McKenna – Adam Smith: The Rhetoric of Propriety

McKenna, Stephen.  Adam Smith:  The Rhetoric of Propriety.  Carbondale: SIU Press, 2005.  Print. M. argues in this work that when Smith’s Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres is read in connection with his other work and in the context of the time in which Smith was writing, there is a unique contribution to the study of rhetoric . . . Smith offers a new connection between the act of communication and the field/practice of ethics. Chapter... Read More

Harrington – A Modern Approach to Invention

Harrington, Elbert. “A Modern Approach to Invention.” Quarterly Journal of Speech XLIII December (1962): 373-78. Print. A lovely quote starts this article out:  “Seldom is an idea new; the time always is” (373). H. notes that often teachers of rhetoric (during the time when this was written) refuse to accept responsibility for the teaching of invention as they believed their duty was to emphasize the stylistic ornamentation... Read More

Cicero – De Oratore – Book I

Cicero – De Oratore Book I: The question of ‘When does rhetoric operate at it’s “highest” is directly engaged by C. at the beginning of this dialogue – He is writing a treatise on oratory and rhetoric at a time of intense political strife just before the dawn of Empire. C. notes that it is interesting that despite the fact that rhetoric is by classical definition a public art, there is little proof of remarkable orators through the ages... Read More

Berlin – The Transformation of Invention in 19th Century American Rhetoric

Berlin, James A. “The Transformation of Invention in Nineteenth Century American Rhetoric.”  Southern Speech Communication Journal 46 (1981):  292-304. 11 In this piece Berlin traces how the disappearance of invention as discovery occurred in the 19th century because of the “supremacy” of Campbell, Blair, and Whately in rhetorical theories of the 18th century.  In these three thinkers he identifies ideas that were compatible with... Read More

Rhetorica ad Herennium

Pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herenium (paginations are from the Harry Caplan/Harvard UP edition 1964). The text dates from sometime in the 90s BCE.  The piece is one of the first to explain a Latin system of style; further, it was also responsible for the codification of argument into a standard format consisting of exordium (like the ‘hook’ – this section of the argument grabs the writers attention and connects them to a specific topic),... Read More