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In the ongoing project of recovering and (re)integrating early modern European women philosophers, scholars have been re-examining not only who counts as a philosopher, but what kinds of works are properly understood as philosophical. Madeleine de Scudéry is best remembered as a novelist, but some scholars have argued that her dialogues are richly philosophical. Here, I examine an early and overlooked text from Scudéry – Illustrious Women – which is a collection of speeches of historical women who find themselves in dire circumstances. I argue that Illustrious Women offers a sophisticated critique of patriarchal power: Scudéry exposes the conflict between epistemic and practical agency under conditions of gendered oppression and illustrates specific manifestations of this harm concerning control, autonomy, and consent. In so doing, particularly through the genre of oratory, Scudéry’s Illustrious Women is both a work of seventeenth-century feminist resistance and a subversive educational tool. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the use of critical questions (CQs) as an 'explicit' pedagogical method in the nature of science to teach Chinese high school students topics of philosophy of science (POS). The study results, evaluated through deductive thematic and qualitative comparative analyses using Toulmin's argumentation patterns and a critical integrative argumentation model, revealed that students who participated in the POS course showed significant improvement in understanding and application of argumentation by asking CQs as suggested by instructors. This finding strongly supports the use of CQs for rebuttals in argumentation based on crisp qualitative comparative analysis. The study results have broad implications for how CQs can promote engagement in high school argumentation. The study conclusions highlight the limitations of oral questioning in classroom argumentation. Finally, the study discusses how POS can improve students' classroom argumentation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper aims to investigate the relation between Vittorio Alfieri's Panegirico di Plinio a Trajano, written by the author in Pisa in 1785, and its Latin model, the speech read by Plinio il Giovane to Traiano in the Senate in the year 100 AD. The study of Alfieri's work has proven interesting from several points of view, primarily because of the author's overturning of the oratorio genre: the work, in fact, has been called by scholars an «antipanegirico», a «panegirico capovolto». Alfieri replaces the original glorification of the optimus princeps with a political proposal, dispensing with the encomiastic aspect that characterizes Plinio’s panegyric in order to emphasize his authorial voice. Indeed, the praises of Traiano in the text are reduced and relegated to a marginal role, while Plinio-Alfieri’s speech assumes an exhortatory and moral function.

Jacob D. Green's speaking career in England (1863-66) is an exploration of how an independent, self-financed Black speaker became a networked abolitionist building on the achievements of other expatriate African American activists like Moses Roper and James Watkins. Born enslaved in Maryland, Green made serial escapes from enslavement in Kentucky and elsewhere in the United States, sojourning in Toronto before arriving in Lancashire at about age forty-eight with evidently few funds. Green appealed to cotton and woollen mill town residents to oppose enslavement and the Confederate States of America from where most of North-West England's cotton originated. He initially lectured under the sponsorship of nonconformist ministers in Yorkshire and built a network that included ministers in the United Methodist Free Church, Congregational Union, capitalists, and tradespeople. Nonconformist sponsorship led to an 1864 move to Heckmondwike in the centre of his lecture circuit. He connected with those who sponsored other Black abolitionists, burgeoning his network by speaking in West Yorkshire towns and cities that had hosted African American orators before. As a networked abolitionist, he earned income from speaking and publishing an autobiography and may have died in England in 1866. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the argumentative character of the eulogy, a speech that is part of a funeral ritual and serves to console the community of the bereaved. It aims to contribute to the understanding of eulogy as a specific argumentative practice by identifying the argumentative patterns that occur in it. A pragma-dialectical approach to the study of argumentation is used, allowing for the description of prototypical (theoretically expected) and stereotypical (frequent in use) argumentative patterns. To probe the empirical plausibility of the argumentative character of eulogy, the research is limited to a type of secular eulogy that was historically established in Czechoslovakia during the communist period (1948–1989). This type is chosen here for pragmatic reasons (easy access to data and researcher's familiarity with the language of the data). It is shown that in secular eulogy, arguments in favour of reconciliation with death and honouring the deceased are typically presented. Prototypical and stereotypical patterns are examined with concern for the structure of these arguments, and the argumentative and content analysis is extended by identification of specific propositional content of sub-arguments. It is also proposed examining the variability of argumentative patterns with respect to the type of the deceased (male/female, short/long life experience, significant/insignificant social status). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is oration literature? More specifically, can we read the multi-functional Arabic oration (khuṭbah) of the 1st/7th and 2nd/8th centuries as part of the classical prose canon? In this article, I argue that if our definition of literature includes beautiful language, admiration expressed by literary theorists, and masterful articulation of themes to evoke audience response, early Arabic oration is most certainly literature. I demonstrate this claim by analyzing the rhythmic and graphic oral aesthetics of early Arabic oration, the views of medieval theorists regarding its distinguished place and literary nature, and its crucial influence on the development of the chancery epistle (risālah), the first written genre of Arabic literary prose. I contend that khuṭbah is the foundational prose genre of Arabic and it has materially influenced the major genres of risālah and maqāmāt that followed. The history of Arabic literature cannot be written without oration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how Nathaniel Hawthorne's narrator in The Scarlet Letter uses a lack of authoritative judgment to counter cynicism and maintain candor. It also discusses Cicero's concept of ideal oratory, the significance of rhythmic eloquence in persuasive speech, and the connection between natural rhythms and effective communication.

