Definitions for "Rhetoric"
The art of composition; especially, elegant composition in prose.
Oratory; the art of speaking with propriety, elegance, and force.
Hence, artificial eloquence; fine language or declamation without conviction or earnest feeling.
high flown style; excessive use of verbal ornamentation
Keywords:  mere, loud, empty, confused, talk
loud and confused and empty talk; "mere rhetoric"
Keywords:  decades, manifest, genre, decline, few
a member of a class of books, a genre, having a great tradition as well as what might seem to many a manifest decline in the past few decades