Handbuch Antike Rhetorik

Jürgen Leonhardt

28Transformationen antiker Rhetorik vom Barock bis zur Moderne

Abstract: To give an overview of the history of ancient rhetoric from about 1600 up to the present means first and foremost to cover what has been left by other articles in this volume. There is neither a good reason to begin a new period of rhetoric with the ‘baroque era’ nor exists any coherent development within this period. On the contrary, the most visible caesura in the history of European rhetoric appears in the 18th and 19th century, when the ancient tradition of rhetorical training as part of higher education came to an end and rhetoric was first reduced to stilistics and then re-invented as a more general science of communication in the 20th century. The ...