Rhetoric in European Culture and Beyond

Rhetoric in European and World Culture traces the position of rhetoric in cultural and educational systems from ancient times to the present. Here, Jirí Kraus examines rhetoric’s decline in importance in a period of rationalism and enlightenment, presents the causes of negative connotations of rhetoric, and explains why rhetoric in the twentieth century regained its prestige.

Kraus demonstrates that the reputation of rhetoric falls when it is reduced to a refined method for deceiving the p...