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