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Low Brows and High Profiles: Rhetoric in the
Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century Theater
Although the European Enlightenment of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries touched all
aspects of western culture and thought, including the rhetorical tradition, little is known about the female
rhetorical activities of the Enlightenment. For much of the twentieth century, scholars of historical
rhetoric viewed Enlightenment rhetoric as consisting strictly of the practice of public oratory and of
written theories on the art of using language for persuasion, moral reasoning, and understanding—
activities executed by men in the context of the university, the church, the law courts, and political
forums. These elite venues allowed little to no participation by women; therefore, female rhetorical work
during the Enlightenment appeared to be nearly nonexistent, except for that produced by a handful of
females, such as Margaret Fell, Mary Astell, and Mary Wollstonecraft, who defied social conventions by
speaking and writing in the traditional rhetorical genres of the sermon (Fell) and the prose treatise (Astell
and Wollstonecraft). However, in the late twentieth century, a growing number of feminist
historiographers and researchers began questioning and expanding the boundaries of the traditional
rhetorical cannon. Studies by Glenn, Lunsford, Ronald and Ritchie, Donawerth, and Bizzell and
Herzberg, among others, began reclaiming female rhetoric from Classical times to the present; much has
been done in the past twenty years to expand the rhetorical cannon to include women in the classical and
renaissance periods and also in the nineteenth century. But the historical record of female contributions
to rhetoric during the period of the European Enlightenment, roughly the late seventeenth to late
eighteenth century, is still surprisingly somewhat sparse.
To rediscover the wide range of female rhetorical acts during the Enlightenment requires looking
beyond the parameters of the traditional rhetorical cannon, as Andrea Lunsford recommends, for the
“forms, strategies and goals used by women as rhetorical” (6). I believe an additional key to locating acts
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of female rhetoric in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is to examine the rhetorical situations in
which females could participate. The rhetorical situation is described by twentieth-century rhetorical
theorist Lloyd Bitzer as “a complex of persons, events, objects, and relations” responding to an exigence
or “an imperfection marked by urgency…a defect, an obstacle, or something waiting to done,” which can
be removed or, more likely, improved or positively impacted through the means of discourse delivered by
a speaker to an audience who has the power to mediate change (304). Every society and historical period
has a multitude of exigencies, or problems, which its members may want to expose, debate, and mediate.
Therefore, it is highly possible to use Bitzer’s concept of the rhetorical situation to reconsider the
historical contexts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to find those in which women took part and
in which language was used to mediate the social issues of the period.
One aspect of Enlightenment rhetoric that until recently has been largely ignored is the
emergence of mixed-gender rhetorical venues, which allowed and encouraged female participation, where
women were not seen as appropriating men’s rhetoric, and where the female point of view was heard and
examined by everybody who participated. One such venue that has recently gained the attention of
scholars of historical rhetoric is the salon, a semi-private social space that became popular in seventeenthcentury Paris and continued to flourish through the eighteenth century in both France and England
(Donawerth; Bizzell and Herzberg). Salons provided places where the educated and elite of both sexes
could meet and converse on topics of artistic and intellectual interest. The salon had a loosely codified set
of rules for conversation, which members were expected to follow and which were entirely different than
guidelines for oratory and written argumentation. One of the greatest significances of the salon is that it
was one of the few venues of that time in which women had direct influence on the form and the content
of rhetoric.
Another socially influential, but less elite, mixed-gender rhetorical venue was the theater of the
British Restoration and early eighteenth century. Some of the most influential rhetoric delivered by and
about women during the long eighteenth century occurred in the theaters of London, which Charles II
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reopened when he was restored to the British throne in 1660 and where, shortly afterwards, he decreed
that female roles would be played by female actresses rather than male actors for the first time in English
history. By the late 1660s, the Restoration theater became a venue in which audiences expected women
to speak and paid attention to female rhetoric. Just as women influenced the rules and content of salon