The conquest of America brought with it the introduction of rhetoric as a model of teaching and as a practice in the different manifestations of religious discourse, of which the preaching or sermon was the most important for scholars of the colonial era (16th-18th centuries) who, on the other hand, gave little importance to the three political genres: deliberative, epideictic and judicial or forensic, although these had not disappeared as discursive practices. The great classical deliberative oratory had taken a backseat in New Spain but continued to develop in the consistories of the mayoralties and in public debates; the judicial genre continued to be exercised in lawsuits before the Inquisition and local judicial bodies and the epideictic genre was manifested in the lives of saints and praises of various kinds. This situation changed during the 19th century, particularly in the second half, when great parliamentary oratory, civic and patriotic speeches that flooded the republic and judicial oratory flourished because of the new political conditions brought about by the struggle for independence and the triumph of liberalism, in addition to other important genres such as history and journalism. The purpose of this essay is, first, to offer an outline of oratory practices and rhetorical teaching during the Colony, emphasizing the importance of sermons and the oblivion of other discursive expressions and, second, to show the emergence of political genres during the 19th century, which reached their greatest splendor in discursive practices and liberal education.

The speech Philip Melanchthon gave on 29 August 1518 at the University of Wittenberg to initiate his professorship is an impressive piece of humanist idealism. Already its title, De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis (On the reform of the studies for the young) reveals his earnest ambitions in introducing reform. Not incidentally, thus, the speech received a lot of attention immediately after its delivery and enjoyed a remarkable popularity even decades after. The speech marks, however, not only an interesting object of study in terms of its content but also in terms of its generic form. Usually labelled as a declamation, this study will revaluate this generic attribution, for the first time, by arguing that the declamation as an academic genre was only introduced into the German academic landscape after Melanchthon's debut in Wittenberg and that De corrigendis adolescentiae studiis does not convincingly fit the standards of declamatory speech in many other respects. It will be shown that the category more apt for talking about Melanchthon's speech is that of the inaugural oration – a genre yet highly underappreciated in modern research on early modern academic oratory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper suggests that Lucretius' Magna Mater interpretation (2.598-660) can fruitfully be approached through the lens of invective oratory. While this difficult passage of De rerum natura has long puzzled scholars, this article argues that in his interpretation Lucretius masterfully transforms the encomiastic topos of allegoresis into a powerful means of blame: the poet allegorically interprets various aspects of the cult of Cybele with a view to showing how religious convictions and customs go awry. When thus exposing the cult as impious, Lucretius ingeniously exploits several topoi of rhetorical hymns (nurture, propitiation, etc.) for the purpose of making his vituperation all the more compelling. Hence, on the reading advocated here, the Magna Mater interpretation is a carefully constructed invective against those aspects of the cult (of Cybele) which an Epicurean is bound to frown upon (providential illusion, divine punishment, etc.). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The process of informing through the media, as well as direct face-to-face communication, is inevitably also a process of persuasion and imposing opinions. This act itself is natural, but experience tells us that rational logical argumentation does not bring an advantage in the exchange of opinions under a strong emotional charge. This phenomenon is not new, as even in ancient Greece the younger sophists failed Protagoras when they replaced the search for truth with the art of persuasion that will make weak claims stronger. Thus, oratory became eristic, the art of arguing with the aim of refuting someone else’s opinion. Skilled polemicists do not look for the truth, but for arguments that support their point of view. The development of technology and media forms have perfected this process and have euphemistically renamed the lie itself as the ‘post-truth’, which is useful and