- Richard A. Lanham
Richard A. Lanham (born 1936) is probably most widely known for his textbooks on revising prose to improve style and clarify thought. He is also a notable scholar of the history of
rhetoric who has published notable books on the subject.Richard A. Lanham was born in 1936 and educated at
Sidwell Friends School andYale University (A.B., M.A., Ph.D.). He is Professor Emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles, and president of Rhetorica, Inc., a consulting firm.Lanham is a recognized expert in prose stylistics and Classical and Renaissance rhetoric. His "Handlist of Rhetorical Terms" (2nd ed., 1991) is the standard reference in the field, and he recently revised his "Analyzing Prose" (2nd ed., 2003), a benchmark work in stylistic analysis. Some other works are "Style: An Anti-Textbook", "Literacy and the Survival of Humanism", and "The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts". His "Revising Prose" and "Revising Business Prose"—now in revision—remain popular. His latest work, "The Economics of Attention", was published in 2006 by the University of Chicago Press.
Long a champion of
Sophistic rhetoric as a challenge and counterweight toAristotelian rhetoric , in recent years Lanham has become very interested in, and very knowledgeable about, multimedia and the implications for rhetoric in this age of electronic text.ources
* [http://www.rhetoricainc.com/ Rhetorica, Inc.]
External links
* [http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/468828in.html An interview with Richard A. Lanham]
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