Interest in ancient rhetoric and its relevance to modern society has increased dramatically over recent decades. In North America, departments of speech and communications have experienced a noticeable renaissance of concern with ancient sources. On both sides of the Atlantic, numerous journals devoted to the history of rhetoric are now being published. Throughout, Aristotle's central role has been acknowledged, and there is also a growing awareness of the contributions made by Theophrastus and the Peripatetics. Peripatetic Rhetoric After Aristotle responds to this recent interest in rhetoric and peripatetic theory. The chapters provide new insights into Peripatetic influence on different periods and cultures: Greece and Rome, the Syrian- and Arabic-speaking worlds, Europe in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and the international scene today. Contributors to this volume include Maroun Aouad, Lucia Calboli Montefusco, Thomas Conley, Tiziano Dorandi, Lawrence D. Green, Doreen C. Innes, George A. Kennedy, Michael Leff, and Eckart Schutrumpf. This comprehensive analysis of the history of rhetoric ranges from the early Hellenistic period to the present day. It will be of significant interest to classicists, philosophers, and cultural historians.

There has recently been a great deal of scholarship on the origins of rhetoric, as well as on important 4th-century figures, such as Isocrates and Alcidamas. This volumes focuses particularly on the generation before Aristotle wrote his Rhetoric, the central text of ancient Greek rhetorical theory. Individual papers concentrate on different aspects of the Peripatetics' writings, both of Aristotle and Theophrastus, their thoughts on character, emotion, logos, style, and metaphor, the influences of dramatic writings, the relationship with Plato and with the Rhetorica ad Alexandrum, and the historical contexts. Some papers offer close readings of individual passages, while others tease out information based on fragmentary references. All of the papers offer original insights based on a thorough knowledge of the original texts.

The first intertextual study of all (allusions to) fables occuring in Archaic, Classical, and Hellenistic Greek literature, examining both modern and ancient fable theory as well as Greaco-Roman terminology of the genre.

Rhetoric is an engine of social discourse and the art charged with generating and swaying emotion. The history of rhetoric provides a continuous structure by which we can measure how emotions were understood, articulated, and mobilized under various historical circumstances and social contracts. This book is about how rhetoric in the West, from Late Antiquity to the later Middle Ages, represented the role of emotion in shaping persuasions. It is the first book-length study of medieval rhetoric and the emotions, coloring that rhetorical history between about 600 CE and the cusp of early modernity. Rhetoric in the Middle Ages, as in other periods, constituted the gateway training for anyone engaged in emotionally persuasive writing. Medieval rhetorical thought on emotion has multiple strands of influence and sedimentations of practice. The earliest and most persistent tradition treated emotional persuasion as a property of surface stylistic effect, which can be seen in the medieval rhetorics of poetry and prose, and in literary production. But the impact of Aristotelian rhetoric, which reached the Latin West in the thirteenth century, gave emotional persuasion a core role in reasoning, incorporating it into the key device of proof, the enthymeme. In Aristotle, medieval teachers and writers found a new rhetorical language to explain the social and psychological factors that affect an audience. With Aristotelian rhetoric, the emotions became political. The impact of Aristotle's rhetorical approach to emotions was to be felt in medieval political treatises, in poetry, and in preaching.

This complete guide to ancient Greek rhetoric is exceptional both in its chronological range and the breadth of topics it covers. Traces the rise of rhetoric and its uses from Homer to Byzantium Covers wider-ranging topics such as rhetoric's relationship to knowledge, ethics, religion, law, and emotion Incorporates new material giving us fresh insights into how the Greeks saw and used rhetoric Discusses the idea of rhetoric and examines the status of rhetoric studies, present and future All quotations from ancient sources are translated into English

This book provides a collection of sources, many of them fragmentary and previously scattered and hard to access, for the development of Peripatetic philosophy in the later Hellenistic period and the early Roman Empire. It also supplies the background against which the first commentator on Aristotle from whom extensive material survives, Alexander of Aphrodisias (fl. c. AD 200), developed his interpretations which continue to be influential even today. Many of the passages are here translated into English for the first time, including the whole of the summary of Peripatetic ethics attributed to 'Arius Didymus'.

Anonymous’ and Stephanus’ commentaries, written in the 12th century AD, are the first surviving commentaries on Aristotle’s Rhetoric. Their study, including the environment in which they were written and the philosophical ideas expressed in them, provides a better understanding of the reception of Aristotle’s Rhetoric in Byzantium, the Byzantine practice of commenting on classical texts, and what can be called “Byzantine philosophy”. For the first time, this book explores the context of production of the commentaries, discusses the identity and features of their authors, and reveals their philosophical and philological significance. In particular, I examine the main topics discussed by Aristotle in the Rhetoric as contributing to persuasion, namely valid and fallacious rhetorical arguments, ethical notions, emotional response and style, and I analyse the commentators’ interpretations of these topics. In this analysis, I focus on highlighting the value of the philosophical views expressed, and on creating a discussion between the Byzantine and the modern interpretations of the treatise. Conclusively, the two commentators need to be considered as independent thinkers, who aimed primarily at integrating the treatise within the Aristotelian philosophical system.

This volume contains the Syriac text, edited for the first time, of the commentary on Aristotle’s Rhetoric by Bar Hebraeus (died 1286) in his Cream of Wisdom. The text is accompanied by an English translation, and the volume also includes an introduction, commentary, and three glossaries (Syriac, Greek and Arabic). Bar Hebraeus’ commentary is based on the lost Syriac version of Aristotle’s treatise, but the author also drew heavily on the commentary of Ibn Sina (Avicenna). The text therefore provides a unique insight into the nature of that lost version, and also exemplifies the way Bar Hebraeus blended the Aristotle of the Graeco-Syriac translation literature with the more recent philosophy of Ibn Sina.

In this collection edited by Alan G. Gross and Arthur E. Walzer, scholars in communication, rhetoric and composition, and philosophy seek to “reread” Aristotle’s Rhetoric from a purely rhetorical perspective. So important do these contributors find the Rhetoric, in fact, that a core tenet in this book is that “all subsequent rhetorical theory is but a series of responses to issues raised by the central work.” The essays reflect on questions basic to rhetoric as a humanistic discipline. Some explore the ways in which the Rhetoric explicates the nature of the art of rhetoric, noting that on this issue, the tensions within the Rhetoric often provide a direct passageway into our own conflicts.

First Thessalonians is one of the most discussed books of the New Testament. This volume by today's top Thessalonians scholars introduces readers to the current scholarly debate on Paul's earliest letter, discussing the difficult challenges that 1 Thessalonians poses to modern readers and explaining the various methods now being used to interpret this important New Testament letter.