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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This project has benefited from many readers. David J. Depew, James P. McDaniel, and John Durham Peters provided crucial encouragement at its outset and invaluable feedback during its early stages of development. Barbara A. Biesecker, Kristine L. Muñoz, Bruce E. Gronbeck, and Daniel M. Gross waded through substantial portions of the work in progress. Dieter J. Boxmann, Robin Patric Clair, Gerard A. Hauser, John Louis Lucaites, Felicia D. Roberts, and Michael Vicaro commented on drafts of chapters along the way. And audiences at the University of Iowa, Northwestern University, and Purdue University helped me work through several difficult sections of the manuscript. Portions of this study appeared in early form as articles: part of chapter 2 as “In Defense of New Stoicism: Public Advocacy and Political Thought in the Age of Nero” in Advances in the History of Rhetoric 14 (2011): 49–64; much of chapter 3 as “Mirrors for the Queen: A Letter from Christine de Pizan on the Eve of Civil War” in the Quarterly Journal of Speech 94, no. 3 (August 2008): 273–96; some of chapter 4 as “The Artistry of Obedience: From Kant to Kingship ” in Philosophy and Rhetoric 38, no. 4 (2005): 302–27; and sections of chapter 6 as “The Political Identity of the Philosopher: Resistance, Relative Power, and the Endurance of Potential” in Philosophy and Rhetoric 42, no. 1 (2009): 71–91. I am grateful to the editors of these journals for permission to use this material. I also wish to thank to everyone at the Pennsylvania State University Press, especially Kendra Boileau, Cheryl Glenn, J. Michael Hogan, Stephanie Lang, Patricia A. Mitchell, Laura Reed-Morrisson, Nicholas Taylor, and Sanford G. Thatcher; as well as my assistants at Purdue University—Adam Lerner, Michael Maione, and Corey Palmer—for their diligent work on the index. And I am particularly grateful to Robert Hariman, whose invaluable feedback on the entire manuscript saved me from a variety of pitfalls. As always, though, my greatest debt is to my wife, Heather June Gibbons, without whose patience (and impatience) this project never would have found completion. ...

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