🚀 go-pugleaf

I am going to respond as did most of the others, but with what I judge
to be slightly different reasons.

Did you deliberately refer to Plato, Isocrates, and Cicero as RHETORS
and Weaver, Burke and Richards as RHETORICAL THEORISTS?  The first three
were both rhetors and rhetoricians, but I presume you wish us to recall
Cicero's DE ORATORE when making our judgment.  Of course, we have to
vote for Cicero.  The debate between Crassus and Antonius produces
a solution to the seemingly contradictory positions of the abstract
philosopher and the politician.  His ethical solution is not as
elegant as Aristotle's famous "truth and justice" solution, but it
provides a better framework for testing whether either extreme has
pulled the system out of balance.

With the 2nd question I vote somewhat reluctantly for Burke.  Metaphoric
criticism is becoming more applicable to analysis of the political scene.
Burke, of course, did a lot of work with metaphor in his dramatistic
structure.  Richards, however, was the one who did the most to resurect
the study of metaphor and take it out of the context of embellishment
and into the context of serious criticism.  Some of the actual metaphoric
criticism has been developing a better theory than most of the theorists
themselves.  We understand a culture's definition of reality when we
understand the metaphors by which that culture's leaders create reality.

I've got to stop.  I'm getting ready for my opening lecture in my
rhetorical criticism class next week.  If I don't stop now, I'll
dump the whole load.

Victor Harnack, U of IL at Chgo, U23194@UICVM