Rhetoric is one of the arts of using language as a means to persuade. Along with
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of logical and structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology,...
and
logicLogic, from the Greek λογική is the art and science of reasoning. More specifically, it is defined by the Penguin Encyclopedia to be "The formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning". As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its...
or
dialecticDialectic is a method of argument, which has been central to both Eastern and Western philosophy since ancient times. The word "dialectic" originates in Ancient Greece, and was made popular by Plato's Socratic dialogues...
, rhetoric is one of the three ancient arts of discourse. From
ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
to the late 19th Century, it was a central part of Western education, filling the need to train public speakers and writers to move audiences to action with arguments. The very act of defining has itself been a central part of rhetoric, appearing among
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
's
TopicsThe Topics is the name given to one of Aristotle's six works on logic, collectively known as the Organon. The other five are:*Categories*De Interpretatione*Prior Analytics*Posterior Analytics*On Sophistical Refutations...
. The word is derived from the
GreekGreek , an independent branch of the Indo-European family of languages, is the language of the Greeks. Native to the southern Balkans, it has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning 34 centuries of written records. In its ancient form, it is the language of classical...
(
rhētorikós), "oratorical", from (
rhḗtōr), "public speaker", related to (
rhêma), "that which is said or spoken, word, saying", and ultimately derived from the verb (
erô), "to speak, say". In its broadest sense, rhetoric concerns human discourse.
Rhetoric as a civic art
Throughout
European historyThe history of Europe describes the history of humans inhabiting Europe to the present day. For convenience, historians divide long periods into more manageable eras....
, rhetoric has concerned itself with persuasion in public and political settings such as assemblies and courts. Because of its associations with democratic institutions, rhetoric is commonly said to flourish in open and democratic societies with rights of free speech, free assembly, and political enfranchisement for some portion of the population.
Rhetoric as a course of study
As a course of study, rhetoric trains students to speak and/or write effectively. The rhetorical curriculum is nearly as old as the rhetorical tradition itself. Over its many centuries, the curriculum has been transformed in a number of ways, but, in general, it has emphasized the study of principles and rules of composition as a means for moving audiences.
In Greece, rhetoric originated in a school of pre-Socratic philosophers known as Sophists circa 600 BC. It was later taught in the
Roman EmpireThe Roman Empire was the post-Republican phase of the ancient Roman civilization, characterised by an autocratic form of government and large territorial holdings in Europe and around the Mediterranean. The term is used to describe the Roman state during and after the time of the first emperor,...
and during the
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
as one of the three original
liberal artsLiberal arts are the skills derived from the Classical education curriculum.-Definition:The term liberal arts denotes a curriculum that imparts general knowledge and develops the student’s rational thought and intellectual capabilities, unlike the professional, vocational, technical curricula...
or
trivium (along with
logicLogic, from the Greek λογική is the art and science of reasoning. More specifically, it is defined by the Penguin Encyclopedia to be "The formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning". As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its...
and
grammarIn linguistics, grammar is the set of logical and structural rules that govern the composition of sentences, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology and syntax, often complemented by phonetics, phonology,...
).
Rhetoric as epistemologyEpistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge...
The relationship between rhetoric and knowledge is one of its oldest and most interesting problems. The contemporary stereotype of rhetoric as "empty speech" or "empty words" reflects a radical division of rhetoric from knowledge, a division that has had influential adherents within the rhetorical tradition, most notably
PlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world...
in ancient Athens, and
Peter RamusPetrus Ramus, or Pierre de la Ramée , French humanist, logician, and educational reformer, was born at the village of Cuts in Picardy, a member of a noble but impoverished family: his father was a farmer and his grandfather's father a charcoal-burner. He was killed during the St...
in 16C Renaissance Europe. It is a division that has been strongly associated with
EnlightenmentThe Age of Enlightenment, or simply The Enlightenment, is a term used to describe a time in Western philosophy and cultural life, centered upon the eighteenth century, in which reason was advocated as the primary source and legitimacy for authority....
thinking about language.
Researchers in the rhetoric of science, however, have shown how the two are difficult to separate, and how discourse helps to create knowledge. This perspective is often called "
epistemic rhetoricRhetoric of science is a body of scholarly literature exploring the notion that the practice of science is a rhetorical activity. It emerged from a number of disciplines during the late twentieth century, including the disciplines of sociology, history, and philosophy of science, but it is...
," where communication among interlocutors is fundamental to the creation of knowledge in communities.
Emphasizing this close relationship between discourse and knowledge, contemporary rhetoricians have been associated with a number of philosophical and social scientific theories that see language and discourse as central to, rather than in conflict with, knowledge-making (See
Critical TheoryCritical theory is the examination and critique of society and culture, drawing from knowledge across the social sciences and humanities. The term has two quite different meanings with different origins and histories, one originating in social theory and the other in literary criticism...
, Post-structuralismPost-structuralism encompasses the intellectual developments of certain continental philosophers and sociologists who wrote within the tendencies of twentieth-century French philosophy. The movement is difficult to define or summarize, but may be broadly understood as a body of distinct responses...
,
HermeneuticsHermeneutics is the study of interpretation theory, and can be defined as either the art of interpretation, or the theory and practice of interpretation. Traditional hermeneutics - which includes Biblical hermeneutics - refers to the study of the interpretation of written texts, especially texts in...
, DramatismDramatism, introduced by rhetorician Kenneth Burke, made its way into the field of communication in the early 1950's as a method for understanding the social uses of language and how to encounter the social and symbolic world of a drama...
, ReflexivityIn sociology, reflexivity is an act of self-reference where examination or action 'bends back on', refers to, and affects the entity instigating the action or examination. In brief, reflexivity refers to circular relationships between cause and effect...
).
The scope of rhetoric
Contemporary studies of rhetoric address a more diverse range of domains than was the case in ancient times. While classical rhetoric trained speakers to be effective persuaders in public forums and institutions like courtrooms and assemblies, contemporary rhetoric investigates human discourse writ large. Rhetoricians have studied the discourses of a wide variety of domains, including the natural and social sciences, fine art, religion, journalism, fiction, history, cartography, and architecture, along with the more traditional domains of politics and the law.
Public relations, lobbying, law, marketing, professional and technical writing, and advertising are modern professions that employ rhetorical practitioners.
Ancient Greece
The earliest mention of oratorical skill occurs in
HomerHomer is a legendary ancient Greek epic poet, traditionally said to be the author of the epic poems the Iliad and the Odyssey...
's
IliadThe Iliad is an epic poem recounting significant events during a portion of the final year of the Trojan War — the Greek siege of the city of Ilion — hence the title...
, where heroes like Achilles, Hektor, and Odysseus were honored for their ability to advise and exhort their peers and followers (the Laos
or army) in wise and appropriate action. With the rise of the democratic polis, speaking skill was adapted to the needs of the public and political life of cities in
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
, much of which revolved around the use of oratory as the medium through which political and judicial decisions were made, and through which philosophical ideas were developed and disseminated. For modern students today, it can be difficult to remember that the wide use and availability of written texts is a phenomenon that was just coming into vogue in
Classical GreeceClassical Greece was a culture that was highly advanced and which heavily influenced the cultures of Ancient Rome and still has an enduring effect on Western Civilization. Much of modern politics, artistic thought, scientific thought, literature, and philosophy derives from this ancient society...
. In Classical times, many of the great thinkers and political leaders performed their works before an audience, usually in the context of a competition or contest for fame, political influence, and cultural capital; in fact, many of them are known only through the texts that their students, followers, or detractors wrote down. As has already been noted, rhetor
was the Greek term for orator:
A rhetor
was a citizen who regularly addressed juries and political assemblies and who was thus understood to have gained some knowledge about public speaking in the process, though in general facility with language was often referred to as logôn techne
, "skill with arguments" or "verbal artistry."
Rhetoric thus evolved as an important art, one that provided the orator with the forms, means, and strategies for persuading an audience of the correctness of the orator's arguments. Today the term rhetoric can be used at times to refer only to the form of argumentation, often with the pejorative connotation that rhetoric is a means of obscuring the truth. Classical philosophers believed quite the contrary: the skilled use of rhetoric was essential to the discovery of truths, because it provided the means of ordering and clarifying arguments.
The Sophists
Organized thought about public speaking began in
Ancient GreeceAncient Greece is the civilisation belonging to the period of Greek history lasting from the Greek Dark Ages ca. 1100 BC and the Dorian invasion, to 146 BC and the Roman conquest of Greece after the Battle of Corinth. It is generally considered to be the seminal culture which provided the...
. Possibly, the first study about the power of language may be attributed to the philosopher
EmpedoclesEmpedocles was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for being the origin of the cosmogenic theory of the four classical elements. He also proposed powers called Love and Strife which would act as forces to bring...
(d. ca. 444 BC), whose theories on human knowledge would provide a basis for many future rhetoricians. The first written manual is attributed to
CoraxCorax , along with Tisias, was one of the founders of ancient Greek rhetoric. It has sometimes been asserted that they are merely legendary personages. Other scholars contend that Corax and Tisias were the same person, described in one fragment as "Tisias, the Crow"...
and his pupil
TisiasTisias , along with Corax of Syracuse, was one of the founders of ancient Greek rhetoric, or sophism. Tisias was reputed to have been the pupil of the lawyer Corax, who agreed to teach Tisias under the condition that he would give him payment for schooling if he won his first case...
