Mendelson (1994) - Suasorias y Controversias

Declamation, Context, and Controversiality
Author(s): Michael Mendelson

Source: Rhetoric Review, Vol. 13, No. 1 (Autumn, 1994), pp. 92-107
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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MICHAEL MENDELSON
Iowa State University
Declamation, Context, and Controversialityl
Readers familiar with Roman educational history will know that

declamation stood at the apex of a very sophisticated language curriculum.
Only after students had progressed through the highly systematized and
remarkably thorough curricular sequence known as the progymnasmata were
they ready to confront the challenge of declamatory exercises, exercises that
required students to adopt all the components of a balanced rhetorical stance:
i.e., student declaimers would analyze an historical or legal problem and
develop a pragmatic argument in response to that problem, they would adapt
this argument to a specific audience with a definite need to know, and they
would invoke an identifiable character to impersonate during the delivery of
their fictional oration. Declamation, therefore, was that point in the Roman
language curriculum where the theory and technique practiced in years of
training with the grammaticus and rhetor were translated into a functional
knowledge of how to create original discourse appropriate to specific
situations.2
Students of Roman rhetoric will also know that declamation came to be
characterized by fantastic plots, an inflated style, and a general divorce from
the actual procedures of the forum and law courts, procedures that declamation
was initially intended to imitate. Seneca the Elder, in his reconstruction of
actual declamatory speeches, documents the growing artificiality of theme, the
baroque developments in oratorical style, and the sensationally pathetic appeals
that we have subsequently come to identify as declamatory.3 Despite its
excesses, however, declamation remained a part of the language curriculum
through the Renaissance and into the classrooms of nineteenth-century
American colleges (see Graff). I would maintain that this persistence was the
result of an undeniable success in pragmatizing rhetorical theory. Quintilian
writes with regard to declamation that "it is possible to make sound use of
anything that is naturally sound" (2.10.3). It was the ability of declamation to
imitate the actual practice of public speech, which for two millennia convinced
rhetoric instructors that this often-abused practice was at base naturally sound.
More recently, as revisionist historians examine the possible contribution
of ancient rhetoric and pedagogy to the contemporary classroom, declamation
has attracted attention as a precursor to what is now called the rhetorical case
study (see Shenk; Mendelson). Such cases for some time have been a part of
92 Rhetoric Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, Fall 1994
Declamation, Context, and Controversiality 93
business and technical writing courses and have become more common in
general composition training. But by-and-large, we have embraced this ancient
pedagogical exercise without becoming alert to the full significance of
declamation as a rhetorical practice. The burden of this article will be to argue
that there are two features of Roman declamation that merit particular scrutiny
by contemporary scholars and teachers of composition. The first is the
contextual nature of the fully developed declamatory case, for despite their
often outlandish artificiality, declamatory exercises asked students to combine
what they knew of the three pisteis and to adjust these proofs to the demands of
a distinct rhetorical situation. The second feature of note is the "controversial"
nature of declamatory practice, its insistence that orators explore the opposing
positions that surround an actual argument. An examination of these two
features of declamation-its contextual and controversial nature can, I
believe, contribute to our own thinking about important matters of rhetorical
pedagogy and theory.
On Context
Quintilian notes that ideal orators reveal their expertise "not in the
discussion of the study but in the actual practice and experience of life"
(12.2.7).4 We share with the great Roman teacher this inclination toward the
practical as well as the assumption that rhetorical literacy is a necessary
prerequisite for cultural participation. And for Quintilian declamation was the
principal means of translating the enormous arsenal of rhetorical techniques
into a unified, functional presentation that anticipated the kinds of deliberative
and forensic oratory on which public reputations were built. He consequently
calls declamation "the most useful of rhetorical exercises," if, that is, it is
"modelled on the pleadings for which it [declamationl was devised as a
training" (2.10.1-4).
Declamatory exercises were of two kinds: the suasoria or deliberative
speech on a question of history or politics, and the controversia or forensic
speech on a specific legal case. Of the two the suasoria was considered the
easier because the argument and its elaboration were relatively straightforward.
Nonetheless, the contextual specificity of the suasoria could be particularly
demanding because the student declaimer was customarily asked to give advice
to a particular character or group out of Greek or Roman history who faced a
distinct social, political, or moral crisis. Sample situations for the suasoria
include Spartan warriors persuading and dissuading their fellow soldiers from
fighting at Thermopylae, Agamemnon explaining to the soothsayer Calchas
why he will or will not sacrifice his daughter Iphegenia, or a senator
deliberating before his peers on whether or not to allow Scipio to become a
94 Rhetoric Review
consul before he is of legal age.5 Particularly vital in such orations were the
principles of ethos and audience.
In the case involving Agamemnon, the declamatory speaker would have to
invent an argument that responded to the exigencies of the particular historical
moment and corresponded with the character of the Mycenean king. In other
words the speaker must have learned the lessons of the progymnasmata
exercise of prosopopoeia (or imitation of character) and have internalized the
theoretical principles of to prepon (appropriateness) and kairos (timeliness)
(see Shenk; Mendelson). Quintilian felt that the success of suasoria depended
so heavily on adequate impersonation that he considers "a speech which is out
of keeping with the man who delivers it just as faulty as the speech which fails
to suit the subject to which it should conform" (3.8.51).
Moreover, students had to imagine that they were speaking not to some
shadowy, undeclared audience but to a person or group whose character and
actions had been thoroughly described by historians. In consequence, Quintilian
recommends that the number of listeners, their status, nationality, sex, rank,
age, and above all their moral character be taken into account by the speaker of
suasoria (3.8.37-38). Appeals to pathos, then, as well as to ethos, had to be
modified in accordance with time, place, and the imagined character of the
audience named in the case.
In addition to the effort by declaimers of suasoria to generate appropriate
appeals to ethos and pathos, there is an intriguing and easily overlooked
narrative element implicit in these historical exercises. Robert Shenk points out
that for any rhetorical case (whether ancient or modern) to be effective, it must
put forward a coherent narrative, "a believable fiction" (123). He quite justly
speculates that this drive toward narrative was an essential motive behind
declamation's increasing recourse to dramatic, even fantastic events. Quintilian
himself admits that the element of entertainment in the declamatory case
helped to quicken the interest and imagination of young students (2.10.5-6).
But it is not simply the statement of the case (or more technically, the case's
theme) that requires a compelling narrative. Rather, declamatory speeches
themselves must generate a well-formed mythos, a story that contextualizes any
appeal to pure logic by accommodating the audience's desire to understand the
time, setting, and the characters involved in the case. As such, declamation
offers the opportunity to exercise one's skills at narratio, that second of the
conventional parts of an oration, which Quintilian calls "the most important
department of rhetoric in actual practice" (2.1.10; cf. De inventions 1.19.27).6
Because of their problematic mythoi, declamatory cases prompt students to
consider the relationship of narratio to logos, to balance the demands of
temporal and abstract reasoning, to contextualize discourse by placing ideas
and arguments in a humanized framework that makes practical, experiential
sense (cf. O'Banion, Narration and Arguimentation 357). In a word,
Declamation, Context, and Controversialitv 95
declamation demands a mytho-logos, a story that has meaning in a specific

