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Rick Davis
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Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students gets the job done, I suppose. It was much more difficult to follow than the, in my opinion, superior Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student by Edward Corbett. That book, from which I have taught a Rhetoric course before, is better arranged with lots of bullet points and lists to break up the prose. This book, though thinner, feels heavier and harder for a student to plod through. The Corbett book also includes complete essays by famous writers at the end of each chapter as examples, whereas this book merely includes paragraph excerpts throughout the chapters.
This book has one advantage over Corbett, however, and that is in the number of exercises provided for the student to hone his (or "her" as Crowley and Hawhee would have me remember!) rhetorical skills.
Overall this is a decent introduction to Rhetoric, but too concerned with extraneous issues, with an extreme (seriously) political bias, a weird habit of frequently switching between male and female personal pronouns even when historically inaccurate (How many female rhetors were there in 5th century Athens again?), and presenting information in way that would make it difficult for a beginning student to grasp.
3/5 stars
This book has one advantage over Corbett, however, and that is in the number of exercises provided for the student to hone his (or "her" as Crowley and Hawhee would have me remember!) rhetorical skills.
Overall this is a decent introduction to Rhetoric, but too concerned with extraneous issues, with an extreme (seriously) political bias, a weird habit of frequently switching between male and female personal pronouns even when historically inaccurate (How many female rhetors were there in 5th century Athens again?), and presenting information in way that would make it difficult for a beginning student to grasp.
3/5 stars
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