1st Edition
Reengaging the Prospects of Rhetoric Current Conversations and Contemporary Challenges
Reengaging the Prospects of Rhetoric reanimates the debate over the function and scope of rhetoric. Providing a contemporary response to the volume The Prospect of Rhetoric (1971), this volume reconceptualizes that classic work to address the challenges facing the study of rhetoric today.
With contributions from today’s leading rhetorical scholars, Reengaging tje Prospects of Rhetoric offers "response" essays to each chapter of the original work. Each scholar uses his/her essay as a forum in which to address three questions:
- As a historical document, why is this essay important?
- In terms of contemporary theory and/or practice, what is the significance of the essay?
- How can the issues raised therein be profitably addressed in the future?
These provocative engagements suggest that, while the study of rhetoric has gained much ground in the intervening decades, there is more work to be done to reestablish the primacy of rhetoric in contemporary society.
This volume provides students and scholars of rhetoric with a strong foundation in the issues that have shaped contemporary rhetorical theory and criticism. It offers them an accessible introduction to the challenges facing future iterations of rhetorical theory and criticism. As a standalone text or a supplemental resource for undergraduate and graduate courses in the history, theory, and criticism of rhetoric or contemporary rhetorical theory, it will help to shape rhetoric’s future role in communication studies and will foster interdisciplinary dialogues about the topic.
PROLOGUE: THE PROSPECT AS PROSPECTUS by Thomas O. Sloane
CHAPTER 1: KARL WALLACE: BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE; A Response to Karl Wallace’s "The Fundamentals of Rhetoric" by Stephen Howard Browne
CHAPTER 2: PROSPECTS OF RHETORIC FOR THE 21ST CENTURY: EVENTAL RHETORIC; A Response to Samuel L. Becker’s "Rhetorical Studies for the Contemporary World" by Barbara A. Biesecker
CHAPTER 3: REVISITING RICHARD MCKEON’S ARCHITECTONIC RHETORIC; A Response to Richard McKeon’s "The Uses of Rhetoric in a Technological Age: Architectonic Productive Arts" by David Depew
CHAPTER 4: OUR PREMATURE BURIAL; A Response to Lawrence W. Rosenfield’s "An Autopsy of the Rhetorical Tradition" by Robert S. Iltis
CHAPTER 5: THE PROSPECTS FOR PHILOSOPHICAL RHETORIC; A Response to Henry Johnstone’s "Some Trends in Rhetorical Theory" by Steve Fuller
CHAPTER 6: A POLEMICAL EXCURSION THROUGH "THE SCOPE OF RHETORIC TODAY"; A Response to Wayne Booth’s "The Scope of Rhetoric Today: A Polemical Excursion" by Paul Kameen
CHAPTER 7: CHAIM PERELMAN’S PROLEGOMENON TO A NEW RHETORIC: HOW SHOULD WE FEEL? A Response to Chaim Perelman’s "The New Rhetoric" by Celeste Michelle Condit
CHAPTER 8: A CULTURAL SOCIOLOGY OF RHETORIC: HUGH DUNCAN’S FORGOTTEN CORPUS; A Response to Hugh Dalziel Duncan’s "The Need for Clarification in Social Models of Rhetoric" by Peter Simonson
CHAPTER 9: RHETORIC AND THE THIRD CULTURE: SCIENTISTS AND ARGUERS AND CRITICS; A Response to Wayne Brockriede’s"Trends in the Study of Rhetoric: Towards a Blending of Criticism and Science" by John Lyne
CHAPTER 10: ‘THE CULT OF UNINTELLIGIBILITY’: CONTINUED QUERIES ABOUT THE NATURE OF OUR DISCOURSE(S); A Response to Barnet Baskerville’s "Responses, Queries, and A Few Caveats" by Mark J. Porrovecchio
CHAPTER 11: READING THE PAST INTO THE FUTURE: CHANGING DISCIPLINARY IDENTITIES IN RHETORICAL STUDIES; A Response to Edward P. J. Corbett’s "Rhetoric in Search of a Past, Present, and Future" by Steven Mailloux
EPILOGUE: THE PROSPECTS OF RHETORIC AND THE PROSPECTS FOR RHETORIC by Herbert W. Simons
Biography
Mark J. Porrovecchio (Ph.D., University of Pittsburgh) is Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Director of Forensics in the Department of Speech Communication at Oregon State University. His work has appeared in the American Communication Journal, Journal of the Northwest Communication Association, Rhetoric Society Quarterly, and Philosophy in Review/Comptes Rendus Philosophiques, among others.
True to its title, the 2010 Reengaging the Prospects of Rhetoric is one of the more engaging works that I hav eread for some time. The essays of this well-edited volume are indeed replies to the pioneering authors of the 1971 The Prospect of Rhetoric.
-- Theresa Enos, Rhetoric Review, Vol. 29