. Their work, as well as that of many of the early rhetoricians, grew out of the courts of law; Tisias, for example, is believed to have written judicial speeches that others delivered in the courts. Teaching in oratory was popularized in the 5th century BC by itinerant teachers known as sophists, the best known of whom were
ProtagorasProtagoras was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue...
(c.481-420 BC),
GorgiasGorgias "the Nihilist", Greek sophist, pre-socratic philosopher and rhetorician, was a native of Leontini in Sicily. Along with Protagoras, he forms the first generation of Sophists. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years younger...
(c.483-376 BC), and
IsocratesIsocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works.Greek rhetoric is commonly traced to Corax of Syracuse,...
(436-338 BC). The Sophists were a disparate group who travelled from city to city making public displays to attract students who were then charged a fee for their education. Their central focus was on
logos' is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion.Heraclitus established the term in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the cosmos....
or what we might broadly refer to as
discourseDiscourse means either "written or spoken communication or debate" or "a formal discussion of debate." The term is often used in semantics and discourse analysis....
, its functions and powers. They defined parts of speech, analyzed poetry, parsed close synonyms, invented argumentation strategies, and debated the nature of reality. They claimed to make their students "better," or, in other words, to teach
virtueVirtue is moral excellence. A virtue is a character trait or quality valued as being good.Personal virtues are characteristics valued as promoting individual and collective well-being, and thus good by definition. The opposite of virtue is vice.-Virtues and values:Virtues can be placed into a...
. They thus claimed that human "excellence" was not an accident of fate or a prerogative of noble birth, but an art or "techne
" that could be taught and learned. They were thus among the first humanists. Several sophists also questioned received wisdom about the gods and the Greek culture, which they believed was taken for granted by Greeks of their time, making them among the first agnostics. For example, they argued that cultural practices were a function of convention or nomosNomos can refer to:* the subdivisions of Ancient Egypt, see Nome * the prefectures of Greece, the administrative division immediately below the peripheries of Greece...
rather than blood or birth or phusis. They argued even further that morality or immorality of any action could not be judged outside of the cultural context within which it occurred. The well-known phrase, "Man is the measure of all things" arises from this belief. One of their most famous, and infamous, doctrines has to do with probability and counter arguments. They taught that every argument could be countered with an opposing argument, that an argument's effectiveness derived from how "likely" it appeared to the audience (its probability of seeming true), and that any probability argument could be countered with an inverted probability argument. Thus, if it seemed likely that a strong, poor man were guilty of robbing a rich, weak man, the strong poor man could argue, on the contrary, that this very likelihood (that he would be a suspect) makes it unlikely that he committed the crime, since he would most likely be apprehended for the crime. They also taught and were known for their ability to make the weaker (or worse) argument the stronger (or better).
AristophanesAristophanes , son of Philippus, of the deme Cydathenaus, was a prolific and much acclaimed comic playwright of ancient Athens. Eleven of his forty plays have come down to us virtually complete...
famously parodies the clever inversions that sophists were known for in his play The Clouds
.
The word "sophistry" developed strong negative connotations in ancient Greece that continue today, but in ancient Greece sophists were nevertheless popular and well-paid professionals, widely respected for their abilities but also widely criticized for their excesses.
See Jacqueline de RomillyJacqueline Worms de Romilly is a French philologist, Classical scholar and writer of fiction of Jewish ancestry - Biography :...
, The Great Sophists in Periclean Athens (French orig. 1988; English trans. Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press, 1992).
Isocrates
IsocratesIsocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works.Greek rhetoric is commonly traced to Corax of Syracuse,...
(436-338 BC), (not to be confused with the philosopher
Socrates Socrates was a Classical Greek philosopher. Credited as one of the founders of Western philosophy, he is an enigmatic figure known only through the classical accounts of his students...
) like the sophists, taught public speaking as a means of human improvement, but he worked to distinguish himself from the Sophists, whom he saw as claiming far more than they could deliver. He suggested that while an art of virtue or excellence did exist, it was only one piece, and the least, in a process of self-improvement that relied much more heavily on native talent and desire, constant practice, and the imitation of good models. Isocrates believed that practice in speaking publicly about noble themes and important questions would function to improve the character of both speaker and audience while also offering the best service to a state. He thus wrote his speeches as "models" for his students to imitate in the same way that poets might imitate Homer or Hesiod. His was the first permanent school in
AthensAthens , the capital and largest city of Greece, dominates the Attica periphery; as one of the world's oldest cities, its recorded history spans around 3,400 years....
and it is likely that Plato's Academy and Aristotle's Lyceum were founded in part as a response to Isocrates. Though he left no handbooks, his speeches ("Antidosis"
and "Against the Sophists" are most relevant to students of rhetoric) became models of oratory (he was one of the canonical "Ten Attic Orators") and he had a marked influence on
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...
and
QuintilianMarcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
, and through them, on the entire educational system of the west.
Plato
PlatoPlato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world...
(427-347 BC) famously outlined the differences between true and false rhetoric in a number of dialogues, but especially the Gorgias and the Phaedrus. Both dialogues are complex and difficult, but in both Plato disputes that the Sophistic notion that an art of persuasion, the art of the Sophists which he calls "rhetoric" (after the public speaker or rhêtôr), can exist independent of the art of dialectic. Plato claims that since Sophists appeal only to what seems likely or probable, rather than to what is true, they are not at all making their students and audiences "better," but simply flattering them with what they want to hear. While Plato's condemnation of rhetoric is clear in the Gorgias, in the Phaedrus he seems to suggest the possibility of a true art of rhetoric based upon the knowledge produced by dialectic, and he relies on such a dialectically informed rhetoric to appeal to the main character, Phaedrus, to take up philosophy. It is possible that in developing his own theory of knowledge, Plato coined the term "rhetoric" both to denounce what he saw as the false wisdom of the Sophists, and to advance his own views on knowledge and method. Plato's animosity against the Sophists derives not only from their inflated claims to teach virtue and their reliance on appearances, but from the fact that his teacher, Socrates, was accused of being a Sophist and ultimately sentenced to death for his teaching.
Aristotle
Plato's student
AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
(384-322 BC) famously set forth an extended treatise on rhetoric that still repays careful study today.
In the first sentence of
The Art of RhetoricAristotle's Rhetoric is an ancient Greek treatise on the art of persuasion, dating from the fourth century BC. In Greek, it is titled ΤΕΧΝΗΣ ΡΗΤΟΡΙΚΗΣ, in Latin Ars Rhetorica. In English, its title varies: typically it is titled the Rhetoric, the Art of Rhetoric, or a Treatise on Rhetoric.Aristotle...
, Aristotle says that "rhetoric is the counterpart [literally, the
antistropheAntistrophe is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west.It has the nature of a reply and balances the effect of the strophe...
] of dialectic." As the "antistrophe" of a Greek
odeOde is a lyrical verse. A classic ode is structured in three major parts: the strophe, the antistrophe, and the epode...
responds to and is patterned after the structure of the "
stropheStrophe is a concept in versification which properly means a turn, as from one foot to another, or from one side of a chorus to the other....
" (they form two sections of the whole and are sung by two parts of the chorus), so the art of rhetoric follows and is structurally patterned after the art of dialectic because both are arts of discourse production. Thus, while dialectical methods are necessary to find truth in theoretical matters, rhetorical methods are required in practical matters such as adjudicating somebody's guilt or innocence when charged in a court of law, or adjudicating a prudent course of action to be taken in a deliberative assembly.
For Plato and Aristotle, dialectic involves persuasion, so when Aristotle says that rhetoric is the
antistropheAntistrophe is the portion of an ode sung by the chorus in its returning movement from west to east, in response to the strophe, which was sung from east to west.It has the nature of a reply and balances the effect of the strophe...
of dialectic, he means that rhetoric as he uses the term has a domain or scope of application that is parallel to but different from the domain or scope of application of dialectic. In Nietzsche Humanist (1998: 129), Claude Pavur explains that "[t]he Greek prefix 'anti' does not merely designate opposition, but it can also mean 'in place of.'" When Aristotle characterizes rhetoric as the antistrophe of dialectic, he no doubt means that rhetoric is used in place of dialectic when we are discussing civic issues in a court of law or in a legislative assembly. The domain of rhetoric is civic affairs and practical decision making in civic affairs, not theoretical considerations of operational definitions of terms and clarification of thought – these, for him, are in the domain of dialectic.
Aristotle's treatise on rhetoric is an attempt to systematically describe civic rhetoric as a human art or skill (techne). His definition of rhetoric as "the faculty of observing in any given case the available means of persuasion," essentially a mode of discovery, seems to limit the art to the inventional process, and Aristotle heavily emphasizes the logical aspect of this process. But the treatise in fact also discusses not only elements of style and (briefly) delivery, but also emotional appeals (pathos) and characterological appeals (ethos). He thus identifies three steps or "offices" of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, and style—and three different types of rhetorical proof:
- ethos
Ethos is a Greek word originally meaning "accustomed place" , "custom, habit", equivalent to Latin mores....
: how the character and credibility of a speaker can influence an audience to consider him/her to be believable.
Today, this is still an effective means of persuading an audience; however, shrewd, critical listeners will note whether the "expert's" actual arguments are as impressive and satisfying as his or her title, to avoid the informal logical fallacy of an Appeal to Authority.
