Arguably one of the most influential schools of rhetoric during this time was Scottish Belletristic rhetoric, exemplified by such professors of rhetoric as Hugh Blair whose Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres saw international success in various editions and translations.

Another notable figure in 18th century rhetoric was Maria Edgeworth, a novelist and children's author whose work often parodied the male-centric rhetorical strategies of her time. In her 1795 "An Essay on the Noble Science of Self-Justification," Edgeworth presents a satire of Enlightenment rhetoric's science-centrism and the Belletristic Movement" (Herrick pp. 183-4). She was called "the great Maria" by Sir Walter Scott, with whom she corresponded ("Edgeworth, Maria"), and by contemporary scholars is noted as "a transgressive and ironic reader" of the 18th century rhetorical norms (Donawerth, 246).

Donawerth, Jane. (2000). Poaching on Men's Philosophies of Rhetoric: Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Rhetorical Theory by Women. Philosophy & Rhetoric, 33(3), 243-258.

"Edgeworth, Maria." (2012). In Birch, D., & Hooper, K. (Eds.), The Concise Oxford Companion to English Literature. : Oxford University Press.

Herrick, James A. (2013). The History and Theory of Rhetoric, fifth ed. Pearson.

• Krista Ratcliffe is a prominent feminist and critical race rhetorical theorist. In her book, Rhetorical Listening: Identification, Gender, Whiteness, Ratcliffe puts forward a theory and model of rhetorical listening as "a trope for interpretive invention and more particularly as a code of cross-cultural conduct" (Ratcliffe p. 17). This book has been described as "taking the field of feminist rhetoric to a new place" (Ronald) in its movement away from argumentative rhetoric and towards an undivided logos (Ratcliffe pp. 25) wherein speaking and listening are reintegrated.

Ronald, K. (2009). Feminist perspectives on the history of rhetoric. In Lunsford, A. A., Wilson, K. H., & Eberly, R. A. (Eds.), The SAGE handbook of rhetorical studies (pp. 139-152). SAGE Publications, Inc.,

@Matthewvetter: Hi Dr. V.! My sandbox here is still in outline form (I know it's quote-heavy and I'll be sure to address that). While I don't have a paragraph draft, below is my outline of what I want to ADD to the RHETORIC page about Enheduanna (right now she has half a sentence as copied and pasted below). I made notes on what I want to talk about and am mapping them to a source list -- I will, of course make sure all of this fits Wiki style, tone, citation conventions, etc. I think the amount of notes I have write now will be more than enough to hit the source and word requirements, so even though I'm not paragraphed out yet, I felt this was in as good of shape as it will get tonight and would love any feedback you can offer at this stage (though, no rush). Thanks so much! - Meg

Current page: "Some of the earliest examples of rhetoric can be found in the Akkadian writings of the princess and priestess Enheduanna (c. 2285–2250 BC). As the first named author in history (Binkley p. 47-48; Hallo p. 26), Enheduanna's writing exhibits numerous rhetorical features that would later become canon in Ancient Greece. Enheduanna's "The Exaltation of Inanna," includes an exordium, argument, and peroration (Hallo p. 26), as well as elements of ethos, pathos, and logos (Binkley p. 49), and repetition and metonymy (Binkley p. 227). She is also known for describing her process of invention in "The Exaltation of Inanna," moving between first- and third-person address to relate her composing process in collaboration with the goddess Inanna (Binkley pp. 49-50), reflecting a mystical enthymeme (Stark p. 263) in drawing upon a Cosmic audience (Binkley p. 50).

Later examples of early rhetoric can be found in the Neo-Assyrian Empire during the time of Sennacherib (704–681 BC)."

Enheduanna has also been recognized as an early rhetorical theorist by scholars such as Roberta Binkley. Her contributions include attention to the process of (writing) invention as well as emotional, ethical and logical appeals within her poem "The Exaltation of Inanna." Rhetorical strategies such as these establish rhetorical theory nearly 2,000 years before the classical Greek period. Binkley suggests that, while Enheduanna wrote "rhetorically complex sophisticated compositions" (Binkley 49) that predated the Ancient Greeks by millenia, her work is less-well-known in rhetorical theory due to her gender and geographic location (Binkley p. 58-59).

