Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance

ISBN: 0809321378

Author: Glenn, Cheryl

Condition: New

After explaining how and why women have been excluded from the rhetorical tradition from antiquity through the Renaissance, Cheryl Glenn provides the opportunity for Sappho, Aspasia, Diotima, Hortensia, Fulvia, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Margaret More Roper, Anne Askew, and Elizabeth I to speak with equal authority and as eloquently as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine. Her aim is nothing less than regendering and changing forever the history of rhetoric.To that end, Glenn locates womens contributions to and participation in the rhetorical tradition and writes them into an expanded, inclusive tradition. She regenders the tradition by designating those terms of identity that have promoted and supported mens control of public, persuasive discourse-the culturally constructed social relations between, the appropriate roles for, and the subjective identities of women and men.Glenn is the first scholar to contextualize, analyze, and follow the migration of womens rhetorical accomplishments systematically. To locate these women, she follows the migration of the Western intellectual tradition from its inception in classical antiquity and its confrontation with and ultimate appropriation by evangelical Christianity to its force in the medieval Church and in Tudor arts and politics.