Retelling rhetorical history in a way that included women in the timeline began in the 90s. Cheryl Glenn’s Rhetoric Retold and Susan Jarrett’s Rereading the Sophists are two foundational texts that identify the kinds of rhetorical practices that women engage in to situate women in that history. Glenn identifies the work that feminist scholarship in rhetoric engages in as “recovering and recuperating women’s contributions in the broad history of culture making” and also identifies regendering as part of the work to include women in the history of rhetoric (Rhetoric Retold, 2). Even in the titles of these books, Glenn and Jarrett use the prefix “re” to express how they are exposing women’s roles in history that has already been written without them, and situating women as integral parts of that history.
In 2012, Jaqueline Jones Royster and Gesa Kirsch identify the three R’s of feminist rhetorical practices as rescue, recovery, and (re)inscription (14). They expand on the feminist rhetorical practices to include four more practices: critical imagination, strategic contemplation, social circulation, and globalization (19). These practices create ways of approaching feminist rhetorical work that reflects what feminist researchers actually do: prioritize a dialogic approach, inquiry, connect present with past and future, and engage with global perspectives.
While this might be old news for the feminist history of rhetoric, it’s worth taking a look at how feminist retellings of the classics, such as those by Madeline Miller, Margaret Atwood, Natalie Haynes, Ali Smith, Nina MacLaughlin, and Maggie O’Farrell (among others) also embody the feminist rhetorical practice of (re)inscription. This work in relation to classic texts is relatively new and is wildly popular because it allows silenced characters to speak for themselves. I think there’s a connection between this work with ancient Greek and Roman myth and the feminist rhetorical practice of (re)inscription that is worth examining, especially because those popular pieces of fiction are bringing about change in the way that we think about the originals and model the kind of critical approach to those texts that is a necessary turn for the study of ancient languages and cultures.
(Re)inscription is related to retelling. (Re)inscription might suggest writing more in its etymology, while retelling might suggest a more oral approach, however the expected product, a book that tells a familiar story from a different characters’ POV, is generally what those novels give us. Authors like Madeline Miller strive to rewrite stories that shift perspectives in ways that allow marginalized characters (often women) a chance to tell their own stories. A shift in perspective also, for these writers, necessitates a shift in genre. While novels might seem most familiar to the genre of the epic poem today, the novel is one that has been open and available and acceptable for women, and historically linked to women’s ability to “take up classical narratives and characters and render them comprehensible to the modern readership” (Hurst, 8-9).
Women’s retellings create a dialogue between ancient and contemporary values and beliefs, and allow contemporary readers to see how influential those stories have become to our culture. Their shifts in perspective allow the authors and readers to take a critical approach to the classics and originals, and they also allow readers to see some influence from contemporary cultural movements like BLM and #MeToo. This work (like Rhetoric Retold) shows how women and other minorities have always been parts of these stories, they weren’t absent, just silent/silenced. And now it is necessary to challenge that perspective, by giving these characters their own voices. And to challenge the very way that we’ve always accepted these stories as foundational.
Sources
Glenn, Cheryl. Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance. Southern Illinois UP, 1997.
Hurst, Isobel. Victorian Women Writers and the Classics: The Feminine of Homer. Oxford UP, 2006.
Jarrett, Susan. Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured. Southern Illinois UP, 1991.
Royster, Jacqueline Jones and Gesa Kirsch. Feminist Rhetorical Practices: New Horizons for Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies. Southern Illinois UP, 2012.
Alexandra Sladky 