rhetoric, they suddenly began to have a major influence on what was said and done on the stage. But,
unlike the semi-private salon, the theater was an openly public space and, therefore, reached a much
broader spectrum of society—what we now call the general public. Thus, the public debut of the actress
on the English stage marked the first time in western history that a group of professional women, not just
an individual female, commanded a sustained and popular public voice. This, in turn, influenced the
structure and the language of public performance and had a profound impact on the female’s position as
an artist and as a member of society. The overall contribution of actresses to the Restoration theater has
been broadly and deeply described in several previous studies (Van Lennep 1965; Highfill, Burnim, and
Langhans 1987; Howe 1992; Pearson 1988; Staves 1979). But the theater of the Restoration and early
eighteenth century has not been studied from the perspective of historical rhetoric.
I will use Bitzer’s theory of the rhetorical situation in conjunction with feminist historiography as
the primary methodology for formulating Restoration and early 18th century theater as an important venue
for rhetoric. Using Bitzer’s theory, the Restoration and early 18th century theater is easily viewed as
venue in which speakers enacted responses to the deep and ongoing exigence (or defect) of gender
identity in western society and in which the necessary rhetorical component of audience was ever present.
The sudden prominence and popularity of the theater in the late seventeenth century London, its novel
composition of players and audience, and the provocative and libertine social climate of the city created a
unique historical context and rhetorical situation. From a feminist rhetorical perspective, Restoration
theater gave females a public venue in which they were fully vested as speakers, as audience members,
and even as the embodiment of the message itself. It has already been observed that, in Restoration and
early eighteenth century theater, the actress was paramount to the message, inspiring playwrights,
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influencing the structure and content of the plays, and broadening the face of public discourse [The
London Stage, Howe, Pearson, Weber, Staves, Hughes]. In this dissertation, I aim to build on these
theater histories and to reclaim the Restoration theater as a mixed-gender rhetorical venue with its own
unique and highly gender-based rhetorical forms, to claim the value of the Restoration actresses to the
modern female rhetorical tradition, and to assert the validity of an interdisciplinary, belletristic stance for
examining the reciprocal relationship between rhetoric, public performance and popular culture. I will
examine the Restoration and early eighteenth century theater not from the perspective of theater history or
simply as a genre for literary or rhetorical analysis, but as a venue for rhetorical performance and, in fact,
the only public, non-elite, and secular venue available to women for public speaking and oratory in that
period of English history.
Of course, theatrical performance is not speech-making, except perhaps the direct address of the
prologues and epilogues, but the performative nature of the theater encompasses a wide variety of
rhetorical elements, including oratorical, textual, and visual. By looking at the plays, prologues and
epilogues, dedications, critical reviews, and other documents describing theater performance and artistry
at that time, I want to understand the rhetorical forms and strategies that were practiced and theorized and
how they were informed by gender. I hope to learn more precisely how Restoration theater is significant
to female rhetorical history. In the spirit of the eighteenth century belletristic movement, my approach to
this study will cross multiple disciplines, including rhetoric, literary analysis, theater history, and cultural
studies and will review the precedents, from the classical period to the present, for combining the study of
drama and rhetoric. After examining precedents, I will then focus on the rhetorical impact of plays and
performances from 1660 through 1737, the year in which the British government passed and strictly
enforced a licensing act that greatly curtailed theater activity until the end of the eighteenth century. In
viewing the theater of this period as rhetorical, I follow the lead started by the study of salon rhetoric to
broaden our understanding of rhetorical practices in order to gain a greater insight into female
participation in social and cultural issues of the long eighteenth century.
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Chapter Outline
Abstract
This section will summarize my argument and give a brief overview of the chapters.
Chapter 1: Treating Drama as Rhetoric (35-40 pages)
This chapter is my literature review in which I state the support and precedents for my study. At this
point, I’m not sure how I will organize the chapter, but my research will cover the following areas:
Classical Rhetorical Theory

