A survey of rhetoric course begins in ancient Greece, moves to the Romans, heads westward over time through Europe and the New World. Our course attempts to include rhetoric from China, India and Persia, but still overlooks rhetorical contributions from…
Author Archive for Kent
Lost in Translation
by Kent • • 1 Comment
Xing Lu says one of the problems with the existing research on Chinese rhetoric is a dependency on translations. The texts we have read so far were not originally composed in English; they were written in Greek or Latin or…
Rhetoric vs. Poetic
by Kent • • 0 Comments
Rhetoric and poetry have been linked for millenia. Aristotle treated both subjects in works that are still read today. For much of history rhetoric has been considered to be superior to poetry. In section XVI, Cicero declares oratory to be…
When Rhetoric Can’t Win
by Kent • • 0 Comments
An audience can be swayed by factors outside the rhetoric realm. This was briefly mentioned in class on Thursday when the Kennedy/Nixon debate was discussed. Radio listeners thought Nixon won the debate, but television viewers considered Kennedy the winner. Nixon…