Description
Examines rhetorical practices in cultures and time periods that experience received little attention to this point.
Focusing on ancient rhetoric outdoor of the dominant Western tradition, this collection examines rhetorical practices in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, and China. The book uncovers alternate ways of figuring out human behavior and explores how these rhetorical practices both reflected and influenced their cultures. The essays address issues of historiography and raise questions concerning the application of Western rhetorical concepts to those very different ancient cultures. A chapter on suggestions for teaching every of these ancient rhetorics is included.
“…all in all we get a good figuring out of how rhetoric functioned in very different cultures.” — Bibliotheca Orientalis
“These essays forcefully and engagingly challenge the instructional commonplace that Athenian rhetoric is foundational. Scholars teaching ‘the classical’ will wish to pay close attention to the expanded corpus, and they’ll use this book as a central text in histories of rhetoric courses and as a supplement to more mainstream texts.” Susan Romano, coauthor of Writing in an Electronic World: A Rhetoric with Readings
Contributors include Roberta A. Binkley, Grant M. Boswell, Richard Leo Enos, William W. Hallo, Paul Y. Hoskisson, Carol S. Lipson, Yameng Liu, Arabella Lyon, David Metzger, C. Jan Swearingen, Deborah Sweeney, James W. Watts, and George Q. Xu.