What is rhetorical criticism?
Rhetorical criticism is necessarily analytical. The scheme of a rhetorical study includes the elements of the speaker’s personality as a conditioning factor; it includes also the public character of the man--not what he was, but what he was thought to be. It requires a description of the speaker’s audience, and of the leading ideas with which he plied his hearers--his topics, the motives to which he appealed, the nature of the proofs he offered...