cultural setting.7
For many reasons, then, the practice of suasoria tends to run counter to
Aristotle's claim that "none of the arts theorize about individual cases"
(Rhetoric 1356b, 29). Indeed, the study of declamation began for Roman
students at just that point where they were asked to transfer their attention from
general theory to particular situations. The rhetor accomplished this transfer
through the critical analysis of model speeches. As the students read these
models aloud, the rhetor would interject commentary on argument,
organization, and style, always with an emphasis on what was rhetorically
fitting under the circumstances of the case (Quintilian 2.5.1-17). This analysis
of models was complemented with original compositions by the students and
the rhetor. The process was as follows: the rhetor would present a new case
and provide some introductory commentary on the status of the issues involved,
on the propia (or unique) as well as communia (or general) arguments, and on
how these all might be arranged and presented. The sermones or comments that
stand as a preface to many of the "minor declamations" provide an abbreviated
version of the kind of commentary the rhetor would provide (e.g., Quintilian
Minor Declamations, 320.1-2; cf. Bonner, Education in Ancient Rome 321;
Edward xxii). Following this guided introduction, students would first compose
and then read their own declamations to the teacher; and after careful
correction, they would commit these speeches to memory (Quintilian 2.7.1).
Once rehearsed, students would deliver their oration to their schoolmates who
were free to respond directly to each oration. The public nature of the classroom
was further enhanced by the occasional presence of adult visitors who were also
free to comment. The Roman classroom, then, was equipped with its own
imitation of an engaged audience. Pupils who did not observe the well-known
procedures for analysis, division, elaboration, and delivery, or who did not
adapt their practice to the circumstances of the case, could count on a lively
response from a very real audience who would not hesitate to applaud or even
hiss.
As a finale for these activities, the rhetor would, in most cases, deliver his
version of the declamation and so provide another model against which
students could measure their own efforts. For the teacher as well as the student,
therefore, the dominant thrust of declamation (despite its regular appeal to
commonplaces, sententiae, and colores) was the pragmatic exercise of one's
rhetorical skills in an environment resembling the prevailing atmosphere for
public discourse. Ultimately, then, declamation operated as not only the
culmination of a carefully graded system of linguistic and rhetorical education
but also a realistic prelude to the contextuality that conditioned an active life of
public oratory.8
96 Rhetoric Review
Readers will recall that Socrates tells Phaedrus repeatedly at the end of that
dialogue that if young orators are "going to get any advantage out of theiri
previous instruction," they must learn to adapt their theoretical training to the
exigencies of particular situations (271d-272b). Declamation exists as perhaps
the most enduring Roman legacy of that pragmatic impulse, a reminder that if
we are going to "get any advantage" out of rhetorical studies, we must
recognize that context (both cultural and narrative) is at the core of the
rhetorical experience.
The topic to which I now turn is controversiality and the rhetorical
principle of in utramque partem, the ability to address both sides of an
argument. This feature of Roman declamation is seen to best advantage in the
other major genre of declamatory practice, the controversia or forensic case.
On Controversy
In Cicero's time the forensic declamation, or case of law, was known