thereby justified. Kant’s observation about poetry as a creative imagination, and rhetoric as an insidious skill that turns people into ‘machinery of persuasion’ is used by the modern media for the creation of informative-entertaining content to achieve commercial and ideological goals. The all-powerful media machines abolish the objective perception of events and lead modern society into a decay that many civilizations have already experienced. Deus ex machina has become an omnipresent Deus ex media that solves nothing, but turns everything into a process of endless entertainment, a spectacle in which reason is enslaved by passions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on instances of spoken communication which qualify commonly as "oratory" and which can be modelled within the socio-semiotic of "spoken and monologic". This includes both "podium oratory", as exemplified by political speeches delivered from a stage to an audience that is physically present, as well as forms of "digital oratory" which have developed via the digital interface, including videos posted to social media. The study proposes to model both types of oratory with respect to a range of multimodal and linguistic resources. The study notably explores spoken and monologic discourse in regard to grammatical intricacy and lexical density, the two types of information packaging which respectively inform prototypical speech and writing. Digital oratory reflects trends associated with the technologisation of discourse, and its underpinnings as socio-semiotic. The discussion also makes the case that systemic functional linguistics (SFL) theory, via its articulation between system and function, provides an ideal lens through which these activities can be modelled, as well as their social role and the symbolic power attached to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Internationally, there are calls for students to be able to use their scientific understandings to make informed decisions about the world in which they live. Using a mixed methods case study design, this study investigated the impact of behaviours and strategies used by two early career science teachers who taught argumentation about a water-based socioscientific issues (SSI) to their Year 7 students. Students' argument quality, measured using Toulmin's argument structure, improved significantly from pre- to post-instruction (p =.0033). There was also a significant increase (p =.0037) in the number of types of categories. Qualitative data comprising classroom audio-transcripts, field notes, student work samples, teacher interviews and student reflections were analysed using inductive analysis to identify four themes related to teacher behaviours and teaching strategies: (1) developing and maintaining a safe classroom environment; (2) providing clear instructions about the features of quality arguments; (3) providing opportunities for all students to think and work individually and collaboratively; and (4) practising oral and written argument construction with gradual removal of scaffolds. While the findings are not generalisable teacher educators can use their expertise to decide the extent to which the teacher strategies and behaviours would support the development of argumentation skills in their particular context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Studia Paedagogica Ignatiana is the property of Jesuit University Ignatianum in Krakow and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Croatica et Slavica Iadertina is the property of University of Zadar, Department of Croatian & Slavic Studies and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Abstract The place of theatre in the Aeschines-Demosthenes dispute: the diplomatic perspective In all studies on the affinities and intersections, both thematic and performative, between oratory and theatre, the contrasting orations of Aeschines and Demosthenes concerning the embassies to Philip of 346 BC and the mutual accusations about the handling of negotiations hold an essential place. In this set of speeches, which includes – in addition to Aeschines’ Against Timarchus and the two orations On the False Embassy (343) – those of 330 Against Ctesiphon (Aeschines) and On the Crown (Demosthenes), the theatre and its performers are, however, represented ambiguously, if not negatively. This essay aims to highlight how this apparent paradox finds a possible solution by considering the concrete role that Athenian theatre and actors played in the difficult negotiations between Athens and Philip. The diplomatic perspective allows us to shed more light on the motivations that led the two rival orators to use theatre as a weapon to fight each other.

