Want to create an interactive transcript for this episode?
Podcast: New Books in Communications
Episode: Rob Goodman, "Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions" (Cambridge UP, 2021)
Description: Why is political rhetoric broken – and how can it be fixed? Words on Fire: Eloquence and Its Conditions (Cambridge University Press, 2022) returns to the origins of rhetoric to recover the central place of eloquence in political thought. Eloquence, for the orators of classical antiquity, emerged from rhetorical relationships that exposed both speaker and audience to risk. Through close readings of Cicero – and his predecessors, rivals, and successors – political theorist and former speechwriter Rob Goodman tracks the development of this ideal, in which speech is both spontaneous and stylized, and in which the pursuit of eloquence mitigates political inequalities. He goes on...