An Introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric: With Analysis, Notes and Appendices

An Introduction To Aristotle's Rhetoric: With Analysis, Notes And Appendices by Edward Meredith Cope provides a compact scholarly introduction to Aristotle's Rhetoric. Written for modern readers, the 1867 edition outlines the aims, scope, and method and situates rhetoric within the social and intellectual context of antiquity. Cope links Aristotle’s project to dialectics and politics, contrasts it with earlier Sophistic traditions, and surveys its date, sources, and relation to Aristotle's other writings. The volume presents a systematic account of definitions, the art's proper objects and limits, and the threefold distinction among demonstration, dialectics, and rhetoric. It emphasizes psychology—character, motives, and feelings—as central to persuasion and treats ethos, pathos, and logos as integral. The work also maps the three branches of rhetoric and the kinds of proofs, and discusses ethical and political implications. Appendices and critical discussion address authorship questions (The Rhetoric to Alexander) and frame rhetoric as a scientifically oriented, ethically informed art grounded in human nature.