With What Persuasion

The Author: An award-winning teacher, Scott F. Crider received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Riverside and is Associate Professor of English at the University of Dallas, where he teaches literature and composition and is Director of the Writing Program. He is a longtime member of the Shakespeare Association of America, and he regularly reviews books for The Ben Jonson Journal. He is also the author of The Office of Assertion: An Art of Rhetoric for the Academic Essay (2005).

«Many critics have acknowledged the importance of the classical tradition of rhetoric to Shakespeare, but few have taken it as seriously as Scott F. Crider does. In a series of subtle readings of some of Shakespeare’s most intellectually challenging plays – among them, ‘Hamlet’, ‘All’s Well That Ends Well’, and ‘Measure for Measure’ – Crider initiates a stimulating dialogue between Aristotle’s understanding of rhetoric and Shakespeare’s. In an especially provocative study of Iago’s sophistry in ‘Othello’, Crider highlights the ethical dimension of rhetoric as a central issue in Shakespeare’s achievement as a playwright.» (Paul A. Cantor, Clifton Waller Barrett Professor of English, University of Virginia)