ANTS121

CLASSICAL RHETORIC

What is rhetoric?
WHAT IS RHETORIC?

Towards a working definition

 SOME DEFINITIONS?

• Aristotle (Greece, C4th B.C.)

“Let Rhetoric be defined, then, as the faculty of discerning in every case the available means of
persuasion.
• Cicero (Rome, C1st B.C.)
“The function of eloquence seems to be to speak in a manner suited to persuade an audience, the end is
to persuade by speech.”
• St Augustine (North Africa, C4th A.D.)
“… through the art of rhetoric both truth and falsehood are pleaded…. Since, therefore, there has been
placed equally at our disposal the power of eloquence, which is so efficacious in pleading either for the
erroneous cause or the right, why is it not zealously acquired by the good, so as to do service for the
truth, if the unrighteous put it to the uses of iniquity and of error for the winning of false and groundless
causes?”
 SOME DEFINITIONS?

• George of Trebizond (Venice, C15th A.D.)

“Rhetoric is the civilian science, by which, we approach subjects (quaestiones) pertaining to the state, with
the approbation (assensione) of the listeners as far as can be considered its own”.
• Philipp Melanchthon (Germany, C16th A.D.)
“Rhetoric is the artifice of speaking, which was indeed of great use to the ancients not only for purposes
of treating education with a certain kind of industry, but also for the administration of state, the public
square, councils, to promote laws, discourage vice, approving declarations of war and treaties of peace,
and lastly for every resource of constituting a state (civitatis)”.
• Thomas Wilson (England, C16th A.D.)
“Rhetoric is an art to set forth, by utterance of words, matter at large, or... it is a learned, or rather an
artificial declaration of the mind, in the handling of any cause, called in contention, that may through
reason largely be discussed... The art helpeth well to dispose and order matters of our own invention,
the which we may follow as well in speaking as in writing, for though many by nature without art, have
proved worthy men, yet is art a surer guide than nature..."
 SOME DEFINITIONS?

• Charles S. Baldwin (1924: 6)

“The only art of composition that concerns the mass of mankind, and is therefore universal in both
educational practise and critical theory, is the art of effective communication by speaking or writing. This
is what the ancients and most moderns call rhetoric.”
• Sr Miriam Joseph (1947: 7)
“Rhetoric prescribes how to combine sentences into paragraphs and paragraphs into a whole
composition having unity, coherence, and the desired emphasis, as well as clearness, force, and beauty.
Furthermore, since the norm of rhetoric is not correctness but effectiveness of expression, it deals not
only with the paragraph and the whole composition, but also with the word and the sentence, for it
prescribes that diction be clear and appropriate and that sentences be varied in structure and rhythm.”
 THE SEVEN LIBERAL ARTS

Musica Astronomia
(Music) (Astronomy)

QUADRIVIUM Arts of Quantity

= Matter
Arithmetica Geometria = One's understanding of
(Arithmetic) (Geometry) the world.

Rhetorica Dialectica
(Rhetoric) (Logic)
TRIVIUM
Arts of Language
= Mind
= Expressing one's
understanding of the world.
Grammatica
(Grammar)
Botticelli (15th
century),
A Young Man Being
Introduced to the
Seven Liberal Arts.
 A DESCRIPTION OF THE GODDESS
RHETORIC

"But while this was happening, see now there came a goddess, sublime of body and very self-assured, her face
bathed with shining grace. The illustrious woman entered, a helmet on her crown, and her head garlanded with
royal majesty. She had weapons in her hands, with which she was accustomed to defend herself or wound her
opponents, and which shone with a fiery glint."
Martianus Capella, The Marriage of Mercury and Philology (C5th A.D., North Africa)
 SO WHERE ARE THE PRINCIPLES OF
RHETORIC USED?

• Composition
• Logical composition
• Persuasion (e.g. formal essays, opinion pieces, written submissions to Parliament etc.)
• Exposition (e.g. news items, encyclopaedia entries, technical writing etc.)
• Literary composition
• Narration (e.g. giving effectiveness to a story/sequence of events).
• Description (e.g. wherever something is described at length, e.g. set pieces in novels and ekphraseis in epic poetry)
 SO WHERE ARE THE PRINCIPLES OF
RHETORIC USED?

• Oratory
• Judicial (i.e. legal speeches of all kinds: defence, prosecution, judgements)
• Deliberative (e.g. political speeches, speeches given in support of a position, anything where an answer is sought)
• Epideictic (from Gk epideixis ‘pointing out’) – e.g. speeches on particular occasions, birthdays, weddings,
centenaries…
• Media other than the spoken or written word?
• The discernment of truth from falsity.
 WHAT IS RHETORIC?

Development of Rhetoric as a discipline from

Antiquity to Modern Times
 RHETORIC IN ANTIQUITY
GREECE (C . 5TH CENTURY BC - 1ST CENTURY BC)

• A by-product both of the dawn of rational inquiry and, later, Cleisthenes’ democratic reforms
in Athens.

• Sophists

• Protagoras (c. 490- c. 420 B.C.)

Isocrates
• Gorgias (483-375 B.C.) – Encomium of Helen

• Rhetorical handbooks containing topoi (commonplaces), which could be added in to speech

at key moments.

• Isocrates (436-338 B.C.)