Aristotle - interrelationship between Rhetoric and Poetics, ideas on delivery and acting, lexis/style as
related to ethos

Quintilian on drama and audience

Cicero – comparisons of actors and orators in The Ideal Orator

Present day rhetorical studies on classical drama (Greek and Roman)
18th Century Rhetoric

Belletristic Movement on literary theory, particularly drama – Blair, Smith

Campbell on Drama and Wit

Elocutionary Movement – Thomas Sheridan on voice and gesture

Literary Theory on drama, comedy, tragedy – Dryden, Behn,
20th Century Rhetoric and Literary Theory
There is a good deal of 20th century backing for arguing that the theater is a significant rhetorical venue:

Feminist historiographers of rhetoric – calls for examining historic situations in which women had a
voice, used language publicly, or persuaded audience - Lundsford, Glenn, Donawerth, Ritchie and
Ronald, Bizzell and Herzberg, etc.

Lloyd Bitzer – his original theory of the rhetorical situation:
exigence (or defect) – plenty of it in the ongoing querrelle de femme of the western world
audience – theater goers
constraints speaker – combination of playwrights and players chiefly, also critics
constituents – the theater as a space, what else?

Habermas and the Public Sphere, also feminist responses to Habermas


will help me define theater as a public space

calls out how the philosophical-epistemological movement in rhetoric, with its direct tie to
Enlightenment rationalism, became dominant—to the degradation of the belletristic movement
Additional possibilities:
Performance Theory? - Judith Butler, maybe Derrida, Jennifer Brody
Wayne Booth – The Rhetoric of Fiction
Kenneth Burke – Is dramatic pentad relevant??? –see Covino’s The Art of Persuasion
Visual rhetoric – stage, body, performance, gesture
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Communications and media theory, reception theory of Stephen Mailloux?
Edith Hamilton – The Greek Way – public spectacle and civic performance
Theater History
Studies of the Restoration and early Eighteenth Century Theater:

Overviews: The London Stage (all components, list of performances),

Actors and Actresses - Dictionary of Actors and Actresses, Elizabeth Howe

Plays and Playwrights - Jacqueline Pearson, Misty Andersen (Marriage and Comedy), Harold Weber
(The Rake Hero), Derek Hughes (Aphra Behn),
Historic Context – 1660-1737
 1660 – Charles II reopens theaters, debut of English actresses, recovery from Interregnum, licentious
times through 1690s
 early 1700s – rise of Whig politics, mercantilism, coffee shops, investment banking

1737 – Licensing act enacts greater censorship, demand down, new play production curtailed

Age of Reason, Enlightenment, Science, inductive logic, empiricism, demonstration (influence of
Descartes, Bacon, Hobbes-strong influence in Restoration, later Locke)

Gender issues – patriarchy: chastity, forced marriage, primogeniture

Marriage and inheritance laws (or lack of)

In Literature, Satire – stereotypes used to reveal individual behaviors and social conditions

In Rhetoric – advances occurring on continent, Scudery, Lamy, in England- following and critiquing
Locke is Mary Astell
Chapter 2 –Restoration and Early 18th Century Theater: A Mixed Gender
Rhetorical Venue (30 - 40 pages)
This chapter will define the meaning of the term rhetorical venue and establish the Restoration theater as
being one. Notes:
Rhetorical venue - a forum for speakers to enact responses to an exigence to an audience who have vested
interest in the issues
Restoration theater as rhetorical venue – explore the deep and ongoing exigence of gender identity
Constraints (defined according to Bitzer):






