The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates
Text, Power, Pedagogy

Shows how Isocrates used writing to provide a model of political engagement distinct from that of his own contemporaries.

Yun Lee Too (Author)

9780521474061, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 31 March 1995

290 pages
21.6 x 14 x 2.1 cm, 0.52 kg

"The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates strengthens our understanding of the process by which Isocrates created his literary ethos and the necessity for such a rhetorical display." Rhetoric Review

The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates offers a sustained interpretation of the Isocratean corpus, showing that rhetoric is a language which the author uses to create a political identity for himself in fourth-century Athens. Dr Too examines how Isocrates' discourse addresses anxieties surrounding the written word in a democratic culture which values the spoken word as the privileged means of political expression. Isocrates makes written culture the basis for a revisionary Athenian politics and of a rhetoric of Athenian hegemony. In addition, Isocrates takes issue with the popular image of the professional teacher in the age of the sophist, combating the negative stereotype of the greedy sophist who corrupts the city's youth in his portrait of himself as teacher of rhetoric. He daringly reinterprets the pedagogue as a figure who produces a discourse which articulates political authority.

Introduction
1. Isocrates and logos politikos
2. The unities of discourse
3. The politics of the small voice
4. Isocrates in his own write
5. The pedagogical contract
6. The politics of discipleship
Brief afterword
Appendix 1. Isocrates and Gorgias
Appendix 2. Concerning the chariot-team.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: classical, early & medieval [DSBB]