simply as a causa or case, while later, under the Empire, it became known as a
scholastic or school-theme to indicate the somewhat cloistered circumstances
out of which these artificial orations arose. One popular textbook case dealt
with Orestes (son of Agamemnon) whose mother, Clytemnestra, had murdered
her husband, and who in turn is murdered by her son (Quintilian 3.11.4-13). As
in all controversia, the declaimer would have to be prepared to argue both for
and against, pro and contra Orestes' decision to murder his mother. Another
controversia, typical of those recounted by Seneca the Elder, involved a law
that required children to support their parents, or be imprisoned. The specific
case, however, complicated the law significantly: a son kills his brother for
adultery, is subsequently captured by pirates, and so writes his father for
ransom; the father not only refuses the ransom (out of vengeance for the loss of
his other son) but also encourages the pirates to cut off his remaining son's
hands. The prisoner/son is let go, and later, when the father is in need, this
remaining son refuses support, which is counter to the cited law.9 Naturally,
any defense of verisimilitude in instances like these could hardly be based on
the events of the case narrative. Rather, it was the ability to analyze the case in
all its complexity, the adjustment of organization and style to the demands of
the situation, and the fitting of one's delivery to the audience that kept such
declamations from mere theatrical display and made them useful preparation
for "the actual work of the courts" (Quintilian 2.10.8).
Faced with such controversial, the student was taught not to rush to
judgment about the case but rather to approach the situation methodically.'0
Quintilian, following Hermagoras and Cicero, tutored his students in the
heuristic procedures of the status doctrine as a means of penetrating to the core
of a particular rhetorical situation (3.11.8-9). But before the main point of
adjudication (or summa question) was arrived at and the students began to
develop a specific case either pro or contra, they were encouraged to
contemplate the competing claims at issue, to consider the principle of in
utramque partem, preparation for either alternative.11 In the case of Ores
and Clytemnestra, the critical question was whether or not it was the son's duty
to avenge his father's murder. Given this unresolvable conflict between legal
and moral justice, there were bound to be powerful arguments on either side. In
order to adequately prepare for such controversy, student orators had to
acquaint themselves with not only the strongest arguments in defense of their
own position but also the arguments likely to be raised by their opponents. As
Juvenal puts it, all declaimers must anticipate "what arrows would come from
the other side" (7.156).
The process of scrutinizing such cases amounts to circling around an
argument, exploring multiple, often contradictory points of view, all of which,
when seen in isolation, would in some way be limited. The student is
consequently building a composite narrative of the circumstances, a narrative
that attempts to respond to the situation in all its contextual richness. In order
for the declaimers on either side to establish the justness of their chosen
position, they must fully assess the pros and cons of the alternative. Or to put it
another way, the declaimer who would prevail in public debate must
understand the many conflicting arguments that attend to a case, the multiplex
ratio disputandi (see Quintilian 6.4.14).
The demand that the declaimer attend to the multiplicity of the argument
highlights the nature of "controversial thinking" and its relation to the
invention process.12 As we know, the controversial, forensic case assumes a
question for debate, a contest between conflicting opinions, a trial of
alternatives, a dilemma. Is it, or is it not just, asks Seneca's example, that a son
who narrowly escapes victimization by a vengeful father be forced to provide
for that father in his time of need (1.7.1-18)? The act of coming to grips with
such a question requires a willingness to place opposing ideas, issues, contexts,
and narratives in juxtaposition. In controversial this juxtaposition of contending
points is central to the production of rhetorically useful knowledge because the
declaimer is constantly in search of those ideas that meet the challenge of the
particular situation and such ideas evolve in response to alternatives and
opposition. In its simplest sense, the notion of controversia-as-inventio might
be seen as an extension of the topos of opposites, a heuristic employed to
produce contrasting ideas and in the process increase one's store of working
ideas.13 But since the contextual nuance of the declamatory case does not allow
for simple, dialectical alternatives (i.e., pure dichotomy divorced from the
human nuance of the particular case), the student must struggle to understand
not just an abstract contrast but the many competing ideas that all have a
bearing on the situation. As a result, the student declaimer is encouraged not
98 Rhetoric Review
simply to invent alternatives but to refine ideas under challenge from a

