Guest Editor’s Introduction: Special Issue in Memory of James J. Murphy

In the spring of 2022, only a few months after the death of James J. Murphy (henceforth Jerry, as he would have preferred), I was approached to organize and guest edit the special issue of Journal for the History of Rhetoric that you now hold in your hands (or, as the case may likely be, have displayed on your computer screen). As a scholar of the rhetorical traditions of medieval Europe, I was quite familiar with Jerry's work—I had drawn from a number of his essays and books while writing my dissertation on medieval rhetoric and civic identity at Arizona State University. I also had the pleasure of meeting him at several conferences, the first time being at the American Society for the History of Rhetoric symposium in San Antonio in 2014. In all my interactions with him, I found Jerry to be a welcoming, supportive, and inquisitive scholar and mentor.Despite this scholarly and passing social familiarity, however, I struggled for some time with accepting the—largely epideictic—task of organizing an issue that sought to do justice to the magnitude, scope, and depth of his work without the advantages of a close relationship with him as a person. That is, I was (and, indeed, still am) hesitant to offer the type of praise and retrospective reflection one has come to expect in the genre of "commemorative editorial introduction" when my relationship with him was almost entirely academic. At the time I began organizing this issue, a number of lovely and heartfelt memorials had been published by individuals close to Jerry and by various scholarly organizations, including one penned by past American Society for the History of Rhetoric (ASHR) president Richard Leo Enos that was published on the ASHR website (see https://ashr.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/MurphyASHR.pdf). It quickly became apparent to me that, whatever I had to say, it would be of a different character than those reflections that had already been published and circulated.Now, with the work of organizing this issue completed—and with the benefit of a year and a half of reflection—I am increasingly convinced that it is both right and fitting that my praise differ from what has come before. I hope that there is value in the perspective I bring as a scholar deeply influenced by Jerry's actions and commitment to the field of rhetoric who never had the opportunity to connect with him beyond brief chats at the occasional conference. This perspective, I think, actually highlights many of the personal and professional traits that made Jerry such a special figure within our field's history.So, in the introduction to this special issue, I ask that you join me in the act of commemoration. Etymologically, the term commemoration comes to the English language by way of the Latin verb commemorāre, meaning roughly "to bring to memory together" or "to make mention of together." Implicit in the act of commemoration is its communal nature: com- being a Latin prefix than can mean, quite literally, "together," though dictionary definitions of our modern, etymologically related terms can sometimes elide this. And, while, like those who have written of him before me, I will make mention of the scholar himself, I want to focus more specifically on the structures and institutions that this particular scholar left behind as well as on what those structures have meant to me as an individual. But, more importantly, I want for us to remember together those institutions that this scholar has helped pass on to us and recognize their value.While Jerry's work was ambitious and wide-ranging (his 1956 dissertation was titled "Chaucer, Gower, and the English Rhetorical Tradition"), he had a particular fondness for the late Roman rhetorician Quintilian (Enos 2019, 135). Indeed, his last major scholarly endeavor was coediting, along with Marc van der Poel and Mike Edwards, The Oxford Handbook of Quintilian (2021). Quintilian is, of course, best known for his magisterial Institutio oratoria, or Institutes of Oratory, and it is for this reason that I now wish to turn to the institutions that Jerry helped establish and nurture throughout his life. As Chaucer observes, the learning associated with any human art or craft eclipses what can be mastered within a single lifetime. It is through the organizations, institutions, structures, and repositories of knowledge that shared endeavors like academic disciplines and scholarly subjects evolve and grow. Indeed, as Jerry might have noted, Chaucer himself was quoting a Latin translation quoting the original Greek aphorism of Hippocrates.At the same time, however, such communal efforts can be advanced only through the work and commitment of individuals. Reflecting on Jerry's life, I am overwhelmed by the contributions that his efforts have made to and the influence that those efforts have had on the field of rhetoric generally and the history of rhetoric specifically. I feel this most acutely when I stop to appreciate how his past work (whether his scholarship or his work organizing academic