playwrights, players, texts, relationships of these things.
the advent of the actress on the public stage
monarch and arts patron Charles II,
marriage laws and their ambiguity,
the ironic mix of patriarchy and libertinism in the social structure,
the eighteenth century taste for realism and rationalism in addressing civic themes.
I will simplify Bitzer’s model to:
Speaker, Audience, Message, and Context
(For me, context is synonymous with exigence and constraints)
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Theatrical Context: Overview of Rhetorical Situations generated by Theater
Speaker
Form/message/genre Audience
Context
Playwrights
Written - scripts and
1. Players and
rehearsal
dedications
crew
2. General
public
Playwrights/Actresses Spoken Players and
Public
performance of plays, crew
performance
prologues, epilogues
Audience
Spoken – immediate
General public
Public
reaction to play
and players
performance
Critics
Written essays,
General public
Published texts
Newspaper articles,
treatises
Citizens
Written critique and
Friends
Private
commentary of plays
correspondence,
in letters
maybe published
at a later date
Public?
No
Yes
Yes
Yes
No
Theater Demographics
Group
Class and Gender
Speakers
Playwrights and actors/actresses – give percentages of male/female by decade,
roles by gender, lines per play by gender, gender trends
Audience
Who is the audience? Mixed gender, mostly upper classes, but servants and some
middle class --conflicting reports on this
The Role of the Audience
 More discussion of Habermas – general public – popular culture – people who have no direct
relationship (bourgeoisie)
 Wits and critics
 High brow and low brow
 As a source of revenue
The Message
What types of plays that were popular?
New plays versus restaging of Renaissance work?
Discuss new genres here or later?
Chapter 3: The Speakers: Playwrights and Players (35-45 pages)
Playwrights
 Profile of playwrights and their plays: popularity, goals, style

Social influences and effects – politics and gender

Writing for Particular Actors and Actresses
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Players
 Actresses and Actors as rhetoricians/ orators

Language, performance and gesture/visual rhetoric
Actresses
 Key question – Actresses in England vs. actresses in France, Spain, Italy – Did they have the
same impact?


Actress profiles – first-hand and second-hand accounts of oratorical strategies
Roles, stereotypes, and gender identity (for each type below, talk about rhetorical styles,
tropes accents, expressions, physical appearance, physical and verbal interactions with other
characters):







female wits and rakes
virtuous heroines
virgins: innocent/wanton, intelligent/ignorant,
wives
widows
prostitutes
servants
Actors
 Actor profiles – first-hand and second-hand accounts of oratorical strategies

roles, stereotypes, and gender identity:








male wits and rakes
virtuous heros
fops and fools
husbands
patriarchs
older and younger brothers
rustics
servants
Chapter 4: Direct Address: Prologues, Epilogues, and Dedications (25-30 pages)
This chapter should include a discussion of the structures, purpose, and rhetorical styles (dialog, tropes,
imagery, motifs, etc.) for each genre/ type of dramatic piece.

Dedications
 Prologues and Epilogues
o Body references
o prostitution
Chapter 5: Indirect Address: Plays and their Rhetorical Maneuvers (35-45 pages)
This chapter should include a discussion of the structures, purpose, and rhetorical styles (dialog, tropes,
imagery, motifs, etc.) for each genre/ type of dramatic piece.

Dramatic Address (indirect, subliminal)
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
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Genres and Subgenres
o Comedy of Manners
o She Comedies
o Breeches Comedies
o Burlesques
o Farces
o Tragedies
Language: Dialog and Figurative Language
o witty repartee
o raillery
o Metaphors

