"Breathe Upon Us an Even Flame": Hephaestus, History, and the Body of Rhetoric

Abstract

This essay challenges accepted versions of rhetorical history by recovering the mythical figure of Hephaestus and the cunning rhetoric he embodied, metis. This critical retelling offers a new and more expansive perspective on history, rhetoric, and embodiment, as it lays bare many of our assumptions about the available means of persuasion. The author asserts that a cunning approach to rhetoric might allow for the celebration of all of our embodied differences.