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Making, not Curating, the Rhetorical Tradition: Ways through and beyond the Canon

The idea of the rhetorical tradition continues to trouble scholars, in part because it is often conflated with the Western rhetorical canon. The current way we use the word tradition is tied to nineteenth-century ideas of inheritance and continuity, which reinforce the canon. Using folklore scholarship to redefine tradition as something we continuously make and take responsibility for moves away from the canon while still allowing for creative use of past rhetorical practices and theories. Redefining tradition as something we make and pass on responsibility for should inform our teaching and reform the syllabi we create for our rhetoric courses.