A Brief History of Rhetoric

A Brief History of Rhetoric Advanced Rhetorical Writing Matt Barton

Rhetoric of…

Eras of Rhetoric • Ancient Greece • Ancient Rome • Medieval Rhetoric • Renaissance Rhetoric • Enlightenment Rhetoric • Modern Rhetoric • Postmodern Rhetoric

Why Greece? • Crucial Period: 500-300 BCE • Place: Greece: Athens and Syracuse • Greece was leaving orality and embracing literacy. • After 510 BCE, Athens became a (limited) democracy. • After 467 BCE, Syracuse overthrew tyrant Hieron and became democratic. • Corax and Tisias began formally studying rhetoric

Ancient Greek Figures • Figures of Classical Rhetoric: • Pre-Socratics (Sophists & Aspasia) • Isocrates (436–338 BCE) • Plato (427-347 BCE) • Aristotle (384-322 BCE)

For a Fee • Foreign scholars called “Sophists” arrived in Athens and began teaching • Public Speaking • Power of Language • Social Origin of all Knowledge • Cultural Relativism • Topoi (“Common Places”)

Protagoras • Protagoras (b. 481 BCE) • Concerned with the correct use of words • “Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are so, and of things which are not, that they are not.” • “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.” • Developed Dissoi Logoi

Gorgias • Gorgias (circa 483-375 BCE) • Born in Leontini, Sicily, birthplace of rhetoric. • Nothing exists; • Even if something exists, nothing can be known about it; and • Even if something could be known about it, knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.

The Great Teacher: Isocrates • Isocrates opens first school of rhetoric in in Athens, 393 BCE • Developed periodic sentence • Emphasized praxis • Education improves natural talents and should serve the state • Talent, Experience, Training crucial for rhetorical and philosophical success • Education should form good citizens, not transcendentalists

Who is Plato? • Born 427 BCE, died 347 BCE • Student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle • “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” –Alfred North Whitehead

The Cave • We cannot perceive reality directly, but only see a distorted image. • The world of the senses is untrustworthy; true sight comes from philosophical inquiry.

Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC • Student of Plato, founder of the Lyceum • Wrote On Rhetoric, most famous work of rhetoric. • Defined rhetoric as the counterpart of dialectic: • “The faculty of observing, in any given situation, the available means of persuasion.”

Cicero and Quintilian • Cicero (106-43 BCE) • Quintilian (35-95 ACE) • Canons of Rhetoric: • Invention (discovery) • Arrangement (organization) • Style (expression) • Memory • Delivery

Stasis • Conjecture: fact of alleged act • Definition: proper label of act • Quality: nature of the act (is it justifiable?) • Translation (objection): Is case being handled properly?

Three Styles • Grand (op. Swollen) • “Smooth and ornate arrangement of impressive words.” • Middle (op. Slack) • “Lower, yet not of the lowest and most colloquial, class of words.” • Simple (op. Meager) • “Brought down even to the most current idiom of standard speech.”

Ramus (1515-1572) • Attacked all classical and scholastic authorities. • Syllogism is proper mode of decisive speaking in disputes. • Aim of dialectic is certainty (absolute)

Modern Rhetoric • Rhetoric began its recovery with the following figures: • Perelman, Toulmin • Kenneth Burke • Richard Weaver • Wayne Booth • Edward P.J. Corbett

A Brief History of Rhetoric