Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric

by Susan Miller

Overview

Trust in Texts: A Different History of Rhetoric challenges the accepted idea of a singular rhetorical tradition poorly maintained from the Athenian Golden Age until the present. Author Susan Miller argues that oratorical rhetoric is but one among many codes that guide the production of texts and proposes that emotion and trust are central to the motives and effects of rhetoric.

This groundbreaking volume makes a case for historical rhetoric as disbursed, formal and informal lessons in persuasion that are codified as crafts that mediate between what is known and unknown in particular rhetorical situations. Traditional, unified histories of rhetoric ignore the extensive historical interactions among discourses—including medicine, drama, lyric poetry, philosophy, oratory, and literary fiction—that have operated from antiquity across cultures that are historically and geographically joined.

Drawing not just on traditional rhetorical works, but also on texts from philosophy and literature, Miller expands the body of works to be considered in the study of rhetoric. As the first book-length study that calls into question the centrality of logos to rhetoric, Trust in Texts will change the way the history of rhetoric is viewed and taught and will be essential to scholars and students of communications, rhetoric, English, classics, and literary studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809387670
Publisher:	Southern Illinois University Press
Publication date:	11/20/2007
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	350 KB

About the Author

Susan Miller, a professor of English and a faculty member in the University Writing Program at the University of Utah, teaches the history and theory of rhetoric and composition. She is the author of Writing: Process and Product, Rescuing the Subject: A Critical Introduction to Rhetoric and the Writer, Textual Carnivals: The Politics of Composition, and Assuming the Positions: Cultural Pedagogy and the Politics of Ordinary Writing.

Hometown:

New York, New York

Place of Birth:

New York, New York

Education:

B.S. in Business, New York University

Website:

http://astrologyzone.com

Table of Contents

Contents Preface 00 Acknowledgments 00 Introduction: Rhetoric, Emotion, and Places of Persuasion 00 Rhetorics, Pedagogies, and Methods 00 Topics: Simultaneous and Consecutive 00 The Trouble with Emotion and Rhetoric 00 Emotional Educations 00 The Trouble with Rhetoric and Emotion 00 1. De-centering Rhetoric 00 Reviewing Rhetoric 00 Everyone Knows: Antique Characters 00 Everyone Knew: Rhetoric as Its Precedents 00 Poetry 00 Drama 00 Cures 00 Sophisticated Rhetoric 00 Divine Rhetoric 00 2. Trusting Texts 00 Trusting Printing 00 Trusting Rhetoric 00 ¿Sincerely, and Prudently, Yours,¿¿ 00 3. The Mobility of Trust 00 Literature, ¿Literature,¿ and Rhetorical Truths 00 Rhetorical Rhetoric and Literary Truth 00 The Communicative Essence of Language: Pure British Tongues 00 The Turn to Words 00 The Ends of Trust 00 Conclusion: Centering Rhetoric: The Psychology of Anxious Moments and Solemn Occasions 00 The Motive to Act 00 The Motivator 00 Notes 00 Works Cited 00 Index 00

Editorial Reviews

“This book, and the research that supports it, has the potential to change the way we understand and study rhetoric.”—Gregory Clark, Brigham Young University

“This is Susan Miller’s magnum opus. It will greatly expand traditional notions of what it is that we look at when we say we’re looking at rhetoric.”—Patricia Harkin, University of Illinois at Chicago

From the Publisher

In writing a poststructuralist history of rhetoric, Miller (Univ. of Utah) pursues several important goals. First, she

decenters understanding of rhetoric's canonical roots, challenging the origins mythology that makes intellectual

context the inevitable descendant of Golden Age Athens. Second, she reimages categories of rhetoric to reclaim a

pre-Cartesian valuation of emotions as an important element (if not an alternative "center") of a whole understanding

of what texts, oratorical or print, do and how they are received. The "trust" of her title is the "emotional consent" one

must accord any text for it to be persuasive. Miller demonstrates that this element has been de-emphasized in

traditional histories. Through close readings of specific examples from ancient Greece, 18th-century liminal spaces

between rhetoric as oratory and mass product, and current theory, she shows that emotional consent can, if

reconceived, offer a reintegration of mind, body, and spirit fragmented by Cartesian rationalism. Although the author

herself points out the poststructuralist "problematic" that she must provide close readings without "re-turning to

totalizing explanations," her conclusion calls for exploration of the implications of a persuasive "energy" that unites

reason and emotion. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty.

CHOICE - M.F. McClure

In writing a poststructuralist history of rhetoric, Miller (Univ. of Utah) pursues several important goals. First, she

decenters understanding of rhetoric''s canonical roots, challenging the origins mythology that makes intellectual

context the inevitable descendant of Golden Age Athens. Second, she reimages categories of rhetoric to reclaim a

pre-Cartesian valuation of emotions as an important element (if not an alternative "center") of a whole understanding

of what texts, oratorical or print, do and how they are received. The "trust" of her title is the "emotional consent" one

must accord any text for it to be persuasive. Miller demonstrates that this element has been de-emphasized in

traditional histories. Through close readings of specific examples from ancient Greece, 18th-century liminal spaces

between rhetoric as oratory and mass product, and current theory, she shows that emotional consent can, if

reconceived, offer a reintegration of mind, body, and spirit fragmented by Cartesian rationalism. Although the author

herself points out the poststructuralist "problematic" that she must provide close readings without "re-turning to

totalizing explanations," her conclusion calls for exploration of the implications of a persuasive "energy" that unites

reason and emotion. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, researchers, and faculty.

— M.F. McClure

CHOICE