Hawk – A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity

Hawk – A Counter-History of Composition: Toward Methodologies of Complexity Introduction: From Vitalism to Complexity Hawk claims that compositionists consider the term vitalism as an “anything goes” approach to writing and thinking, as an “ahistorical category that subsumes multiple divergent practices, and as an assumed negative counterpart to preferred rhetorical practices that establishes a binary between rhetoric and poetics” (3). ... Read More

Leff – The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius

Leff, Michael C. “The Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to Boethius.” Rhetorica 1 1 (1983): 23-44. Print. 21 L. provides a nice definition of topoi at the beginning of this piece: “rhetoricians must draw their starting points from accepted beliefs and values relative to the audience and the subject of discourse.  When these beliefs and values are considered at a high level of generality, they become... Read More

Miller – The Aristotelian Topos: Hunting for Novelty

Miller, Carolyn.  “The Aristotelian Topos: Hunting for Novelty.” Rereading Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Ed. Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000. 130–146 In this essay Miller extends the work of Richard McKeon on the Aristotelian topoi.  Her main contention is that the topoi could have a generative function instead of a merely “managerial” role in the creation of argument.  To make this... Read More

Tindale – Reason’s Dark Champions: Constructive Strategies of Sophistic Argument

Tindale, Christopher.  Reason’s Dark Champions: Constructive Strategies of Sophistic Argument.  South Carolina UP: Columbia.  2010. Part I: Sophistic Argument and the Early Tradition Introduction:  At its heart, T.’s work recognizes that the sophists were engaged in a range of argumentative practices.  These practices operated in ways that were far different than the ways Aristotle and Plato understood and employed reason.  By considering... Read More

Quendahl – Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Reinterpreting Invention

Quendahl, Ellen. “Aristotle’s Rhetoric;  Reinterpreting Invention.” Rhetoric Review 4.2 (Jan. 1986). Quendahl makes the claim early on in this piece that we must read the Rhetoric against the grain, dismissing the tradition of philosophy that has marginalized it into a philosophy of logic of argument or taxonomies of discourse; further, we must resist also reading Rhetoric as divorced from questions of language and style.  To ensure this sort... Read More