By: Bryan Lutz

1. By: Bryan Lutz You may forget but let me tell you this: someone in some future time will think of us. —Sappho “Echo of the Lyre: Remembering Sappho as a ‘Mother of Rhetoric’”

2. We have forgot… • Composition Textbooks frequently evoke Socrates, Aristotle, Plato, Cicero, and Quintilian as fathers of rhetoric whose wisdom about communication transcends the ages • They are used as figureheads that inform ‘truths’ about effective communication, and as tropes for rhetorical considerations • But where are rhetoric’s mothers?

3. Goals of Feminism and Rhetoric • Feminist scholarship is about reclaiming lost or marginalized voices • Feminist scholarship is about resisting male oriented/dominated methods of persuasion, communication, and research • Feminists is also keen on rhetoric as social action

4. To Enact Rhetoric’s Mothers Feminist historiography in particular has sought to recover, reclaim, and (re)inscribe women’s rhetorics both within and apart from traditional canons Susan Jarrat Cheryl Glenn Jessica Enoch and Jordynn Jack Ancient Greek women rhetors are now anthologized, but where are Aspasia, Diotima, and Sappho in composition textbooks?

5. In Search of Sappho and Feminine Rhetoric I’ve synthesized the impactful and imaginative scholarship on Sappho in order to theorize Sappo as a trope for rhetorical enactment Journeyed through books and articles that sought to (re)claim Sappho as a poet in order to (re)claim Sappho as a object and subject, as a trope of rhetoric rooted in a parallel, divergent, and complementary tradition

6. Why Sappho? • We have plenty of idealized and imagined male figures who in various ways represent rhetors and their art • Both traditional and non-traditional histories construct Sappho as poet in direct opposition to philosophy • Sappho is a figure may have opposed her inclusion in a tradition that includes Plato and Aristotle • But there is a degree of imagination in all of these interpretations • Because she offers a figure that is both object and subject—she is a trope for rhetoric considerations and a subject of rhetorical inquiry

7. Sappho –Jane McIntosh-Snyder and Camille-Yvette Welsch McIntosh-Snyder and Welschweave personal experience with scholarship and her interpretation of Sappho’s poetry Sappho philosophy of the power of lyric as rooted in the body The passions of the body result in eros, which has the capability for creation (poetry) and destruction (self-imposed exile or isolation) Rhythm and rhyme are a way to convey the majesty of place (the “s” sounds in the Greek mimic the rustling of trees) Frequently invoked the Greek pantheon as tropes for interpersonal relations

8. Sappho is Burning –Page Dubois Page duBois collapses Postmodern theory, feminist historiography, and literary theory Subject Uses “I” to foreground individual experience Rejects “metaphysics” ‘Eros’ drives the body, which wants what it wants. Writing can reach toward the unattainable, but never reach it Object Any history is fragmentary and incomplete Passion drives us to search for the unattainable and excluded

9. Sappho’s Supra-Superlatitives Zellner, H. "Sappho's Supra-Superlatives." The Classical Quarterly 1 (2006): 292. JSTOR Arts & Sciences II. Web. 20 Feb. 2014. Super-Supralatitive: T is more N thanV Vis an extreme exemplar, the unattainable and the unfathomable More sweet sounding than the lyre Whiter than the egg More golden than gold

10. A Feminist Rhetoric (re)consituted in Sappho Rhetoric as embodied Rhetoric as destruction and creation Rhetoric as phonetic mimicry Rhetoric as the “I” Rhetoric as the recognition of desire and the acceptance of the unattainable Rhetoric as reaching for articulating what is beyond language to grasp Rhetoric as rejecting the metaphysical Rhetoric as the search for the ever fragmented