Organizers of public commemorations held in early eighteenth-century New Spain during the War of the Spanish Succession characterized Philip V as a defender of the faith and queen consort Maria Luisa Gabriela de Saboya and crown prince Luis I as agents of providence. An examination of a corpus of sermons given between 1707 and 1710 reveals that orators assured novohispanos that the birth of Luis I of Spain would inaugurate a messianic age, marked by fecundity and prosperity. The queen, moreover, put the rebirth of the empire in motion before her death. As various orators suggested, her role in bringing about a sort of «Bourbon millennium» had been foretold in the Book of Revelation. In cities throughout New Spain, orators characterized the queen as the fecund vehicle of God’s providence, or the Woman of the Apocalypse, a figure associated with the Immaculate Conception. As the mother of Spain’s messiah, the queen assured the prosperous future of the empire.

Review of: Lāuga: Understanding Samoan Oratory, Sadat Muaiava (2022) Wellington: Te Papa Press, 336 pp., ISBN 978 0 99513 844 5 (hbk), NZ$45 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite being the largest group in the Salesian Family, with 100,000 affiliated members worldwide, the Past Pupils of Don Bosco Movement has to date lacked a biography of their charismatic founder, the Turin-born Carlo Gastini (1833–1902), the 120th anniversary of whose death was commemorated in 2022. A family man, bookbinder and teacher, as well as occasional poet and actor, he was the first boarder at the Oratory of Saint Francis de Sales. Little was known about him, beyond three specific anecdotes. However, from 1847 to 1902, he was linked to Valdocco as a pupil (first as a day pupil and then as a boarder), seminarian, parishioner, worker and entertainer. His life was parallel to that of Don Bosco himself, who was a second father to him, and to the development of his own congregation, the Salesian Family and even Italy as a nation. The culmination of his gratitude since 1849 was the charismatic foundation, in 1870, of the Past Pupils of Don Bosco Movement, which celebrated its 150th anniversary in 2020. Its basis was simple: create an instrument of mutual help among his former colleagues, just as Don Bosco had taught them to do when they were students at the Oratory. Creating a cohesive group centred on values ​​is a proposal for facing difficulties together. In Spain, the Movement found one of its deepest-rooted abodes.

The article explores abolitionist, Frederick Douglass's oratory skills, particularly focusing on his use of the word "scrivener" in a speech discussing the antislavery Constitution. It reflects on Douglass's unique linguistic abilities, examining the significance of the chosen term and its implications for understanding Douglass as a textualist. It emphasizes the role of historical context and political considerations in shaping historical narratives.

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various topics within the issue, including French and Francophone studies, education research, and the humanities job market.

Political figures engage rhetoric and exalted speech to excite the imagination, stir up the emotions, and prompt their listeners to embrace and act on an ideological perspective. However, there is more to excellent public oratory than eloquence. Rational persuasion is also a key component, emphasizing facts, evidence, and reasoning. Hume acknowledges that rational persuasion alone is not terribly effective in the public arena. His corpus contains many references to eloquence. Dispassionate delivery of evidence does not have the psychological impact of eloquent delivery. What explains the difference? My aim in this paper is to use Hume's theory of belief and "the feeling of conviction" to explain his analysis of effective oratory. Furthermore, I point to the abuses of eloquence in the political arena. Given these abuses, I ask why Hume considers eloquence a virtue. Although eloquence is immediately agreeable to us (one category of virtue for Hume), it can have detrimental, even deadly, consequences. Does this make it vicious in certain cases, since it has disutility, and given that usefulness to the public is another category of virtue for Hume? I suggest that skilled and elegant oratory is pleasing, but such oratory, when used for inhumane ends, could undermine the pleasure of the oratory experience itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to explain how teachers can build on children's oral language resources to support writing. Thus, we offer recommendations and specific examples for classroom applications that connect oral language with written expression. Specifically, we provide examples on the transition from phonemic awareness to phonics to word writing to sentence writing, and to oral and written responses that address genre expectations. Specifically, we address sentence rehearsals, sentence expansion, and sentence combining that teachers can model and collaboratively conduct so learners use oral language as a vehicle for written production and communication with readers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The antislavery and antiracist oratory of Frederick Douglass is a powerful case study of the appropriation and transformation of "the master's tools." Douglass's formative exposure to the classical rhetorical tradition is well known—but just as important are the ways in which he subverted it. He did so by developing a categorically new, hybrid role: the orator-slave. Slavery played an important part in the conceptual apparatus of the Ciceronian rhetoric that Douglass absorbed: it conceived of oratory as a willing, temporary submission to the harms that were commonly associated with slavery. An explanation of the force of Douglass's oratory should begin with his translation of the orator-slave identification from the metaphorical to the literal plane. Drawing on Douglass's self-education in rhetorical discipline and artifice, an account of the symbolic uses of slavery in classical rhetoric, and Douglass's own oratory, I reconstruct his claim to embody classical rhetoric in a uniquely vivid way. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay explores the figure of invocation across the philosophical and rhetorical traditions in order better to understand its role in symbolic life. From Augustine to Quintilian, and from Lyotard to Lacan, it argues that a rhetorical notion of invocation must extend itself beyond the mere dimension of the call. Exhuming an overlooked definition from Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory, it proposes that invocation should be reconceptualized in a way that emphasizes its aversus. The consequence is that an invocatory rhetorical project—indeed, the device itself—insists against the metaphysics of the Other. Invoking Quintilian, it argues for a redefinition on the basis of invocation’s particularity as a figure, its polemic, and its publicity [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From ancient times, the oratorical art (ars bene dicendi) affirms itself as an essential component of society. Being an instrument for politicians, jurists and more, the ability to communicate became an indispensable aptitude. Naturally, intellectuals gradually started to show interest for this art from a methodological perspective, starting schools of rhetoric and theorizing the knowledge on the subject. Therefore, by evoking the most important figures of oratory and exploring the theory behind this art, we analyzed its development until it reached the form it has in present times, with a particular interest for the judicial component of oratory, the lawyer`s plead.

