Jeffrey Walker

This course will examine the classical rhetorical tradition, with an eye to its contemporary uses. The first half of the course will focus on classical (ancient) rhetoric per se, while the second half will rapidly overview (some of) its post-classical iterations and modifications — e.g., in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modernist eras — depending in part on student interests and projects. Within the general overview, possible foci will include: relations between rhetoric and poetics; rhetoric and technology (orality/literacy, etc.); the rhetorical paideia (rhetorical pedagogy and the liberal arts); rhetoric, politics, and practical wisdom (phronêsis); rhetoric, philosophy, and the “regime of Truth”; rhetoric and/as critical hermeneutics.

Primary readings in classical rhetoric are likely to include: the fragments of the early sophists; Isocrates; Plato (Gorgias, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Ion); Aristotle (Rhetoric, Poetics); Cicero (De Oratore); Quintilian; Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Hermogenes; Longinus On the Sublime; Augustine (De Doctrina Christiana); and rhetorical “handbooks” (technai; artes). Readings from later periods may include selections and extracts from Medieval and Renaisssance artes, Erasmus (De Copia), Sidney (Apology for Poetry); Neoclassical and Romantic “lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres”; Nietszche; and such modernist figures as I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke,  and Chaim Perelman. Recommended secondary readings will include general histories of rhetoric and rhetorical education (e.g., Kennedy, Conley, Bizzell/Herzberg), as well as studies of particular periods and/or figures (e.g., Schiappa, Pernot, Marrou, Cribiore, Murphy, Lanham, Sloane); an extended bibliography will be provided.

Requirements probably will include: several brief oral presentations (discussion openers, reports); a conference-paper-length oral presentation on the student’s chosen research/writing project; and an expanded (up to article-length) seminar paper on that project.

E387R: CLASSICAL RHETORIC (THROUGH THE CENTURIES)

Particular topics may vary, but in general this course will examine the classical rhetorical tradition with an eye to its contemporary uses. The first half of the course will focus on classical (ancient) rhetoric per se, while the second half will rapidly overview (some of) its post-classical iterations and modifications — e.g., in the Middle Ages, Renaissance, Enlightenment, and Modernist eras — depending in part on student interests and projects. Within the general overview, possible foci will include: relations between rhetoric and poetics; rhetoric and technology (orality/literacy, etc.); the rhetorical paideia (rhetorical pedagogy and the liberal arts); rhetoric, politics, and practical wisdom (phronêsis); rhetoric, philosophy, and the “regime of Truth”; rhetoric and/as critical hermeneutics.

Primary readings in classical rhetoric are likely to include: the fragments of the early sophists; Isocrates; Plato (Gorgias, Phaedrus, Protagoras, Ion); Aristotle (Rhetoric, Poetics); Cicero (De Oratore); Quintilian; Dionysius of Halicarnassus; Hermogenes; Longinus On the Sublime; Augustine (De Doctrina Christiana); and rhetorical “handbooks” (technai; artes). Readings from later periods may include selections and extracts from Medieval and Renaisssance artes, Erasmus (De Copia), Sidney (Apology for Poetry); Neoclassical and Romantic “lectures on rhetoric and belles lettres”; Nietszche; and such modernist figures as I.A. Richards, Kenneth Burke,  Chaim Perelman, and Wayne Booth. Recommended secondary readings will include general histories of rhetoric and rhetorical education (e.g., Kennedy, Conley, Bizzell/Herzberg), as well as studies of particular periods and/or figures (e.g., Schiappa, Pernot, Marrou, Cribiore, Murphy, Lanham, Sloane); an extended bibliography will be provided.

Requirements will include: several brief oral presentations (discussion openers, reports); a conference-paper-length oral presentation on the student’s chosen research/writing project; and an expanded (up to article-length) seminar paper on that project.

See attachment.