In the last few decades there has been much scholarly dispute about the 'demise' or the 'ongoing survival' of rhetoric in the 18th century. A consensus has yet to be achieved. The author attempts to resolve the issue by adopting a novel theoretical approach elucidated in the first part of this study. Here, the history of rhetoric is regarded as a debate between various conflicting concepts of rhetoric. Against this background, the extensive second section of the book discusses the central stages in a history of the theory of rhetoric, with reference to a period extending from around 1600 to 1800.

In the 1980s the sublime was rediscovered in the context of the debates on postmodernism. The emphasis here was on the theories of Burke and Kant, which contrasted beauty and sublimity. Little attention was accorded to the history of sublimity in the early modern age. This study seeks to remedy this deficit. It proceeds on the conviction that in the early modern age the dichotomy between beauty and sublimity was not in fact the operative factor in the debate, but rather the opposition between two models of the sublime, that of Pseudo Longinus, on the one hand, and the three styles defined by classical rhetoric on the other.