Rhetorical Theory Reading List
I've been meaning to post my approved rhetorical theory reading list. As you can see, I'm skewing it more in the direction of the modern era:
Greek
Period
Sophists: Jarratt, Susan
C. Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Reconsidered.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991;
Gorgias, Encomium of
Helen
Plato: Gorgias (any
edition); Phaedrus. (Nehamas and Woodruff edition has an
excellent Introduction.)
Aristotle: On
Rhetoric. George Kennedy, trans. Oxford UP
Roman Period
Cicero: De Oratore
(Loeb edition)
Eighteenth Century
Campbell, George:
Philosophy of Rhetoric.
Nineteenth Century
Nietzsche, Friedrich:
"On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense."
Modern Era
Burke, Kenneth. Language
as Symbolic Action.
---Rhetoric of
Motives.
Bakhtin, Mikhail. “The
Problem of Speech Genres.”
---“Discourse in
Dostoevsky,” in Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics,
pp, 181-12
---“Discourse in
the Novel,” in Dialogic Imagination, pp. 259-331
Foucault, Michel.
Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. New York:
Vintage
Books, 1995.
Foucault, Michel.
History of Sexuality,An Introduction. Vol 1.Trans. Robert
Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
Habermas, Jürgen:
"What Is Universal Pragmatics?" in Communication and the
Evolution of Society.
Habermas, Jürgen.
“The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article.” In
Critical Theory and Society: A Reader . Ed. Stephen Eric
Bronner and Douglas MacKay Kellner. London: Routledge, 1989.
136-42.
Perelman, Chaim and
Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca: The New Rhetoric.
Searle, John: "Part
I" Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.
Cambridge UP.
Bitzer, Lloyd: "The
Rhetorical Situation." Philosophy and Rhetoric 1 (1968):
1-14.
Scott, Robert: "On
Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic. Central States Speech Journal
18 (1967): 9 -18.
Feminist Perspectives
Campbell, Karlyn Kohrs.:
"The Rhetoric of Women’s Liberation: An Oxymoron. QJS
59 (1973): 74-86.
Glenn,
Cheryl.: Rhetoric Retold. Southern Illinois UP.
Lunsford, Andrea (Ed.).
Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition
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Comments
Gaps?
So much for the renaissance, huh?
If you're gonna do Jaratt, I'd suggest at least a little Isocrates, and maybe Bizzell and Herzberg's historical introductions to the Greeks and Romans, at least for context. You need context for Lunsford, too, since she kinda ignores what was going on around Appian's account of Hortensia: sometimes reclamation can be a bit of a stretch. Also, the 2001 Oxford University Press James May and Jakob Wisse translation of De Oratore (they translate the title as "On the Ideal Orator") is much, much more useful for English-language scholars (and easier to read) than the Loeb edition. Lotsa good front-matter, too.
The Foucault texts you list are certainly canonical, but are they really all that rhetorical? Wouldn't some of the short essays, or the Discourse on Language, be more appropriate?
As a secondary source, I'd highly recommend Foss, Foss & Trapp, Contemporary Perspectives on Rhetoric. Has really nice and accessible chapters on Perelman, Foucault, Habermas, and Burke.
But, well, since your reading list is "approved", I guess all this is kinda moot.
More on gaps
The master list is here, and they encourage us to cut material and substitute according to our interests--and they want us to offer sample questions that reflect our interests. As you can see, I've added Bakhtin, more Habermas, and more Foucault (and I'd argue that his thoughts on discursive formations, deployment of sexuality, etc. are rhetorical, albeit not in the technê sense).
This list in no way represents all the rhetorical theory I've read. I've read a lot of stuff that I don't list here (Isocrates' "Against the Sophists" and Antidosis, much more Plato, some of Demosthenes' Phillipics, the Dissoi Logoi, Rhetorica ad Herennium, Boethius, Augustine, Bacon, Peacham's Garden of Eloquence, Adam Smith's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, Thomas Sheridan's A Course of Lectures on Elocution, etc. etc.). I'm not being tested on everything, but that doesn't mean I don't think it's all important.
Oh, and we're reading the chapter on Habermas in the Foss, Foss, & Trapp book in my modern rhetorical theory class this semester. I agree that it's great. Since I'm reading it anyway, perhaps I'll add it off-the-record.
There goes the Renaissance!
I've been singing that in my mind to the tune of Body Count's "There Goes the Neighborhood." Thanks a LOT, Mike.
advocating for the ancients
Clancy introduces her rhetorical theory reading list with an admission that it is skewed toward the modern period. I'd like to suggest some modern studies of the ancients Gorgias and Plato which begin to bridge the gap between the two periods. Bruce McComiskey's 2002 book, _Gorgias and the New Sophistic Rhetoric_ offers fresh perspectives on both Gorgias' "Helen" and Plato's _Gorgias_. It also makes some tantalizingly brief attempts to link 5th c BCE sophistry with both contemporary feminist theory and "postmodern sophistics." Edward Schiappa provides a critical review of previous work on the "Helen" and offers his own "predisciplinary" analysis in a 1996 study included in _Theory, Text, Context_, edited by C. L. Johnstone. I'd also recommend Jacqueline de Romilly's provocative 1975 book, _Magic and Rhetoric in Ancient Greece_, which includes chapters on both Gorgias and Plato.