A Brief History of Rhetoric

Advanced Rhetorical Writing

Matt Barton

Rhetoric of…

Eras of Rhetoric

• Ancient Greece

• Ancient Rome

• Medieval Rhetoric

• Renaissance Rhetoric

• Enlightenment Rhetoric

• Modern Rhetoric

• Postmodern Rhetoric

Why Greece?

• Crucial Period: 500-300 BCE

• Place: Greece: Athens and Syracuse– Greece was leaving orality and embracing

literacy.– After 510 BCE, Athens became a (limited)

democracy.– After 467 BCE, Syracuse overthrew tyrant

Hieron and became democratic. • Corax and Tisias began formally studying rhetoric

Ancient Greek Figures

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

For a Fee

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

Protagoras

• Protagoras (b. 481 BCE)– Concerned with the correct use of words– “Man is the measure of all things: of things

which are, that they are so, and of things which are not, that they are not.”

– “Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life.”

– Developed Dissoi Logoi

Gorgias

• Gorgias (circa 483-375 BCE)

• Born in Leontini, Sicily, birthplace of rhetoric.– Nothing exists; – Even if something exists, nothing can be

known about it; and – Even if something could be known about it,

knowledge about it can't be communicated to others.

The Great Teacher: Isocrates

• Isocrates opens first school of rhetoric in in Athens, 393 BCE

• Developed periodic sentence

• Emphasized praxis– Education improves natural talents and should serve

the state– Talent, Experience, Training crucial for rhetorical and

philosophical success– Education should form good citizens, not

transcendentalists

Who is Plato?

• Born 427 BCE, died 347 BCE

• Student of Socrates, teacher of Aristotle

• “The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato.” –Alfred North Whitehead

The Cave

• We cannot perceive reality directly, but only see a distorted image.

• The world of the senses is untrustworthy; true sight comes from philosophical inquiry.

Aristotle (384 BC–322 BC

• Student of Plato, founder of the Lyceum

• Wrote On Rhetoric, most famous work of rhetoric.

• Defined rhetoric as the counterpart of dialectic:– “The faculty of observing, in any

given situation, the available means of persuasion.”

Cicero and Quintilian

• Cicero (106-43 BCE)

• Quintilian (35-95 ACE)– Canons of Rhetoric:

• Invention (discovery)• Arrangement (organization)• Style (expression)• Memory• Delivery

Stasis

• Conjecture: fact of alleged act

• Definition: proper label of act

• Quality: nature of the act (is it justifiable?)

• Translation (objection): Is case being handled properly?

Three Styles

• Grand (op. Swollen)– “Smooth and ornate arrangement of

impressive words.”

• Middle (op. Slack)– “Lower, yet not of the lowest and most

colloquial, class of words.”

• Simple (op. Meager)– “Brought down even to the most current

idiom of standard speech.”

Ramus (1515-1572)

• Attacked all classical and scholastic authorities.

• Syllogism is proper mode of decisive speaking in disputes.

• Aim of dialectic is certainty (absolute)

Modern Rhetoric

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