Freedom/slavery

Mirror – to audience

Commodity metaphor

Gambling/gamesters metaphors and action
Chapter 6: Rhetorical Legacy of the Restoration Theater (15 pages)
Relationship of media and Popular culture
The rhetoric of the public self, idealized, debauched, subverted, perverted
the actress as sex symbol
actors and actresses as larger than life – public property – no private life
vicarious interest in public personas
stalkers
gender identity/confusion
Possible Plays for Case Study (Dr Caldwell recommended using six)
Possible strategies for choosing six representative plays:
 Strong female presence/ storyline
 Mix of comedy and tragedy or just comedy?
 Gender identity as strong themes
 Interesting rhetorical strategies in prologue and epilogue and in plays
 Good mix of decades represented (from 1670s – 1637)
Classic comedy of manners:
Wycherley, William. The Country Wife. (1675)
Etherege, George. The Man of Mode. (1676)
Congreve, William. The Way of the World (1700)
Pix, Mary. The Beau Defeated. (1700)
Good gender-bender comedies:
Behn, Aphra. The Rover (1677)
Southerne, Thomas. Sir Anthony Love (1690)
Tragedies with gender issues:
Otway, Thomas. Venice Preserved. (1682)
Dryden, John. All for Love. (1677)
Rowe, Nicholas. The Fair Penitent. (1703)
Others – good for various reasons:
Centlivre, Susanna. The Gamester.
__________. The Basset Table.
Fielding, Henry. The Actor’s Farce (1730s?)
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. (1728)
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Bibliography
This is still very rough
Restoration and 18th Century Drama
Behn, Aphra. The Rover: or The Banished Cavaliers.(1677)
__________. The Lucky Chance.
__________. The Rover Part 2. (1681)
Centlivre, Susanna. Bold Stroke for a Wife. (1718)
__________. The Gamester.
__________. The Basset Table.
Cibber, Colley. Love’s Last Shift. (1696)
Congreve, William. The Way of the World (1700)
Dryden, John. All for Love. (1677)
Etherege, George. The Man of Mode. (1676)
Farquhar, George. The Beaux’s Strategem. (1707)
Fielding, Henry. The Author’s Farce (1730s?)
Gay, John. The Beggar’s Opera. (1728)
Otway, Thomas. Venice Preserved. (1682)
Pix, Mary. The Beau Defeated. (1700)
Rowe, Nicholas. The Fair Penitent. (1703)
Southerne, Thomas. Oroonoko. (1695)
___________. Sir Anthony Love. (1690)
Vanbrugh, John. The Relapse. (1696)
Wycherley, William. The Country Wife. (1675)
Drama of Previous Periods
(needed for comparison)
Classical
Aeschylus
Aristophanes. The Frogs.
Euripides. The Bacchae.
Sophocles
Renaissance
Shakespeare – The Taming of the Shrew. Twelfth Night. MacBeth. Antony and Cleopatra.
Romeo and Juliet.
French – Moliere???
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18th Century Rhetoric
Astell, Mary. A serious proposal to the ladies. Parts I & II. Ed. Patricia Springborg.
Brookfield, VT: Pickering & Chatto, 1997.
Blair, Hugh Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres. Selections from The Rhetoric of
Blair, Campbell, and Whately. Ed. James Golden and Edward P. J. Corbett.
Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1990.
Campbell, George. The Philosophy of Rhetoric. 1776. Rpt. Delmar, NY: Scholars' Facsimiles
and Reprints, 1992.
Hobbes, Thomas. The Leviathon
Hume, David. "Of the Standard of Taste" in Essays Moral, Political, and Literary. Indianapolis,
IN: LibertyClassics, 1987.
Locke, John. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding
de Scudery, Madeleine . “Of Conversation” The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from
Classical Times to the Present. . Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg.
Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001. 767-772.
___________________. The Story of Sapho. Trans. Karen Newman. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press (2003).
Sheridan, Thomas. A Course of Lectures on Elocution. Delmar, NY: Scolars Facsimiles &
Reprints, 1991.
Smith, Adam. Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres...Reported by a Student in 1762-3, ed. J.C.
Bryce. Oxford: Clarenden Press, 1983.
Theater History, Theory, and Criticism
Anderson, Misty G. Female Playwrights and Eighteenth Century Comedy: Negotiating
Marriage on the London Stage. New York: Palgrave, 2002.