„Si rex non essem, Jesuita essem” religious matters in the context of Stephen Báthory’s domestic and foreign policies in Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki’s congratulatory speeches Summary The aim of the dissertation is to present Stephen Báthory’s stance on religious issues and the organization of religious life in Livonia (Inflanty) in the light of pressure exerted on the king by various political factions and religious elites with often opposing concepts regarding the future of the territory annexed to the Commonwealth after the Treaty of Yam-Zapolsky. This goal will be achieved through the analysis of three congratulatory speeches delivered by Andrzej Patrycy Nidecki in the presence of the king in November 1579, January 1581, and August 1582.

The article is devoted to the analysis of axiological dominants actualized by the Abkhaz through the public speaking culture. The relevance of the study is determined by the fact that the consideration of oratory tradition is given through the prism of the axiological aspect reflected in it. We believe that a deep analysis of public speaking culture that has been mastered by the people living on the territory of Abkhazia over hundreds of centuries, can give an overall picture of its people and the values they share. In the proposed study through structural and semiotic analysis that helped to systematize and describe the axiological guidelines, we tried to identify value dominants of Abkhaz people. The classification of the values has been made. The study revealed a certain hierarchy of values that is reflected in the oratory tradition of Abkhazians.

Assumptions about the tirocinium fori are based on claims by Joachim Marquardt that it was a form of training for young elite Romans at about the age of 16, that it lasted for one year, and that it consisted of mentorship by a distinguished elder. Though there is little evidence to support these claims, the theory of a tirocinium fori continues to influence discussions of oratory in the age of Cicero, where it gives a false picture of the process by which aspiring young orators made the transition from the school of rhetoric to practice in the courts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Digital communication and digital oratory have become an integral part of today's workplace. This research discusses an innovative assessment tool that uses digital oratory and digital video along with YouTube to create opportunities for the students to develop self-efficacy in digital oratory and public speaking. The measurement of the effectiveness through a survey questionnaire displays that the assessment tool met its learning objectives. The assessment tool fostered self-efficacy in digital oratory and improved digital communication knowledge and skills. The article also discusses the challenges and recommendations for implementing this assessment tool in various contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The words κακὸν κακῶς σε at D. 18.267 are printed in quotation marks in many modern editions of the speech. This sequence scans as the beginning of an iambic trimeter and is connected by καί with two quotations from tragedy. This article questions the idea that the sequence should be interpreted as the start of an interrupted quotation by showing that (1) these words are part of a standard, vernacular Greek curse formula, (2) initial καί may be interpreted as a discourse-level connector rather than as a syntactic coordinator, and (3) word order in the curse may be accounted for without invoking metrical effects. In particular, it is suggested that Demosthenes' wording of the curse should be interpreted as a parody of the plea to the judges at Aeschin. 2.180. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how antiquarians in Rome used archaeological evidence—a site excavated from under the church of San Martino in Monti in 1636—to argue that Pope Sylvester (314–335) exercised spiritual and temporal authority over the Roman Empire. The document which had formed the bedrock of papal sovereignty, the Donation of Constantine, was shown to be a forgery in the early modern period. Protestant reformers pointed to the document's contradictions to dismantle the Catholic Church's claims that its preeminence originated in the privileges bestowed on Sylvester by the Emperor Constantine. I use archival materials and a history of the site published in 