Resonant Isocrates

David Beard, the syntax factory himself, recently directed readers of the blogora to a really tidy blog entry by Tania Smith at Edu*Rhetor on the utility of reading Isocrates as part of an Organizational Communication course.

Smith notes that Isocrates is invaluable, not only because of his commitment to a rhetoric of ethical engagement, but also because his model of rhetorical education closely resembles what many imagine when they think of the liberal arts. While Smith notes that Isocrates connects to these contemporary dynamics of pedagogy, it remains less clear how we might get contemporary students to connect to Isocrates.

As part of my continuing experiments with packaging the rhetorical tradition in the trappings of digital life, I'll be working on this project in the coming months:

I imagine "rhetorix comix" as pdf formatted comic books (with interactive links, maybe?) that package things like "Against the Sophists" for use in the undergraduate classroom. The project is severely limited by my own meager abilities at digital imaging (more on why that might not be a terrible thing in a coming entry), but I think Isocrates might be the best place to ease into this mode of presentation. First, as Smith notes, Isocrates is terribly relevent in many contemporary contexts. Second, his works are generally short essays and orations that lend themselves well to the abbreviated style of the comic-book frame. Maybe someday we'll get the illustrated Quintillian, but for now I'm hoping to churn out a short exercise in anachronism: Isocrates Against the Sophists.