Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance

by Cheryl Glenn

After explaining how and why women have been excluded from the rhetorical tradition from antiquity through the Renaissance, Cheryl Glenn provides the opportunity for Sappho, Aspasia, Diotima, Hortensia, Fulvia, Julian of Norwich, Margery Kempe, Margaret More Roper, Anne Askew, and Elizabeth I to speak with equal authority and as eloquently as Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and Augustine. Her aim is nothing less than regendering and changing forever the history of rhetoric. To that end, Glenn locates women’s contributions to and participation in the rhetorical tradition and writes them into an expanded, inclusive tradition. She regenders the tradition by designating those terms of identity that have promoted and supported men’s control of public, persuasive discourse—the culturally constructed social relations between, the appropriate roles for, and the subjective identities of women and men. Glenn is the first scholar to contextualize, analyze, and follow the migration of women’s rhetorical accomplishments systematically. To locate these women, she follows the migration of the Western intellectual tradition from its inception in classical antiquity and its confrontation with and ultimate appropriation by evangelical Christianity to its force in the medieval Church and in Tudor arts and politics.

Genres: Writing

248 pages, Paperback

First published December 31, 1997

Reviews

[Matt Sautman · Rating 4 out of 5]

For contemporary scholars who are not specifically engaging in the history of women’s representations in the history of rhetoric, the influence of this text has made the biographies that comprise the majority of chapters two onward may feel a little less rewarding than one might expect. However, the section on mapping in the first chapter is rich for anyone interested in questions of feminist historiography.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

In Rhetoric Retold (1997), Cheryl Glenn argues that women have been made invisible and silent in the rhetorical tradition because of the value placed on the "good man speaking well" in public. She offers to "regender" the history of rhetoric by not only recovering women in the rhetorical tradition, but also calling into question notions of what rhetoric is. She draws on historiography, feminism, and gender studies in order to ask questions about "Whose history? Whose rhetoric? Which rhetoric," and questioning the notion that there is a single "truth" found through empiricism and positivism (5). She is committed to "reading it crookedly and telling it slant" (8).

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book completely changed the way I think about women in the rhetorical tradition. Cheryl Glenn is an inspiring writer and feminist rhetorician.