-
- This could be any position in which the speaker—from being a college professor of the subject, to being an acquaintance of person who experienced the matter in question—knows about the topic.
- For instance, when a magazine claims that An MIT professor predicts that the robotic era is coming in 2050, the use of big-name "MIT" (a world-renowned American university for the advanced research in math, science, and technology) establishes the "strong" credibility.
- pathos
Pathos is one of the three modes of persuasion in rhetoric . Pathos appeals to the audience's emotions. It is a part of Aristotle's philosophies in rhetoric...
: the use of emotional appeals to alter the audience's judgment.
- This can be done through metaphor, amplification, storytelling, or presenting the topic in a way that evokes strong emotions in the audience.
- logos
' is an important term in philosophy, analytical psychology, rhetoric and religion.Heraclitus established the term in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the cosmos....
: the use of reasoning, either inductive or deductive, to construct an argument.
- Logos appeals include appeals to statistics, math, logic, and objectivity. For instance, when advertisements claim that their product is 37% more effective than the competition, they are making a logical appeal.
- Inductive reasoning
Induction, also known as inductive reasoning or inductive logic, is a type of reasoning which involves moving from a set of specific facts to a general conclusion. It can also be seen as a form of theory-building, in which specific facts are used to create a theory that explains relationships...
uses examples (historical, mythical, or hypothetical) to draw conclusions.
- Deductive reasoning
Deductive reasoning, sometimes called deductive logic, is reasoning which constructs or evaluates deductive arguments.In logic, an argument is said to be deductive when the truth of the conclusion is purported to follow necessarily or be a logical consequence of the premises and its corresponding...
, or "enthymematic" reasoning, uses generally accepted propositions to derive specific conclusions. The term logic evolved from logos. Aristotle emphasized enthymematic reasoning as central to the process of rhetorical invention, though later rhetorical theorists placed much less emphasis on it.
Aristotle also identifies three different types or genres of civic rhetoric: forensic
(also known as judicial, was concerned with determining truthTruth can have a variety of meanings, from the state of being the case, being in accord with a particular fact or reality, being in accord with the body of real things, events, actuality, or fidelity to an original or to a standard. In archaic usage it could be fidelity, constancy or sincerity in...
or falsity
of events that took place in the pastThe past is the portion of time that has already occurred; it is the opposite of the future.-Overview:The past is contrasted with the present. It is also regarded as the conglomerate of events that happened in a certain point in time, within the Space-time continuum. The aforementioned conception...
, issues of guilt), deliberative
(also known as political, was concerned with determining whether or not particular actions should
or should not be taken in the futureThe future is a time period commonly understood to contain all events that have yet to occur. It is the opposite of the past, and is the time after the present. In the Occidental view, which uses a linear conception of time, the future is the portion of the projected time line that is anticipated...
), and epideicticEpideictic or praise and blame rhetoric is one of the three branches, or "species" , of rhetoric as outlined in Aristotle's Rhetoric.- Characteristics :...
(also known as ceremonial, was concerned with praise and blame, values, right and wrong, demonstrating beauty and skill in the present).
One of the most famous of Aristotelian doctrines was the idea of topics (also referred to as common topics or commonplaces). Though the term had a wide range of application (as a memory technique or compositional exercise, for example) it most often referred to the "seats of argument"—the list of categories of thought or modes of reasoning—that a speaker could use in order to generate arguments or proofs. The topics were thus a heuristic or inventional tool designed to help speakers categorize and thus better retain and apply frequently used types of argument. For example, since we often see effects as "like" their causes, one way to invent an argument (about a future effect) is by discussing the cause (which it will be "like"). This and other rhetorical topics derive from Aristotle's belief that there are certain predictable ways in which humans (particularly non-specialists) draw conclusions from premises. Based upon and adapted from his dialectical Topics, the rhetorical topics became a central feature of later rhetorical theorizing, most famously in Cicero's work of that name.
See Eugene Garver, Aristotle's Rhetoric: An Art of Character
(University of Chicago Press,1994).
Roman rhetoricians
For the Romans, oration became an important part of public life. CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...
(106-43 BC) and QuintilianMarcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
(35-100 AD) were chief among Roman rhetoricians.
Rhetorica ad HerenniumThe Rhetorica ad Herennium, formerly attributed to Cicero but of unknown authorship, is the oldest surviving Latin book on rhetoric, dating from the 90s BC, and is still used today as a textbook on the structure and uses of rhetoric and persuasion....
, formerly attributed to Cicero but of unknown authorship, is one of the most significant works on rhetoric and is still widely used as a reference today. It is an extensive reference on the use of rhetoric, and in the
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
and
RenaissanceThe Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Florence in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe...
, it achieved wide publication as an advanced school texts on rhetoric.
Cicero is considered one of the most significant rhetoricians of all time. His works include the early and very influential De Inventione
(On Invention, often read alongside the Ad Herennium
as the two basic texts of rhetorical theory throughout the Middle Ages and into the Renaissance), De Oratore
(a fuller statement of rhetorical principles in dialogue form), Topics
(a rhetorical treatment of common topics, highly influential through the Renaissance), Brutus
(a discussion of famous orators) and Orator (a defense of Cicero's style). Cicero also left a large body of speeches and letters which would establish the outlines of Latin eloquence and style for generations to come. It was the rediscovery of Cicero's speeches (such as the defence of Archias) and letters (to Atticus) by Italians like
PetrarchFrancesco Petrarca , known in English as Petrarch, was an Italian scholar, poet and one of the earliest Renaissance humanists. Petrarch is often called the "Father of Humanism"...
that, in part, ignited the cultural innovations that we know as the Renaissance.
Quintilian's career began as a pleader in the courts of law; his reputation grew so great that
VespasianTitus Flavius Vespasianus, commonly known as Vespasian , was a Roman Emperor who reigned from 69 AD until his death in 79 AD...
created a chair of rhetoric for him in Rome. The culmination of his life's work was the Institutio oratoria
(or Institutes of Oratory), a lengthy treatise on the training of the orator in which he discusses the training of the "perfect" orator from birth to old age and, in the process, reviews the doctrines and opinions of many influential rhetoricians who preceded him.
In the Institutes, Quintilian organizes rhetorical study through the stages of education that an aspiring orator would undergo, beginning with the selection of a nurse. Aspects of elementary education (training in reading and writing, grammar, and literary criticism) are followed by preliminary rhetorical exercises in composition (the progymnasmata) that include maxims and fables, narratives and comparisons, and finally full legal or political speeches. The delivery of speeches within the context of education or for entertainment purposes became widespread and popular under the term "declamation." Rhetorical training proper was categorized under five canons that would persist for centuries in academic circles:
- Inventio
Inventio is the system or method used for the discovery of arguments in Western rhetoric and comes from the Latin word, meaning "invention" or "discovery"...
(invention) is the process that leads to the development and refinement of an argument.
- Once arguments are developed, dispositio
Dispositio is the system used for the organization of arguments in Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "organization" or "arrangement."...
(disposition, or arrangement) is used to determine how it should be organized for greatest effect, usually beginning with the exordiumIn Western classical rhetoric, the exordium was the introductory portion of an oration. The term is Latin and the Greek equivalent was called the Proem or Prooimion....
.
- Once the speech content is known and the structure is determined, the next steps involve elocutio
Elocutio is the term for the mastery of stylistic elements in Western classical rhetoric and comes from the Latin loqui, "to speak". Although today we associate the word elocution more with eloquent speaking, for the classical rhetorician it connoted "style".It is the third of the five canons of...
(style) and pronuntiatioPronuntiatio was the discipline of delivering speeches in Western classical rhetoric.It is the one of five canons of classical rhetoric that concern the crafting and delivery of speeches....
(presentation).
- Memoria
Memoria was the term for aspects involving memory in Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "memory."It was one of five canons in classical rhetoric concerned with the crafting and delivery of speeches and prose.The art of rhetoric grew out of oratory, which was...
(memory) comes to play as the speaker recalls each of these elements during the speech.
- Actio
Actio is a term in rhetoric that means the delivery that is given to a speech. Hand gestures, voice variation, speaker to audience eye contact, and an engaging manner are all needed for an effective actio....
(delivery) is the final step as the speech is presented in a gracious and pleasing way to the audience - the Grand Style.
This work was available only in fragments in medieval times, but the discovery of a complete copy at
Abbey of St. GallThe Abbey of Saint Gall was for many centuries one of the chief Benedictine abbeys in Europe. It is located in the city of St. Gallen in present-day Switzerland. The Abbey has existed since 719 and became an independent principality during the 13
th Century. It was founded by Saint...
in 1416 led to its emergence as one of the most influential works on rhetoric during the Renaissance.
Quintilian's work describes not just the art of rhetoric, but the formation of the perfect orator as a politically active, virtuous, publicly minded citizen. His emphasis was on the ethical application of rhetorical training, in part a reaction against the growing tendency in Roman schools toward standardization of themes and techniques. At the same time that rhetoric was becoming divorced from political decision making, rhetoric rose as a culturally vibrant and important mode of entertainment and cultural criticism in a movement known as the "second sophistic," a development which gave rise to the charge (made by Quintilian and others) that teachers were emphasizing style over substance in rhetoric.
