Rhetoric and Power

Nathan Crick

Description

An examination of how intellectuals and artists conceptualized rhetoric as a medium of power in a dynamic age of democracy and empire

In Rhetoric and Power, Nathan Crick dramatizes the history of rhetoric by explaining its origin and development in classical Greece beginning the oral displays of Homeric eloquence in a time of kings, following its ascent to power during the age of Pericles and the Sophists, and ending with its transformation into a rational discipline with Aristotle in a time of literacy and empire. Crick advances the thesis that rhetoric is primarily a medium and artistry of power, but that the relationship between rhetoric and power at any point in time is a product of historical conditions, not the least of which is the development and availability of communication media.

Investigating major works by Homer, Heraclitus, Aeschylus, Protagoras, Gorgias, Thucydides, Aristophanes, Plato, Isocrates, and Aristotle, Rhetoric and Power tells the story of the rise and fall of classical Greece while simultaneously developing rhetorical theory from the close criticism of particular texts. As a form of rhetorical criticism, this volume offers challenging new readings to canonical works such as Aeschylus's Persians, Gorgias's Helen, Aristophanes's Birds, and Isocrates's Nicocles by reading them as reflections of the political culture of their time.

Through this theoretical inquiry, Crick uses these criticisms to articulate and define a plurality of rhetorical genres and concepts, such as heroic eloquence, tragicomedy, representative publicity, ideology, and the public sphere, and their relationships to different structures and ethics of power, such as monarchy, democracy, aristocracy, and empire. Rhetoric and Power thus provides a foundation for rhetorical history, criticism, and theory that draws on contemporary research to prove again the incredible richness of the classical tradition for contemporary rhetorical scholarship and practice.

Sujets

• Communication Studies
• Disciplines
• Language Arts
• HISTORY
• Protágoras
• Against the Sophists
• Sophistication
• Sophism
• The Philosopher
• Callicles
• Humanism
• Modes of persuasion
• Stesichorus
• Multitude
• Endoxa
• Critias (dialogue)
• Cultural hegemony
• Truism
• Great power
• Dialectician
• Ancient history
• Semantics
• Rhetoric
• Propaganda
• Ancient
• Discipline
• Greece
• Protagoras
• Satire

Informations

• Publié par: University of South Carolina Press
• Date de parution: 28 octobre 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 3
• EAN13: 9781611173963
• Langue: English

Extrait

RHETORIC POWER
STUDIES IN RHETORIC/COMMUNICATION
Thomas W. Benson, Series Editor
RHETORIC POWER
The Drama of Classical Greece
NATHAN CRICK

