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Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times . By George A. Kennedy. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. xii+291 pp. $18.00 cloth; $9.00 paper.

Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times. By GEORGE A. KENNEDY. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. xii + 291 pp. $18.00 cloth; $9.00 paper. To follow his histories of rhetoric in Greece and Rome, Professor Kennedy provides a concise history of rhetorical theory and practice. Distinguishing between arts of oral persuasion (primary rhetoric) and their adaptation as literary techniques (secondary rhetoric), Kennedy discovers a pattern whereby ages of vital primary rhetoric slip into ages of literary rhetoric. Serving the needs of a reference work, he summarizes contents of major works and characteristics of significant periods. He gives appropriately extended detail on ancient schools, texts, and their transformations in the Late Empire. Subsequent history tends to be one of variations on the classical heritage until the attempts at fresh syntheses by Agricola and Ramus, who, however, viewed rhetoric as adjunct to dialectic and grammar respectively. Kennedy finds a turning point in Francis Bacon, who represents "the completion of the recovery of . . . philosophical rhetoric . . . [and] a new rhetorical maturity" (p. 219). After 1800, except for the elocutionary movement, he sees rhetoric in decline, save as an aspect of literature and composition: he muses on this in a charming concluding dialogue set in 1900.