[sangkancil] A History of Rhetoric Explained and Defined

["Pak Sanno" <paksanno@hotmail.com>]

Rhetoric

George E. Duckworth, M.A., Ph.D.
Late Giger Professor of Classics, Princeton University.

I. Introduction

Rhetoric, in its broadest sense, the theory and practice of           
eloquence, whether spoken or written. Spoken rhetoric is oratory. Rhetoric 
defines the rules that should govern all prose composition or speech 
designed to influence the judgment or the feelings of people. It therefore 
treats of all matters relating to beauty or forcefulness of style In a 
narrower sense, rhetoric is  concerned with a consideration of the 
fundamental principles according to which oratorical discourses
are composed: invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. This 
article deals primarily with the theory of rhetoric.

II. Classical Rhetoric

The eloquence that Nestor, Odysseus, and Achilles display in the
Iliad by the Greek poet Homer led many Greeks to look upon Homer as the 
father of oratory. The establishment of democratic institutions in Athens in 
510 BC imposed on all citizens the necessity of public service, making skill 
in oratory essential. Hence a group of teachers arose known as Sophists, who 
endeavored to make men better speakers by rules of art. Protagoras, the 
first of the Sophists, made a study of language and taught his pupils how to 
make the weaker cause in a speech
or discussion appear the stronger argument. The actual founder of rhetoric 
as a science is said to be Corax of Syracuse, who in the 5th century BC 
defined rhetoric as the "artificer of persuasion" and composed the first 
handbook on the art of rhetoric. Other masters of rhetoric during this 
period included Corax's pupil Tisias, also of Syracuse; Gorgias of Leontini, 
who went to Athens in 427 BC; and Thrasymachus of Chalcedon, who also taught 
at Athens. Antiphon, the first of the so-called Ten Attic Orators, was also 
the first to combine the theory and practice of rhetoric. With Isocrates, 
the great teacher of oratory in the 4th century BC, the art of rhetoric was 
broadened to
become a cultural study, a philosophy with a practical purpose.

The Greek philosopher Plato satirized the more technical approach to 
rhetoric, with its emphasis on persuasion rather than truth, in his work 
Gorgias, and in the Phaedrus he discussed the principles constituting the 
essence of the rhetorical art. The Greek philosopher Aristotle, in his work 
Rhetoric, defined the function of rhetoric as being, not that of persuasion, 
but rather that of "discovering all the available means of persuasion," 
thereby emphasizing the winning of an argument by persuasive marshaling of 
truth, rather than the swaying of an audience by an appeal to their 
emotions. He regarded rhetoric as the
counterpart, or sister art, of logic. The instructors in formal rhetoric in 
Rome were at first Greek, and the great masters of
theoretical and practical rhetoric, Cicero and Quintilian, were both 
influenced by Greek models. Cicero wrote several treatises on the theory and 
practice of rhetoric, the most important being On the Orator (55 BC); 
Quintilian's famous Institutio Oratoria (AD95?; The Training of an 
Orator,1921-1922) still retains its value as a thorough treatment of the 
principles of rhetoric and the nature of ideal eloquence. School exercises, 
called declamations, of the early empire are found in the existing suasoriae 
and controversiae of the rhetorician Seneca, the
former term referring to exercises in deliberative rhetoric, the latter term 
referring to exercises dealing with legal issues and presenting forensic 
rhetoric. During the first four centuries of the Roman Empire, rhetoric 
continued to be taught by teachers who were called Sophists, the term by 
this time used as an academic title.


III. Medieval and Renaissance Rhetoric

Rhetoric constituted one of the subjects of the trivium, or three 
preliminary subjects of the seven liberal arts taught at the  universities, 
the other two being grammar and logic. The chief
medieval authorities on rhetoric were three Roman scholars of the 5th, 6th, 
and 7th centuries, respectively: Martianus Capella, author of an 
encyclopedia of the seven liberal arts ( arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, 
and music, in conjunction with grammar,logic, and rhetoric); Flavius Magnus 
Aurelius Cassiodorus,historian and founder of monasteries, famed especially 
for his Institutiones Divinarum et Humanarum Lectionum, (Introduction to 
Divine and Human Readings, 550?), the second book of which contains an 
account of the seven liberal arts; and Saint Isidore of Seville, a Spanish 
archbishop who compiled an encyclopedic work setting forth the erudition of 
the ancient world. During this period, rhetoric found practical application 
in three "artes": letter writing, preaching, and the composition of poetry.

During the Renaissance (14th century to 17th century), the study of rhetoric 
was again based on the works of such writers of classical antiquity as 
Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian. A number of contemporary dissertations 
were produced, including The Arte or Crafte of Rhethoryke (1530?) by the 
English schoolmaster Leonard Cox, The Arte of Rhetorique (1553) by the 
English statesman and writer Thomas Wilson, and treatises by the 
16th-century French rhetoricians Pierre de Courcelles and André de 
Tonquelin. Rhetoric was a prescribed subject in colleges and universities, 
with public disputations and competitive exercises helping to keep the 
practice alive.


IV. Modern Rhetoric

In the early 18th century, rhetoric declined in importance, although more on 
its theoretical than on its practical side, since the political arena and 
the debating platform continued to furnish numerous opportunities for 
effective oratory. For the next half-century, the art of rhetoric had 
increasingly fewer exponents. The Lectures on Rhetoric (1783) by the 
Scottish clergyman Hugh Blair achieved considerable popularity in the late 
18th and early 19th centuries, as did the Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776) by 
the Scottish theologian George Campbell and the Elements of Rhetoric (1828) 
by the British logician Richard Whately. In the first half of the 20th 
century, a revival of the
study of formal rhetoric, encouraged largely by the exponents of
the linguistic science known as semantics, occurred throughout
the English-speaking countries of the world. The modern educators and 
philosophers who made notable contributions to this study included the 
British literary critic I. A. Richards and the American literary critics 
Kenneth Duva Burke and John Crowe Ransom.


"Rhetoric," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000
http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights 
reserved.



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