Rhetoric from the Medieval period to the Enlightenment
After the breakup of the western Roman Empire, the study of rhetoric continued to be central to the study of the verbal arts; but the study of the verbal arts went into decline for several centuries, followed eventually by a gradual rise in formal education, culminating in the rise of medieval universities. But rhetoric transmuted during this period into the arts of letter writing (
ars dictaminisThe ars dictaminis was the medieval description of the art of prose composition, and more specifically of the writing of letters . It is closely linked to the ars dictandi, covering the composition of documents other than letters. The standing assumption was that these writings would be composed in...
) and sermon writing (ars praedicandi
). As part of the trivium
, rhetoric was secondary to the study of logic, and its study was highly scholastic: students were given repetitive exercises in the creation of discourses on historical subjects (suasoriae
) or on classic legal questions (controversiae).
Although he is not commonly regarded as a rhetorician,
St. AugustineAugustine of Hippo , Bishop of Hippo Regius, also known as St. Augustine or St. Austin, was an Algerian Berber philosopher and theologian....
(354-430) was trained in rhetoric and was at one time a professor of Latin rhetoric in Milan. After his conversion to Christianity, he became interested in using these "
paganPaganism is a word with several different meanings.In its broadest definition, pagan denotes all non-Abrahamic religions, that is to say it denotes all religions other than Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.Other usages are:*Paganism may mean Polytheism: The group so defined includes most of the...
" arts for spreading his religion. This new use of rhetoric is explored in the Fourth Book of his De Doctrina Christiana, which laid the foundation of what would become
homileticsHomiletics , in theology the application of the general principles of rhetoric to the specific department of public preaching. The one who practices or studies homiletics is called a homilist....
, the rhetoric of the sermon. Augustine begins the book by asking why "the power of eloquence, which is so efficacious in pleading either for the erroneous cause or the right", should not be used for righteous purposes (IV.3).
One early concern of the medieval Christian church was its attitude to classical rhetoric itself.
JeromeSaint Jerome was a Christian priest and apologist. He was the son of Eusebius, of the city of Strido, which was on the border of Dalmatia and Pannonia...
(d. 420) complained, "What has
HoraceThis article is about the Roman poet Horace. For other uses, see Horace .Quintus Horatius Flaccus, , known in the English-speaking world as Horace, was the leading Roman lyric poet during the time of Augustus.-Life:Born in the small town of Venusia in the border region between Apulia and Lucania...
to do with the Psalms,
VirgilPublius Vergilius Maro was a classical Roman poet, best known for three major works—the Eclogues , the Georgics, and the Aeneid—although several minor poems are also attributed to him.The son of a farmer, Virgil came to be...
with the Gospels, Cicero with the Apostles?" Augustine is also remembered for arguing for the preservation of pagan works and fostering a church tradition which led to conservation of numerous pre-Christian rhetorical writings.
Rhetoric would not regain its classical heights until the renaissance, but new writings did advance rhetorical thought. Boethius (480?-524), in his brief Overview of the Structure of Rhetoric, continues Aristotle's taxonomy by placing rhetoric in subordination to philosophical argument or dialectic. The introduction of Arab scholarship from European relations with the Muslim empire (in particular
Al-AndalusAl-Andalus was the Arabic name given to the parts of the Iberian Peninsula and Septimania governed by Arab and North African Muslims , at various times in the period between 711 and 1492....
) renewed interest in Aristotle and Classical thought in general, leading to what some historians call the twelfth century renaissance. A number of medieval grammars and studies of poetry and rhetoric appeared.
Late medieval rhetorical writings include those of St.
Thomas AquinasSaint Thomas Aquinas, O.P. was a priest of the Roman Catholic Church in the Dominican Order from Italy, and an immensely influential philosopher and theologian in the tradition of scholasticism, known as Doctor Angelicus and Doctor Communis...
(1225?-1274),
Matthew of VendomeMatthew of Vendôme was a French poet of the twelfth century, writing in Latin. He was a pupil of Bernard Silvestris, at Tours, as he himself writes. He is known for his Ars Versificatoria, a theoretical work on versification.According to E. R. Curtius,.....
(Ars Versificatoria
, 1175?), and Geoffrey of VinsaufGeoffrey of Vinsauf is a representative of the early medieval grammarian movement, termed preceptive grammar by James J. Murphy for its interest in teaching ars poetria ....
(Poetria Nova, 1200-1216). Pre-modern female rhetoricians, outside of Socrates' friend
AspasiaAspasia was a Milesian woman who was famous for her involvement with the Athenian statesman Pericles. Very little is known about the details of her life. She spent most of her adult life in Athens, and she may have influenced Pericles and Athenian politics...
, are rare; but medieval rhetoric produced by women either in religious orders, such as
Julian of NorwichJulian of Norwich is thought of as one of the greatest English mystics. Little is known of her life aside from her writings. Even her name is uncertain, the name "Julian" coming from the Church of St Julian in Norwich, where she was an anchoress...
(d. 1415), or the very well-connected
Christine de PizanChristine de Pizan was a Venetian-born woman of the medieval era who strongly challenged misogyny and stereotypes prevalent in the male-dominated realm of the arts...
(1364?-1430?), did occur if not always recorded in writing.
In his 1943 Cambridge University doctoral dissertation in English, Canadian
Marshall McLuhanHerbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory.McLuhan is known for the...
(1911-1980) surveys the verbal arts from approximately the time of
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...
down to the time of
Thomas NasheThomas Nashe was an English Elizabethan pamphleteer, poet and satirist. He was the son of the minister William Nashe and his wife Margaret .-Life and career:...
(1567-1600?). His dissertation is still noteworthy for undertaking to study the history of the verbal arts together as the trivium, even though the developments that he surveys have been studied in greater detail since he undertook his study. As noted below, McLuhan became one of the most widely publicized thinkers in the 20th century, so it is important to note his scholarly roots in the study of the history of rhetoric and dialectic.
Another interesting record of medieval rhetorical thought can be seen in the many animal debate poems popular in England and the continent during the Middle Ages, such as
The Owl and the NightingaleThe Owl and the Nightingale is a 12th or 13th century Middle English poem detailing a debate between an owl and a nightingale as overheard by the poem's narrator.-Author and Date:...
(13th century) and
Geoffrey ChaucerGeoffrey Chaucer was an English author, poet, philosopher, bureaucrat, courtier and diplomat. Although he wrote many works, he is best remembered for his unfinished frame narrative The Canterbury Tales...
's Parliament of Fowls (1382?).
Sixteenth century
Walter J. Ong's encyclopedia article "Humanism" in the 1967 New Catholic Encyclopedia
provides a well-informed survey of Renaissance humanism, which defined itself broadly as disfavoring medieval scholastic logic and dialectic and as favoring instead the study of classical Latin style and grammar and philology and rhetoric. (Reprinted in Ong's Faith and Contexts
(Scholars Press, 1999; 4: 69-91.))
One influential figure in the rebirth of interest in classical rhetoric was Erasmus (c.1466-1536). His 1512 work, De Duplici Copia Verborum et Rerum
(also known as Copia: Foundations of the Abundant StyleCopia: Foundations of the Abundant Style is a rhetorical guide written by Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus in 1512. It is Erasmus' systematic instruction on how to embellish, amplify, and give variety to speech and writing....
), was widely published (it went through more than 150 editions throughout Europe) and became one of the basic school texts on the subject. Its treatment of rhetoric is less comprehensive than the classic works of antiquity, but provides a traditional treatment of res-verba
(matter and form): its first book treats the subject of elocutioElocutio is the term for the mastery of stylistic elements in Western classical rhetoric and comes from the Latin loqui, "to speak". Although today we associate the word elocution more with eloquent speaking, for the classical rhetorician it connoted "style".It is the third of the five canons of...
, showing the student how to use schemes and tropesA figure of speech is a use of a word that diverges from its normal meaning, or a phrase with a specialized meaning not based on the literal meaning of the words in it such as a metaphor, simile, or personification. Figures of speech often provide emphasis, freshness of expression, or clarity...
; the second book covers inventioInventio is the system or method used for the discovery of arguments in Western rhetoric and comes from the Latin word, meaning "invention" or "discovery"...
. Much of the emphasis is on abundance of variation (copia
means "plenty" or "abundance", as in copious or cornucopia), so both books focus on ways to introduce the maximum amount of variety into discourse. For instance, in one section of the De Copia
, Erasmus presents two hundred variations of the sentence "Semper, dum vivam, tui meminero." Another of his works, the extremely popular
The Praise of FollyThe Praise of Folly is an essay written in 1509 by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam and first printed in 1512...
, also had considerable influence on the teaching of rhetoric in the later sixteenth century. Its orations in favour of qualities such as madness spawned a type of exercise popular in Elizabethan grammar schools, later called
adoxographyAdoxography is a term coined in the late 19th century, and means "fine writing on a trivial or base subject." It was a form of rhetorical exercise “in which the legitimate methods of the encomium are applied to persons or objects in themselves obviously unworthy of praise, as being trivial, ugly,...
, which required pupils to compose passages in praise of useless things.
Juan Luis VivesJoan Lluís Vives i March , better known as Juan Luis Vives , was a Valencian Spanish scholar and humanist.-Biography:Vives was born in Valencia...
