Demosthenes as Text: Classical Reception and British Rhetorical History

Agnew, Lois

doi:10.1080/15362426.2016.1137249

Advances in the History of Rhetoric

2016

DOI: 10.1080/15362426.2016.1137249

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Demosthenes as Text: Classical Reception and British Rhetorical History

Lois Agnew

Abstract: British rhetorical theorists demonstrate a persistent interest in Demosthenes, but their interpretations of his significance reflect different understandings of rhetoric. This article uses reception theory to illuminate how British depictions of Demosthenes at different moments in history reflect writers’ values and rhetorical aims. The focus on Demosthenes as a model of rhetorical prowess becomes particularly important for nineteenth-century British theorists who conceive of rhetoric as an individualistic dis… Show more

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Cited by 8 publications

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Enter the jargon: the intertextual rhetoric of Radical Economic Transformation following the logic of Demosthenes’s oratory

Masemola

2020

African Identities

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This paper considers the timing and entry into public discourse of 'Radical Economic Transformation' as a concept that is open to deliberate misinterpretation in the media. Whilst, as the title suggests, it is necessary to distil the content signified by its rhetorical signposts, the diverse uses to which 'radical economic transformation' is being put by the media, government and researchers requires examination relative to parameters of debate set by the Greek orator Demosthenes's thesis in his Against Meidias, during times of political crisis in Athens Macedonian expansion. Similarly, in the wake of oligarchies and deepening economic inequality along racial lines, Jacob Zuma's Radical Economic Transformation (RET) was intended to be a bulwark against further expansion, exploitation and pauperization. In its intention, the rhetoric RET signposted a pro-poor intervention for ownership, management and control of the economy in favour of all South Africans. If the exordium is whether 'Radical Economic Transformation' should be embraced, then the debate takes stock of the observation by Mark Swilling that while there is a clear need for 'radical economic transformation,' there are concerns that 'this is being used as an ideological smokescreen to mask the rent-seeking practices of the Zuma-centred power elite' (Bhorat et al., 2017). In the media, Schutte argues that Radical Economic Transformation is part of a 'distorted discourse [which] is the weapon of choice [at a time when] empty rhetoric is served up on Orwellian platters'. Following the logic of Demosthenes, the debate around the rhetoric of Radical Economic Transformation demands and deserves to be tested against legality, justice, expediency, practicability, decency and consequences.

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Enter the jargon: the intertextual rhetoric of Radical Economic Transformation following the logic of Demosthenes’s oratory

Masemola

2020

African Identities

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SocratesEx Situ

Kennerly

2017

Advances in the History of Rhetoric

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Socrates is an oddity. This past decade has seen both his radical contextualization through archeological efforts to locate him in the public spaces of his native Athens and his radical decontextualization through studies of his reception in later times and places. What unifies those seemingly divergent investigations of Socrates is a fascination with discovering and discerning where Socrates belongs. Socrates’ own contemporaries called him “atopos” (odd, literally, out-of-place), and our contemporary attempts to locate him seem to oppose this displacement, on the one hand, and capitalize upon it, on the other. By seeking Socrates in his own time and place, we may come to understand better how his very movements marked him as out of step with Athenian norms and how such a demarcation affects how we map rhetoric’s borders during that formative time. By seeking Socrates in other times and places, we learn that Socrates himself is a rhetorical topos returned to again and again by people who find or think themselves similarly marked as odd, inappropriate, unbelonging, or out of place. This location work matters for Rhetoric because Socrates is such an atopic (odd) figure in our history.

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Rhetorical Accretion and Rhetorical Criticism in William Hazlitt’sEloquence of the British Senate

Homar

2017

Advances in the History of Rhetoric

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This paper examines William Hazlitt’s collection, Eloquence of the British Senate (1807), alongside our interest in reception, accretion, and the rhetorical culture of Parliament. I trace Hazlitt’s interpretation of oratory, including his analysis of remediated, printed speech. Hazlitt investigates the circulation and power of oratory in modern print culture, while beginning a multidisciplinary, career-long interest in rhetoric. By mapping how Hazlitt criticizes the status quo while avoiding partisan exposes of corruption, I argue he thinks like a critical rhetorician in ways that enrich our histories of nineteenth-century rhetoric and help us reflect on our own enterprise as historians of rhetoric.

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Demosthenes as Text: Classical Reception and British Rhetorical History

Cited by 8 publications

References 6 publications

Enter the jargon: the intertextual rhetoric of Radical Economic Transformation following the logic of Demosthenes’s oratory

Enter the jargon: the intertextual rhetoric of Radical Economic Transformation following the logic of Demosthenes’s oratory

SocratesEx Situ

Rhetorical Accretion and Rhetorical Criticism in William Hazlitt’sEloquence of the British Senate

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