The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies

One of the most remarkable trends in modern scholarship in the humanities has been the resurgence of interest in the history, theory, and practice of rhetoric. On the one hand, modern methods of textual and historical analysis-from feminism and semiotics to historicism and psychoanalysis-have revita [...]
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One of the most remarkable trends in modern scholarship in the humanities has been the resurgence of interest in the history, theory, and practice of rhetoric. On the one hand, modern methods of textual and historical analysis-from feminism and semiotics to historicism and psychoanalysis-have revitalized the study of ancient Greek and Roman rhetoric, producing radically new readings of canonical texts and, more generally, of the rhetorical tradition itself and the immense history of its imperium as a cultural institution. And yet, despite the revival and reinvention of rhetoric underway today there are few edited collections on the market that offer scholars and graduate students an authoritative, engaging, and comprehensive overview of the theory and practice of rhetoric across the disciplines from antiquity to the twentieth century. In terms of topical arrangement, many competing handbooks and companions tend to lack thematic and conceptual unity and for this reason are difficult to use in graduate seminars. By comparison, this will be organized around established fields of study at the core of humanities curricula in universities across Europe and North America. Moreover, this topical coverage is systematic (within reason) since the Handbook offers chapters on the same topic in each period of the history of rhetoric; in other words, there are chapters devoted to poetics, politics, philosophy, etc. in the sections on Greek rhetoric, Roman rhetoric, medieval rhetoric, Renaissance rhetoric, Enlightenment rhetoric, and modern rhetoric. For this reason the Handbook will complement the many anthologies of primary texts on the market that trace the evolution of rhetoric across historical epochs.