1639 to describe how antiquarians claimed that they found the house church of Sylvester, which he converted into a church after Constantine's baptism and then used to host a Roman Council in 324 (before Nicaea). I offer a new perspective on Catholic confessional historiography by observing how antiquarians used material evidence to provide a foundation for early papal power in the Roman Empire, thereby bypassing the need for spurious documents such as the Donation. This new tradition, which lives on today despite modern archaeological critiques, illustrates the malleability of Catholic epistemologies and historiography in the wake of textual criticism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emperor Leo VI the Wise made speeches on various occasions, and the surviving texts have attracted numerous philological and historical studies. However, delivering a speech was never merely a monologue, especially in the court milieu where life was highly ritualized. It combined text-reading and multiple ceremonies and thus became a theatrical performance. In this 'theatre', the emperor's elegant appearance, the audience reaction to the orator's words following a set of conventions, and the venue decorated with torches, candles, and many other objects all played an indispensable role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Annals of Theology / Roczniki Teologiczne is the property of Towarzystwo Naukowe KUL & Katolicki Uniwersytet Lubelski Jana Pawla II and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article focuses on Hamlin Garland and the Vitagraph Moving-Picture Co. and followers of the Baptist Church to provide college-preparatory classes in the community of Osage, Iowa. It mentions he observed the facial expressions of his classmates and had struggled with mathematics, he excelled in oratory. It also mentions Garland pondered how he would ever be able to further his education and achieve his ambitions.

This essay examines Rhetorica ad Herennium 4.1–10, arguing that it is part of a programmatic textual performance. The author likens his crafting of rhetorical examples to a kind of visual display for the reader. He also explores the tension between the orator's rival imperatives to perform for an audience and to remain rhetorically inconspicuous. This tension helps us to understand the place of the Rhetorica in the Greco-Roman rhetorical tradition. It also sheds light on how textual performance becomes integral to negotiating that tradition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the prologue to the Rhetorica ad Herennium Book 4, the author boldly departs from tradition and explains that he will create his own examples, rather than drawing from poets and orators. This methodological discussion portrays itself as an exemplum and hence carries a meta-literary and mimetic dimension. In particular, this prologue anticipates and illustrates the precept propounded in Book 4; its fine style and rhythm amount to a defense of rhetoric itself; and this defense must be considered in the political and cultural context of the time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers, through a reading of James Fredal's new study, The Enthymeme , an argument for the value of the history of rhetoric to theories of legal reasoning. The argument is inspired by Fredal's call, in his ingenious reading of the practice of Ancient Greek oratory, for a shift in thinking of the enthymeme as a logical form, and an inadequate or imperfect one (when compared to the logical forms of dialectic), towards a way of thinking that emphasises enthymising as an activity, and specifically a relational and interactive activity of making narrative. At the heart of legal reasoning, on this view, is narrativity, which has two related elements: (i) the arts of storytelling and (ii) the arts of storyworld construction, or actively and creatively experiencing the told. What makes a narrative difference—for instance, various kinds of enthymising, or bringing to mind of narrative details—also makes a normative one. Enthymising, understood in this way, thus offers a way of understanding legal reasoning as a rhetorical art of making narratives that is deeply emotional, embodied and sensory. This art illuminates not only the making of arguments by advocates in particular cases, but also the making of law by judges and others over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]