This book, Rhetoric in European and World Culture, defines the position of rhetoric in the cultural and educational systems from ancient times through the present. It examines the decline of its importance in a period of rationalism and enlightenment, presents the causes of why rhetoric (reduced to a system of rhetorical tricks) came to have negative connotations, and explains why rhetoric in the 20th century was able to regain its position. It demonstrates that the prestige of rhetoric sharply falls when it is reduced to a refined method for deceiving the public, and increases when it is seen as a scientific discipline that is used throughout all of the fields of the humanities - philosophy, logic, semiotics, literary science, linguistics, the science of media and others. In this sense, rhetoric strives for universal recognition and the cultivation of rhetorical expression, spoken and written, including not only its production but also reception and interpretation. In such a renaissance of interest, rhetoric appears not merely as a guide to language skills, but as a complex theoretical field examining human behaviour in social communication. Chapters 1-9 describe the development of rhetoric from its Greek, Hellenic and Roman beginnings to rhetoric in the context of medieval Christian culture, later during the periods of humanism, Enlightenment, baroque. The final chapter is concerned with rhetoric in the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. It takes into account geography, including the history of rhetoric in France, Spain, Italy, Germany, England, Scotland, Poland, Russia, the Czech Lands, Moravia, Slovakia and from the 19th century in the United States. The final chapter presents an answer to the question of whether corresponding systems of rhetorical knowledge have been formed beyond the borders of Mediterranean antiquity. The selected examples of theoretical works on "the art of speech" from India, the Middle East, China, Korea and Japan show that each language community forms its own concept, theory and practice of persuasive and suggestive speaking behaviours. Often such findings, instead of being used as manuals for the stylization and presentation of speeches, rather concentrate on analyzing written documents, in which we can find not only specific categorical devices of the given culture (as is the case with comments on the Vedic texts of ancient India) but also tropes and figures characteristic of Greek and Roman rhetoric, e.g., the Hebrew and Aramaic texts of the Old Testament.

Inspired by the Rhetoric Culture Project, this volume focuses on the use of imagery, narrative, and cultural schemes to deal with predicaments that arise during the course of life. The contributors explore how people muster their resources to understand and deal with emergencies such as illness, displacement, or genocide. In dealing with such circumstances, people can develop new rhetorical forms and, in the process, establish new cultural resources for succeeding generations. Several of the contributions show how rhetorical cultural forms can themselves create emergencies. The contributors bring expertise from a variety of disciplines, including anthropology and communications studies, underlining the volume’s wider relevance as a reflection on the human condition.

This book explores the significance of rhetoric from the perspective of its complex relationship with philosophy. It demonstrates how this relationship gives expression to a basic tension at the core of politics: that between the contingency of its happening and the transcendence toward which it strives. The first part of the study proposes a reassessment of the ancient quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric, as it was discussed by Plato, Aristotle, and above all Cicero and Quintilian, who ambitiously attempted to bring them together creating an ideal that is at the roots of the humanist tradition. It then moves to twentieth-century political theory and shows how the questions that emerge from that quarrel still strongly resonate in the works of key thinkers such as H. Arendt, L. Strauss, and R. Rorty. The volume thus offers an original contribution that locates itself at the intersection of politics, rhetoric, and philosophy.

While some scholars have said that there is no such thing as culture and have urged to abandon the concept altogether, the contributors to this volume overcome this impasse by understanding cultures and their representations for what they ultimately are – rhetorical constructs. These senior, international scholars explore the complex relationships between culture and rhetoric arguing that just as rhetoric is founded in culture, culture is founded in rhetoric. This intersection constitutes the central theme of the first part of the book, while the second is dedicated to the study of figuration as a common ground of rhetoric and anthropology. The book offers a compelling range of theoretical reflections, historical vistas, and empirical investigations, which aim to show how people talk themselves and others into particular modalities of thought and action, and how rhetoric and culture, in this way, are co-emergent. It thus turns a new page in the history of academic discourse by bringing two disciplines – anthropology and rhetoric – together in a way that has never been done before.

This book seeks to develop Rhetoric as a field of knowledge in an important new direction, European Union politics. The authors analyse what could be called a “European style of politics”: textual strategies and rhetorical styles evolving within and around the EU’s supranational and national institutions. By fusing rhetorical and sociological approaches, political thought and culture, the book contributes to the analysis of the ‘political’ as a way of thinking and judging the political aspect of any phenomena.

A groundbreaking handbook that takes a cross-national approach to the media history of Europe of the past 100 years The Handbook of European Communication History is a definitive and authoritative handbook that fills a gap in the literature to provide a coherent and chronological history of mass media, public communication and journalism in Europe from 1900 to the late 20th century. With contributions from teams of scholars and members of the European Communication Research and Education Association, the Handbook explores media innovations, major changes and developments in the media systems that affected public communication, as well as societies and culture. The contributors also examine the general trends of communication history and review debates related to media development. To ensure a transnational approach to the topic, the majority of chapters are written not by a single author but by international teams formed around one or more lead authors. The Handbook goes beyond national perspectives and provides a basis for more cross-national treatments of historical developments in the field of mediated communication. Indeed, this important Handbook: Offers fresh insights on the development of media alongside key differences between countries, regions, or media systems over the past century Takes a fresh, cross-national approach to European media history Contains contributions from leading international scholars in this rapidly evolving area of study Explores the major innovations, key developments, differing trends, and the important debates concerning the media in the European setting Written for students and academics of communication and media studies as well as media professionals, The Handbook of European Communication History covers European media from 1900 with the emergence of the popular press to the professionalization of journalists and the first wave of multimedia with the advent of film and radio broadcasting through the rapid growth of the Internet and digital media since the late 20th century.

During the 1970s todays Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung, Wissenschaft und Forschung, BMBWF) supported the founding of the Center for Austrian Studies at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis and the Austrian Chair at Stanford University in California. These foundings were the initial incentives for the worldwide `spreading' of similar institutions; currently, nine Centers for Austrian and Central European Studies exist in seven countries on three continents. The funding of the Ministry enables to connect senior scholars with young scholars, to help young PhD students, to participate in and to benefit from the scientific connection of experienced researchers, and to get in touch with the national scientific community by `sniffing scientific air', as the Austrians like to say. Furthermore, it aims to avoid prejudices, and to spread a better understanding and knowledge about Austria and Central Europe by promoting scientific exchange.

This book examines the entirety of Giambattista Vico's oeuvre and demonstrates his significance as a theorist who adapted the discipline of rhetoric to modern conditions.

This book analyses collaborative activities across the visual arts to show the power of non-verbal rhetoric in the Middle Ages.

This book provides examples of the best modern scholarship on rhetoric in the renaissance. Lawrence Green, Lisa Jardine, Kees Meerhoff, Dilwyn Knox, Brian Vickers, George Hunter, Peter Mack, David Norbrook and Pat Rubin look at the reception of Aristotle's Rhetoric in the renaissance; the place of rhetoric in Erasmus's career, Melanchthon's teaching, and sixteenth century protestant schools; the rhetoric textbook; the use of rhetoric in Raphael, renaissance drama, Elizabethan romance, and seventeenth century political writing. It will become essential reading for advanced studies in English, rhetoric, art history, history, history of education, history of ideas, political theory, and reformation history.