(1492 - 1540) also helped shape the study of rhetoric in England. A Spaniard, he was appointed in 1523 to the Lectureship of Rhetoric at Oxford by Cardinal Wolsey, and was entrusted by
Henry VIIIHenry VIII was King of England from 21 April 1509 until his death. He was also Lord of Ireland and claimant to the Kingdom of France. Henry was the second monarch of the House of Tudor, succeeding his father, Henry VII.Henry VIII was a significant figure in the history of the English monarchy...
to be one of the tutors of Mary. Vives fell into disfavor when Henry VIII divorced
Catherine of AragonCatherine of Aragon was Princess of Wales as the wife of Arthur, Prince of Wales, and Queen of England as the first wife of King Henry VIII of England....
and left England in 1528. His best-known work was a book on education, De Disciplinis
, published in 1531, and his writings on rhetoric included Rhetoricae, sive De Ratione Dicendi, Libri Tres
(1533), De Consultatione
(1533), and a rhetoric on letter writing, De Conscribendis Epistolas
(1536).
It is likely that many well-known English writers would have been exposed to the works of Erasmus and VivesVives can refer to:*Vivès, commune in the Pyrénées-Orientales department in southern France*11363 Vives, main belt asteroidPeople:*Amadeo Vives, a Spanish musical composer*Carlos Vives , Colombian singer, composer and actor...
(as well as those of the Classical rhetoricians) in their schooling, which was conducted in Latin (not English) and often included some study of Greek and placed considerable emphasis on rhetoric. See, for example, T.W. Baldwin's William Shakspere's Small Latine and Lesse Greeke
, 2 vols. (University of Illinois Press, 1944).
The mid-1500s saw the rise of vernacular rhetorics — those written in English rather than in the Classical languages; adoption of works in English was slow, however, due to the strong orientation toward Latin and Greek. Leonard CoxLeonard Cox or Coxe was an English humanist, author of the first book in English on rhetoric. He was a scholar of international reputation who found patronage in Poland, and was friend of Erasmus and Melanchthon...
's The Art or Crafte of Rhetoryke
(c. 1524-1530; second edition published in 1532) is considered to be the earliest text on rhetorics in English; it was, for the most part, a translation of the work of Philipp Melanchthon. A successful early text was Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique
(1553), which presents a traditional treatment of rhetoric. For instance, Wilson presents the five canons of rhetoric (Invention, Disposition, ElocutioElocutio is the term for the mastery of stylistic elements in Western classical rhetoric and comes from the Latin loqui, "to speak". Although today we associate the word elocution more with eloquent speaking, for the classical rhetorician it connoted "style".It is the third of the five canons of...
, MemoriaMemoria was the term for aspects involving memory in Western classical rhetoric. The word is Latin, and can be translated as "memory."It was one of five canons in classical rhetoric concerned with the crafting and delivery of speeches and prose.The art of rhetoric grew out of oratory, which was...
, and Utterance or ActioActio is a term in rhetoric that means the delivery that is given to a speech. Hand gestures, voice variation, speaker to audience eye contact, and an engaging manner are all needed for an effective actio....
). Other notable works included Angel Day's The English Secretorie
(1586, 1592), George PuttenhamGeorge Puttenham is the reputed English author of The Arte of English Poesie .-Family:George was the second son of Robert Puttenham of Sherfield-on-Loddon in Hampshire and his wife Margaret, the daughter of Sir Richard Elyot and sister of Sir Thomas Elyot. He had an elder brother, Richard...
's The Arte of English Poesie
(1589), and Richard Rainholde's Foundacion of Rhetorike (1563).
During this same period, a movement began that would change the organization of the school curriculum in Protestant and especially Puritan circles and lead to rhetoric losing its central place. A French scholar, Pierre de la Ramée, in Latin
Petrus RamusPetrus Ramus, or Pierre de la Ramée , French humanist, logician, and educational reformer, was born at the village of Cuts in Picardy, a member of a noble but impoverished family: his father was a farmer and his grandfather's father a charcoal-burner. He was killed during the St...
(1515-1572), dissatisfied with what he saw as the overly broad and redundant organization of the trivium, proposed a new curriculum. In his scheme of things, the five components of rhetoric no longer lived under the common heading of rhetoric. Instead, invention and disposition were determined to fall exclusively under the heading of dialectic, while style, delivery, and memory were all that remained for rhetoric. See
Walter J. OngFather Walter Jackson Ong, Ph.D. , was an American Jesuit priest, professor of English literature, cultural and religious historian and philosopher.-Biography:...
, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press, 1958; reissued by the University of Chicago Press, 2004, with a new foreword by Adrian Johns). Ramus, rightly accused of sodomy and erroneously of atheism, was martyred during the French Wars of Religion. His teachings, seen as inimical to Catholicism, were short-lived in France but found a fertile ground in the Netherlands, Germany and England.
One of Ramus' French followers, Audomarus Talaeus (Omer Talon) published his rhetoric, Institutiones Oratoriae
, in 1544. This work provided a simple presentation of rhetoric that emphasized the treatment of style, and became so popular that it was mentioned in John BrinsleyJohn Brinsley the elder was an English schoolmaster, known for his educational works.-Life:He was educated at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. in 1584 and M.A. in 1588. He became the master of the school at Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, brought there by Henry Hastings,...
's (1612) Ludus literarius; or The Grammar Schoole
as being the "most used in the best schooles." Many other Ramist rhetorics followed in the next half-century, and by the 1600s, their approach became the primary method of teaching rhetoric in Protestant and especially Puritan circles. See Walter J. Ong, Ramus and Talon Inventory
(Harvard University Press, 1958); Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Art Europe, 1500-1700: Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities
(Ashgate, 1999). John MiltonJohn Milton was an English poet, author, polemicist and civil servant for the Commonwealth of England. He is best known for his epic poem Paradise Lost and for his treatise condemning censorship, Areopagitica....
(1608-1674) wrote a textbook in logic or dialectic in Latin based on Ramus' work, which has now been translated into English by Walter J. Ong and Charles J. Ermatinger in The Complete Prose Works of John Milton
(Yale University Press, 1982; 8: 206-407), with a lengthy introduction by Ong (144-205). The introduction is reprinted in Ong's Faith and Contexts (Scholars Press, 1999; 4: 111-41).
Ramism could not exert any influence on the established Catholic schools and universities, which remained by and large stuck in Scholasticism, or on the new Catholic schools and universities founded by members of the religious orders known as the
Society of JesusThe Society of Jesus is a Catholic religious order of clerks regular whose members are called Jesuits.Jesuits are the largest male religious order in the Catholic Church, with 18,815 members—13,305 priests, 2,295 scholastic students, 1,758 brothers and 827 novices—as of January 2008, although the...
or the Oratorians, as can be seen in the Jesuit curriculum (in use right up to the 19th century, across the Christian world) known as the
Ratio StudiorumThe Ratio Studiorum often designates the document that formally established the globally influential system of Jesuit education in 1599...
(that Claude Pavur, S.J., has recently translated into English, with the Latin text in the parallel column on each page (St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 2005)). If the influence of Cicero and Quintilian permeates the
Ratio StudiorumThe Ratio Studiorum often designates the document that formally established the globally influential system of Jesuit education in 1599...
, it is through the lenses of devotion and the militancy of the Counter-Reformation. The Ratio was indeed imbued with a sense of the divine, of the incarnate logos, that is of rhetoric as an eloquent and humane means to reach further devotion and further action in the Christian city, which was absent from Ramist formalism. The Ratio is, in rhetoric, the answer to St Ignatius Loyola's practice, in devotion, of "spiritual exercizes." This complex oratorical-prayer system is absent from Ramism.
The English Tradition in the Seventeenth Century
In New England and at
Harvard CollegeHarvard College is one of two undergraduate degree granting schools, and the oldest school, of Harvard University, a private university in the United States founded in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature...
(founded 1636), Ramus and his followers dominated, as
Perry MillerPerry G. Miller was an American intellectual historian and Harvard University professor. He was an authority on American Puritanism...
shows in The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century (Harvard University Press, 1939). However, in England, several writers influenced the course of rhetoric during the seventeenth century, many of them carrying forward the dichotomy that had been set forth by Ramus and his followers during the preceding decades. Of greater importance is that this century saw the development of a modern, vernacular style that looked to English, rather than to Greek, Latin, or French models.
Francis BaconFrancis Bacon,1st Viscount St Alban KC , son of Nicholas Bacon by his second wife Anne Bacon, was an English philosopher, statesman, scientist, lawyer, jurist, and author. He served both as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England...
(1561-1626), although not a rhetorician, contributed to the field in his writings. One of the concerns of the age was to find a suitable style for the discussion of scientific topics, which needed above all a clear exposition of facts and arguments, rather than the ornate style favored at the time. Bacon in his The Advancement of Learning
criticized those who are preoccupied with style rather than "the weight of matter, worth of subject, soundness of argument, life of invention, or depth of judgment." On matters of style, he proposed that the style conform to the subject matter and to the audience, that simple words be employed whenever possible, and that the style should be agreeable. See Lisa JardineLisa Anne Jardine CBE , née Lisa Anne Bronowski, is a British historian of the early modern period. She is professor of Renaissance Studies and Director of the Centre for Editing Lives and Letters at Queen Mary, University of London, and is Chair of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority...