organizations, societies, and journals) has directly facilitated or supported my own career as a scholar.I will start by being up-front that, in naming some of Jerry's most important contributions to the study of the history of rhetoric, I am leaving much unsaid. I make no claim to detailing his contributions to the field comprehensively—many others, such as Nicholas J. Crowe and Rachel M. Reznik in their essay "The Rhetoric of James J. Murphy: Continuity, Commitment, Community" (2014)—can do this much better than I. Instead, I want to recognize that, as Jerry argued in his introduction to the first "Octalog," "the place where one stands will have a great influence on what the historian's lever can move" (Murphy 1988, 5). If my Archimedean lever is my own, it seems only fair to concede that the place—the ground itself—where I stand is not. For me, at least, it is communal and very much shaped by Jerry's past efforts on behalf of and contributions to the discipline of rhetoric. It was not until I sat down to begin writing this introduction that I began to appreciate the extent to which this is true.In the most basic sense, Jerry's work helped legitimate rhetorical studies, rhetoric and composition, and the history of rhetoric as worthy areas of scholarly expertise and inquiry. As Jerry was himself fond of relating, when in 1960 he first sent an article about medieval rhetoric to PMLA, the response he received was a "rejection . . . in two parts": "One, rhetoric is not a subject; and if it were, there would be no history of it" ("Octalog" 1988, 33).1 My own experience as a fledgling scholar of medieval rhetoric could not have been more different. For example, my first major conference presentation in the field was at the aforementioned 2014 American Society for the History of Rhetoric (see Loveridge 2014). ASHR was founded in 1977 with the help, of course, of Jerry. The year I presented the theme was "Rhetoric and Freedom." It was chosen by then president Susan Jarratt, one of the presenters from the first "Octalog." My presentation referenced Jerry's work, and to my surprise I learned at the symposium reception that he had been seated right in front of me the whole time. We spoke briefly at that reception, but, owing to time constraints and grad-student nerves, I remember very little of the conversation, aside from the fact that it was pleasant.When I sent my first (ultimately published) essay to Advances in the History of Rhetoric—the ASHR journal then edited by Art Walzer that is now the Journal for the History of Rhetoric—I felt no need to make extended claims about the significance or validity of investigating the medieval rhetorical tradition. I had the comparative luxury to observe that "the continued importance of classical traditions of rhetoric to the teaching of the language arts in the medieval period has been well-defined and explored" before citing work published years earlier by Jerry and many others (Loveridge 2016, 71)—and in the first sentence no less. "That's taken care of then, time to move on," I suppose.Several years later, my essay would be cited for the first time—in the newest edition of A Short History of Writing Instruction, edited by James J. Murphy and Christopher Thaiss (Lanham and Dumitrescu 2020). I discovered this citation as I was reviewing the new edition of the text, which I often assign in my course on rhetoric and poetics. Seeing my name in a volume I had read intently and often revisited was a moment of real scholarly pride for me—pride that was reinforced knowing that Jerry had a hand in putting together the new edition.For me, this brief journey through a single piece of my own scholarship speaks volumes about Jerry's contributions to the academic study of the history of rhetoric. His work informed the composition and content of my first essay, provided the institutional support and the venue for its eventual publication, produced a foundational text for my teaching of rhetoric, and, ultimately, provided the means for the essay's findings to be integrated and circulated within the field's ongoing conversations and debates. The extent to which my first publication is entwined with Jerry's work is remarkable to me.I would continue to find support in the organizations, journals, and scholarly communities Jerry helped create throughout my early career. As I became more confident in my scholarship, I eventually published a second essay, this time in Rhetorica (see Loveridge 2019), the journal of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (ISHR). Jerry served as the first editor of Rhetorica and was one of the original founders of ISHR. Around this same time, ISHR also generously awarded me an early career fellowship as I transitioned into my first academic position, assistance I would have been unlikely to receive if not for the work of Jerry and others in establishing structures of support for early career historians of rhetoric. It is not an exaggeration to say that I am intellectually, socially, and materially a product of the institutions Jerry helped establish.Today, almost a decade since