Ethos: New Essays in Rhetorical and Critical Theory [Paperback]

Ethos can be an elusive animal partly because of its history. Baumlin and Baumlin have an excellent text that clarifies, yet challenges, the Western understanding of ethos. Contributors of this edited collection include (contemporary) rhetoric heavies such as Susan Jarratt, James Kinneavy, Jim Corder, and Victor Vitanza. But many others are well established in the field as well such as Jim Baumlin himself, Keith Miller, and Keith Sipiora.

My opening point about ethos being elusive partly derives from my ongoing education about it. For example, when one speaks of ethos, is it in the Aristotelian or Ciceronian perspective?
Nevertheless, the Baumlins edit a text (and contribute to it) that seems to leave few stones unturned as it were. From historical readings of ethos to using a feminist lens or even a psychological lens on ethos (both to expand our understanding), this collection has become a "go to" text when speaking of rhetorical ethos. I might add that many of the authors position their essay (to some degree) within the pedagogical frame of composition, which only adds to the text's usefulness for scholars.

The TOC includes (last name of author, title):
J. Baumlin: Introduction: Positioning Ethos in Historical and Contemporary Theory
Alcorn, Self-structure as a Rhetorical Device: Modern Ethos and the Divisiveness of the Self
Jarratt and Reynolds: The Splitting Image: Contemporary Feminisms and the Ethics of Ethos
Davis and Gross: Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and the Ethos of the Subaltern
Baumlin and Baumlin, On the Psychology of the Pisteis: Mapping the Terrains of Mind and Rhetoric
Swearingen, Ethos: Imitation, Impersonation, and Voice
Brooke: Trust, Ethos, Transference: Plato and the Problem of Rhetorical Method
Kinneavy and Warshauer, From Aristotle to Madison Avenue: Ethos and the Ethics of Argument
Schnakenberg, Cicero Latinizes Hellenic Ethos
Hughes, "Dramatic" Ethos in Cicero's Later Rhetorical Works
T. Baumlin, "A Good (Wo)man Skilled in Speaking": Ethos Self-Fashioning, and Gender in Renaissance England
Sipiora, Ethical Argumentation in Darwin's _Origin of Species_
Hirst, Ethos and the Conservative Tradition in 19th C American Protestant Homiletics
Miller, Taking a Ride on the "Old Ship of Zion": Self-Making in African-American Folk Religion
Corder, Hunting Lt. Chadbourne: A Search for Ethos Whether Real or Pretended
Short, Literary Ethos: Dispersion, Resistance, Mystification
Vitanza: Concerning a Postclassical Ethos as Para/Rhetorical Ethics, the "Selphs," and the Excluded Third
(and there is a compilation of sources on modern Ethos)

If you have an interest in ethos, even a passing one, this text will inspire your thinking for days if not weeks in what "ethos" really means and how it functions. Every essay has helped me to understand the complexity (and universality) of ethos. I can think of no higher praise of a text if I can say, "It makes me think..." And this text does precisely that.

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