The Jesuit Juan de Mariana (1535-1624) is one of the most misunderstood authors in the history of political thought. His treatise De rege et regis institutione libri tres (1599) is dedicated to Philip III of Spain. It was to present the principles of statecraft by which the young king was to abide. Yet soon after its publication, Catholic and Calvinist politiques in France started branding Mariana a regicide. De rege was said to empower the private individual to kill a legitimate king. Its 'pernicious doctrines' were blamed for the murder of Henry IV in 1610, and it was burned at the order of the parlement of Paris. Modern historians have tended to build on this interpretation and consider De rege a stepping stone towards modern pluralist and democratic thought. Nothing could be further from the truth. The notion of Mariana as an uncompromising theorist of resistance is in fact based on the distorted reading of a few select sentences from the first book of the treatise. This study offers a radical departure from the old view of Mariana as an early modern constitutionalist thinker and advocate of regicide. Thorough analysis of the text as a whole reveals him to be a shrewd and creative operator of political language as well as a champion of the church and bishops of Castile. The argument as a whole is informed by a Catholic-Augustinian view of human nature. Mariana's bleak, at times downright cynical view of man imparts focus and coherence to a text that challenges well established terminological boundaries and political discourses. In the first instance, his deeply pessimistic appraisal of human virtue justifies his disregard of positive law. He is thus able to mould diverse elements extracted from Roman and canon law, scholastic theology and humanist literature into a deliberately equivocal discourse of reason of state. Finally, this secular interpretation of the world of politics is cleverly yoked to a thoroughly clerical agenda of reform. In fact, reason of state is made to propagate an episcopal monarchy. De rege is exceptional in that it strings together a curious scholastic theory of the origins of society, a conservative ideology of absolute monarchy and a breathtakingly radical vision of theocratic renewal of Spanish government and society. Juan de Mariana and Early Modern Political Thought elucidates the differentiated nature of political debate in Habsburg Spain. It confirms the complexity of Spanish political life in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth century. Complementing recent work on Catholic political thought, the European reception of Machiavelli, and Spanish Habsburg government, this study offers a more complete and holistic picture of early modern Spanish political culture.

Throughout the years, biographers have depicted John Calvin in manifold ways. Serene Jones takes a fresh look at Calvin as she draws a compelling portrait of Calvin as artist, engaged in the classical art of rhetoric. According to Jones, this art was used knowingly and skillfully by Calvin to persuade and challenge his diverse audiences. Jones offers a rhetorical reading of the first three chapters of Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion. What emerges is a truly original interpretation of Calvin and his work.

We tend to think of rhetoric as a solely human art. After all, only humans can use language artfully to make a point, the very definition of rhetoric. Yet when you look at ancient and early modern treatises on rhetoric, what you find is surprising: they’re crawling with animals. With Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw, Debra Hawhee explores this unexpected aspect of early thinking about rhetoric, going on from there to examine the enduring presence of nonhuman animals in rhetorical theory and education. In doing so, she not only offers a counter-history of rhetoric but also brings rhetorical studies into dialogue with animal studies, one of the most vibrant areas of interest in humanities today. By removing humanity and human reason from the center of our study of argument, Hawhee frees up space to study and emphasize other crucial components of communication, like energy, bodies, and sensation. Drawing on thinkers from Aristotle to Erasmus, Rhetoric in Tooth and Claw tells a new story of the discipline’s history and development, one animated by the energy, force, liveliness, and diversity of our relationships with our “partners in feeling,” other animals.