Avery, Emmett L. “Rhetorical Patterns in Restoration Prologues and Epilogues.” Essays in
American and English Literature Presented to Bruce Robert McElderry, Jr.. ed. Max F
Schulz, William D Templeman, and Charles R. Metzger. Athens: Ohio UP, 1968. 221237.
Collins, Margo. “Centlivre v. Hardwicke: Susannah Centlivre’s Plays and the Marriage Act of
1753.” Comparative Drama. 33 2. 1999.
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Corporaal, Marguérite. “'Thy Speech Eloquent, Thy Wit Quick, Thy Expressions Easy: Rhetoric
and Gender in Plays by English Renaissance Women.” Renaissance Forum: An
Electronic Journal of Early Modern Literary and Historical Studies, 2003 Winter; 6 (2).
Feldwick, Arlen. “Wits, Whigs, and Women: Domestic Politics as Anti-Whig Rhetoric in Aphra
Behn’s Town Comedies.” Political Rhetoric, Power, and Renaissance Women. Eds.
Carole Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan. New York: State University of New York Press,
1995. 223-242.
Goodden, Angelica. Actio And Persuasion : Dramatic Performance In Eighteenth-Century
France. 1986.
Gunderson, Erik. Staging Masculinity : The Rhetoric Of Performance In The Roman World.
2000.
Hayes, Douglas W.. Rhetorical Subversion in Early English Drama. New York: Peter Lang,
2004.
Highfill, Philip H., Kalman A. Burnim, Edward A. Langhans. A Biographical Dictionary of
Actors, Actresses, Musicians, Dancers, Managers & Other Stage Personnel in London,
1660-1800. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1987.
Howe, Elizabeth. The First English Actresses. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1992).
Hughes, Derek. The Theatre of Aphra Behn. Houndmills: Palgrave, 2001.
Kreis-Schink, Annette. Women, Writing, and the Theater in the Early Modern Period: The Plays
of Aphra Behn and Suzanne Centlivre. London: Associated University Presses, 2001.
Longman, Stanley Vincent, ed. Theatre symposium Vol. 5, Drama as rhetoric/rhetoric as drama
: an explanation of dramatic and rhetorical criticism: a journal of the Southeastern
Theatre Conference. 1997.
Lowenthal, Cynthia. “Sticks and Rags, Bodies and Brocade: Essentializing Discourses and the
Late Restoration Playhouse.” Broken Boundaries: Women and Feminism in Restoration
Drama. ed. Quinsey, Katherine M.. Lexington: UP of Kentucky, 1996. 219-33.
Maus, Katharine Eisaman. “Playhouse Flesh and Blood: Sexual Ideology and the Restoration Actress.”
ELH, 1979 Winter; 46 (4): 595-617
Payne, Deborah C.. “Reified Object of Emergent Professional? Retheorizing the Restoration Actress.”
Cultural Readings of Restoration and Eighteenth-Century English Theater. J. Douglas Canfield
and Deborah C. Payne, ed.. Athens: U of Georgia P; 1995. 13-38.
Pearson, Jacqueline. The Prostituted Muse: Images of Women and Women Dramatists 1642-1737, New
York: Harveister Wheatsheaf, 1988.
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Staves, Susan. Players’ Scepters: Fictions of Authority in the Restoration. Lincoln: University of
Nebraska Press, 1979.
Van Lennep, ed. London Stage 1660-1800: Part 1:1660-1700. Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1965.
Weber, Harold. The Restoration Rake-Hero. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986.
Worthen, William B., Modern Drama and the Rhetoric of Theater. 1992.
Classical Rhetoric and Poetic
Aristotle, Poetics
___________. On Rhetoric
Longinus. On The Sublime (excerpted in Bizzell/Herzberg);
Cicero, On The Ideal Orator, edited and translated by James M. May and Jakob Wisse, Oxford
UP, 2001.
Quintilian. Institutes of Oratory: or, Education of an Orator.
Contemporary Theory (Rhetorical, Feminist, and Literary)
Bizzell, Patricia and Bruce Herzberg, ed. The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical
Times to the Present. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2001.
Bizzell, Patricia. “Feminist Methods of Research in the History of Rhetoric: What Differences Do They
Make?” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 30.4 (Fall 2000): 5-17.
___________. “Praising Folly: Constructing a Postmodern Rhetorical Authority as a Woman.” In
Feminine Principles and Women’s Experience in American Composition and Rhetoric. Ed.
Louise Wetherbee Phelps and Janet Emig. U of Pittsburgh P, 1995. 27-42.
