A Revival of Rhetoric at Oxford: A Report from the 2012 Oxford Medieval & Renaissance Studies Interactive Seminar

Abstract

The “Rhetoric in the Twenty-First Century: An Interactive Symposium” hosted by Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies (CMRS), Oxford from July 3–7, 2012, organized by James J. Murphy, Professor Emeritus of English at the University of California–Davis, and Nicholas J.Crowe, (CMRS), illustrates the resilience of rhetoric as a discipline. Rhetoric, a discipline shunned by twentieth-century Oxonians, was on full display at the conference, suggesting that twenty-first century Oxford is interested in things rhetorical. This report describes the form of the conference and the rhetorical notions advanced, discussed, and debated by the participants. The conference included important scholars of rhetoric as keynote or priming speakers: Sir Brian Vickers, Peter Mack, Jennifer Richards, and James Murphy. Enacting the spirit of rhetoric and scholastic disputation, the symposium delegates put the ideas presented by the priming speakers to the test of argumentation in planned responses to each priming speaker and in a parliamentary style debate. The symposium was deemed as success. The Oxford setting sponsored an atmosphere supportive of dialogue and civil disagreement necessary to the understanding of the rhetorical tradition’s future.

Notes

1. 1Built by William Laud in the 1630s, Canterbury Quad hosts busts of the liberal arts and virtues, carved by the master mason Robert Jackson (Colvin). The four books to the side of “Rhetorica” present, from left to the right, Demosthenes, Cicero, Hermogenes, and Quintilian. Jackson placed a caduceus, the ancient symbol of rhetoric, with two snakes paired suggesting the union of opposites, on both sides of the quad’s “Rhetorica.”

2. 2Renato Barilli (Italy), Lyn Bennett (Canada), Michelle K. Bolduc (USA), Chen Rudong (China), James Farrell (USA), David A. Frank (USA), Ryan Gillespie (USA), John Gooch (USA), Randy Allen Harris (Canada), Haixia Lan (USA), Sean O’Rourke (USA), Stephen Pender (Canada), Carol Poster (Canada), Robin Reames (USA), Franz-Hubert Robling (Germany), Hanne Roer (Denmark), Elza Tiner (USA), John Oastler Ward (Australia), and Mark Williams (USA).

3. 3http://www.amazon.com/History-Renaissance-Rhetoric-1380-1620-Oxford-Warburg/dp/0199597286

Additional information

Notes on contributors

David A. Frank

David A. Frank is a professor of rhetoric in the Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon. Professor Frank’s research agenda includes the history and theory of twentieth century rhetorical theory, with a focus on Chaïm Perelman’s new rhetoric project, argumentation and forensics education, the rhetoric of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, and the rhetoric of Barack Obama.

Nicholas J. Crowe

Nicholas J. Crowe was for a number of years Senior Dean at the Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Studies, Oxford, where he is now Academic Advisor, and Tutor in Early Modern English and European Literature and the History of Ideas. Research interests lie at the interface between literature and intellectual history, from the early Renaissance to the Enlightenment, in Britain and Europe. Specifically they include rhetoric, the literature of pastoral, comparative literature, Arcadias and Utopias, the generic reception of antiquity, the interrelations of the arts, the systematization and transmission of knowledge, and translation studies.