CLS3930

Rhetoric

Proposed to be offered next in 2000

Walter Veit

12 points - 3 hours per week - Clayton

Objectives Students who have successfully completed this subject should have studied a number of foundation texts of rhetoric, gained a good knowledge of the history and theory of rhetoric from antiquity to the present, and developed a recognition of its importance in human communication.

Synopsis The subject studies the philosophical foundations and historic development of rhetoric as a theory of communication. It investigates its beginnings in theory and practice in Greek and Roman antiquity (Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Quintilian); the major forces during the Middle Ages (Augustine, Boethius, Abelard, Anselm of Canterbury); the decline of rhetoric from the Renaissance to the nineteenth century; and the reassessment of the function of rhetoric in the work of contemporary theoreticians and scholars like E R Curtius, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Ernesto Grassi, Paul Ricoeur, Chaim Perelman, Jürgen Habarmas, Hans Blumenberg and Hayden White, and in the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric. Particular points of discussion will be the theory of argumentation, the function of 'topoi', the theory of metaphor, and the relationship between rhetoric, philosophy, literature and literary criticism.

Assessment Two seminar papers (1000-1500 words each): 20% each - Research essay (4000 words): 60%

Prescribed texts

Brock B and Scott R Methods of rhetorical criticism: A twentieth-century perspective Wayne State U P
Burks D Rhetoric, philosophy and literature: An exploration Purdue U P
Curtius E European literature and the Latin Middle Ages Princeton U P
Dixon P Rhetoric Methuen

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