The University of South Carolina Press
2015 University of South Carolina
Published by the University of South Carolina Press
Columbia, South Carolina 29208
www.sc.edu/uscpress
24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Crick, Nathan, author.
Rhetoric and Power : the drama of classical Greece / Nathan Crick. pages cm-(Studies in rhetoric/ communication)
ISBN 978-1-61117-395-6 (hardbound : alk. paper)-ISBN 978-1-61117-396-3 (ebook) 1. Greek drama-History and criticism. 2. Rhetoric, Ancient. I. Title. II. Series: Studies in rhetoric/ communication.
PA3133.C75 2014 882 .0109-dc23
2014007286
To William, Dean, Sofia, and Leo, may you each find your own Ithaca
CONTENTS
Series Editor s Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1
Homer s Iliad and the Epic Tradition of Heroic Eloquence
Chapter 2
Heraclitus and the Revelation of Logos
Chapter 3
Aeschylus s Persians and the Birth of Tragedy
Chapter 4
Protagoras and the Promise of Politics
Chapter 5
Gorgias s Helen and the Powers of Action and Fabrication
Chapter 6
Thucydides and the Political History of Power
Chapter 7
Aristophanes s Birds and the Corrective of Comedy
Chapter 8
Plato s Protagoras and the Art of Tragicomedy
Chapter 9
Isocrates s Nicocles and the Hymn to Hegemony
Chapter 10
Aristotle on Rhetoric and Civilization
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index
SERIES EDITOR S PREFACE
Nathan Crick s Rhetoric and Power: The Drama of Classical Greece tells the story of how rhetoric emerged as a theory and practice in the centuries leading to Aristotle s Rhetoric . Crick examines in detail a series of foundational texts in Greek thought based on an understanding of the difference between violence and power, and of the fundamental relation of rhetoric with power. These earlier texts were serving cultural, aesthetic, and intellectual projects of their own, which Crick honors by refusing to regard them as simply struggling to articulate what was later to become rhetorical theory. At the same time, Crick shows how these early texts prepared the intellectual ground for rhetoric as it did emerge, under changing political and cultural conditions, as a discipline in its own right.
Each chapter explores in detail a key text in Greek thought: Homer s Iliad , the logos of Heraclitus, Aeschylus s The Persians and Prometheus Bound , surviving fragments of Protagoras, Gorgias s Helen , the history of Thucydides, Aristophanes s The Birds , Plato s Protagoras , Isocrates s Nicocles, and Aristotle s Rhetoric . The chapters serve as both readings of the chosen text and theoretical explorations of the growing store of resources for thinking about power and symbolic action. In addition Crick gives us a highly informative tour of modern classical scholarship and a lucid, dramatic sketch of the centuries of Greek history from Homer to Aristotle and beyond. Nathan Crick s Rhetoric and Power is an exciting story of early Greek history and thought and a compelling exposition of the theory of rhetoric.
T HOMAS W. B ENSON
Series Editor
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
It was at the end of my senior year in high school when I first encountered Plato. My grandparents Leo and Elsie Conti had a beautiful wood bookcase at the top of their stairs whose contents had remained unopened for decades. Until that year, I had never really paid any attention to these books, treating them as background in a house that I always considered filled with antiques. A stately, stucco home built in the Tuscan style, it was the product of the labor of my great-grandfather who came to the United States from Italy as a teenager, alone, and who built the house in Springfield, Massachusetts, with his own hands after founding a masonry business. Naturally, such a home, filled with decades of artifacts and memories, was a perfect place for a child to ransack for props for imaginative play, particularly in the basement with its fireplace, its potato cellar, its furnace, and its piles of dusty boxes and pickling jars. And it was good for stories, too. Sometimes, when Leo Conti was in the mood, he would corner the grandchildren and make them listen to him praise the Romans for their invention of the arch and their general possession of that rare character trait that Leo called fire in the belly. Then he would challenge us to try to punch him in his sizable belly or try to squeeze his giant hand until he gave in-something which not even my older cousins who joined the military could ever actually make him do. One thing Leo never did was give in.
As I was going off to college, however, I felt the urge to take something else with me from that house along with my fond childhood memories. So I took two books, You Can t Go Home Again, by Thomas Wolfe, and The Last Days of Plato, a paperback which included the Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. The first book was a sprawling exploration of the upheavals of American society during the 1920s and 1930s, before and after the stock market crash which crushed the illusion of unending prosperity and forced American artists like Wolfe into literary exile as they attempted to envision a new future for the country. The second was a dramatization of philosophy in action, of a life acted according to principle in a time of war, greed, and hypocrisy. It was a vivid demonstration that ideas are weapons, that virtue is emancipatory, and that artists are the educators of history. When I read both books that summer, I did not understand much about literary criticism or the nuances of Platonic dialectic, nor did I care to. I read those books for one simple reason-because they were artifacts that found their way somehow into my family s biography, linking that place of my childhood to a larger cosmos of which I, too, would eventually have some part to play. I was ready to expand my imagination beyond the confines of my safe, rural upbringing to catch a glimpse of the possibilities of life and death, of tragic suffering and comic adventure.
The impulse that led me to take The Last Days of Plato off of that bookcase at the top of the stairs is not so different from what drove my grandfather to tell stories about the Romans. We look to the drama of ancient history to give us license to imagine possibilities that we often close off in our own lives once our childhood fantasies subside. When I told a good friend of mine (also an academic) that I was writing about Classical Greece, he remarked that such a project would be like taking a trip to some beautiful island somewhere where everything is different yet somehow the same. Of course, it goes without saying that this beautiful island was also the scene of plagues, burning cities, executions, slavery, and military conquest-but to the modern imagination, it is a beautiful island nonetheless. And we cannot ever seem to abandon this beautiful island. Time and time again, there are movements within academic disciplines of all types to simply abandon the classics as irrelevant and to concentrate on cutting-edge modern scholarship, only to find that we ended up back where we started. Then there is a call for a revival of some tendency that was first articulated in a classical author, and the cycle starts all over again. The reason is plain. Whenever we seem to have run out of inspiration, energy, passion, or hope, we always turn to the past for rejuvenation. Like a child exploring a grandparent s basement, we always locate undiscovered objects that stimulate the imagination with sudden possibilities.
Although I am forever grateful to the lasting influence of my family, this book was not the product of an accidental reading of Plato s dialogues. It was in large part the result of the Fates guiding me to John Poulakos, who I can confidently say possesses that fire in the belly that would have impressed Leo Conti. John s primary goal as an advisor is simply to inspire a love of wisdom in his students, an unabashed passion for ideas that are validated not by their popularity but by their power and their virtue. In a university environment that judges authority by the length of one s list of secondary sources, it is truly emancipatory to be mentored by one who cares as little for popularity as does Socrates on trial. I am forever grateful to have crossed paths with someone who combines the intellect of Athena with the creativity of the Muses.
My other source of inspiration has been the graduate students with whom I have been fortunate to work at Louisiana State University. Indeed, much of this book has been composed in the context of conversations with them in the classroom, in my office, over coffee, at the bar, and strolling down the sidewalks of cities in happy avoidance of NCA panels. Special thanks are thus in order. Ryan McGeough challenged me to step up to the plate when I was an insecure assistant professor. Rya Butterfield was the first to trust that I had anything to teach her, and in exchange for my labors she introduced me to the tradition of classical rhetoric in China. Joseph Rhodes, when not playing the role of Hippocleides, was a constant source of enthusiastic provocation and loyal friendship, and to him I owe my acquaintance with the likes of Joshua, Amos, and Isaiah. Bryan Moe has invited me into the garden of Epicurus for a lunch of bread, cheese, and wine, and I shall always take courage from David Tarvin, who has taught me not to be ashamed of wearing a washbasin on my head when the time comes to sally forth.