Carstarphen, Meta G. and Susan C. Zavoina., ed. Sexual Rhetoric : Media Perspectives on Sexuality,
Gender, and Identity. 1999.
Connors, Robert J. “Dreams and Play: Historical Method and Methodology.” In Methods and
Methodology in Composition Research. Eds. Gesa Kirsch and Patricia A. Sullivan. Southern
Illinois UP, 1992. 15-36.
Covino, William A. The Art of Wondering: A Revisionist Return to the History of Rhetoric.
Boynton/Cook, 1988.
___________. The Elements of Persuasion. Allyn & Bacon/Longman, 1998.
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Donawerth, Jane. “Conversation and the Boundaries of Public Discourse in Rhetorical Theory by
Renaissance Women.” Rhetorica. 16:2 (1998). 181-199.
___________. “As Becomes a Rational Woman to Speak: Madeleine de Scudery’s Rhetoric of
Conversation.” Listening to Their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women. 1997.
___________. “The Politics of Renaissance Rhetorical Theory by Women.” Political Rhetoric, Power,
and Renaissance Women. Eds. Carole Levin and Patricia A. Sullivan. New York: State
University of New York Press, 1995. 257-272.
Donawerth, Jane, ed. Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900. Rowman and Littlefield, 2002. (this is an
anthology; read introduction)
Enos, Richard. “Recovering the Lost Art of Researching the History of Rhetoric.” Rhetoric Society
Quarterly 29.4 (Fall 1999): 7-20.
Enos, Theresa, ed. Learning from the Histories of Rhetoric: Essays in Honor of Winifred Bryan Horner.
Southern Illinois UP, 1993.
Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the
Renaissance
Lunsford, Andrea. “On Reclaiming Rhetorica.” Reclaiming Rhetorica: Women in the Rhetorical
Tradition, ed. Andrea A. Lunsford. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1995. 3-8.
Paxson, James J. “Personification’s Gender.” Rhetorica 16.2 (1998): 149-79.
Poulakis, Takis, ed. Rethinking the History of Rhetoric: Multidisciplinary Essays on the Rhetorical
Tradition. Westview Press, 1993.
Ritchie, Joy S. Available Means: An Anthology of Women's Rhetoric
Vitanza, Victor J., ed. Writing Histories of Rhetoric. Southern Illinois UP, 1994.
Wertheimer, Marjories, ed. Listening to their Voices: The Rhetorical Activities of Historical Women. U of
South Carolina P, 1997.
Readings for Connecting Rhetoric and Poetics
Hamilton, Edith. The Greek Way and The Roman Way
Jarratt, Susan C. “Sappho’s Memory.” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 32.1 (Winter 2002): 11-43.
Jarratt, Susan, and Susan Romano. “Peitho Revisited.” Peitho: The Newsletter of the Coalition of
Women Scholars in the History of Rhetoric and Composition 7.2 (Spring/Summer 2002):
10.
Kallendorf, Craig, ed. Landmark Essays on Rhetoric and Literature. Hermagoras Press, 1999.
Liz Tasker
Dissertation Prospectus – prepared for meeting on 5/12/2005
15 of 15
Kennedy, George A. Comparative Rhetoric. NY: Oxford UP, 1998.
___________. A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton UP, 1994.
Kirby, John T. “ ‘The Great Triangle’ in Early Greek Rhetoric and Poetics.” Rhetorica III.3
(Summer 1990): 213-28.
Walker, Jeffrey. Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity. Oxford UP, 2000.
Readings related to the “The Public Sphere”
Bracci, Sharon L. and Clifford G. Christians, ed. Moral Engagement in Public Life: Theorists
for Contemporary Ethics. 2002.
Crossley, Nick, et al., eds. After Habermas: New Perspectives on the Public Sphere. Blackwell
Publishers, 2004.
Fraser, Nancy. Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of
Actually Existing Democracy.” In Postmodernism and the Re-Reading of Modernity. Ed.
Francis Barker, Pete Hulme, and Margaret Iverson. NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1992. 197-231.
Gaillet, Lynee Lewis. “Public Literacy, Social-Process Inquiry and Rhetorical Intervention:
Viewing Students (and Ourselves) as Public Intellectuals.” Composition Studies 30.2 (Fall
2002): 127-36.
Habermas, Jurgen. The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a
Category of Bourgois Society. MIT Press, 1991 (reprint)
Hauser, Gerard. Vernacular Voices: The Rhetoric or Publics and Public Spheres. U of South
Carolina P, 1999.
Weisser, Christian R. Moving Beyond Academic Discourse: Composition Studies and the Public
Sphere. Southern Illinois UP, 2002.