Richard Alan Lanham was born on April 26, 1936, in Washington, D.C.[1][2] He attended Yale University (AB, 1956; MA, 1960; PhD, 1963).
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 "The Motives of Eloquence: Literary Rhetoric in the Renaissance", Style: An Anti-Textbook, Literacy and the Survival of Humanism, and The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts (1995).
In The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology and the Arts, Lanham asks what he calls the "Q" question, named "Q" after Quintilian.
More modern (and postmodern) theories contribute to Lanham's "Strong Defense" which "argues that, since truth comes to humankind in so many diverse and disagreeing forms, we cannot base a polity upon it.