meeting Jerry at the 2014 ASHR Symposium, I find myself in a very different scholarly position but one no less indebted to Jerry's efforts to build and legitimate the scholarly study of rhetoric and its history. I am currently the president of the organization dedicated to supporting the study of rhetoric in the United States that he helped found, guest editing an issue in his honor for the journal he helped launch, and, perhaps most importantly, doing the (sometimes less visible) work of bringing talented, interesting, and committed scholars of rhetoric together to share their knowledge and insights. It is with this thought that I shift the locus of commemoration from my own experience to the work of scholars who continue the long work of learning the art to which Jerry dedicated his life.As I indicated previously, Jerry's scholarship is expansive and wide-ranging, addressing historical periods from antiquity to the Renaissance and concepts as diverse as pedagogy, poetics, letter writing, debate, and reception history. His work in these areas has proved foundational for subsequent scholars investigating these topics, often leading to a greatly increased awareness of his subjects' unique contributions or character. As Nicholas Crowe and Rachel Reznik observe: "Commitment to the tradition suffuses Murphy's work, as any canvas of his writings will prove. Notably, a large measure of that commitment bears a pioneering character. The vibrant state of the rhetorical disciplines at present is not something to be taken for granted, nor is it serendipitous. The dedicated focus of scholarship required to illuminate an overlooked area, or reanimate a dormant one, has been a major force in Murphy's rhetorical vocation" (2014, 62). Jerry's passion for continued investigation, study, and scholarly progress in a wide range of historical areas has long been one of his qualities that I most admire. When I began inviting scholars to contribute to this special issue, I faced the difficult problem of settling on some sort of selection criteria for who should be included in the issue and who should not. In the end, I found it most fitting to invite scholars who, in my view, were doing work that exemplifies the twin commitment to tradition and continued exploration and evolution to which Crowe and Reznik alluded. The articles offered here, then, are meant to showcase these qualities.The scholars included here are not necessarily the closest to Jerry, nor is their work the most engaged with Jerry's own scholarship or the most reflective of Jerry's own interests and scholarly expertise. This is very much by design. Instead, my goal has been to recognize scholars—especially early career scholars—whose work exemplifies Jerry's commitment to the continual development of rhetoric as a scholarly and historical enterprise. I wanted this issue to draw attention to the quality and variety of historical work that is now possible in our field, almost an antistrophos to the comments of disgruntled PMLA reviewers from years passed.For Jerry, the varied backgrounds, experiences, and ideological commitments of scholars were a natural and desirable feature of historical inquiry. As he put it in his introduction to the first "Octalog":The scholars whose work is gathered in this issue naturally differ in their whys, their ways, their means, and their ends. The differences in their approaches bear witness to the vibrancy of scholarship in the history of rhetoric and to Jerry's role in shaping the field as it currently stands. I am honored to have played a limited role in bringing them together and helping share their findings.The articles that follow show both a commitment to the rhetorical traditions that Jerry studied throughout his life and the desire to push the historical study of rhetoric in productive and exciting new directions. You will first find Christina Cedillo's "'Streite vnto my mirrour and my glas': Disability Ethos in Thomas Hoccleve's 'My Compleinte.'" In this article, Cedillo draws from Jerry's closely held belief that people of all historical periods are worthy of intensive scholarly attention: "Murphy pushed back against this notion that people of the past—and their praxes—were quaint and unsophisticated." Cedillo operationalizes this commitment to explore how the poet Thomas Hoccleve uses rhetoric to define and express his lived experience of disability while also attempting "to reestablish identification with/in his community following a bout of madness." Throughout, Cedillo weaves together insights from historical scholarship and contemporary disability studies, drawing parallels between medieval and modern experiences of navigating disability at personal and societal levels.In "Killing the Messenger in Richard Coer de Lyon," Elise Broaddus theorizes what she terms the epistolary circuit, where "information moves across and through various bodies, events, and modalities." Expounding on past scholarship on the ars dictaminis (one of Jerry's primary areas of focus in his germinal 1974Rhetoric in the Middle Ages), she argues that the theoretical dictates of the