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| Rhetorical QuestionThis book is poorly written: it is unbalanced in its coverage of content, it is so skeletal in style that it is hard to read, most of the anecdotal "context" consists of the usual suspects without any value added. I'm stupefied that a man who has studied elocution, argument, and rhetoric as a whole for his entire professional life, could write such a flat, disjointed, largely mediocre book. Who would possibly consider this to be a passable introduction to the art of oratory?
A whirlwind tour through a vast museum of ideasTheodore Remington's review, above, is spot on. This is a wonderful book, wonderfully written. However, it is not quite what I expected, so let me emphasize a few points. First, this is a HUGE topic. The total absence of rhetoric from contemporary life belies its importance to the ancients and moderns alike. I had expected to learn one system, to which slight refinements and adaptations had accreted over the centuries. Not so. The author outlines five widely-divergent schools of Attic rhetoric alone! And that's just chapter one. Expect a whirlwind tour through a vast museum of ideas. The author speeds through the centuries about 10 pages at a time. While the author is clearly a heavyweight scholar, and this an authoritative text, it is neither a work of original scholarship nor a true 'survey' of the field - it's more like an annotated bibliography. Expect to learn how the thinkers fit together, and where to turn for additional inquiry, but this book does not 'dig in' to substance of rhetoric. With that caveat, this is an excellent and very useful text.
Best Brief Handbook on the SubjectI received my Ph.D. in rhetorical studies a few years ago, and looking back, I wish I had this book when I started!
To say that this is a "Cliff's Notes" of rhetoric in the Western tradition seems a bit glib, but that's essentially what you have, in the very best sense. Conley divides the history of European rhetoric into chapters that are basically chronological, but which focus more on the intellectual development of thought rather than simply filling in slots on a timeline.
Each chapter, while brief, does an impressive job of condensing the major figures, schools of thought, and writings into a handful of pages, with helpful subheadings that make finding and reviewing information easy. Each chapter also closes with a brief but elegant summary of the major developments in rhetoric in the period covered.
The most inventive inclusion in the book are the outlines of major works of rhetoric as a sort of appendix to each chapter. After reading the chapter on classical Greek rhetoric, you get outlines of Plato's "Gorgias" and Aristotle's "On Rhetoric." After reading about rhetoric in the English Renaissance, you might find yourself wondering a bit about what Thomas Wilson's "Arte of Rhetorique" looks like, but don't have the time or inclination to dive headlong into this hefty work. No problem. Conley provides a snappy little outline that lets you see the basic divisions and development of Wilson's work. This feature not only helps summarize longer works, but allows for helpful comparison of the major works of rhetorical thought, particularly in the way they differ in their conceptual frameworks.
Another aspect of the work I appreciate is that it is not simply a dispassionate history. Conley puts his own spin on things at times, arguing for certain ways of understanding connections and differences among the thinkers he covers. Yet, this never gets in the way of the primary goal of presenting a useful summary or rhetoric's history. And when he does argue for certain interpretations, he clearly says how and why his particular take on things might be a bit different than the conventional wisdom.
Lastly, his writing is clear and fluid. Given the breadth of the subject and the small space he takes to cover it (around 300 pages), his prose is dense, but in the best sense. It is never needlessly abstract or reliant on academic jargon. It's highly accessible to any audience that's interested in the subject. Beyond that, he does a nice job of creating a true narrative of the development of rhetoric, including the odd twists and turns, disjunctions, and leaps it sometimes makes. While pointing these out, Conley succeeds in crafting a lucid story in which characters appear and reappear (understandably, Cicero dominates much of the first half of the book, despite the fact that only a short section is devoted explicitly to Roman rhetoric).
I will likely be developing an undergraduate course in rhetoric in the near future, and Conley's book will undoubtedly be the backbone of it. I hope to give my students what I myself didn't have!
Product DescriptionRhetoric in the European Tradition provides a comprehensive, chronological survey of the basic models of rhetoric as they developed from the early Greeks through the twentieth century. Discussing rhetorical theories and practices in the context of the times of political and intellectual crisis that gave rise to them, Thomas M. Conley chooses carefully from a vast pool of rhetorical literature to give voice to those authors who exercised the greatest influence in their own and succeeding generations. This book is valuable as both an introduction for students and a reference and resource for scholars in fields including literature, cultural history, philosophy, and speech and communication studies.
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