This pathbreaking study integrates the histories of rhetoric, literacy, and literary aesthetics up to the time of Augustine, focusing on Western concepts of rhetoric as dissembling and of language as deceptive that Swearingen argues have received curiously prominent emphasis in Western aesthetics and language theory. Swearingen reverses the traditional focus on rhetoric as an oral agonistic genre and examines it instead as a paradigm for literate discourse. She proposes that rhetoric and literacy have in the West disseminated the interrelated notions that through learning rhetoric individuals can learn to manipulate language and others; that language is an unreliable, manipulable, and contingent vehicle of thought, meaning, and communication; and that literature is a body of pretty lies and beguiling fictions. In a bold concluding chapter Swearingen aligns her thesis concerning early Western literacy and rhetoric with contemporary critical and rhetorical theory; with feminist studies in language, psychology, and culture; and with studies of literacy in multi- and cross-cultural settings.

"Rhetoric, the Polis, and the Global Village" represents current thought on the role of rhetoric in various disciplines, and includes such diverse topics as race, technology, and religion, demonstrating the expanding relevance of rhetoric in today's world. The essays included in this volume address the question of the polis in ancient and modern times, gradually converging with the more recent 30-year span between the decade of the Global Village and today's rhetorical rehearsals for a political global economy.
Originating from the 1998 Rhetoric Society of America's biennial conference, and representing the 30-year anniversary of the organization, this volume offers to all readers the keynote lectures and selected papers celebrating the universality of rhetoric across cultures. As a benchmark for the scholarship and growth of the rhetoric discipline in recent history, it will be of great interest to scholars in classical and contemporary rhetoric, writing, and other fields in which rhetoric has attained critical significance and influence.

"Rhetoric, the Polis, and the Global Village" represents current thought on the role of rhetoric in various disciplines, and includes such diverse topics as race, technology, and religion, demonstrating the expanding relevance of rhetoric in today's world. The essays included in this volume address the question of the polis in ancient and modern times, gradually converging with the more recent 30-year span between the decade of the Global Village and today's rhetorical rehearsals for a political global economy.
Originating from the 1998 Rhetoric Society of America's biennial conference, and representing the 30-year anniversary of the organization, this volume offers to all readers the keynote lectures and selected papers celebrating the universality of rhetoric across cultures. As a benchmark for the scholarship and growth of the rhetoric discipline in recent history, it will be of great interest to scholars in classical and contemporary rhetoric, writing, and other fields in which rhetoric has attained critical significance and influence.