Overview

From the Constitution to the Bible, from literary classics to political sound bites, our modern lives are filled with numerous texts that govern and influence our behavior and beliefs. Whether in the courtrooms of our judiciaries or over our dining room tables, we argue over what these texts mean as we apply them to our lives. Various schools of hermeneutics offer theories of how we generally understand the world around us or how to read certain types of texts to arrive at the correct or best interpretation, but most neglect the argumentative and persuasive nature of every act of interpretation.In Arguing over Texts, Martin Camper presents a rhetorical method for understanding the types of disagreement people have over the meaning of texts and the lines of argument they use to resolve those disagreements. Camper's fresh approach has its roots in the long forgotten interpretive stases, originally devised by ancient Greek and Roman teachers of rhetoric for inventing courtroom arguments concerning the meaning of legal documents such as wills, laws, and contracts. The interpretive stases identify general, recurring debates over textual meaning and catalogue the lines of reasoning arguers may employ to support their preferred interpretations. Drawing on contemporary research in language, persuasion, and cognition, Camper expands the scope of the interpretive stases to cover textual controversies in virtually any context. To illustrate the interpretive stases' wide range of applicability, Arguing over Texts contains examples of interpretive debates from law, politics, religion, history, and literary criticism. Arguing over Texts will appeal to anyone who is interested in analyzing and constructing interpretive arguments.

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9780190677121

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The time is ripe for this book. Arguably, the interpretive stases underpin the whole humanistic enterprise of hermeneutics, including literary theory and reception theory. Camper draws from political, literary, and religious texts, some quite timely, some dealing with quite contentious issues (such as race and gender), and all insightfully analyzed. Students and scholars alike will find it a lively and useful book. -David Charney, Professor of Rhetoric and Writing, University of Texas at Austin Camper's book rejuvenates the interpretive stases, a classical technique for analyzing arguments, and applies them to an intriguing range of historical cruxes, from questions about the authenticity of the Donation of Constantine to the sexual orientation of Abraham Lincoln and on into modern times. Camper explains the rhetorical theory with great sophistication, and yet so clearly that I plan to adapt some of his case studies for teaching argument at the college undergraduate level. This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of a neglected aspect of classical rhetoric. -Patricia Bizzell, Professor of English, Distinguished Professor of Humanities, College of the Holy Cross

Author Information

Martin Camper is Assistant Professor of Writing at Loyola University Maryland, where he teaches courses in rhetoric, writing, argument, and style. He researches and publishes in the history of rhetoric, rhetorical and argumentation theory, the rhetoric of religion, and college writing.

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