Rhetoric before and beyond the Greeks

Examines rhetorical practices in cultures and time periods that have received little attention to date.

Focusing on ancient rhetoric outside of the dominant Western tradition, this collection examines rhetorical practices in Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, and China. The book uncovers alternate ways of understanding human behavior and explores how these rhetorical practices both reflected and influenced their cultures. The essays address issues of historiography and raise questions about the application of Western rhetorical concepts to these very different ancient cultures. A chapter on suggestions for teaching each of these ancient rhetorics is included.

“…all in all we get a good understanding of how rhetoric functioned in very different cultures.” — Bibliotheca Orientalis

"These essays forcefully and engagingly challenge the academic commonplace that Athenian rhetoric is foundational. Scholars teaching ‘the classical’ will need to pay close attention to the expanded corpus, and they will use this book as a central text in histories of rhetoric courses and as a supplement to more mainstream texts." — Susan Romano, coauthor of Writing in an Electronic World: A Rhetoric with Readings

Contributors include Roberta A. Binkley, Grant M. Boswell, Richard Leo Enos, William W. Hallo, Paul Y. Hoskisson, Carol S. Lipson, Yameng Liu, Arabella Lyon, David Metzger, C. Jan Swearingen, Deborah Sweeney, James W. Watts, and George Q. Xu.