counterargument, to uncover new ideas in the process of contemplating
alternatives, and to invent original constructs through the synthesis of ideas
that were initially separate or even opposed. More specifically, controversial
thinking does not simply promote the development of multiple variations
derived from the analysis of existing concepts; rather, it seeks to stimulate the
birth of new ideas through the interplay of unresolved, opposing ideas. As
Quintilian puts it, the "art of debate turns on invention alone," and "those who
have given a careful study to the arguments that are likely to be produced by
their opponent or the replies which may be made by themselves are almost
always ready for the fray" (6.4.1, 6.4.14).
Moreover, controversial thinking does not ask the young rhetor to operate
in isolation, i.e., it is not a monologic process in which contrast, contradiction,
and antithesis stand as formal categories for the student's private suppositions
about potential alternatives. Instead, the process of invention in controversia is
dialogical, as all the students dealing with the same declamatory case react to
one another in a give-and-take of actual rather than hypothetical (or
monologically produced) perspectives. In the process of listening to the
interactive banter of the class, the student declaimer is alerted to the limits of
the individual imagination, and so should begin to cultivate an appreciation for
the variety of responses potentially raised by a particular case.14 At the same
time, the student rhetor, guided by the teacher, will come to recognize that each
new position advanced must alter in some way-rather than simply
duplicate-an initial idea, so that each new turn in the discussion of
alternatives yields, by its very nature, that which was not there before. The
debate of the classroom, therefore, provides a dynamic favorable for invention,
a dynamic that invariably expands the range and enhances the subtlety of the
student rhetor's grasp of arguments on either side. In the careful exercise of
controversial thinking, then, the student is prompted not only to develop a full
store of working concepts from which to build an effective declamation but also
to recognize that rhetoric abhors simply casuistry and instead insists that
invention be informed by the interactive play of multiple voices, in contrares
partes, that make up the drama of any actual controversy.
Translated into the contemporary idiom of Mikhail Bakhtin, controversial
thinking is double-voiced; it will acknowledge the concerns of both the
prosecution and the defense and will accommodate both during the process of
invention, allowing the voice of one's respondent (either fictionalized through
imaginative hypothesis or simulated by the comments of fellow students)
adequate time to develop the opposing case. The resulting argument will
articulate this double-voicing not simply as an altercatio between opposing
positions, but more effectively as discourse "interanimated" with the
controversial reasoning that has informed the well-planned argument (see
Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination 354). Indeed, at its best, controversial thinking

is heteroglot (another Bakhtinian term) in its willingness to incorporate all
those voices that contribute to the drama of the situation (Dialogic Imagination
291). Interestingly, this emphasis on a diversity of interactive voices (what
Bakhtin calls the "unique internal dramatism" of fully dialogical discourse,
Problem of Speech Genres 96) looks toward the contemporary multicultural
classroom in which tolerance for difference is privileged as an aid to
understanding the wide spectrum of potential responses that controversial
issues are likely to generate. Correspondingly, controversial thinking will avoid
any undue striving after resolution; instead, it will defer resolution and actively
promote disputation in an effort to uncover the most comprehensive, persuasive
position. The process of invention in controversia, therefore, most effectively
proceeds by statement and counterstatement, by refutation, revision,
restatement, and further refutation, each new iteration giving rise to new
inventions, each new invention patiently responding to a new facet of the case
(cf. Sloane, Donne 116). As such, controversia continues the pragmatic,
contextual emphasis we have seen in the historical suasoria: it eschews
absolute positions or pure logic and develops its ideas in the public domain of
conflict and ambiguity, a domain where arguments evolve out of the
juxtaposition of opposing ideas simultaneously at play within a culturally
specific matrix.
The Roman rhetor concerned with controversia as a stimulus for invention
might ask the students to study model speeches on opposing sides of an issue,
or the rhetor might even allow the young orator to declaim on both sides of a
case, upholding the law against murder at one moment, then defending Orestes'
moral obligation the next. As noted, the Senecan declamations all provide
examples of pro and contra arguments drawn from the popular declamations of
the day, so that students might easily have witnessed in public debate the
generation of ideas on both sides of a case. But the lineage of controversial
reasoning itself is certainly much older than the first century BCE and probably
can be attributed to the early Greek sophists. The widely known comment that
there are two, opposing sides (or accounts) for every question (or experience) is
customarily attributed to Protagoras (c. 490-420 BCE).15 There is also an
anonymous sophistic treatise titled "Dissoi Logoi or Dialexeis" (c. 400 BCE),
i.e.,on two-fold or doubled reasoning (Sprague 279-93). Certainly Plato, despite
his contempt for the sophists, was a master of the dissoi logoi; Brian Vickers,
in fact, refers to the Phaedrus as "one of the most brilliant examples . . . of
arguing in utramque partem, on both sides of an issue" (16). The procedures of
literary declamation are further extended by Cicero in his De orator, which
not only discusses the nature of rhetoric but also enacts the process of
controversial thinking through the opposing speeches of its various characters.
Indeed, immediately following his opening epideictic on rhetoric's powers,
100 Rhetoric Review
Crassus-the primary spokesman for Cicero-is countered by the old stoic,

