ancient to medieval rhetoric

8/6/2019 Ancient to Medieval Rhetoric

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ancient to medieval rhetoric

5th C BCE to 15th C CE, this period "holds theseeds of the theory of rhetoric debated anddeveloped in contemporary intellectual circles"(Covino & Jolliffe 165).



the conventional history...

� democracy in Sicily, 5th C BCEbrought a judicial system + need 4people to learn to speak asprosecutors or defendants

� Corax wrote handbooks

� imitating Corax, some foundsuccess, and thus more handbooksor "techne" wereproduced (prescriptions 4 successfuloration)

� the Sophists ("philosophers,mathematicians, and musicians")started to offer instruction in goodpublic speaking ("show pieces")

� Plato didn't this instruction. said theSophists could "not teach rhetors tospeak the truth, and thus that their art

was questionable." the sophist,Isocrates, who also taught, is noted asan exception -- he never accepted a fee(Covino & Jolliffe 61.)

� Plato calls 4 an "ideal, philosophicalrhetoric" (dialectic), still enamored of his

former teacher, Socrates, and his seeminglymagical gifts.

� Aristotle responds w/ his Arts of

Rhetoric. "rhetoric as the counterpart of dialectic, in which rhetors would be able

to establish a 'truth' and persuadean audience to accept it."

� Aristotle into "probable truths"(enthymeme) to Plato's "episteme"(certain knowledge) (Covino & Jolliffe 165)



and then ...later (84 BCE, De Inventione; 54 BCE, DeOratore), in Rome, Cicero combines much of the earlier Greek work on rhetoric -- "thehandbooks, the sophistic teaching, and thephilosophical rhetoric of Plato and Aristotle"and devised "a theory of public speakingparticularly suited to his time's political and

social context."

later, "the Roman Quintilian synthesizedabout seven centuries of rhetorical theory,creating a body of thought about oratory andeloquence that was then adapted and put to

use in the spread of Christianity throughoutwestern Europe." (recall "Vir bonus dicendiperitas," or "the good man speaking well" --ethics, morals, values, and whatnot) (Covino &

Jolliffe 165.



lexicon + concepts (note: these are porous membranes, these cell walls. see?)

public

� dialectic and rhetoric as "counterparts," complimentary� protrepticus (the "journey" of philosophical enterprise. the

"movement." associated with Aristotle)� polis� agora� democracy� dialectic (integrated by the Sophist "Isocrates [who] rejects

the philosophical insistence on the possibility of teachingtranscendent knowledge"; it "is immoral because it teachessocial isolation." in Antidosis, he argues the need for "an idealrhetoric that could incite practical political action [guided byphronesis or practical wisdom] and at the same time beethical" (Covino & Joliffe 61).

� epistemic rhetoric: (4 the Sophists, rhetoric could be taughtbeyond an "ideal." Arguing not from transcendent, a-prioritruths but from diff perspectives (dissoi logoi ), rhetoric could generate a version of contextualized truth. a way of generating "intersubjectively verifiable" truth (Cherwitz).

� enthymeme: rooted in the dialectic "syllogism." based not on"true" but probable premises. it is a "partial syllogism" (i.e.,"Socrates is mortal, therefore human"), audience expected tosupply the middle term. debated for centuries, Lloyd Bitzer (20th C) focused on the probable nature of the enthymeme askey.

private

� (ideal) dialectic (Plato's "elitist" skill,

4 a "chosen few"). natural talent required.not easily reducible to teachablity.

� episteme (certain knowledge. for Plato

arrived at via ideal, philosophical dialecticbased upon true premises). also, naturally,considerable meaningful in terms of "public" and "publicness," as in, what wecome to know as knowledge (however wearrive at such knowledge), but in ClassicalRhetoric terms, it is more often associatedwith Plato's essentialism, foundationalism,and certainty.

ancient to medieval rhetoric

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