive to divide the understanding of logos into warring disciplines. (shrink)