Scaevola, who initiates a pattern of "on the other hand" responses that may be
taken as the master trope of the entire dialogue (cf. 1.8.30-34 with 1.9.35-
10.45).16 This pattern of opposition is encoded into the dialogue not just
through the give-and-take between principal speakers, but also in the syntactic
patterns of single speeches themselves, patterns that feature such contrast-
based constructions as "granted that/yet," "though/nevertheless," or "I
acknowledge/but consider" (see, for example, 1.10.44-17.73).17 As Thomas
Sloane has shown, similar patterns of controversia, or oppositional reasoning
as both a method for invention and a structuring device for extended inquiries,
can also be found in such later writers as Augustine, Erasmus, Thomas Wilson,
Donne, and Milton.
There are also some intriguing contemporary analogues to the process of
controversial thinking, most notably in the work of William Covino. In his
brief but provocative defense of rhetoric as an "art of wondering," Covino
writes that the rhetorical tradition has been subject to conflicting
interpretations, but that he would resurrect a "repressed," "forgotten" tradition
in which rhetoric is "a mode of avoiding rather than intending closure," an
intellectual perspective that promotes sustained, open speculation and eschews
the techniques, formulas and rules that lead to 'finished discourse" (9). In the
light of this invention-oriented tradition, Plato's Phaedrus is seen not "as a
tissue of information [but instead] as a collection of prompts to further
discourse, as the interplay of ambiguities" (19), while Aristotle's Rhetoric is not
so much a body of data as a "habit of mind" that discourages single-mindedness
and certainty and instead is devoted to "the discovery of multiple perspectives"
(25, 28) The relation between Covino's consistent emphasis on the openness
and multiplicity inherent in rhetorical "wondering" and the motives and
procedures of controversial thinking is made manifest in his comments on De
oratore, which he calls a "drama of perspectives" (44). Covino writes that the
dialogue "demonstrates that multiple constructions of history, tradition, and the
facts are possible, and that the formation of knowledge exploits these
possibilities" (38). We might add that the rhetorical method by which such
polysemous knowledge is indeed made possible is controversia, i.e., the
conscious opposition of mixed perspectives for the purpose of an expanded,
adaptable vision of a mutable subject. Covino also adds, in his comments on
Montaigne, that the figures of opposites and antithesis are "structural token[s]
of knowledge-as-exploration," a formal means for rendering the collocation and
disjunction of perspectives that characterize the dialectical nature of inquiry
unencumbered by the tyranny of unity, coherence, clarity, and closure (56). For
William Covino, then, the collision of opposing positions is (as it was in
Roman controversial a critical aid to invention, since the contemplation of
multiplex ratio disputandi gives rise to something new, something that
transcends the boundaries of present knowledge and leads, in turn, to ever-new

explorations. 18
Covino's rhetorical theories and the patterns of controversial thinking find
an interesting corollary in the critical practice of Victor Vitanza, who, in his
"'Notes' Towards a Historiography of Rhetorics," writes that his purpose is to
"initiate the construction of a continuous dissoi-logoi . . . to pick up an
argument, to examine it for a while, and then to drop it midway in order once
again only to pick it up from still another vantage point; . .. in other words, to
sustain . . without any resolution . . . the motion of the whole" (69). The
'counter-ideology" that results from Vitanza's "aphorist, sophistic, subversive"
style is as interesting in its method as in its matter, and it is clearly an
extension (albeit a postmodernist one) of principles that motivate Roman
controversial thinking: "Without disputation, without antithetical positions
being stated [balanced and 'counter'- balanced, even to the point of subversive
comedic parody], there is entropy.... As the sophists maintained, disputation,
or contest, keeps the motion of the whole alive" (97, brackets in original). And
while imaginative entropy was what the invention practices of the
controversiae were designed to defeat, Vitanza takes the process considerably
further than any Roman rhetor would have imagined: "A corollary to this
position is that such disputation and antithetical thinking must occur not only
inter-personally, but intra-personally as well, which leads to arguments with
oneself and to self-conscious critical practices" (97).
My own argument in behalf of the controversial thinking that drives
declamatory invention shares with Covino and Vitanza the proposition that
apprehending and working with contraries remains a vital source of rhetorical
knowledge. Moreover, such knowledge has a central role to play in the
pedagogy of argument. The relevance of controversial thinking to argument
was explicitly stated by Douglas Ehninger in a 1970 article titled "Argument as
Method" (see also Hikins 165-69). Ehninger there identifies several notable
features of argument, the first being "bilateralism" or what we might call the
dual participation of opposing forces in discussion. Bilateralism, says Ehninger,
insists that in real argument (as opposed to coercion) "the lines of influence"
flow back and forth between interlocutors in debate (102). The second feature
of argument is "controversiality," which in this context means that arguments
assume an opposition between incompatible positions.19 In addition, the
arguments of either position are "partial" in the sense that they make up "part
of' rather than "all" of the case. Arguments, says Ehninger, are always partial
since there is routinely "much to be said on both sides of an issue" (103). These
constituent features corroborate the notion that controversial like argument, is a
"method," a procedure by which we investigate opposition and in the process
encounter that which was previously unknown, a procedure through which we
expand the scope of our thinking. As such, controversial rhetoric, with its
102 Rhetoric Review
interactive byplay and bilateral movement, is a significant contributor to

