Rhetoric and Poetics in Antiquity - Hardcover

Jeffrey Walker outlines his project in the opening pages of his preface with a clarity and explicitness typical of the exemplary consideration with which readers are treated throughout this extraordinary ambitious complex and wide-ranging book. (Malcolm Heath, University of Leeds - Hermathena: A Trinity College Dublin Review)

... there is much in this book to learn from ... I hope that it will succeed in undermining some orthodoxies ... I hope that it will be recognised as an invaluable stimulus to reflection, discussion and discovery. Walker's work certainly deserves to be read widely, and will richly reward its thoughtful readers.

Passionately-argued ... The elevated perspective of Walker's inclusive approach reveals an ancient literary landscape formed as much by Isocrates and Alcaeus as by Aristotle and Demosthenes, and from it many literary and scholarly paths not taken may be glimpsed through the clouds. (Journal of Roman Studies)

This book offers a counter-traditional account of the history of both rhetoric and poetics. In reply to traditional rhetorical histories, which view "rhetoric" as an art of practical civic oratory, the book argues in four extended essays that epideictic-poetic eloquence was central, even fundamental, to the rhetorical tradition in antiquity. In essence, Walker's study accomplishes what in the world of rhetoric studies amounts to a revolution: he demonstrates that in antiquity rhetoric and poetry could not be viewed separately.