, Francis Bacon: Discovery and the Art of Discourse
(Cambridge University PressCambridge University Press is a printer and publisher granted a Royal Letters Patent by Henry VIII in 1534. It is the world's oldest continually operating book publisher...
, 1975).
Thomas HobbesThomas Hobbes was an English philosopher, remembered today for his work on political philosophy. His 1651 book Leviathan established the foundation for most of Western political philosophy from the perspective of social contract theory.Hobbes also contributed to a diverse array of fields,...
(1588-1679) also wrote on rhetoric. Along with a shortened translation of AristotleAristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
's Rhetoric, Hobbes also produced a number of other works on the subject. Sharply contrarian on many subjects, Hobbes, like Bacon, also promoted a simpler and more natural style that used figures of speech sparingly.
Perhaps the most influential development in English style came out of the work of the
Royal SocietyThe Royal Society of London for the Improvement of Natural Knowledge, known simply as the Royal Society, or even the Royal, is a learned society for science that was founded in 1660 and is considered by most to be the oldest such society still in existence...
(founded in 1660), which in 1664 set up a committee to improve the English language. Among the committee's members were
John EvelynJohn Evelyn was an English writer, gardener and diarist.Evelyn's diaries or Memoirs are largely contemporaneous with those of the other noted diarist of the time, Samuel Pepys, and cast considerable light on the art, culture and politics of the time John Evelyn (31 October 1620 – 27 February...
(1620-1706),
Thomas SpratThomas Sprat , English divine, was born at Beaminster, Dorset, and educated at Wadham College, Oxford, where he held a fellowship from 1657 to 1670.Having taken orders he became a prebendary of Lincoln Cathedral in 1660...
(1635-1713), and
John DrydenJohn Dryden was an influential English poet, literary critic, translator, and playwright who dominated the literary life of Restoration England to such a point that the period came to be known in literary circles as the Age of Dryden.-Early life:Dryden was born in the village rectory of Aldwincle...
(1631-1700). Sprat regarded "fine speaking" as a disease, and thought that a proper style should "reject all amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style" and instead "return back to a primitive purity and shortness" (History of the Royal Society, 1667).
While the work of this committee never went beyond planning, John Dryden is often credited with creating and exemplifying a new and modern English style. His central tenet was that the style should be proper "to the occasion, the subject, and the persons." As such, he advocated the use of English words whenever possible instead of foreign ones, as well as vernacular, rather than Latinate, syntax. His own prose (and his poetry) became exemplars of this new style.
Modern rhetoric
At the turn of the twentieth century, there was a revival of rhetorical study manifested in the establishment of departments of rhetoric and speech at academic institutions, as well as the formation of national and international professional organizations. Theorists generally agree that a significant reason for the revival of the study of rhetoric was the renewed importance of language and persuasion in the increasingly mediated environment of the twentieth century (see
Linguistic turnThe linguistic turn was a major development in Western philosophy during the 20th century, the most important characteristic of which is the focusing of philosophy, and consequently also the other humanities, primarily on the relationship between philosophy and language.Ludwig Wittgenstein can be...
) and through the twenty-first century, with the media focus on the wide variations and analyses of political rhetoric and its consequences. The rise of
advertisingAdvertising is a form of communication used to influence individuals to purchase products or services or support political candidates or ideas. Frequently it communicates a message that includes the name of the product or service and how that product or service could potentially benefit the consumer...
and of
mass mediaMass media denotes a section of the media specifically designed to reach a very large audience such as the population of a nation state. The term was coined in the 1920s with the advent of nationwide radio networks, mass-circulation newspapers and magazines. However, some forms of mass media such...
such as
photographyPhotography is the process, activity and art of creating still or moving pictures by recording radiation on a sensitive medium, such as a photographic film, or an electronic sensor...
,
telegraphyTelegraphy is the long-distance transmission of written messages without physical transport of letters. It is a compound term formed from the Greek words tele = far and graphein = write. Radiotelegraphy or wireless telegraphy transmits messages using radio...
,
radioRadio is the transmission of signals by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...
, and
filmFilm encompasses individual motion pictures, the field of film as an art form, and the motion picture industry. Films are produced by recording images from the world with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects....
brought rhetoric more prominently into people's lives.
Reflecting this, more recently the term rhetoric has been applied to media forms other than verbal language, e.g.
Visual rhetoricVisual rhetoric is the fairly recent development of a theoretical framework describing how visual images communicate, as opposed to aural or verbal messages...
. The goal is to analyze how non-verbal communication persuades. For example, a soft drink advertisement showing an image of young people drinking and laughing is making the case that the consumer, by using the product, will be health and happy.
Chaim Perelman and Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca
Chaim PerelmanChaïm Perelman was a Polish-born philosopher of law, who studied, taught, and lived most of his life in Brussels. He was among the most important argumentation theorists of the twentieth century...
was a philosopher of law, who studied, taught, and lived most of his life in Brussels. He was among the most important
argumentationArgumentation theory, or argumentation, is the study of how humans can, do, and should reach conclusions through logical reasoning, that is, claims based on premises. It includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion...
theorists of the twentieth century. His chief work is the Traité de l'argumentation - la nouvelle rhétorique
(1958), with Lucie Olbrechts-Tyteca, which was translated into English as The New Rhetoric: A Treatise on Argumentation, by John Wilkinson and Purcell Weaver (1969). Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca move rhetoric from the periphery to the center of argumentation theory. Among their most influential concepts are "the universal audience," "quasi-logical argument," and "presence."
Henry Johnstone Jr.
Henry Johnstone Jr.Henry Johnstone Jr. was an American philosopher and rhetorician known especially for his notion of the "rhetorical wedge" and his re-evaluation of the ad hominem fallacy. He was the founder and longtime editor of the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric....
was an American philosopher and rhetorician known especially for his notion of the "rhetorical wedge" and his re-evaluation of the ad hominem fallacy. He was the founder and longtime editor of the journal Philosophy and Rhetoric.
Kenneth Burke
Kenneth BurkeKenneth Duva Burke was a major American literary theorist and philosopher. Burke's primary interests were in rhetoric and aesthetics.-Personal History:...
was a rhetorical theorist, philosopher, and poet. Many of his works are central to modern rhetorical theory: A Rhetoric of Motives
(1950), A Grammar of Motives
(1945), Language as Symbolic Action
(1966), and Counterstatement
(1931). Among his influential concepts are "identification," "consubstantiality," and the "dramatistic pentad."
Lloyd Bitzer
Lloyd BitzerLloyd Bitzer is Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison College of Letters and Science. As a rhetorician he is best known for the concept of "the rhetorical situation." Marilyn Young has characterized him as "one of the most respected rhetoricians of the latter half of the...
is a rhetorician who is best known for his notion of "the rhetorical situation."
Edwin Black
Edwin BlackEdwin Black is an award-winning New York Times bestselling American author and journalist specializing in corporate and historical investigations. He has published sixty-five editions in fourteen languages in sixty-one countries. He has also written numerous newspaper and magazine articles,...
was a rhetorical critic best known for his book Rhetorical Criticism a Study in Method (1965) in which he criticized the dominant "neo-Aristotelian" tradition in American rhetorical criticism as having little in common with Aristotle "besides some recurrent topics of discussion and a vaguely derivative view of rhetorical discourse." Furthermore, he contended, because rhetorical scholars had been focusing primarily on Aristotelian logical forms they often overlooked important, alternative types of discourse. He also published several highly influential essays including: "Secrecy and Disclosure as Rhetorical Forms.", "The Second Persona," and "A Note on Theory and Practice in Rhetorical Criticism."
Marshall McLuhan
Marshall McLuhanHerbert Marshall McLuhan, CC was a Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar — a professor of English literature, a literary critic, a rhetorician, and a communication theorist. McLuhan's work is viewed as one of the cornerstones of the study of media theory.McLuhan is known for the...
was a media theorist whose discoveries are important to the study of rhetoric. McLuhan's famous dictum "the medium is the message" highlighted the important role of the mass media in modern communication.
I.A. Richards
I.A. Richards was a literary critic and rhetorician. His The Philosophy of Rhetoric
is an important text in modern rhetorical theory. In this work, he defined rhetoric as "a study of misunderstandings and its remedies," and introduced the influential concepts tenor
and vehicle
to describe the relationship of metaphors and ideas.
Stephen Toulmin
Stephen ToulminStephen Edelston Toulmin is a British philosopher, author, and educator. Influenced by the Austrian born British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, Toulmin devoted his works to the analysis of moral reasoning. Throughout his writings, he seeks to develop practical arguments which can be used...
is a philosopher whose models of argumentation have had great influence on modern rhetorical theory. His Uses of Argument is an important text in modern rhetorical theory and
argumentation theoryArgumentation theory, or argumentation, is the study of how humans can, do, and should reach conclusions through logical reasoning, that is, claims based on premises. It includes the arts and sciences of civil debate, dialogue, conversation, and persuasion...
.
Edward Bernays
Edward BernaysEdward Louis Bernays was an American pioneer in the field of public relations along with Ivy Lee. Combining the ideas of Gustave Le Bon and Wilfred Trotter on crowd psychology with the psychoanalytical ideas of his uncle, Sigmund Freud, Bernays was one of the first to attempt to manipulate public...
is the father of modern public relations. As such, he devised works about intricate sales and marketing practices to market to goods to people. A nephew to Sigmund Freud, he used late 19th century psychology in application of his techniques.