One of the most remarkable trends in the humanities and social sciences in recent decades has been the resurgence of interest in the history, theory, and practice of rhetoric: in an age of global media networks and viral communication, rhetoric is once again "contagious" and "communicable" (Friedrich Nietzsche). Featuring sixty commissioned chapters by eminent scholars of rhetoric from twelve countries, The Oxford Handbook of Rhetorical Studies offers students and teachers an engaging and sophisticated introduction to the multidisciplinary field of rhetorical studies. The Handbook traces the history of Western rhetoric from ancient Greece and Rome to the present and surveys the role of rhetoric in more than thirty academic disciplines and fields of social practice. This combination of historical and topical approaches allows readers to chart the metamorphoses of rhetoric over the centuries while mapping the connections between rhetoric and law, politics, science, education, literature, feminism, poetry, composition, philosophy, drama, criticism, digital media, art, semiotics, architecture, and other fields. Chapters provide the information expected of a handbook-discussion of key concepts, texts, authors, problems, and critical debates-while also posing challenging questions and advancing new arguments. In addition to offering an accessible and comprehensive introduction to rhetoric in the European and North American context, the Handbook includes a timeline of major works of rhetorical theory, translations of all Greek and Latin passages, extensive cross-referencing between chapters, and a glossary of more than three hundred rhetorical terms. These features will make this volume a valuable scholarly resource for students and teachers in rhetoric, English, classics, comparative literature, media studies, communication, and adjacent fields. As a whole, the Handbook demonstrates that rhetoric is not merely a form of stylish communication but a pragmatic, inventive, and critical art that operates in myriad social contexts and academic disciplines.

The studies of rhetoric and literature have been closely connected on the theoretical level ever since antiquity, and many great works of literature were written by men and women who were well versed in rhetoric. It is therefore well worth investigating exactly what these writers knew about rhetoric and how the practice of literary criticism has been enriched through rhetorical knowledge. The essays reprinted here have been arranged chronologically, with two essays selected for each of six major periods: Antiquity, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance (including Shakespeare), the 17th century, the 18th century, and the 19th and 20th centuries. Some are more theoretically oriented, whereas others become exercises in practical criticism. Some cover well-trod ground, whereas others turn to parts of the rhetorical tradition that are often overlooked. Scholars in the field should benefit from having this material collected together and reprinted in one volume, but the essays included here will also be useful to graduate students and advanced undergraduates for course work and general reading. Students of rhetoric seeking to understand how the principles of their field extend into other forms of communication will find this volume of interest, as will students of literature seeking to refine their understanding of the various modes of literary criticism.

A Companion to Rhetoric offers the first major survey in two decades of the field of rhetorical studies and of the practice of rhetorical theory and criticism across a range of disciplines. Assesses rhetoric’s place in the larger intellectual universe. Focuses on the practical side of rhetoric, looking at specific works, problems and figures. Provides examples of rhetoric from ancient times to the present day. Written by leading scholars from a variety of different fields.

The History and Theory of Rhetoric offers discussion of the history of rhetorical studies in the Western tradition, from ancient Greece to contemporary American and European theorists that is easily accessible to students. By tracing the historical progression of rhetoric from the Greek Sophists of the 5th Century B.C. all the way to contemporary studies–such as the rhetoric of science and feminist rhetoric–this comprehensive text helps students understand how persuasive public discourse performs essential social functions and shapes our daily worlds. Students gain conceptual framework for evaluating and practicing persuasive writing and speaking in a wide range of settings and in both written and visual media. Known for its clear writing style and contemporary examples throughout, The History and Theory of Rhetoric emphasizes the relevance of rhetoric to today's students.

In this study, Michael Ullyot makes two new arguments about the rhetoric of exemplarity in late Elizabethan and Jacobean culture: first, that exemplarity is a recursive cycle driven by rhetoricians' words and readers' actions; and second, that positive moral examples are not replicable, but rather aspirational models of readers' posthumous biographies. For example, Alexander the Great envied Achilles less for his exemplary life than for Homer's account of it. Ullyot defines the three types of decorum on which exemplary rhetoric and imitation rely, and charts their operations through Philip Sidney's poetics, Edmund Spenser's poetry, and the dedications, sermons, elegies, biographies, and other occasional texts about Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, and Henry, Prince of Wales. Ullyot expands the definition of occasional texts to include those that criticize their circumstances to demand better ones, and historicizes moral exemplarity in the contexts of sixteenth-century Protestant memory and humanist pedagogy. The Rhetoric of Exemplarity in Early Modern England concludes that all exemplary subjects suffer from the problem of metonymy, the objection that their chosen excerpts misrepresent their missing parts. This problem also besets historicist literary criticism, ever subject to corrections from the archive, so this study concedes that its own rhetorical methods are exemplary.