The popularizing and renewing of rhetoric

The revival of interest in rhetoric's literary and cultural applications, combined with ongoing research in psychology, linguistics, sociology, and composition pedagogy resulted in an explosion of new work in rhetoric from the early 1970s, including the following important studies: James L. Kinneavy, A Theory of Discourse (1971, reissued 1980); W. Ross Winterowd, Contemporary Rhetoric: A Conceptual Background with Readings (1975); Francis Christensen and Bonniejean Christensen, Notes Toward a New Rhetoric: Nine Essays for Teachers, 2nd ed. (1978); Frank J. D'Angelo, A Conceptual Theory of Rhetoric (1975); Walter J. Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (1982, reissued 2002); George A. Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric & Its Christian & Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times, 2nd ed., rev. and enlarged (1999); Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 4th ed. (1999); and Samuel IJsseling, Rhetoric and Philosophy in Conflict: An Historical Survey (1976; originally published in Dutch, 1975). A handy, widely-used survey is James J. Murphy et al., A Synoptic History of Classical Rhetoric, 3rd ed. (2003). From the traditions of speech and communication, Douglas Ehninger and Wayne Brockriede, Decision by Debate, 2nd ed. (1978), put rhetorical and argumentation principles in service to debate. In writings, mostly essays, from the late 1920s to mid-1980s, Richard McKeon, Rhetoric: Essays in Invention and Discovery, ed. by Mark Backman (1987), McKeon describes rhetoric as an “architectonic” art, capable of wide-ranging interdisciplinary allegiances and historic reconfigurations, presaging that in the 1980s and 1990s rhetoric became both an independent discipline and an umbrella term for dynamic creation and reassessment.

Late-20th-century rhetoric

A popular introduction to the history and modern directions has been Robert J. Connors, Lisa S. Ede, and Andrea A. Lunsford (eds.), Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse (1984). Susan C. Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured (1991), is a feminist/deconstructionist approach to re-reading ancient rhetoric. C. Jan Swearingen, Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies (1991), integrates rhetoric, language theory, and aesthetics up to Augustine. Two especially thorough historical surveys with original-language quotes are Richard Leo Enos, Greek Rhetoric Before Aristotle (1993); and Thomas M. Conley, Rhetoric in the European Tradition (1990). Bruce A. Kimball, Orators & Philosophers: A History of the Idea of Liberal Education, expanded ed. (1995), traces two opposing traditions throughout the history of a liberal arts education. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg (eds.), The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, 2nd ed. (2001), provides a rich selection of canonical texts as well as newly introduced writings of women. Bizzell's and Herzberg's introductory essays to each time period are helpful.

John Bender and David E. Wellbery (eds.), The Ends of Rhetoric: History, Theory, Practice (1990); and Brian Vickers, In Defence of Rhetoric (1988), are useful for their historical and interdisciplinary scope. James E. Porter, Audience and Rhetoric: An Archaeological Composition of the Discourse Community (1992), considers the role of the audience from classical rhetoric through modern reader-response criticism and post-structuralist literary theory. An interview and response format provides fruitful exchanges in a pair of books: Gary A. Olson and Irene Gale (eds.), (Inter)views: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Rhetoric and Literacy (1991); and its sequel, Gary A. Olson (ed.), Philosophy, Rhetoric, Literary Criticism: (Inter)views (1994). A helpful survey of the intersections of composition theory and literary theory is John Clifford and John Schilb (eds.), Writing Theory, and Critical Theory (1994). Victor Vitanza (ed.), Writing Histories of Rhetoric (1994), recommends changing the ways in which rhetoric's history has been conceived. Similarly, Takis Poulakos (ed.), Rethinking the History of Rhetoric: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Rhetorical Tradition (1993), assembled contributors whose goal is a refiguration of rhetoric history. Gerard A. Hauser, Introduction to Rhetorical Theory, 2nd ed. (2002); and Timothy W. Crusius, Discourse: A Critique and Synthesis of Major Theories (1989), are helpful introductions to major theoretical branches of recent rhetorical studies.

Richard Harvey Brown, Society as Text (1987), discusses rhetoric in sociological terms, with rhetoric as the context-giving tradition that informs moral and political praxis. Roderick P. Hart and Suzanne M. Daughton, Modern Rhetorical Criticism, 3rd ed. (2005), argues for good rhetorical criticism and analyzes many short speeches and popular-interest texts. Barry Brummett, Rhetorical Dimensions of Popular Culture (1991); and Walter Nash, Rhetoric: The Wit of Persuasion (1989), pay particular attention to the role of rhetoric in contemporary popular culture. Harold Barrett, Rhetoric and Civility: Human Development, Narcissism, and the Good Audience (1991), applies insights from developmental psychology to political rhetoric, particularly in the United States; Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson, Deeds Done in Words: Presidential Rhetoric and the Genres of Governance (1990), gives a critical history of U.S. presidential rhetoric. Karlyn Kohrs Campbell, Man Cannot Speak for Her, 2 vol. (1989), is a critical study of early feminist rhetoric with key texts of early feminists. Andrea A. Lunsford (ed.), Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical Tradition (1995), interpolates women's voices and rhetorics into the seamless masculine, rhetorical historical tradition. Krista Ratcliffe, Anglo-American Feminist Challenges to the Rhetorical Traditions: Virginia Woolf, Mary Daly, Adrienne Rich (1996), emphasizes the extraction of feminist rhetorical theory from the texts of three prominent female writers. An interesting collection of essays about teachers and scholars concerned with the role of feminism in rhetoric and composition is Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig (eds.), Feminine Principles and Women's Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric (1995).

Three other essay collections that survey scholarship in rhetoric are Winifred Bryan Horner (ed.), The Present State of Scholarship in Historical and Contemporary Rhetoric, rev. ed. (1990); Winifred Bryan Horner and Michael Leff (eds.), Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of James J. Murphy (1995); and W. Ross Winterowd and Vincent Gillespie (eds.), Composition in Context: Essays in Honor of Donald C. Stewart (1994).