Quandahl, Ellen. “Aristotle’s Rheotic: Reinterpreting Invention.” Rhetoric Review. 4.2(Jan., 1986): 128-137. (Available through JSTOR)

In “Aristotle’s Rhetoric: Reinterpreting Invention,” asserts that the use of the topics in the Rhetoric were not intended as methods of invention, but rather as useful theories to aid in interpretation. Reading the Rhetoric with excerpts from Aristotle’s Topics, along with the work of Plato, Socrates and Cicero, Quandahl, examines the way that Aristotle’s use of the topics must be looked at in relation to the works of his contemporaries and the way followers edited his ideas in their own works. Quandahl attributes her theory that the topics are a tool of interpretation to the fact that the Aristotle’s rhetoric itself is a rhetoric of interpretation (135) and the topics cannot be seen as separate from the remainder of the text. While the theory Quandahl explores appears simple in a summation, familiarity with a breadth of other classical texts is imperative for a full understanding of the assertions and connections made within the text. Quandahl presents the facts to the topics in Aristotle’s Rhetoric in order to make her readers think about the implications for their teaching that should evolve from the new use of the topics.