This workshop forms part of the ongoing online lecture series ‘Building Bridges: Exploring Graeco-Roman Oratory and Rhetoric from a Cross-cultural Perspective’. Devoted to the comparative study of ancient rhetorical traditions, it brings together two specialists working on different cultural and intellectual traditions in order to create a dialogue between scholars of ancient Chinese and Greco-Roman rhetoric. The event explores how rhetorical communication in both traditions has been shaped by historical legacies and transmitted across time, and seeks to foster exchange not only between the two intellectual traditions but also among all participants.
Programme
• Xiaoye You (Pennsylvania State University), Confucian Rhetoric on Comparative Terms
• Henriette van der Blom (University of Birmingham), Chinese and Greco-Roman Rhetoric — and Beyond
• Open discussion and Q&A
Confucian Rhetoric on Comparative Terms
Xiaoye You, Pennsylvania State University, USA
How can non-Western rhetorical traditions be studied within the prevailing discourse of Western rhetoric? This talk approaches the question through a comparative lens, focusing on Confucian rhetoric. I begin with the well-known case of Jesuit missionaries who, at the end of the seventeenth century, sought to describe Chinese rhetoric. Their accounts reveal the difficulties of interpreting Confucian practices through Western categories, underscoring the limits of a Eurocentric lens. Building on this case, I propose that Confucian rhetoric should be examined both on its own terms and in dialogue with contemporary scholarly concerns. Drawing on the Analects—a collection of Confucius’s exchanges with students and other figures—I identify four key concepts central to Confucian rhetorical thinking and practice: junzi, ming, li, and yan. I then trace how these terms were reinterpreted by the Han dynasty thinker Dong Zhongshu, whose work illustrates the adaptation of Confucian rhetoric to shifting political and intellectual exigencies. In short, this talk introduces the essential constructs of Confucian rhetoric and demonstrates how they were mobilised to consolidate authority within Han imperial ideology, thereby highlighting both the internal evolution of Confucian thought and its broader implications for comparative rhetorical study.
Chinese and Greco-Roman Rhetoric — and Beyond
Henriette van der Blom, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom
A response to Xiaoye You’s lecture, with wider reflections.
Turning Xiaoye You’s question ‘How can non-Western rhetorical traditions be studied within the prevailing discourse of Western rhetoric?’ on its head, I ask: how can students and scholars of Western rhetorical traditions develop their understanding of rhetoric through engagements with other rhetorical traditions? Arising from a larger project of co-editing the forthcoming Cambridge History of Rhetoric I: The Ancient World to c. 350 CE, my intervention seeks to highlight a different way of understanding ‘rhetoric’ which allows us to embrace a wider range of discourse phenomena than is normally understood by this term. To illustrate this thinking, I bring in short examples from a range of non-Western cultures, discussed in comparison with Greco-Roman examples.
All are welcome; no registration required.
Hosted by the Centre for Oratory and Rhetoric (COR) and the Humanities and Arts Research Institute (HARI), Royal Holloway, University of London
In collaboration with the School of History, Shandong University, and the Center for Classical and Medieval Studies, Peking University
Supported by the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR) and the International Society for the Study of Rhetoric (ISSR)
Funded by the UK Research and Innovation
