Susan B. Anthony Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell

Critical Essay by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell

SOURCE: "Contemporary Rhetorical Criticism: Genres, Analogs, and Susan B. Anthony," in The Jensen Lectures: Contemporary Communication Studies, edited by John I. Sisco, University of South Florida, 1982, pp. 117-30.

In the following essay, originally presented as a lecture at the University of South Florida's Department of Communication, Campbell uses an Aristotelian theory of rhetoric to analyze Anthony's style of forensic lecture.

Edwin Black's Rhetorical Criticism: A Study in Method was a milestone because the early history of rhetorical criticism ended with its publication. Prior to 1965, relatively little criticism had been written, and what had been published generally followed the precepts of what Black termed "neo-Aristotelian" methodology.¹ After 1965, criticisms proliferated, and critics used many perspectives, including approaches based on discourse groupings or genres, a form of criticism Black encouraged by describing two broad rhetorical genres—exhortation and argumentation—in the final chapters of his book.

More recently, some of the possibilities...
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