The Rhetoric of Identity in Isocrates

Text, Power, Pedagogy

Yun Lee Too

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 1995
• ISBN:
  9781107710566
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

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.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• ABBREVIATIONS
• 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
• APPENDICES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• GENERAL INDEX
• INDEX OF GREEK WORDS
• INDEX OF PASSAGES