rhetorical invention because it provides us with the tools not just to generate a
refutatio to the announced positions of our opponents but also to explore
contraries and differences as a method for filling out, opening up, and more
effectively situating (or contextualizing) our arguments through contact with
diverse, alternative perspectives.
Yet, if controversial thinking is to function successfully as a method of
invention suitable to argument (and, like Sloane, I take argument to be a
paradigm for all rhetorical interaction; see "Reinventing" 468), then we must
make sure that we learn to actually hear opposing viewpoints for what they are
in themselves (rather than to use them simply as foils for generating more
entrenched defenses), and that we respond to the new knowledge that altercatio
provides by actually reviewing, rethinking, and modifying our own initial ideas
(as Victor Vitanza recommends). Accordingly, we need not view controversial
thinking exclusively as a device (a techno) for broadening the scope of what we
know about a subject; instead, we might employ it as a means by which we and
our students enhance our tolerance of and accommodation to alternatives to our
own perspective. Controversia would suggest that such alternatives, the contra
to our pro, are an aid, a complement, a springboard for rhetorical thinking and
not a roadblock to the accomplishment of our own persuasive purposes. Such
an approach implies that controversia-inspired argument, while always
oppositional, need not be blatantly adversarial, need not display the uncaring,
agonistic intent that has made the argumentative mode itself the subject of
attack by Jane Tompkins, Olivia Frey, Catherine Lamb, and other feminists.
Instead, the method of argument promoted by declamatory practice and
pedagogy becomes a means for suspending the rush to judgment and, in the
process, humanizing the aims of rhetoric.
More specifically, argument which is conducted under the guidance of
controversial thinking would naturally acknowledge the contextual multiplicity
of the situation and so suspend judgment during the process of canvasing
alternatives and reformingg one's own perceptions. The value of this deferral in
the decision-making process to rhetorical training in general is not simply that
it allows the teacher to point out the contextual multiplicity and cultural
embeddedness of all public discourse. Equally important, this deferral of
judgment until after one has weighed alternatives places a system of knowing,
of coming into one's ideas, within the discipline of rhetoric itself since meaning
is realized not through recourse outside the argument (to "official" data or to
"professional" opinion) but is generated within the context of opposing
narratives to which the student has been a witness. In this epistemic context,
rhetoric is not simply a cosmetic kit of added effects but rather a dialogic
method for experimenting with knowledge. Similarly, the contraries that
declamation insists upon invariably work to promote a narrative of inclusion, a
line of argument that incorporates the heteroglossia of competing opinions and