ars dictaminis represent medieval media theories, texts that offer accounts and explanations of how "multiple bodies collaborate in the composition of the letter" and in "the letter's transmission and delivery." Her argument offers novel and unique insight into the familiar precepts of the ars dictamins, potentially transforming them from utilitarian texts of compositional advice into sites of medieval theory building: "The action of epistolarity—the process of communication and signification across distances of time and space—complicates the relationship between human body and text." Broaddus substantiates this argument through careful analysis of the ars dictaminis as well as literary texts such as Richard Coer de Lyon, demonstrating the significance of revising our understanding of the art of letter writing in medieval literary culture.In "A Cognitive Poetics of Wonder: The Synthesis of Aristotelian Rhetoric, Grammar, and Psychology in Fernando de Herrera's Anotaciones," Carlos Iglesias-Crespo takes up Jerry's theory of metarhetoric as a method for understanding the rhetorical- poetic works of Fernando de Herrera, one of the most important intellectuals of the sixteenth century. Drawing from a number of Jerry's writings from across his long career, Iglesias-Crespo observes that, to approach an author's corpus metarhetorically, we must examine "'the first principles, either stated or left implicit, upon which a rhetorician bases his whole activity'" (quoting Murphy 1971, 202). In so doing, the historian of rhetoric is able to grasp connections and perceive a unified coherence in a body of work that may not otherwise appear. Indeed, Iglesias-Crespo concludes that, when approached metarhetorically, Herrera's work exhibits "a notable degree of theoretical cohesion" that may not have been apparent otherwise. This article should prove generative, not only for scholars seeking a robust and contextually sensitive method for conducting historical inquiry, but also for those seeking to recognize and expand on methodological approaches like Jerry's that may not have undergone full development within the scholar's lifetime.The final article is penned by Jerry's close friend and colleague Richard Leo Enos. In "After Cicero Finished Speaking, Caesar Trembled! The Affect of Deprecatio in the Pro Ligario," Enos argues that the Pro Ligario represents a rare example of a case in which Cicero abandoned his normally carefully constructed arguments—by ignoring key strategies such as identifying and engaging the argumentative status, for example—in favor of an approach to special pleading focused largely on emotional affectio. Specifically, he notes that Cicero argued this case as a deprecatio, "an amplified emotive plea for truth and justice taking the position that an understanding of a case's unique circumstances would reveal equity and result in the pardoning the defendant." Rooted in Roman religious practice, this approach to arguing sees Cicero purposefully abandoning the theoretical precepts and standard conventions of Roman judicial argumentation. Instead, he judged (and, in retrospect, effectively) that what would sway Caesar in this moment, in this context, was not a carefully reasoned defense but heartfelt pleading.Cicero recognized what contemporary scholarship in argumentation has more or less confirmed: "that the logic-emotion binary is an inaccurate characterization because claiming categorical distinctions and separation between reasoning and emotion misrepresents the dynamics of persuasion that occur in social interaction." If rhetoric truly is the ability to see all means of persuasion, then Cicero's speech must be judged a success. As Enos concludes: "The Pro Ligario is concerned, not with which of its arguments are most rational and, therefore, stood the test of time, or even with whether its arguments are consistent with the theoretical standards that Cicero explicated in detail in his Rhetorica, but rather with what pleas were most persuasive to Caesar at the occasio of that moment."A brief personal memorial to Jerry by Richard Leo Enos closes out the issue.While the articles assembled here differ in their scholarly focus, their historical period, and their methodological approaches, they share Jerry's commitment to and passion for understanding what is important and enduring about every time period and every culture's approach to theorizing persuasion. When asked to respond to eight (wildly different and ideologically heterodox) statements about the politics of historiography in rhetoric as part of the first "Octalog," Jerry stated simply: "This is a bewildering array of very cogent ideas and I must confess I agree with every one of them" (Murphy 1988, 19). As I close this introduction, I leave you with the thought that the articles presented here represent an impressive range of responses to distinct elements of Jerry's thinking and scholarship across his long career. They have challenged and inspired and illuminated my thinking on a number of important issues in the history of rhetoric. I must confess I agree with every one of them.