Rhetoric and poetics in antiquity - Walker, Jeffrey (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Includes bibliographical references (p. 367-386) and index
Before the beginnings: Hesiod on eloquence -- The emergence of Poiêsis, logos and Rhêtorikê -- Hellenistic rhetoric -- "Rhetoric" from Cicero to the second sophistic -- Theognis' Octopus: on poetry as rhetorical transaction -- Lyric enthymemes -- A "truest paradigm for Western Lyric": Pindar Isthmian 3, and Olympian 1 -- Argumentation indoors: Alcaeus and Sappho -- Solon sophôtatos: on lyric argument maximal and minimal -- Aristotelianism and grammar -- Toward modernity
This book offers a counter-traditional account of the history of both rhetoric and poetics. In reply to traditional rhetorical histories, which view "rhetoric" as an art of practical civic oratory, the book argues in four extended essays that epideictic-poetic eloquence was central, even fundamental, to the rhetorical tradition in antiquity. In essence, Walker's study accomplishes what in the world of rhetoric studies amounts to a revolution: he demonstrates that in antiquity rhetoric and poetry could not be viewed separately