so reflects that most treasured of humanistic values, the liberalizing of the
mind. Instead of sharpening the "agonistic edge" that conditions much
argument, declamation and controversial thinking might well be used to foster
an approach to disputation that makes of one's opposition an ally in the
collaborative effort to extend boundaries, refine interpretations, and, ultimately,
adjudicate those differences that give rise to controversy in the first place (Ong
in Frey 511). If my own argument at this point seems a bit utopian, do recall
that Crassus and Antonius, in Cicero's own extended controversia, not only
work together to enlarge and refine the definition of rhetoric but also remain
fully respectful of both the opinions and character of one other throughout the
process (which is only just, since neither the polymath nor the pragmatist has a
lock on the truth in this discussion). It may be that their "habits of conduct" in
this controversy have as much to tell us about the nature of rhetorical thinking
as the discursive substance of the debate itself (1.14.60).
Kant writes in The Critique of Judgment that rhetoric is "the art of
carrying on a serious business of the understanding as if it were the free play of
the imagination" (?51.165; cited in Nietzsche 3). The concept I want to
emphasize in closing is "play," for there is clearly a ludic, dramatic element in
declamation. Declamatory speakers play with different roles; they rehearse
situations different than they have ever actually encountered, with different
audiences and for far higher stakes than it is the custom of the rhetorical novice
to face. And, as the professional orations of Seneca the Elder indicate, there is
in declamation a strong tincture of the epideictic, of verbal display and
theatrical performance, even though the speaker is dealing with the deliberative
issues of suasoria and the forensic debates of controversia. The contemporary
writer alert to the claims of controversial thinking will also play with different
opinions, will juggle with alternatives, and, as we have seen, will even smile on
these alternatives as allies in the effort to develop a comprehensive narrative
that incorporates opposition. Rhetoric, says Nietzsche, is a "republican art" that
not only accustoms us to divergent opinions but also encourages in us "a certain
pleasure in their counterplay' (3). If, indeed, pleasure in the counterplay of
opinion is at the core of the rhetorical experience, then declamation remains a
fit vehicle for rhetorical instruction. But to use it wisely (and there were many
teachers who did not) we need to recover and contemplate the fundamental
motives that made these mock orations the apex of Roman pedagogy.
Notes
1 The author wishes to thank Professors Susan Carlson, William Covino, and Richard Leo Enos
for their judicious and supportive comments on early drafts of this essay.
2 Critical discussion of declamation and Roman educational history can be found in D. L. Clark,
M. Clarke, Duff, Gwynn, Kennedy (both Art of Rhetoric and Quintilian), Marrou, Parks, and Russell.
104 Rhetoric Review
The reader is directed in particular to the eminent works of Stanley F. Bonner, which inform this study
throughout.
3 Seneca the Elder is our principal source of information about the substance and practice of actual
declamatory speeches (see also Edward). Additional materials can be found in the major and minor
declamations conventionally attributed to Quintilian. Selections of additional ancient commentary on
Roman declamation by Petronius, Tacitus, Ovid, Juvenal, Lucan, and others have been collected
(though not translated) by Winterbottom. For discussion of Seneca, see Edward, Fairweather, and
Sussman. For a typical example of the florid declamatory theme (replete with pirates, prostitutes, rape,
and murder), see Seneca's Controversia 1.2.1-23.
4 I rely throughout this paper principally on Quintilian's Institutio oratoria because it is by far the
most authoritative, comprehensive ancient source of information on the theory of declamation and its
pedagogical practice. Additional discussion of the Roman method for dealing with the circumstances of
actual cases can be found in Cicero's youthful De invention and the psuedo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad
Herennium.
5 The first two cases (on Thermopylae and by Agamemnon) are drawn from Seneca's Suasoriae
(see 2.1-23, 3.1-7), and the third (on Scipio) from the ad Herennium (3.2.2).
6 For a thorough discussion of the relation of narrative to logic in ancient and modern rhetoric, see
O'Banion, Reorienting Rhetoric, esp. Part I, 23-102.
7 The relation of logic to narrative that is critical to declamation has also been central to Kenneth
Burke, who sees ideas "in action" as dramatistic, and agents "in ideation" as dialectical (511-12).
Burkean rhetoric, as I understand it, would mediate between the temporal, or "storial," and the logical,
or dialectical perspectives, while his famous pentadic grammar of motives is presented as a method for
translating "back and forth between logical and temporal vocabularies" (430). Similarly,
declamation-at its best-is the practice of a rhetoric that comprehends the need for a combination of
narrative and logical appeals.
8 For an opposing view of the contextuality of declamation, see Halloran.
9 In most of the Senecan controversiae, the text of a specific case (like the one described here) is
as follows: first there is (usually) a brief point of law cited (which may or may not correspond to actual
Roman law; see Bonner, Roman Declamation 108-32); next comes a short narration (or thema) of the
circumstances of the particular case; after which follows arguments both for and against derived from
actual Roman rhetors (arguments that are, for the most part, drawn from memory by Seneca who
devotedly followed contemporary declamatory performances and who boasted a prodigious memory).
Often, there is related commentary by Seneca himself on the division, sententiae, and various colores
employed by the rhetors who had argued the case. In addition, there are prefaces to some of the books (I-
IV, VII, IX, X) that discuss a wide range of matters connected to Roman oratory and declamatory
practice. The specific case cited in the text here is 1.7.1-18 (cf. cases 1.1. and 3.4).
10 For a full discussion of the standard categories for and approaches to Roman forensic cases, see
the ad Herennium 2.1.1-17.26 and De invention 2.4.12-35.115.
1 For example, in "conjectural cases" in which the issue was one of fact (did he or she do it?),
there was usually no appeal to definite proof and so the declaimers might plausibly adopt either side,
arguing by inference (coniectura) and appealing to various degrees of plausibility. In matters of equity,
or "quality" (such as in the case of Orestes), the issue was not whether an act had been committed, but
whether or not such an act was just; so again, the declaimer must be prepared in utramque partem.
12 I am much indebted to Thomas 0. Sloane's discussion of controversial thinking, which he
develops in both its historical (see Donne) and its pedagogical contexts (see "Reinventing"). Professor
Sloane does not, however, link the practice of controversial thinking to its formal refinement in
declamatory practice and pedagogy.
13 See Aristotle's Rhetoric 2.23.1, where "contrast" is the first of the 28 common topics; see also
topic six, turning an opponent's utterance: 2.23.7. Cf. Cicero's Topica, on differences and contradictories
(11.46-49, 12.53-13.55).
14 The relation between controversial thinking and the current interest in collaborative writing
groups is an idea worthy of further attention. Of particular interest for students of controversia-as-
invention is the positive role of opposition in group work, an idea investigated by John Trimbur as
"dissensus" and by Rebecca Burnett as "conflict."
15The fragmentary comment was attributed t

