Rhetoric and Kairos: Essays in History Theory and Praxis

About this book

The first comprehensive discussion of the history theory and practice of kairos: that is of the role "timeliness" or "right-timing" plays in human deliberation speech and action. 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.