• Women in Rhetoric
  • "Enheduanna’s works are rhetorically complex sophisticated composi-tions, and they challenge the traditional canon of rhetoric and thereby many of the origins stories and foundational assumptions of the humanities." (Binkley p. 49)
  • while there aren't many other examples of women rhetoricians in ancient cultures, "she stands at the beginning of written tradition, a notable exception to the early western canonical tradition in which women are virtually nonexistent. Certainly, her work, her documented existence, and her ethos problematize rhetorical assumptions of origins and the Other in rhetori-cal historiography and in Assyriology (a general term for the discipline that studies ancient Mesopotamia)." (Binkley p. 47)
  • Why Enheduanna isn't better known
    • terms like "prerhetorical" or "protorhetorical" for anything before classical Greek rhetoric creates and East/West binary in which East becomes "other" and "becomes intellectually suspect" (Binkley p. 54)
    • Binkley pretty much says Enheduanna and Assyrian rhetoric aren't better known because both geographic and gendered "other" (Binkley)
    • Enheduanna as "transgressive" -- "an alien, oriental voice that sings to a gendered deity" (Binkley p. 58).
      • "Her gendered ethos and sacred subject matter do not fit the west-ern profile of a singular male subject, a unified agent of discourse, whose themes form the commonplaces of a dominant power group." (Binkley p. 58)

My revisions: (expand on Enheduanna, invention, mythical entymeme etc. -- maybe make a mesopotamian secion & segment the "history" page?)

• Scholars note that Enheduanna's "The Exaltation of Inanna" is "expressly attributed to the first nonanonymous author in Mesopotamian history, perhaps in all of history" -- Enheduanna. (Hallo p. 26)
  • Enheduanna is the "first named historical author" (Binkley, p. 47)
  • Enheduanna as the "earliest known writer," around 2300 BCE (Binkley p. 48)
• Enheduanna
  • "Her religious verse was an influential model for later writers and she was held in great reverence for generations." (Enheduanna)

