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Rhetoric & Public Affairs 5.3 (2002) 537-540



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Book Review

Encyclopedia of Rhetoric


Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Edited by Thomas O. Sloane. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001; pp. xii + 837. $150.

I begin with a disclaimer; I am the author of entries on "Feminist Rhetoric" and "Modern Rhetoric" that appear in this work. When I pointed this out, the book review editor rejoined that anyone who might write a review would be in a similar position. Indeed, this is a work created by an array of scholars housed in different departments and in different countries.

The distinctive character of this encyclopedia emerges from the synoptic outline of contents (799-804), which reveals that it is based on conceptual categories. It is a map of rhetoric as a discipline, as a set of practices that have developed and been modified through time, and as situated in relation to related areas of study. As the preface admits, this organization produces some overlapping among entries; concepts rarely have clear boundaries. There are no entries on individuals or on individual works. Instead, one finds extended essays on the rhetoric of historical periods (classical, medieval, renaissance, eighteenth century, nineteenth century, modern, and postmodern); on the elements of rhetoric (the modes of proof, the five "canons"); on major principles (ends, genres); on a hodgepodge of related subjects, including art, African American rhetoric, casuistry, comparative rhetorics (Arabic, Chinese, Hebrew, Indian, Slavic), composition, feminist rhetoric, hermeneutics, linguistics, logic, and queer rhetoric, among others; and strategies and principles, including some 64 figures of speech.

By definition, an encyclopedia is a reference work, but for whom, and to what purpose? In the preface, the editor writes that "readers, we assume, will have at least some acquaintance with our subject's scarlet past, and will be neither astounded nor dismayed to discover that they have actually used its tactics from time to time" (ix), comments that suggest relatively naïve readers who, nonetheless, are "moved beyond curiosity about such matters as a 'simile' (which is nonetheless defined herein) to wondering what on earth a hendiadys might be, or how to conceive of a 'virtual audience' or a 'hypertext.' Given the readers we have in mind, all recognizable words from antiquity have been left intact and more or less in their original Latin or Greek" (ix).

In my role as a naïve reader, I searched for an entry on Rhetoric, but found none, nor does that term appear in the index except as the title of Aristotle's important work. Where such an entry might have appeared, I found an entry on "Rhetorical Situation" as defined by Lloyd Bitzer and his critics, which omits reference to the earlier, nuanced work on that topic by Kenneth Burke. On turning to the cross-referenced "Occasion," I found a summary of the same essays from Philosophy and Rhetoric but incorporating others by Burke, Mary Garret[t] and Xiousui Xiao, James Kinneavy, and John Patton, as well as works on occasional verse and on kairos. Obviously, editing a conceptually based encyclopedia to avoid overlap is challenging. [End Page 537]

"Audience" was another cross-reference, an entry that contrasts universal and specific audiences (as described by Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca), indicates the conflict between textual analysis and reader/audience response studies, raises ethical issues involved in adaptation, rehearses Bitzer's notion of the audience in the rhetorical situation, and notes the audience implied in the text (Edwin Black's "second persona") and excluded audiences (Philip Wander's "third persona"). The entry discusses conceptualizing the audience as a community, without, however, referring to the work of Michael McGee (treated under "Ideograph") or Maurice Charland (treated in "Constitutive rhetoric" under "Politics") or providing cross-references to these entries.

Still imagining myself to be a "common reader" seeking to understand this academic area, I turned to the entry on "Public Speaking" and found a history of oratory and of the ways in which understandings of public speaking in the nineteenth century had changed from neoclassical conceptions. The entry surveyed the norms of the golden age of British oratory, the shift represented by Dale...

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