Casting the Art of Rhetoric with Theater and Drama - (Hardcover)

About the Book

This edited volume applies rhetorical methodologies to dramatic literature and performative text, exploring a wide range of themes, .

Book Synopsis

Casting the Art of Rhetoric with Theater and Drama: Taking Center Stage explores rhetoric and theater as they relate to one another, developing the understanding of rhetoric as theory and praxis. This book addresses rhetorical themes and cultural resonances, as well as the oft overlooked symbiosis of rhetoric and theater. Rather than addressing audiences as either observers of rhetorical artifacts or theatrical performance, this work demonstrates the intersection of the two, which strengthens theatrical events and their cultural significance. Overall, the volume showcases the many ways in which an understanding of the relationship between rhetorical and poetic theories can benefit dramatic convention and the breaking thereof.

Review Quotes

Hacker Daniels and her colleagues pull back the curtain on the debt of contemporary theatre to 2500 years of rhetoric and dramatic debate. This edited collection is smart, funny, highly readable, thought-provoking, and bound to incite debate. It is like taking a magic carpet from Athens to Broadway, from Sophocles to The Lion King, from Cicero to Thornton Wilder, from Shakespeare to Hamilton, from page to stage, from sheet music to aria, and from oratory to sign language for the deaf.
John Soliday, University of Miami, USA

Spotlighting the ineluctable antistrophes between rhetoric and dramatic performance, Casting the Art of Rhetoric with Theater and Drama: Taking Center Stage showcases how the art of rhetoric and the rhetoric of art still have much to teach us. Hacker Daniels's volume features a diverse troupe of trope experts and rhetorical critics who push the boundaries of rhetoric and theatre scholarship, offering readers illuminating anagnorises of the musical, political, legal, pedagogical, spatial, and religious stages of symbolic life. Bravo!
Christopher J. Oldenburg, Illinois College, USA

About the Author

Adrienne E. Hacker Daniels is professor emerita at Illinois College.