• Rhetoric
  • through a Western, contemporary rhetorical lens, "The Exaltation of Inanna" demonstrates an exordium, argument, and peroration (Hallo p. 26)
    • The Exaltation of Inanna includes "carefully arranged epithets and descriptions" (Binkley p. 49)
    • "In this powerful narrative are the strong elements of emotional appeal (pathos). She clearly establishes her own ethos by step-ping forward in the first person to tell her own story, naming herself. The ar-gument, the underlying the logos of the narrative, has variously been inter-preted as political (Hallo) and as a court case (Zgoll)." (Binkley p. 49)
    • uses "repetition and metonomy" (Binkley p. 227)
  • Invention in "The Exaltation of Inanna" (Binkley)
    • Enheduanna extols Inanna in the third person, and then moves to the first person to descrive "her personal creative process." (Binkley pp. 49-50)
    • Enheduanna draws on a "collaborative 'I'" referencing both herself and Inanna and their ultimate union (Binkley p. 50)
    • "Mystical Enthymeme," Ryan Stark, which "requires participation from the Audience/Cosmos to work" (Binkley p. 50).
      • "Authorship becomes a tri-part communion among the writer, the audience, and Cosmos (in this case Inanna as representative of the cosmos). (Binkley p. 50)
      • Relates this to how Sappho and Plato "invoked the muse(s)" (Binkley p. 50)
      • hard to track down source because it's mentioned in footnote 4 (Binkley p. 60) as a "Rhetoric Society Meeting" in Las Vegas in 2002
        • So Ryan J. Stark defines Mystical Enthymeme as “A type of rhetorical argument in which the writer omits a premise, intentionally, so that the audience and Audience (cosmic powers, angels, etc.) must fill in the missing information. That is, the audience must supply energy and substance to the argument, and the writer leaves room in the argument for that participation. Superlunary powers, including God, God-desses, angels, and/or mysterious energies participate with the mortal audience in shaping the argument. This sounds strange to the modern academic mind, but it prop-erly describes the style of the mentality of mystical writers themselves from antiquity to the Renaissance. For every text, then, three active elements converge: the author and two kinds of audience co-authors, the mortal audience and cosmic powers.” (Binkley p.. 60)
    • Pre-Cartesian embodiment
      • Enheduanna's subjectivity is "tied to the body and outside of Western dualistic notions derived from the Greeks" (Binkley p. 56)
      • Listening (tie to Ratcliffe?)
        • tying to mind-body-spirit all together, Binkley writes of how Enheduanna's invention process includes "understanding and sense were acquired by listening, a type of inspiration" (Binkley p. 57)
• Women in Rhetoric
  • "Enheduanna’s works are rhetorically complex sophisticated composi-tions, and they challenge the traditional canon of rhetoric and thereby many of the origins stories and foundational assumptions of the humanities." (Binkley p. 49)
  • while there aren't many other examples of women rhetoricians in ancient cultures, "she stands at the beginning of written tradition, a notable exception to the early western canonical tradition in which women are virtually nonexistent. Certainly, her work, her documented existence, and her ethos problematize rhetorical assumptions of origins and the Other in rhetori-cal historiography and in Assyriology (a general term for the discipline that studies ancient Mesopotamia)." (Binkley p. 47)
  • Why Enheduanna isn't better known
    • terms like "prerhetorical" or "protorhetorical" for anything before classical Greek rhetoric creates and East/West binary in which East becomes "other" and "becomes intellectually suspect" (Binkley p. 54)
    • Binkley pretty much says Enheduanna and Assyrian rhetoric aren't better known because both geographic and gendered "other" (Binkley)
    • Enheduanna as "transgressive" -- "an alien, oriental voice that sings to a gendered deity" (Binkley p. 58).
      • "Her gendered ethos and sacred subject matter do not fit the west-ern profile of a singular male subject, a unified agent of discourse, whose themes form the commonplaces of a dominant power group." (Binkley p. 58)

4 references, 300 words

References

Hallo, W. W. (2004). The Birth of Rhetoric. In Lipson, C. S., & Binkley, R. A. (Eds.), Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks. SUNY Press, pp. 25-46.

Binkley, R. (2004). The Rhetoric of Origins and the Other: Reading the Ancient Figure of Enheduanna. In Lipson, C. S., & Binkley, R. A. (Eds.), Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks. SUNY Press, pp. 47-63.

Binkley, R. (2004). Suggestions for Teaching Ancient Rhetorics: Mesopotamia -- Problems of Origins and Reading Enheduanna. In Lipson, C. S. & Binkley, R. A. (Eds.), Rhetoric Before and Beyond the Greeks. SUNY Press, pp. 227-229.

Enheduanna. (2005). In J. S. Uglow, F. Hinton, & M. Hendry (Eds.), The Palgrave MacMillan dictionary of women's biography (4th ed.). Macmillan Publishers Ltd. Credo Reference: http://proxy-iup.klnpa.org/login?url=https://search.credoreference.com/content/entry/macdwb/enheduanna/0?institutionId=693

Hallo, W. W., & Van Dijk, J. J. A. (1968). The Exaltation of Inanna. Yale University Press.

Stark, R. J. (2008). Some Aspects of Christian Mystical Rhetoric, Philosophy, and Poetry. Philosophy and Rhetoric, 41(3), 260–277.

• haven't read this yet

Hey @Undercommonsatrix: This looks like a wonderful plan for contributing more information about this significant and under-represented figure. my recommendation would actually be to split some of the content between TWO Wikipedia articles - the one on rhetoric with some of the more introductory/general information on Enheduanna and then the article on Enheduanna for some of the more in-depth/focused information. And of course, the rhetoric article would also link to the Enheduanna article (if it doesn't already). I'm mainly suggesting this because I'm thinking about balance in the rhetoric article. If there is way more information given to Enheduanna than others, it may feel a bit unbalanced. Hope this makes sense, and of course, we can talk about it anytime. DarthVetter (talk) 18:01, 15 March 2021 (UTC)