Includes bibliographical references.

Contents: Where do English departments come from? -- The field of rhetoric -- Rhetoric: its functions and its scope -- The literary criticism of oratory -- The province of rhetoric and poetic -- Greek rhetoric and the transition from orality -- The rhetoric of Isocrates and its cultural ideal -- Plato and Aristotle on rhetoric and rhetoricians -- Introduction to the rhetoric and poetics of Aristotle -- Cicero and Quintilian on rhetoric -- St. Augustine on preaching -- English rhetoric of the 16th Century -- John Locke's contributions to rhetoric -- Renaissance rhetoric and modern rhetoric -- Introduction to the Rhetoric of Blair, Cambell and Whately -- The Boylston Professorship and oratory, 1806-1904 -- Alexander Bain's contributions to discourse theory -- The Cornell School of Rhetoric -- I. A. Richard's Theory -- Kennetht Burke and the 'New Rheoric' -- Richard M. Weaver on the nature of Rhetoric -- The philosophical basis of Chaim Perelman's theory of rhetoric -- Toulmin on argument -- Emerging European perspectives on rhetoric