La Sinopsis histórica de la retórica clásica es un libro ideal para las personas que, sin intención de adquirir conocimientos especializados, quieran introducirse en el pensamiento del mundo antiguo y familiarizarse con su forma canónica de expresión retórica. El Prof. Murphy coordina el trabajo de distintos especialistas. Cada uno de ellos resume la evolución de la retórica en un período dado, apoyándose en citas de las obras fundamentales, con el fin de estimular el lector para que acuda a los originales y profundice en su estudio. Guión para un estudio más completo del tema y Biblioteca básica para el estudio de la retórica clásica completan la orientación didáctica de la obra, cuyo manejo agiliza un índice de nombres y conceptos.
Dr. Murphy spent his career studying the history and pedagogy of language use, with scholarly work exploring rhetoricians from the Classical Period, the Middle Ages, through the Renaissance, and on to modernity. His work extended to the pedagogy of teaching rhetoric, writing, and debate, including texts that have been published in numerous editions and multiple languages including Korean, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, and Polish. Before settling at UC Davis in 1965, he taught at St. Mary’s College, Stanford, and Princeton. During his career, he published 75 journal articles and book chapters and edited numerous volumes. Dr. James J. Murphy, (Ph.D., Stanford University, 1957), Professor Emeritus at UC Davis, passed away in 2021, at the age of 98. He remained alert and intellectually engaged until just a few days before his death. His final publication, The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian, which he co-edited, arrived exactly one week before he died.
Helpful in providing an overview of classical rhetoric, but, sadly, rather poorly written! Some chapters felt illogically arranged or overly pedantic (trying to summarize too much when a few extra excepts in the appendix would have been more useful), while others were simply full of grammar issues or otherwise hard to follow. Excerpts and speeches in the back are very helpful, though.
This was one of our main texts for ENG 570, History of Composition-- "Tracing the Evolving Ecologies of Writing Theory." I had trouble keeping all the different classical rhetoricians straight...