Focusing on ancient rhetoric outside of the dominant Western tradition, this collection examines rhetorical practices in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, and China. The book uncovers alternate ways of understanding human behavior and explores how these rhetorical practices both reflected and influenced their cultures. The essays address issues of historiography and raise questions about the application of Western rhetorical concepts to these very different ancient cultures. A chapter on suggestions for teaching each of these ancient rhetorics is included.

ANCIENT NON-GREEK RHETORICS contributes to the recovery and understanding of ancient rhetorics in non-Western cultures and other cultures that developed independently of classical Greco-Roman models. Contributors analyze facets of the rhetorics as embedded within the particular cultures of ancient China, Egypt, Mesopotamia, the ancient Near East more generally, Israel, Japan, India, and ancient Ireland. The ten essays examine rhetorics as broadly construed, analyzing texts, addressing silence, as well as considering the placement and use of texts as part of multimedia cultural communication, involving ritual along with oral, visual, sensual, experiential, and architectural elements and performances. CAROL S. LIPSON is Professor of Writing and Rhetoric, and immediate past chair of the Writing Program at Syracuse University. She received her PhD in English at the University of California-Los Angeles, where she began the study of Egyptology. She has published on ancient Egyptian medical rhetoric, on the multimedia nature of ancient Egyptian public texts, and on the central Egyptian value of Maat in relation to the culture's rhetorical principles. With Roberta Binkley, she co-edited RHETORIC BEFORE AND BEYOND THE GREEKS (SUNY Press, 2004). ROBERTA BINKLEY received her PhD in rhetoric from the University of Arizona. Subsequently she has taught at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga and at Arizona State University. Her research has focused on Near Eastern rhetoric in early Mesopotamia, with particular attention to the works of the priestess and poetess Enheduanna. With Carol S. Lipson, she co-edited RHETORIC BEFORE AND BEYOND THE GREEKS. CONTRIBUTORS include Roberta Binkley, Richard Johnson-Sheehan, Carol S. Lipson, Yichun Liu, Arabella Lyon, Steven B. Katz, Marie Lee Mifsud, Scott R. Stroud, James W. Watts, Xiaoye You, and Kathy Wolfe.

For the ancient Greeks and Romans, eloquence was essential to public life and identity, perpetuating class status and power. The three-tiered study of rhetoric was thus designed to produce sons worthy of and equipped for public service. Rhetorical competency enabled the elite to occupy their proper place in society. The oracular and literary techniques represented in Greco-Roman education proved to be equally central to the formation of the New Testament. Detailed comparisons of the sophisticated rhetorical conventions, as cataloged in the ancient rhetorical handbooks (e.g., Quintilian), reveal to what degree and frequency the New Testament was shaped by ancient rhetoric's invention, argument, and style. But Ancient Rhetoric and the New Testament breaks new ground. Instead of focusing on more advanced rhetorical lessons that elite students received in their school rooms, Michael Martin and Mikeal Parsons examine the influence of the progymnasmata--the preliminary compositional exercises that bridge the gap between grammar and rhetoric proper--and their influence on the New Testament. Martin and Parsons use Theon's (50-100 CE) compendium as a baseline to measure the way primary exercises shed light on the form and style of the New Testament's composition. Each chapter examines a specific rhetorical exercise and its unique hortatory or instructional function, and offers examples from ancient literature before exploring the use of these techniques in the New Testament. --

The role of athletics in ancient Greece extended well beyond the realms of kinesiology, competition, and entertainment. In teaching and philosophy, athletic practices overlapped with rhetorical ones and formed a shared mode of knowledge production. Bodily Arts examines this intriguing intersection, offering an important context for understanding the attitudes of ancient Greeks toward themselves and their environment. In classical society, rhetoric was an activity, one that was in essence "performed." Detailing how athletics came to be rhetoric's "twin art" in the bodily aspects of learning and performance, Bodily Arts draws on diverse orators and philosophers such as Isocrates, Demosthenes, and Plato, as well as medical treatises and a wealth of artifacts from the time, including statues and vases. Debra Hawhee's insightful study spotlights the notion of a classical gymnasium as the location for a habitual "mingling" of athletic and rhetorical performances, and the use of ancient athletic instruction to create rhetorical training based on rhythm, repetition, and response. Presenting her data against the backdrop of a broad cultural perspective rather than a narrow disciplinary one, Hawhee presents a pioneering interpretation of Greek civilization from the sixth, fifth, and fourth centuries BCE by observing its citizens in action.

Challenges the traditional rhetorical canon.

Originally published as La Rhétorique dans l'Antiquité (2000), this new English edition provides students with a valuable introduction to understanding the classical art of rhetoric and its place in ancient society and politics

Rhetoric gives our words the power to inspire. But it's not just for politicians: it's all around us, whether you're buttering up a key client or persuading your children to eat their greens. You have been using rhetoric yourself, all your life. After all, you know what a rhetorical question is, don't you? In this updated edition of his classic guide, Sam Leith traces the art of argument from ancient Greece down to its many modern mutations. He introduces verbal villains from Hitler to Donald Trump - and the three musketeers: ethos, pathos and logos. He explains how rhetoric works in speeches from Cicero to Richard Nixon, and pays tribute to the rhetorical brilliance of AC/DC's "Back In Black". Before you know it, you'll be confident in chiasmus and proud of your panegyrics - because rhetoric is useful, relevant and absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Rhetoric in the European Tradition provides a survey for the basic models of rhetoric as they developed from the early Greeks to the twentieth century. Discussing rhetorical theories in the context of the times of political and intellectual crisis that gave rise to them, Thomas Conley chooses carefully from the vast pool of rhetorical literature to give voice to those authors who exercised influence in their own and succeeding generations.

A Companion to African Rhetoric, edited by Segun Ige, Gilbert Motsaathebe, and Omedi Ochieng, presents the reader with different perspectives on African rhetoric mostly from Anglophone sub-Saharan Africa and the Diaspora. The African, Afro-Caribbean, and African American rhetorician contributors conceptualize African rhetoric, examine African political rhetoric, analyze African rhetoric in literature, and address the connection between rhetoric and religion in Africa. They argue for a holistic view of rhetoric on the continent.

In Pragmatism, Democracy, and the Necessity of Rhetoric, Robert Danisch examines the search by America's first generation of pragmatists for a unique set of rhetorics that would serve the needs of a developing democracy. Digging deep into pragmatism's historical development, Danisch sheds light on its association with an alternative but significant and often overlooked tradition. He draws parallels between the rhetorics of such American pragmatists as John Dewey and Jane Addams and those of the ancient Greek tradition. Danisch contends that, while building upon a classical foundation, pragmatism sought to determine rhetorical responses to contemporary irresolutions. rhetoric, including pragmatism's rejection of philosophy with its traditional assumptions and practices. Grounding his argument on an