Patricia Bizzell

Feminist methods of research in the history of rhetoric: What difference do they make?

Abstract Feminist research in the history of rhetoric has used traditional humanistic research techniques to recover many women rhetoricians. Nevertheless, such work has been faulted for making tendentious arguments on behalf of some women figures. These criticisms arise in part from failing to understanding that feminist researchers, although employing many traditional methods, do not seek the traditional goal of objective truth. Rather, they work for truths that are relative to the interests of specific communities. Scholars who refuse to accept their findings may be motivated in part by rejection of the emotional allegiances the relevant communities invoke. An exemplary theory to negotiate these research difficulties can be found in the work of Jacqueline Jones Royster.

Arguing about Literacy.

Arguments about literacy typically take the same form. One kind of literacy holds a commanding position, that which comprises the ways of using language valued by the academy and the upper social classes with which it is associated. The dominance of this academic literacy is challenged by people who have made their way into the schools but whose native tongues are at a relatively greater remove from the academic dialect, whose preferred modes of developing ideas conflict with the linear logic and impersonal posture of academic debate, and whose cultural treasures are not included in the academic canon. These challenges of academic literacy typically come from social groups at some remove from the upper classes-that is, from the lower classes, foreign born, non-white, and/or female.

Frances Willard, Phoebe Palmer, and the Ethos of the Methodist Woman Preacher

This article attempts to analyze the ineffable quality of ethos in a case study anout Frances Willard, contending that she succeeded with conservative middle-class audiences by invoking the ethos of the Methodist woman preacher, which she may have learned from her mentor Phoebe Palmer. Methodism encouraged womens moral activism, and Palmer, foreshadowing Willards agenda, worked for many causes, all the while maintaining a genteel True-Womanly persona. Willard testified to Palmers spiritual influence on her, and her speaking style also reflected Palmers blend of intense commitment, spiritual restraint, refined appearance, sound logic, and seemingly artless eloquence. Both womens rhetoric came to seem dated in their final years, yet both left lasting legacies of social change in their communities.

Rhetorical traditions, pluralized canons, relevant history, and other disputed terms: A report from the history of rhetoric discussion groups at the ARS conference

Abstract Among the thirty or so historians gathered to discuss the question of “rhetorical tradition” at the inaugural Alliance of Rhetoric Societies meeting, there was virtual agreement that the concept of a single tradition would not stand without critique, interrogation, and pluralization. The two groups took somewhat different paths outward from the notion of a unified tradition, one spending more time elaborating a range of historiographical models and the other dwelling on questions of value and purpose in the enterprise of writing and teaching histories of rhetoric They reached agreement in discussions of inventive approaches to curriculum development and the need for a proliferation of scholarly projects and resources.

Chastity Warrants for Women Public Speakers in Nineteenth-Century American Fiction

Accusations of sexual impropriety have been used against women public speakers at least since the Renaissance, and nineteenth-century America was no exception. In constructing public personae that worked with prevailing gender ideologies, women tried to preserve the appearance of sexual purity. This concern for chastity carried over into fictional representations of women public speakers. While some authors depicted such figures negatively, the three examined here—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, Louisa May Alcott, and Frances E. W. Harper—all defended the woman public speaker by providing warrants within the narrative structure for her chastity and by giving her a public mission that was appropriately feminine according to nineteenth-century gender ideology. These women authors also provided a utopian moment in their narratives in which the social benefits of allowing their protagonists to speak in public are dramatized. Studying the literary representations of women speakers, in any era, can help to illuminate the cultural milieu in which such women made their way.

(Shibutz) as a Conciliatory Rhetorical Style in Nachmanides’ “Letter to the French Rabbis”

Combining Zeno’s rhetorics of the open hand and closed fist, Nachmanides addressed the heirs of Rashi to defend Maimonides. Polemical letters were a vehicle for this controversy, and a major example is his “Letter to the French Rabbis.” Using cleverly organized arguments and a brilliantly learned style of allusion to Biblical and rabbinic texts, called “shibutz,” Nachmanides influenced his addressees to mitigate a herem (ban) against students of Maimonides. Nachmanides sought to unify the warring factions rather than to achieve victory for either side, and his densely packed allusions to texts all the combatants revered comprise common ground for reconciliation.

Rhetoric in the European Tradition

Rhetoric in the European Tradition by Thomas M. Conley. New York: Longman, 1990. pp. ix + 325.