The Origin of Rhetoric in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Ted Remington, The Jaynesian, 2007, 1, 1.

Excerpt: The concept of rhetoric does not appear in Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Nor does Jaynes’s work figure prominently in works of rhetorical theory and criticism. This is unfortunate. Jaynes’s ideas on the role of language in constructing consciousness have much to say to scholars of rhetoric, and the field of rhetoric offers a venue in which we can see the applicability of Jaynes’s ideas in our daily lives.