Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History, Theory, and Praxis

This collection offers the first comprehensive discussion of the history, theory, and pedagogical applications of kairos, a seminal and recently revised concept of classical rhetoric. Augusto Rostagni, James L. Kinneavy, Richard Leo Enos, John Poulakos, and John E. Smith are among the international list of scholars who explore the Homeric and literary origins of kairos, the technologies of time-keeping in antiquity, the role of "right-timing" in Hippocratic medicine, the improvisations of Gorgias, as well as the uses of kairos in Isocrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero, and the New Testament. Broad in its scope, the book also examines the distinctive philosophies of time reflected in Renaissance Humanism, Nineteenth-Century American Transcendentalism, Oriental art and ritual, and the application of kairos to contemporary philosophy, ethics, literary criticism, rhetorical theory, and composition pedagogy.

Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments Foreword Carolyn R. Miller Introduction: The Ancient Concept of Kairos Phillip Sipiora 1. A New Chapter in the History of Rhetoric and Sophistry Augusto Rostagni translated by Phillip Sipiora 2. Time and Qualitative Time John E. Smith 3. Kairos in Classical and Modern Rhetorical Theory James L. Kinneavy 4. Inventional Constraints on the Technographers of Ancient Athens: A Study of Kairos/ Richard Leo Enos 5. Kairos in Gorgias' Rhetorical Compositions John Poulakos 6. Hippocrates, Kairos, and Writing in the Sciences Catherine R. Eskin 7. Kairos: The Rhetoric of Time and Timing in the New Testament Phillip Sipiora 8. Kairos and Decorum: Crassus Orator's Speech de lege Servilia Joseph J. Hughes 9. Ciceronian Decorum and the Temporalities of Renaissance Rhetoric James S. Baumlin 10. Chronos, Kairos, Aion: Failures of Decorum, Right-Timing, and Revenge in Shakespeare's Hamlet James S. Baumlin and Tita French Baumlin 11. Ralph Waldo Emerson and the American Kairos Roger Thompson 12. In Praise of Kairos in the Arts: Critical Time, East and West Gregory Mason 13. Changing Times in Composition Classics: Kairos, Resonance, and the Pythagorean Connection Carolyn Eriksen Hill 14. On Doing the Right Thing at the Right Time: Toward an Ethics of Kairos Amelie Frost Benedikt 15. A Bibliography on Kairos and Related Concepts Tanya Zhelezcheva and James S. Baumlin Contributors Index

About the Author :
Phillip Sipiora is Professor and Associate Chair of English at The University of South Florida. He is the coeditor, with Fredric G. Gale and James L. Kinneavy, of Ethical Issues in College Writing. James S. Baumlin is Professor of English at Southwest Missouri State University. He is the author of John Donne and the Rhetorics of Renaissance Discourse and coeditor, with Tita F. Baumlin, of Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory.

Review :
"What is most commendable about this book is the broadness of its scope, embracing in some fashion or another all the disciplines of the humanities, its essays covering topics as diverse as biblical references to kairos to the place of kairos in medicine and writing in the sciences. Worthy of special note is the effort to apply the idea of kairos to the practical aspects of writing in the composition classroom." - Bernard A. Miller, Eastern Michigan University