| Guiding this study has been the following twofold question: From antiquity through the Renaissance, what contributions did women make to the rhetorical tradition? And how can those contributions be located within that tradition? Library and archival research revealed a surprising amount of female participation within the rhetorical tradition. This research uncovered one rhetorician, several orators, and a number of practitioners of rhetoric (rhetors); in addition, it found reoccurring pockets of female intellectual activity, coteries of upper-class, well-educated women who moved out of the margins into the body of the rhetorical tradition. The research did not, however, uncover any hidden record of a female-only rhetorical tradition, either a synchronic or a diachronic one.;The research led to two basic, intertwined conclusions. First of all, from antiquity through the Renaissance very few women were involved in the mainstream of rhetorical tradition. Only Aspasia of Miletus, a Greek, is a found rhetorician, in the received sense of the word. Other women who have made contributions to or participated in the rhetorical tradition have been rhetors, practitioners--not theoreticians--of rhetoric. During the Middle Ages, the women who wrote and spoke persuasively (Heloise, Hildegard, Julian, Margery) were all under the aegis of the patriarchal Church, whether they composed theological tracts, visionary memoirs, evangelic exhortations, or letters of direction. The Renaissance brought forth a number of upper-class learned women (Roper, Askew, Elizabeth) who demonstrated their awareness of rhetorical conventions and practices in translation, arguments, and religious and non-religious compositions.;The second conclusion is that women have been systematically and purposefully excluded from the history of rhetoric. My study elucidates all the social, religious, political, cultural, and literary ways that women's voices have been muted--by men. Women's intellectual repression has been deliberate, willed, constant, and institutionalized. |