• Plato (420s – c. 348 B.C.) – Gorgias and Phaedrus

• Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) – Rhetoric

• Philosophers vs. sophists: rhetoric as the art of giving effectiveness to truth vs sophistry as the

Aristotle
art of giving effectiveness to the speaker (cf. Baldwin 1928: 2-7)
 RHETORIC IN ANTIQUITY
ROME (1ST CENTURY BC - 5TH CENTURY A.D.)

• Import and refining of Greek learning

• Essentially seen as a tool for training politicians and lawyers, but gradually
became a key part of Roman education through grammatici and rhetores.
• Importance of progymnasmata (sing. progymnasma)

• Major works:
• Cicero (106-43 B.C.) – De inventione and De oratore

• Rhetorica ad Herennium (80s B.C.)

Cicero
• Quintilian (c. 35 – c. 100 A.D.) – Institutio oratoria
 RHETORIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES

• Middle Ages = approximately end C4th to early C14th

• Shift in needs and applications of rhetorical training:
• Rise and later dominance of Christianity in the latter years of the Roman Empire.
• Movement away from ‘democratic’ systems of government.
• Increasingly ritualised court life, especially in Greek speaking East.
• Intellectualisation of rhetorical training.
• Concentration of education away from secular grammatici and rhetores to cathedral schools and later
universities (C11th and 12th).
• Two broad developments in response to socio-political change.
• Emphasis placed on stylistic aims, much like the Sophists.
• Rhetoric subordinated to Dialectic (Logic) and to a lesser extent Grammar.
 RHETORIC IN THE MIDDLE AGES

• Minimal knowledge of Classical Greek; reliance chiefly on the De inventione of Cicero, and later (C9th) the
Rhetorica ad Herennium.
• Boëthius (C6th) – Italy – De topicis differentiis
• The Venerable Bede (C8th) – Northern England – De schematibus et tropiis
• Alcuin (C8th) - Northern England/ Italy/ Low Countries - Rhetorica
• Marbod of Rennes (C12th) – De ornamentis verborum
• Greek texts only known through digests and later in Latin translation (via Arabic).
• Scholasticism the predominant intellectual mode.
• Dictamen from about the C12th
• Preaching
 RHETORIC IN THE RENAISSANCE

• The Renaissance begins in the C14th and coincides with a number of important historical events
• Rediscovery of the Greek classics with the fall of Constantinople.
• Rejection of mediaeval Scholasticism
• Protestant Reformation.

George of Trebizond

Erasmus
• Multiple centres of development in rhetorical thought.
• Italy
• Lorenzo Valla – De elegantia

Valla
• George of Trebizond – Rhetoricorum Libri V

• Northern Europe
• Erasmus of Rotterdam – Netherlands - De copia; Modus conscribendi epistolas
• Philipp Melanchthon – Germany - Rhetorica

de la Ramée
• Rodolphus Agricola – Germany – De inventione

Melanchthon
• Pierre de la Ramée – France – Rhetoricae Distinctiones in Quintilianum
 RHETORIC IN THE RENAISSANCE

• Protestant Reformation brings new emphasis to vernacular languages.

• Foreign scholars still influential in England, and Latin still the language of educated society.
• Erasmus
• Juan Luis Vives - De Ratione Dicendi (1533); De Consultatione (1533)
• Flowering of English-language rhetoric
• Roger Ascham (c. 1515-1568), tutor of Queen Elizabeth I
• Leonard Cox – The Arte or Crafte of Rhetoryke (1524)
• Thomas Wilson – The Arte of Rhetorique (1553)
• Purpose and place of rhetoric questioned again – clear camps of style and development of literary value vs.
political and practical needs.
 RHETORIC IN MODERN TIMES

• Scientific revolution of the C17th a major impact on the status of Logic, and a
• Rhetoric continues to have value as a means to develop literary style, but gradually watered down
and confused with other treatises on poetics.
• Re-establishment of Ciceronian rhetoric as the desired model – by the time of the C20th this had
devolved into writing courses in university, particularly in the United States.
• John Genung, Practical Elements of Rhetoric (1886); Outlines of Rhetoric (1893)
• F.N. Scott & J.V. Denney, Paragraph-Writing (1891)
• E.C. Woolley, Handbook of Composition: A Compendium of Rules (1907)
 RHETORIC IN MODERN TIMES

• Rhetoric not only used for training how to write, but increasingly how to analyse too - overlap
with different schools of literary criticism in early C20th.
• S.E. Toulmin – The Uses of Argument
• I.A. Richards – The Philosophy of Rhetoric
• K. Burke - A Rhetoric of Motives

• Advertising theory?
• Centralised propaganda methods?
WHAT IS RHETORIC?

Aims of this course

 FURTHER READING

• Baldwin, C.S. 1959 [1924]. Ancient Rhetoric and Poetic. Gloucester, MA: Peter
Smith
• Baldwin, C.S. 1959 [1928]. Medieval Rhetoric and Poetic. Gloucester, MA: Peter
Smith
• Joseph, M. 2014 [1948]. The Trivium in College Composition and Reading, 3rd ed.
Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing.
• Wagner, D.L. (ed.). 1983. The Seven Liberal Arts and the Middle Ages. Bloomington,
IN: Indiana University Press
 PICTURE CREDITS

• Botticelli: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sandro_Botticelli_028.jpg
(Public domain)