Lois Agnew – “The Classical Period” from The Present State of Scholarship in the History of Rhetoric: A 21^st Century Guide eds. Gaillet and Horner

Agnew’s essay highlights the revisionary turn in the histories of rhetoric that have occurred since the previous edition of The Present State of Scholarship (1988) as well as the other major pieces written in the interim between the second edition and the third edition (2010).  In the way of sophistic Greek rhetoric, recent trends in scholarship indicate an increased interest in the life and teachings of Isocrates.  Intimately concerned with the rhetorical education necessary to respond to civic matters in a democratic society, Isocrates’ pedagogy questions and disrupts the typical Platonic dismissals of sophistic – and especially Gorgianic – rhetoric as self-gratifying and inward-looking.  For Roman rhetoric, recent reissues and retranslations of Cicero, Quintilian, and the unknown author of the Rhetorica ad Herennium highlight a reinvigorated interest in the civic duties of rhetorical citizenship in antiquity.

Recent Trends

Historiography – Rewriting the histories of rhetoric has been one area of concentration for authors involved in the study of ancient rhetorical texts.  Usually deployed to disrupt traditional readings of Greek rhetoricians, the new historiographical texts typically reconsider Aristotelianism, explore and disrupt binary-bound logics, and insert new figures into the rhetorical tradition (like Anaximenes, Aristides, Cornelia, and Philodemus).  All of these new historiographical texts ask readers to consider ancient rhetoric “not as a body of canonical texts, but as a rich array of rhetorical practices and contexts that provide opportunities for creative scholarship” (12).

Women and Classical Rhetoric – Many texts in the field have emphasized the need to reconsider ancient rhetorical historiography in order to reconsider (and consider!) the position of women in rhetoric’s history.  These texts demonstrate that rhetoric isn’t merely agonistic and public; rather, by reconsidering women in context, through the words of men (creating a new interpretation), and as represented in art and cultural artifacts, new pictures of women’s rhetorical practices can be constructed.  Aspasia and Diotima have garnered the most attention; however, Roman women have also been the focus of some study (Cape 1997).  There are some serious questions about methodologies of historical interpretation in this kind of historiography as very little evidence / artifacts still exist from these women rhetors.

Sophistic Rhetoric – The age of beginning with Plato and ending with Aristotle when considering Greek rhetoric is over.  Many studies in the period analyzed argue for a reconfiguration of the ancient Greek rhetorical tradition to accommodate the sophists as central figures.  Work with the sophists has highlighted their role as the first pragmatists (Mailloux 1995), and the precursors to multiple strands of the contemporary rhetorical tradition.  Much of the scholarship surrounding sophistic rhetoric highlights the tensions and questions surrounding “evidence, interpretation, and historiography” also prominent in work on feminist historiography (15).

Ancient Rhetorics beyond the West – The European universalism characteristic of English-speaking academic work has been challenged in recent scholarship on the rhetorical tradition considered from a non-western perspective.  Much of the work exploring ancient non-western rhetorics shares many of the anxieties surrounding ancient feminist and sophistic rhetoric in that evidence is often scant; however, the broadening of the perspective must be a good thing.

Revisiting the Canon / Embodiment – Much canonical revision hasn’t changed the ancient texts so much as emphasizing nuance and complexity within.  Some scholarship has explored Greek rhetoric not so much as static and transmittable, but dynamic, fundamentally civic, and “capacity” creating – a rhetoric of doing.  This dynamism comes to the fore when considering ancient rhetoric not merely as progymnasmata or heuristical but actually subject to the perfomative, embodied, and material constraints of its instantiation.  This sort of work revises the civic notions of rhetoric and instead offers an alternative history wherein rhetoric functions as cultural identity making via epideictic discursive creations.

Classical Rhetoric and Pedagogy – As Agnew notes, the “awareness of material circumstances that surround rhetoric contributes to a sense of rhetoric as practiced and taught” (23).  This naturally connects to contemporary conversations about classrooms and the pressures of first-year writing courses.  Many of these studies argue for a reinsertion of classical rhetorical theory – and especially the cannons – in order to more justly, civically, ethically conduct composition pedagogy.

Agnew closes by noting that future scholarship in the field will likely continue to expand work on women in antiquity and the contributions of ancient global rhetorics.  Additionally, the quest to find more primary documents and the need to conduct interdisciplinary scholarship will likely characterize future work in the field.