Introduction: The Parrhesiastes in Rhetorical Studies

Abstract

This Forum is occasioned by the publication of Sullivan and Walzer’s Thomas Elyot: Critical Editions of Four Works on Counsel. The volume collects “The Doctrinal of Princes,” “Pasquill the Playne,” “Of That Knowlage Whiche Maketh a Wise Man,” and “The Defence of Good Women,” the latter assembled with the editorial assistance of Emily Gallik, and appears in International Studies in the History of Rhetoric (a series edited by Laurent Pernot and Craig Kallendorf). The purposes of a critical edition are multiple [clarification of a text across variant editions, recontextualization of a text within its own time and within the biography of an author, among others] – but one of the works of a new critical edition is to ensure that a historically remote text speaks to a contemporary audience.No one is more gifted at making the history of rhetoric speak to contemporary audiences than Arthur Walzer. Walzer made the classical period speak to the Renaissance and Enlightenment rhetorical tradition; he made the Roman, Greek, Renaissance and Enlightenment traditions speak to contemporary issues. He has made Aristotle available for the contemporary classroom and shown Campbell to be useful for criticism of contemporary events. More to the point, he has made the civic infrastructure that supports the classical rhetorical tradition visible for our times, a time when the stakes of civic deliberation have never been higher.In this forum, using Walzer and Sullivan’s engagement with Elyot as a starting point, we address the ways that Walzer’s approach to the rhetorical tradition has made that tradition speak for future scholars and teachers of rhetoric.