What distinguishes the study of rhetoric from other pursuits in the liberal arts? From what realms of human existence and expression, of human history, does such study draw its defining character? What, in the end, should be the purposes of rhetorical inquiry? And amid so many competing accounts of discourse, power, and judgment in the contemporary world, how might scholars achieve these purposes through the attitudes and strategies that animate their work?
Rethinking Rhetorical Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy: The Living Art of Michael C. Leff offers answers to these questions by introducing the central insights of one of the most innovative and prolific rhetoricians of the twentieth century, Michael C. Leff. This volume charts Leff ’s decades-long development as a scholar, revealing both the variety of topics and the approach that marked his oeuvre, as well as his long-standing critique of the disciplinary assumptions of classical, Hellenistic, renaissance, modern, and postmodern rhetoric.
Rethinking Rhetorical Theory, Criticism, and Pedagogy includes a synoptic introduction to the evolution of Leff ’s thought from his time as a graduate student in the late 1960s to his death in 2010, as well as specific commentary on twenty-four of his most illuminating essays and lectures.
ContentsIntroductionPart 1. Greek and Latin Rhetorical TheoryTradition and Agency in Humanistic RhetoricThe Uses of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Contemporary American ScholarshipGenre and Paradigm in the Second Book of De OratoreThe Topics of Argumentative Invention in Latin Rhetorical Theory from Cicero to BoethiusPart 2. Contemporary Extensions of Classical Rhetorical TheoryPiety, Propriety, and Perspective: An Interpretation and Application of Key Terms in Kenneth Burke’s Permanence and Change (with Thomas Rosteck)Topical Invention and Metaphoric InteractionUp from Theory: Or I Fought the Topoi and the Topoi WonThe Habitation of RhetoricDecorum and Rhetorical Interpretation: The Latin Humanistic Tradition and Contemporary Critical TheoryIn Search of Ariadne’s Thread: A Review of the Recent Literature on Rhetorical TheoryPart 3. Theories of CriticismInterpretation and the Art of the Rhetorical CriticTextual Criticism: The Legacy of G. P. MohrmannWords Most like Things: Iconicity and the Rhetorical Text (with Andrew Sachs)Things Made by Words: Reflections on Textual CriticismHermeneutical RhetoricPart 4. The Practice of Rhetorical CriticismLincoln at Cooper Union: A Rhetorical Analysis of the Text (with G. P. Mohrmann)Lincoln at Cooper Union: A Rationale for Neo-Classical Criticism (with G. P. Mohrmann)Instrumental and Constitutive Rhetoric in Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” (with Ebony A. Utley)Lincoln among the Nineteenth-Century OratorsPart 5. Rhetorical PedagogyTeaching Public Speaking as CompositionKenneth Burke in the ClassroomTheory and Practice in Undergraduate EducationCultivating the Useless: Rhetoric and Liberal Arts Education in an Age of ConsumerismWhat Is Rhetoric?
