Shakespearean Educations examines how and why Shakespeare’s works shaped the development of American education from the colonial period through the 1934 Chicago World’s Fair, taking the reader up to the years before the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944 (popularly known as the GI Bill), coeducation, and a nascent civil rights movement would alter the educational landscape yet again. The essays in this collection query the nature of education, the nature of citizenship in a dem...

A timely collection of essays by prominent scholars in the field—on the past, present, and future of rhetoric instruction.From Isocrates and Aristotle to the present, rhetorical education has consistently been regarded as the linchpin of a participatory democracy, a tool to foster civic action and social responsibility. Yet, questions of who should receive rhetorical education, in what form, and for what purpose, continue to vex teachers and scholars.The es...

This collection of essays investigates the historiography of rhetoric, global perspectives on rhetoric, and the teaching of writing and rhetoric, offering diverse viewpoints. Addressing four major areas of research in rhetoric and writing studies, contributors consider authorship and audience, discuss the context and material conditions in which students compose, cover the politics of the field and the value of a rhetorical education, and reflect on contemporary trends in canon diversifica...

Yes, it’s true: you can learn how to be a verbal wizard!Ever hear someone utter an unforgettable phrase and feel yourself reacting with with…well, awe? Ever read a great quote and think I could never come up with anything that clever?Daunting as it may seem, there’s nothing mystical about witcraft. Crafting memorable lines doesn’t require DNA-encoded brilliance. What it does require is some knowledge of the trick...

No one can resist a love letterLove letters are largely a lost and forgotten art. Not long ago suitors used the written word to work magic, and people were swept off their feet by a sweet, sincere note. How to Write a Love Letter teaches us, once again, how to reinvent this most meaningful of arts.In today's rushed, individualistic society, love letters are more potent than ever before. They embody and convey the mysterious, the unexpected, and the most utterly tho...

In Ambient Rhetoric, Thomas Rickert seeks to dissolve the boundaries of the rhetorical tradition and its basic dichotomy of subject and object. With the advent of new technologies, new media, and the dispersion of human agency through external information sources, rhetoric can no longer remain tied to the autonomy of human will and cognition as the sole determinants in the discursive act.Rickert develops the concept of ambience in order to engage all of the elements that c...

Since its original publication by UNC Press in 1980, this book has provided thousands of students with a concise introduction and guide to the history of the classical tradition in rhetoric, the ancient but ever vital art of persuasion.Now, George Kennedy offers a thoroughly revised and updated edition of Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition. From its development in ancient Greece and Rome, through its continuation and adaptation in Europe and America ...

Prefaced by brief historical and biographical introductions, the examples in this book show how words can be used to inspire, to comfort, to move, or to enthuse even the most seemingly hard-bitten of listeners. From rallying cries such as Garibaldi's 'To arms, then, all of you!' and Chou En-lai's 'We must hold aloft the great red banner' to sombre statements such as Sheikh Mujibur Rahman's 'This time the struggle is for our freedom', each extract gives us an insight into the hardships of w...

Imagine a common movie scene: a hero confronts a villain. Captioning such a moment would at first glance seem as basic as transcribing the dialogue. But consider the choices involved: How do you convey the sarcasm in a comeback? Do you include a henchman's muttering in the background? Does the villain emit a scream, a grunt, or a howl as he goes down? And how do you note a gunshot without spoiling the scene?These are the choices closed captioners face ever...

An insightful approach to classical Greek texts and practices as the wellspring for understanding rhetoric's relationship to authorityIn Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational...

There is a need for general theoretical principles describing/explaining effective design -- those which demonstrate "unity" and enhance comprehension and usability. Theories of cohesion from linguistics and of comprehension in psychology are likely sources of such general principles. Unfortunately, linguistic approaches to discourse unity have focused exclusively on semantic elements such as synonymy or anaphora, and have ignored other linguistic elements such as syntactic parallelism and...

A transdisciplinary approach to the relationship between classical rhetoric and Augustan cultureIn A City of Marble, Kathleen Lamp argues that classical rhetorical theory shaped the Augustan cultural campaigns and that in turn the Augustan cultural campaigns functioned rhetorically to help Augustus gain and maintain power and to influence civic identity and participation in the Roman Principate (27 b. c. e.—14 c. e.).Lamp begins by studying rhetori...