Richard E. Vatz
Richard E. Vatz is a professor of rhetoric and communication whose framing of persuasion as the struggle for salience/agenda and then struggle for infusion of meaning/spin was first articulated in "The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation" [PHILOSOPHY AND RHETORIC, Summer, 1973] and later in “The Mythical Status of Situational Rhetoric" [REVIEW OF COMMUNICATION, January, 2009]
Methods of analysis
There does not exist an analytic method that is widely recognized as "the" rhetorical method, partly because many in rhetorical study see rhetoric as merely produced by reality (see dissent from that view below). It is important to note that the object of rhetorical analysis is typically discourse, and therefore the principles of "rhetorical analysis" would be difficult to distinguish from those of "discourse analysis." However, rhetorical analytic methods can also be applied to almost anything, including objects -- a car, a castle, a computer, a comportment. Generally speaking, rhetorical analysis makes use of rhetorical concepts (ethos, logos, kairos, mediation, etc.) to describe the social or epistemological functions of the object of study. When the object of study happens to be some type of discourse (a speech, a poem, a joke, a newspaper article), the aim of rhetorical analysis is not simply to describe the claims and arguments advanced within the disourse, but (more important) to identify the specific semiotic strategies employed by the speaker to accomplish specific persuasive goals. Therefore, after a rhetorical analyst discovers a use of language that is particularly important in achieving persuasion, he typically moves onto the question of "How does it work?" That is, what effects does this particular use of rhetoric have on an audience, and how does that effect provide more clues as to the speaker's (or writer's) objectives? There are some scholars who do partial rhetorical analysis and defer judgments about rhetorical success. In other words, some analysts attempt to avoid the question of "Was this use of rhetoric successful [in accomplishing the aims of the speaker]?" To others, however, that is the preeminent point: is the rhetoric strategically effective and what did the rhetoric accomplish? This question allows a shift in focus from the speaker's objectives to the effects and functions of the rhetoric itself.
Rhetorical criticism
Rhetorical critics explain texts and speeches by investigating their rhetorical situation, typically placing them in a framework of speaker/audience exchange. The opposing view, gaining currency, is from The Myth of the Rhetorical Situation, PHILOSOPHY AND RHETORIC (Summer: 1973), that the source of rhetorical persuasion is the rhetor who competes with other rhetors for his or her agenda and the spin to infuse meaning into the chosen focus. Rhetorical critics use a variety of concepts from contemporary and classical rhetoric in order to conduct their analyses. Though any text, in principle, could be the subject of a rhetorical criticism, most rhetorical critics focus on the public and professional texts and speeches that have been the primary concern of the rhetorical tradition for centuries. These kinds of texts are rhetorical because they are attempts to solve real-world problems by addressing specific audiences who have decision-making power.
Though fiction would not seem to qualify as "rhetorical" in any traditional sense, some have argued that rhetorical criticism can be used as a way to understand it. In his 1961 Rhetoric of Fiction,
Wayne BoothWayne Clayson Booth was an American literary critic. He was the George M. Pullman Distinguished Service Professor Emeritus in English Language & Literature and the College at the University of Chicago...
makes this case, that the writer of fiction, like the rhetor, is addressing an audience in order to solve a problem. Booth writes, " the rhetoric resourse available to the writer of epic, novel or short story as he tries, consciously or unconsciously, to impose his fictional word upon the reader."A number of recent critics of prose fiction and of narrative or non-narrative poems have emphasized the author"s use of a variety of means- including the authorial presence or "voice"that he or she projects- in order to engage the interest and guide the imaginative and emotional response of the reader to whom the literary work is addressed.
Demonstrative example of rhetorical criticism
This section is being created as an example of rhetorical criticism. The purpose is so that an undergraduate student can use this section in an academic assignment to demonstrate knowledge of theoretical concepts of rhetoric.
As the description of a rhetorical text, according to Wikipedia, is one that "attempts to solve real-world problems by addressing specific audiences who have decision-making power," this article will coincidentally do so with the addition of this section (it will influence the undergraduate student writing it, the instructor grading the individual's assignment, the class this assignment will be presented to and the sense of humor of any individuals who may read this). Of course, even without the ployful addition of this section, this entry could certainly still fulfill its own requirement of persuading a reader it is a proper encyclopedic entry.
The instantaneous/spontaneous ability of publishing, the wide margin of what is considered a legitimate source and the input and evaluation by an entire online community could easily be used to argue for or against any effectiveness Wikipedia essentially has.
Though this section is being used as a demonstration and possible improvement of the "Rhetoric" entry, it will only be used temporarily in these capacities. By both furthering proof behind the concepts applied and preserving the integrity of Wikipedia, the submitter will remove this section by April 30, 2009 after 5:00 pm. If another submitter to Wikipedia feels this section is unnecessary or detrimental, it can, by Wikipedian means, be removed or its removal debated before that time.
French rhetoric in the Modern and Contemporary periods
Rhetoric was part of the curriculum in Jesuit and, to a lesser extent, Oratorian colleges until the French Revolution. For Jesuits, right from the foundation of the Society in France, rhetoric was an integral part of the training of young men toward taking up leadership positions in the Church and in State institutions, as
Marc FumaroliMarc Fumaroli was born June 10, 1932 in Marseille. A historian and essayist, he was elected to the Académie française March 2, 1995 and became its Director. He held the Chair of Rhetoric and Society in Europe from 1986 to 2002 at the Collège de France and is now an emeritus professor. He is...
has shown it in his foundational Age de l’éloquence
(1980). The Oratorians, by contrast, reserved it a lesser place, in part due to the stress they placed on modern language acquisition and a more sensualist philosophy (Bernard Lamy’s Rhetoric
is an excellent example of their approach). Nonetheless, in the 18th Century, rhetoric was the structure and crown of secondary education, with works such as Rollin’s Treatise of Studies achieving a wide and enduring fame across the Continent.
The French Revolution, however, turned this around. Philosophers such as Condorcet, who drafted the French revolutionary chart for a people’s education under the rule of reason, dismissed rhetoric as an instrument of oppression in the hands of clerics in particular. The Revolution went as far as to suppress the Bar, arguing that forensic rhetoric did disservice to a rational system of justice, by allowing fallacies and emotions to come into play. Nonetheless, as later historians of the 19th century were keen to explain, the Revolution was a high moment of eloquence and rhetorical prowess, although set against a background of rejecting rhetoric.
Under the First Empire and its wide-ranging educational reforms, imposed on or imitated across the Continent, rhetoric regained little ground. In fact, instructions to the newly founded Polytechnic School, tasked with training the scientific and technical elites, made it clear that written reporting was to supersede oral reporting. Rhetoric reentered secondary curriculum in fits and starts, but never regained the prominence it had enjoyed under the ancien régime, although the penultimate year of secondary education was known as the Class of Rhetoric. When manuals were redrafted in the mid-century, in particular after the 1848 Revolution to formulate a national curriculum, care was taken to distance their approach to rhetoric from that of the Church, which was seen as an agent of conservatism and reactionary politics.
By the end of the 1870s, a major change had taken place: philosophy of the rationalist or eclectic kind, by and large Kantian, had taken over rhetoric as the true end stage of secondary education (the so-called Class of Philosophy bridged secondary and university education). Rhetoric was then relegated to the study of literary figures of speech, a discipline later on taught as Stylistics within the French literature curriculum. More decisively, in 1890, a new standard written exercise superseded the rhetorical exercises of speech writing, letter writing and narration. The new genre, called dissertation, had been invented in 1866, for the purpose of rational argument in the philosophy class. Typically, in a dissertation, a question is asked, such as: “Is history a sign of humanity’s freedom?” The structure of a dissertation consists in an introduction that elucidates the basic definitions involved in the question as set, followed by an argument or thesis, a counter-argument or antithesis, and a resolving argument or synthesis that is not a compromise between the former but the production of a new argument, ending with a conclusion that does not sum up the points but opens onto a new problem. The dissertation design was influenced by Hegelianism. It remains today the standard of writing in French humanities.
By the beginning of the 20th century, rhetoric was fast losing the remains of its former importance, and eventually was taken out of the school curriculum altogether at the time of the Separation of State and Churches (1905). Part of the argument was that rhetoric remained the last element of irrationality, driven by religious arguments, in what was perceived as inimical to Republican education. The move, initiated in 1789, found its resolution in 1902 when rhetoric was expunged from all curricula. However, it must be noted that, at the same time, Aristotelian rhetoric, owing to a revival of Thomistic philosophy initiated by Rome, regained ground in what was left of Catholic education in France, in particular at the prestigious Faculty of Theology of Paris, now a private entity. Yet, for all intents and purposes, rhetoric vanished from the French scene, educational or intellectual, for some 60 years.
In the early 1960s a change began to take place, as the word rhetoric and the body of knowledge it covers began to be used again, in a modest and almost secret manner. The new linguistic turn, through the rise of
semioticsSemiotics, also called semiotic studies or semiology, is the study of sign processes , or signification and communication, signs and symbols, into three branches:...
as well as of structural
linguisticsLinguistics is the scientific study of natural language. Linguistics encompasses a number of sub-fields. An important topical division is between the study of language structure and the study of meaning...
