Includes bibliographical references and index.

Contents: General introduction -- Origins of rhetoric -- Part One: Classical Rhetoric: Gorgias -- Isocrates -- Plato --Aristotle --Cicero --Anonymous --Part Two: Medieval Rhetoric: Augustine -- Boethius -- Anonymous -- Robert of Basevorn -- Part Three: Renaissance Rhetoric: Christine de Pisan and Laura Cereta -- Desiderius Erasmus -- Peter Ramus -- Thomas Wilson -- Francis Bacon -- Part Four: Enlightenment Rhetoric: Margaret Fell and Sarah Grimke -- John Locke -- Giambattista Vico -- Thomas Sheridan -- Gilbert Austin -- George Campbell -- Hugh Blair -- Richard Whately -- The rhetoric of composition: Henry N.Day, Alexander Bain, David J. Hill, and Adams Sherman Hill -- Friedrich Nietzsche -- Part Five: Twentieth-Century Rhetoric: Mikhail Bakhtin -- I. A. Richards -- Kenneth Burke -- Richard Weaver -- Chaim Perelman -- Stephen Toulmin -- Michel Foucault -- Jacques Derrida -- Henry Louis Gates -- Helene Cixous and Julia Kristeva