I have also had the assistance of several libraries, including those at The University of Michigan, Indiana University, The American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Carnegie Mellon University, The University of Pittsburgh, Texas Christian University, Rice University, and the Epigraphical Museum at Athens. The results of these efforts have enabled me to compile both primary sources and difficult-to-acquire secondary scholarship. This evidence, in the form of epigraphy, literary fragments, scholia (ancient commentary) and archaeological evidence provides the source material for a much more specific rendering of the emergence of rhetoric as a discipline than our present anecdotal description permits. As mentioned above, the task of reconstructing this evidence is a monumental one, but my preliminary review, which includes archaeological and epigraphical reports of holdings at repositories, leads me to believe that this primary evidence will not only provide information on rhetoric’s evolution as an art but also its place within a culture evolving from an oral to a literate society. Records from the Epigraphical Museum at Athens, for example, list inscriptions that bear directly on the political relationships between Athens and Sicily dealing with rhetoric. Additionally, literary and dramatic contests, with winners’s names and cities of origin inscribed on stone monuments, offer another valuable source of information.
Finally, I wish to acknowledge here support of a different sort, the kind that encourages and nurtures the research done at the centers mentioned above. First and foremost, I wish to acknowledge The National Endowment for the Humanities, whose generous stipend made this project possible. I am indebted to my family, colleagues and students such as Elizabeth Baddour for their encouragement and enthusiasm to continue my work. I particularly wish to thank Texas Christian University for supporting humanistic studies in rhetoric. I also wish to thank my colleagues who are not only in the halls of my department but across the country, for they form a community whose nurturing is invaluable. Sarah Yoder Skripsky, Amy K. Hermanson, Wendy Williams, and Michelle Iten all read versions of this manuscript and made many valuable suggestions. The readers for Parlor Press, Jenny Bay and Thomas Rickert made observations and suggestions that served as an invaluable guide in my revision. David Blakesley, the Publisher of Parlor Press, has been consistently supportive throughout the revision of this work . . . a trait that mirrors his distinguished career both as a scholar and publisher. I wish to thank Richard E. Young, who has been my colleague for a period that now spans four decades and who, even in his retirement, continues to teach me about rhetoric. Finally, I wish to express my gratitude to associates whom we have lost but will always remember: Fathers Walter Ong and William Grimaldi, as well as James L. Kinneavy, Edward P. J. Corbett, and Wilbur Samuel Howell.
Introduction: Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric
A Rhetorical Faux Pas
Perhaps by its very nature, rhetoric is a subject that attracts interdisciplinary interest. Departments in English, communication, philosophy, linguistics and classical studies have provided us with great scholars who have refined theories, contributed to a better understanding of our history, constructed research methodologies, and offered heuristics for sensitive criticism. As the twenty-first century unfolds, we can look back with pride at our scholarly accomplishments and at how rhetoric has been integrated back into higher education. Yet, at one moment several years ago, I realized how fragile sustaining that momentum could be. In 1985, the then Speech Communication Association (now National Communication Association) awarded Wilbur Samuel Howell its highest honor, The Distinguished Service Award, in recognition of his career-long contribution to scholarship. I had known Professor Howell for many years; we participated together on panels, corresponded frequently and spoke to each other over the phone on a regular basis. When he learned of this award, Professor Howell called me, not just to share this news but also to ask a favor. Travel had become a great burden for him in his later years, and he asked if I would attend the convention and accept the award in his honor. I, of course, was delighted to share the moment, even as a bystander, and readily agreed. My obligations at the SCA Convention were relatively simple. I was to accept the award on Sam’s behalf and say a few words of appreciation. This simple task filled me with anxiety. It is, after all, an intimidating task to speak for one of last century’s great scholars of rhetoric and all the more so since I hold him in such personal esteem. I wanted my remarks to honor Professor Howell on that important occasion.
The point of this anecdote is not what I said at that banquet but how the audience reacted to what I said. In the process of honoring Wilbur Samuel Howell I mentioned not only the word “rhetoric” but “oratory” as well. Having worked closely with and across the fields of Communication and English for many years I know that “rhetoric” is a term shared by scholars both in Communication and English. In fact, the history of scholars of rhetoric interacting across disciplines is long and fruitful. Thus, even though Howell and I had been in English Departments for several years, no one saw either of us as outsiders to NCA. The audience’s discomfort was with the words “rhetoric” and “oratory.” Evidently, I had selected the words that listeners wished to have left unspoken. Yet, as any oralist will tell you, there is no turning back in orality once the word, as Homer says, passes through the barrier of your teeth. I simply could not erase the winged word acoustically. As I look back on that moment, I realize that the issue that was revealed by the audience’s reaction was that the terms “rhetoric” and “oratory” were politically incorrect. If I had used another synonym—perhaps communication—all would have been socially acceptable or at least tolerable. The safest of all terms was probably “discourse,” but by that point in the acceptance speech the damage already had been done.
For several years I thought a great deal about that moment. Perhaps, I considered, this event was an aberration and, at the moment, I had committed an unwarranted generalization. I think not. I am convinced that this faux pas uncovered a serious problem that constrains the field today: the belief that research in rhetoric is retrospective or, at best, static. That night’s audience associated the study of the history of rhetoric as an out-of-step phase of their march toward research excellence and believed that the terms “oratory” and “rhetoric” conjured up methods and topics that the discipline had outgrown. NCA has a large and growing stake in research methods and topics associated with the social sciences. This perspective has been represented in ways that make it appear to be incompatible with the tradition of humanistic scholarship that characterizes much of the field’s history. The growing intolerance toward the humanistic study of rhetoric has serious, detrimental consequences not only to the field in question but also for the entire temperament about research and what such research contributes. This introduction is an effort to reveal those consequences and to argue for the benefits of a more inclusive attitude than the one exhibited by listeners on that night.
It is important to emphasize that while I am convinced that this attitude existed with many in the audience on that day, such a perspective is not shared by scholars in other disciplines. Let me demonstrate a different perspective on rhetoric and oratory, one that comes from outside Communication. Classicists such as Eric Havelock, anthropologists such as Claude Levi-Strauss, sociologists such as Jack Goody and Ian Watt, and rhetoricians from English such as Walter Ong rushed to use such shared terms as “orality” and “oral” unabashedly (Havelock, Muse 24–29). Father Ong even dared to give it marquee status in his book, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word. Since Father Ong’s book has just recently been translated into its seventh language I felt that saying “oratory” would have been tolerated with that