Novantiqua: Rhetorics as a Contemporary Theory

"A remarkable book... sure to be of lasting interest... to be reckoned with by all rhetorical theorists." --Choice

This is the first contemporary attempt at a holistic theory of rhetoric, well grounded in the context of cultural and social history. Arguing that rhetoric has always been an independent, objective, essential factor in human interaction, Valesio views it as coextensive with human speech in use.

I. What and Why: The Ontology

1.1 The Problem

1.2 The Field of Rhetoric

II. The Commonplace as the Common Place

2.1 The Aristotelian Dilemma

2.2 The Rhetoric of Antirhetoric

III. Rhetoric, Ideology, and Dialectic

3.1 The Rock Bottom

3.2 Strategies and Tactics

3.3 The Tortuous Path to Dialectic

3.4 The Nature of Dialectic

3.5 Structures and Discontinuities

IV. The Structure of the Rheme

4.1 The Thicket of Syntax

4.2 At the Frontiers of Linguistics

4.3 The Fragment

4.4 The Metaphor

4.5 The Critique of Ideologies

4.6 Concluding Perspective

Notes

Selected Bibliography