The Rhetoric of Exile explores the rhetorical construction of force in indirect exile and in literary responses to it. Between banishment, a compulsory exile, and expatriation, a voluntary one, many legal systems have allowed for a third model. Such an exile is pragmatic and ambiguous in nature: the degree of compulsion is never explicitly defined, but all agents involved understand that it is real. As far back as the Roman Republic, there have been exiles who felt considerable duress but could not pin it down to any specific legal document or judicial decision, and these victims of silent...