, brought to the fore a new interest in figures of speech as signs, the metaphor in particular (in the works of
Roman JakobsonRoman Osipovich Jakobson was a Russian linguist and literary critic, associated with the Formalist school...
, Michel Charles, Gérard Genette) while famed Structuralist
Roland BarthesRoland Barthes was a French literary theorist, philosopher, critic, and semiotician. Barthes's work extended over many fields and he influenced the development of schools of theory including structuralism, semiotics, existentialism, social theory, Marxism and post-structuralism.-Life:Roland...
, a classicist by training, perceived how some basic elements of rhetoric could be of use in the study of narratives, fashion and ideology. Knowledge of rhetoric was so dim in the early 1970s that his short memoir on rhetoric was seen as highly innovative. Basic as it was, it did help rhetoric regain some currency in avant-garde circles. Psychoanalyst
Jacques LacanJacques-Marie-Émile Lacan was a French psychoanalyst and psychiatrist who made prominent contributions to psychoanalysis, philosophy, and literary theory. He gave yearly seminars, in Paris, from 1953 to 1981, mostly influencing France's intellectuals in the 1960s and the 1970s, especially the...
, his contemporary, makes references to rhetoric, in particular to the Pre-Socratics. Philosopher
Jacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher born in Algeria, who is known as the founder of deconstruction. His voluminous work had a profound impact upon literary theory and continental philosophy...
wrote on Voice.
At the same time, more profound work was taking place that eventually gave rise to the French school of rhetoric as it exists today.
This rhetorical revival took place on two fronts. First, in 17th century French studies, the mainstay of French literary education, awareness grew that rhetoric was necessary to push the limits of knowledge further, and also to provide an antidote to
StructuralismStructuralism is an approach to the human sciences that attempts to analyze a specific field as a complex system of interrelated parts. It began in linguistics with the work of Ferdinand de Saussure...
and its denial of historicism in culture. This was the pioneering work of Marc Fumaroli who, building on the work of classicist and Neo-Latinist Alain Michel and French scholars such as Roger Zuber, published his famed Age de l’Eloquence
(1980), was one of the founders of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric and was eventually elevated to a chair in rhetoric at the prestigious College de France. He is the editor in chief of a monumental History of Rhetoric in Modern Europe.
His disciples form the second generation, with rhetoricians such as Françoise Waquet and Delphine Denis, both of the Sorbonne, or Philippe-Joseph Salazar (:fr:Philippe-Joseph Salazar on the French Wikipedia), until recently at Derrida's College international de philosophie.
Second, in the area of Classical studies, in the wake of Alain Michel, Latin scholars fostered a renewal in Cicero studies. They broke away from a pure literary reading of his orations, in an attempt to embed Cicero in European ethics. Meanwhile, among Greek scholars, the literary historian and philologist Jacques Bompaire, the philologist and philosopher E. Dupréel, and later the literature historian
Jacqueline de RomillyJacqueline Worms de Romilly is a French philologist, Classical scholar and writer of fiction of Jewish ancestry - Biography :...
pioneered new studies in the Sophists and the Second Sophistic. The second generation of Classicists, often trained in philosophy as well (following Heidegger and Derrida, mainly), built on their work, with authors such as
Marcel DetienneMarcel Detienne is a Belgian historian and specialist in the study of ancient Greece. He is Professor Emeritus at The Johns Hopkins University, where he held the Basil L...
(now at Johns Hopkins), Nicole Loraux, Medievalist and logician Alain De Libera (Geneva), Ciceronian scholar Carlos Lévy (Sorbonne, Paris) and Barbara Cassin (Collége international de philosophie, Paris). Sociologist of science
Bruno LatourBruno Latour is a French sociologist of science, anthropologist and an influential theorist in the field of Science and Technology Studies...
and economist Romain Laufer may also be considered part of, or close to this group.
Links between the two strands – literary and philosophical – of the French school of rhetoric are strong and collaborative, and bear witness to the revival of rhetoric in France.
See also
Miscellaneous terms
Political speech resources
Primary texts
The locus classicus
for Greek and Latin primary texts on rhetoric is the Loeb Classical LibraryThe Loeb Classical Library is a series of books, today published by Harvard University Press, which presents important works of ancient Greek and Latin Literature in a way designed to make the text accessible to the broadest possible audience, by presenting the original Greek or Latin text on each...
of the Harvard University PressHarvard University Press is a publishing house, a division of Harvard University, that is highly respected in academic publishing. It was established on January 13, 1913. In 2005, it published 220 new titles. It is a member of the Association of American University Presses . The current director...
, published with an English translation on the facing page. For other translations, see the references in each author's Wikipedia entry.
Available online texts include:
- Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. He wrote on many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology.Together with Plato and Socrates , Aristotle is one of...
.
Rhetoric.
CiceroMarcus Tullius Cicero was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. Cicero is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.Cicero is generally perceived to be one of the most versatile minds of ancient Rome...
. De Inventione.
Latin only.
------. De Oratore. Latin only.
DemosthenesDemosthenes was a prominent Greek statesman and orator of ancient Athens. His orations constitute a significant expression of contemporary Athenian intellectual prowess and provide an insight into the politics and culture of ancient Greece during the 4th century BC. Demosthenes learned rhetoric by...
. Orations
. Greek. English.
HerenniusHerennius may refer to:* Herennius Philo , scholar* Herennius Senecio , Roman writer, biographer of Helvidius Priscus* Herennius Etruscus , Roman ruler* Herennius Modestinus , Roman jurist...
. De Ratione Dicendi. Latin only.
IsocratesIsocrates , an ancient Greek rhetorician, was one of the ten Attic orators. In his time, he was probably the most influential rhetorician in Greece and made many contributions to rhetoric and education through his teaching and written works.Greek rhetoric is commonly traced to Corax of Syracuse,...
. Against the Sophists.
Henry PeachamHenry Peacham is the name shared by two English Renaissance writers who were father and son.The elder Henry Peacham was an English curate, best known for his treatise on rhetoric titled The Garden of Eloquence first published in 1577....
. The Garden of Eloquence.
George PuttenhamGeorge Puttenham is the reputed English author of The Arte of English Poesie .-Family:George was the second son of Robert Puttenham of Sherfield-on-Loddon in Hampshire and his wife Margaret, the daughter of Sir Richard Elyot and sister of Sir Thomas Elyot. He had an elder brother, Richard...
. The Arte of Poesie.
QuintilianMarcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
. Institutio oratoria.
Johannes Susenbrotus. Epitome troporum.
Thomas WilsonThomas Wilson was an English diplomat, judge, and privy councillor in the government of Elizabeth I. He is now remembered for his Logique and The Arte of Rhetorique , an influential text...
. The Arte of Rhetorique.
Rhetoric in the visual arts
Die Werke der Barmherzigkeit in der Kunst des 12.–18. Jahrhunderts. Zum Wandel eines Bildmotivs vor dem Hintergrund neuzeitlicher Rhetorikrezeption
(Studien zur Kunstgeschichte, vol. 115), Hildesheim / Zürich / New York: Verlag Georg Olms 1998. ISBN 3-487-10319-2
External links
Rhetoric in Africa
, article by Sanya Osha.
American Rhetoric: The Power of Oratory in the United States.
- Brian Vickers
Sir Brian Vickers, FBA is a British academic, now Emeritus Professor at ETH Zurich. He is known for his works on rhetoric, Shakespeare, and Francis Bacon....
on Rhetoric in the
Cambridge Companion to English Poetry
The Online Speech Bank
The Top 100 Political Speeches of the 20th Century
Wikibooks: Rhetoric and Composition
Irmsher, Karen Communication Skills
Lauer, Janice. Invention in Rhetoric and Composition.
Mitchell, Anthony. A Primer for Business Rhetoric. Discusses how messages are dumbed down to make them acceptable to wide audiences.
Newall, Paul. An introduction to Rhetoric and Rhetorical Figures. Aimed at beginners.
Taylor, Alan. - Blog on We the Media..., a study of the rhetorical representation of the USA broadcast news industry in Hollywood films, 1977-99.
Rhetorosaurus. Searchable database for rhetorical terms.
rhet.net Portal for rhetoricians.
Silva Rhetoricae.
It Figures - Figures of Speech.
A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples by the Division of Classics at The University of Kentucky.
Twenty Special Forms of Rhetoric. A satirical look at non-traditional but commonly used rhetorical forms.
BBC Radio 4's In Our Time programme on Rhetoric (requires RealAudioRealAudio is a proprietary audio format developed by RealNetworks. It uses a variety of audio codecs, ranging from low-bitrate formats that can be used over dialup modems, to high-fidelity formats for music. It can also be used as a streaming audio format, that is played at the same time as it is...
)
Rodney Barker, Gresham CollegeGresham College is an unusual institution of higher learning off Holborn in central London. It enrolls no students and grants no degrees. The Collège de France offers perhaps a Parisian equivalent....
Professor of Rhetoric, with links to his free public lectures in London.
Voices of Democracy. Promotes the study of great speeches and public debates in the humanities undergraduate classroom.
Critical Thinking. A Web site about Critical Thinking.
- Cox, Leonard
Leonard Cox or Coxe was an English humanist, author of the first book in English on rhetoric. He was a scholar of international reputation who found patronage in Poland, and was friend of Erasmus and Melanchthon...
. .
- Rainolde (or Rainholde), Richard. .