Notes
149 Notes Preface 1. See Berlin, Writing Instruction; Kennedy, Art of Persuasion, Art of Rhetoric, and Greek Rhetoric; Murphy; and Howell, Logic and Rhetoric and Eighteenth-Century British Logic. For a brilliant critique of the Kennedy-Howell-Corbett school of history of rhetoric, see Berlin, “Revisionary Histories” 112–14. See also Poulakos 1–2, for his evaluation of Kennedy; Vitanza viii–xi, for his dialogue with Kennedy; and Crowley, “Let Me Get This,” for her survey of the debate on historiography (1–8), as well as her definition of constructionist history, which presupposes that “categories such as ‘human nature’ and ‘rhetoric’ are produced and modified within the discourse of a given community or culture in accordance with current social or political requirements” (10). 2. The traditional histories of rhetoric do not, in general, treat any women theorists, since they concentrate on the textbooks of formal masculine rhetorical education. In his massive Eighteenth-Century British Logic, Howell revealed the effect of the development of the “new science,” what I have called “empiricism” in this study, on eighteenthcentury logic and rhetoric; these influences transformed rhetoric from an art into a science and refocused emphasis in the discipline on the psychology of the audience, rather than the invention of arguments; nevertheless, British rhetoric had four different lineages in the eighteenth century, according to Howell—a reinterpretation of classical rhetoric that includes all canons, stylistic rhetoric, elocution, and the new empirical rhetoric (for a brief survey of these, see 696–98). Howell mentions no women rhetorical theorists in his study. In his groundbreaking study, Kitzhaber pointed out that early nineteenth-century college rhetoric (for men) reworked and merged the belletristic rhetoric of Scotsman Hugh Blair and the psychological rhetoric of George Campbell, modified by the new science of linguistics; this rhetorical direction was overwhelmed at the end of the century by the demand for correctness generated by the 1892 Harvard Report, and rhetoric became a discipline devoted to the mechanics of grammar, paragraphing , and the four forms of discourse—description, narration, exposition, and argumentation. Berlin followed Kitzhaber, but divided nineteenth-century American writing instruction into four periods: early classical, Scottish psychological, romantic 150 Notes to Pages 2–7 (emphasizing Emerson), and current-traditional (emphasizing correctness). Although both mention Gertrude Buck, who wrote composition textbooks, Kitzhaber and Berlin set the direction of scholarly exploration of nineteenth-century writing instruction by considering only college composition texts (almost all by men) or writings of famous men (like Emerson). In Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric, Nan Johnson has explored the synthetic nature of American rhetoric, which combines classical, psychological, and epistemological concepts in textbooks for composition used in colleges; again, since she studies the most frequently used college textbooks, she is in actuality describing men’s rhetoric. This trend of considering college textbooks, and so mainly men’s texts, has continued in otherwise admirable studies of nineteenth-century Bostonian rhetoric by Broaddus and of the college tradition of composition by Brereton and by Crowley in Methodical Memory. Such preselection of materials, however, distorts conclusions. For example, although Brereton includes Luella Clay Carson’s “Compilation of Standard Rules and Regulations Used by the English Department of the University of Oregon” (1898) in his sourcebook (one of only five women out of over fifty entries), he considers her list as a precursor for college handbooks, rather than realizing that women as normal and high school teachers had been compiling such lists for several decades before Carson. For such lists, see. e.g., Knox; Lockwood; and Keeler and Davis. Introduction: Adding Women’s Rhetorical Theory to the Conversation 1. Here I allude not only to Aristotle’s definition of rhetoric—“the discovery of the available means of persuasion” (Rhetoric 24; 1.2.25)—but also to Ritchie and Ronald’s use of his definition for the title of their collection, Available Means. See esp. xvii: “Our decision to title this collection with Aristotle’s famous definition of rhetoric . . . reflects our desire to locate women squarely within rhetoric but also to acknowledge that their presence demands that rhetoric be reconceived.” 2. Besides Hull, see Hannay, introduction, esp. 1–5; Grafton and Jardine, esp. 37–38; and Beauchamp, Hageman, and Mikesell, introduction xxiii–xxvi, xxxix–lxxvi. 3. Examining the accounts of the rhetoric of Frances Willard, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Nan Johnson found that even for these women “the parlor [was] woman’s proper rhetorical world” (Gender 119), for in their rhetoric, the nation was their home, and their children in crisis...
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