250 BCE) and has been translated in myriad ways (see Sprague 21, 4). For a full discussion of the
fragment, see Schiappa, Ch. 5, "The Two-Logoi Fragment" 89-102.
16 Perhaps the most notable example of the centrality of oppositional argument in De oratore is
Antonius's long response to Crassus at the end of Book One (1.47-65). Directly following this speech
(which sets Antonius's "armory of practical wisdom" [ 1.38.172] against Crassus's defense of specialized
knowledge), we learn that Antonius has "a singular liking ... for contradiction" and for arguing "either
for or against any proposition whatever laid before him" (1.62.263). Antonius himself later admits that
his own purpose in this early speech had been primarily to refute that which had come before (2.10.40).
See also Antonius's controversia-based method for examining clients (2.24.102-03).
17 De oratore explicitly defends the use of declamatory cases, as long as they are "adapted as
nearly as possible to real life" (1.33.149), an adaptation which requires that orators "argue every
question on both sides (in contrares partes) and bring out on every topic whatever points can be
deemed plausible" (1.34.158).
18 There is much in Covino's position that is reminiscent of the work of Kenneth Burke, with its
emphasis on dramatism and the multiple, shifting ratios (or perspectives) by which discourse may be
viewed, on the inherent differences that lie behind any semblance of "consubstantiality," and on the role
of the negative (or oppositional) which is implicit in all intellectual constructs. Covino quite justly
acknowledges Burke in his "Afterword" (121-31), but I have chosen to focus on Covino rather than
Burke because the corollaries between the former's ideas and the practice of controversia seem to me
more direct and clarifying in the present instance. The relation between Burkology and controversia is
undoubtedly an essay of its own. See also note #7.
19It is James Hikins who refers to the second feature of Ehninger's definition as "controversiality."
The term is helpful because Ehninger himself does not label this feature (Hikins 165 Ehninger 103).
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Michael Mendelson is an Associate Professor of English at Iowa State University. He publishes

essays on rhetorical history and theory, professional communication, and children's literature. He was
the founding Coordinator of Iowa State's doctoral program in Rhetoric and Professional
Communication.
Award for Best Article in an RR Volume
The James A. Berlin Award

for Best Essay
in Rhetoric Review, Volume 12, 1993-1994
Peter Elbow
"The War between Reading and Writing and How To End It"
At CCCC in Nashville, Rhetoric Review presented its award for best essay in Volume
12. The Editor and Editorial Board named the 1993-1994 award the James A. Berlin
Award in memory of our beloved friend and colleague. The award, along with $200,
was presented to Peter Elbow for "The War between Reading and Writing and How To
End It."
Three Outstanding Essays were also recognized:
Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen

"Gender and Writing Instruction in Early America:
Lessons from Didactic Fiction"
Thomas P. Miller
"Teaching the Histories of Rhetoric as a Social Praxis"
Elizabeth Ervin
"Interdisciplinarity or'An Elaborate Edifice Built on Sand"':
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Declamation, Context, and Controversiality

Author(s): Michael Mendelson

Declamation, Context, and Controversialityl

Readers familiar with Roman educational history will know that

92 Rhetoric Review, Vol. 13, No. 1, Fall 1994

declamation demands a mytho-logos, a story that has meaning in a specific

In Cicero's time the forensic declamation, or case of law, was known

simply to invent alternatives but to refine ideas under challenge from a

Bakhtin, Dialogic Imagination 354). Indeed, at its best, controversial thinking

Crassus-the primary spokesman for Cicero-is countered by the old stoic,

transcends the boundaries of present knowledge and leads, in turn, to ever-new

interactive byplay and bilateral movement, is a significant contributor to

line of argument that incorporates the heteroglossia of competing opinions and

15The fragmentary comment was attributed t

Michael Mendelson is an Associate Professor of English at Iowa State University. He publishes

Award for Best Article in an RR Volume

The James A. Berlin Award

Three Outstanding Essays were also recognized:

Janet Carey Eldred and Peter Mortensen

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