Donawerth, Jane. Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women's Tradition, 1600–1900.

Donawerth, Jane. Conversational Rhetoric: The Rise and Fall of a Women's Tradition, 1600-1900. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 2011. 232 pp. $60 (hardcover). ISBN-13: 9780809330270. And my essays lying scattered on the floor Fulfill their needs just by being there And my hands shake, my head hurts, My voice sticks inside my throat I'm invisible and dumb, And no one will recall me --David Bowie, "Conversation Piece" In the 1970 song "Conversation Piece," David Bowie sings as a scholar who has lost his voice; silent and unseen except for the Austrian grocer downstairs, he fears that he will be forgotten. The song has, perhaps, some parallels to Jane Donawerth's work in Conversational Rhetoric." The Rise and Fall of a Women's Tradition, 1600-1900. In Conversational Rhetoric, Donawerth offers a "revisionist, feminist, critical, and 'constructionist' history" (10) of women's contributions to rhetorical theory from the Renaissance to the Industrial Revolution. Much of Donawerth's argument is not new, drawing from three decades of scholarship in rhetoric, communication, and gender studies from such well-respected authors as Patricia Bizzell, Cheryl Glenn, and Andrea Lunsford. Like her predecessors, Donawerth attempts to redefine rhetoric and reclaim a women's rhetorical tradition in the light of a growing body of recovered primary sources. Unlike some earlier texts, however, Donawerth is committed to the argument that a women's rhetorical tradition was not simply a matter of practices but of developed and nuanced rhetorical theories. Her move toward articulating women's rhetorical theories may seem obvious to readers outside the conversations of rhetoric and gender; one can hardly imagine discussing the communication practices of Plato or Foucault, for example, without also discussing the rhetorical theories that emerge from those practices. However, because the history of a women's rhetorical tradition is multiple, clustered, and partial, the focus has long been on practices devoid of accompanying theories. Donawerth effectively and succinctly contextualizes her work within these preexisting conversations and uses the very constraints of such a fractured history to argue that a women's rhetorical tradition is one of moments rather than movements (2). Donawerth claims that conversation was the primary mode of women's rhetorical practices in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. By rhetoric, she means "the art of communication through oral, written, or visual discourse" (10-11), and this expanded notion of rhetoric is central to her work. In Donawerth's capable hands, the idea of an Aristotelian rhetoric limited only to seeing the available means of persuasion seems woefully simplistic and ... boyish. Donawerth does not, of course, claim a gendering of definitions of rhetoric, but one might see how typical definitions disenfranchise women because of the historical restrictions on public speaking, while an expanded definition better includes private communication and thereby more easily supports a women's tradition. Further, Donawerth defines conversation as "small-group communication, from any private, informal verbal communication, to artful verbal dialogue used in informal leisure and social activities" (11). Like rhetoric, conversation receives the benefit of an expanded definition that brings multiple communication practices under its wing. Using these definitions, Donawerth shows that the rhetorical work of conversation offered a way for women to develop their rhetorical theories. In each chapter, Donawerth provides a short introduction articulating how her major premise will emerge, examines a few prominent women writers of a particular era, and finishes with a conclusion that links the writers and illuminates larger cultural, historical, and rhetorical issues. Chapter 1 highlights important women writers of the seventeenth century, including Mary Astell, Madeleine de Scudery, and Margaret Cavendish. …