Mythic Progenitors in Chinese and Sumerian Rhetorical Culture: A Short Primer

ABSTRACT

This argument demonstrates how rhetorical theory was shaped recursively by the mythology of ancient Sumer and China, and resulted in new discursive formations in subsequent rhetorical theory. These discursive theoretical formations occurred after the advent of widespread literate practice. The myth of Cangjie shaped the teleology of rhetoric of ancient China and the myth of Enmerkar shaped rhetorical theory in Sumer in similar ways. Following the authority of Walker, Schiappa, and Johnstone, which charted a similar phenomenon in ancient Greece, these non-Greco-Roman myths were deployed to form a similar pattern. By following Rita Copeland’s call to “allow the history of rhetoric to be written through mythic time,” it can be shown that the use of myths by ancient cultures to shape their rhetorical theories suggests that this is not merely a Greco-Roman feature of rhetoric in antiquity, but a human one.

Notes

1. The author would like to thank RR reviewers, Don Abbott and John Belk, and the editor Elise Hurley for their tireless efforts. The author would also like to thank Richard Leo Enos, Suzan Aiken, and Scott Sundvall for their support and encouragement.

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Shawn Ramsey

Shawn Ramsey teaches writing. He studies the history of ideas, particularly rhetoric.