“Available Means” of Rhetorical Instruction

2020 ◽  
pp. 244-271
Author(s):  
Elizabethada A. Wright ◽  
Suzanne Bordelon ◽  
S. Michael Halloran
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Instruction

Ciceronian Rhetoric in Italy, 1260-1350

1999 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 239-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Cox
Keyword(s):  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Civic Culture ◽  
The Political ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Late Medieval ◽  
Ethical Attitudes ◽  
Ethical Discourse ◽  
Educational Role ◽  
Ars Dictaminis ◽  
Rhetorical Instruction

Abstract: The later thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries in Italy saw a marked new interest in the study of Ciceronian rhetorical theory, in both Latin and vernacular contexts. This reflects the increasing prominence within the civic culture of the Italian communes of practices of oral and adversarial rhetoric which the dominant instrument of rhetorical instruction in this period, the ars dictaminis, was ill-equipped to teach. While the utility of the strategies of argument taught by Roman rhetorical theory was widely recognised in this period, the ethical attitudes implicit in that theory represented a challenge to prevailing Christian constructions of the moral decorum of speech. Classical rhetorical theory may thus be seen to have constituted a destabilising presence within late medieval ethical discourse: a situation which presisted, to some extent, even after the political and cultural changes of the later Trecento had displaced rhetoric in Italy from a primary to a secondary, literary and educational, role.

“She Must Be a Rare One”: Aspasia, Corinne, and the Improvisatrice Tradition

PMLA ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 123 (1) ◽  
pp. 92-108 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Ianetta
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Literary History ◽  
Rhetorical Theory ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Literary Production ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
The Arts ◽  
Rhetorical Instruction ◽  
Foreign Woman

Improvisation was long the apex of the arts of eloquence, yet modern scholars ignore its importance as a rhetorical and literary genre, thereby severing a long-enduring connection between rhetorical and literary history. This essay reads Plato's Menexenus to formulate a theory of improvisational rhetoric around the cultural position of Aspasia, a foreign woman renowned for eloquence in Periclean Athens. It then places this construction of improvisation alongside Germaine de Staël's early-nineteenth-century novel Corinne to demonstrate the endurance and evolution of improvisational rhetoric. Doing so not only illustrates the long-standing—and long-neglected—influence of improvisation on both rhetorical theory and literary production but also challenges present-day disciplinary prejudice by revealing the permeable boundary between imaginative works and those that provide rhetorical instruction.

Tusculan Disputations II

1989 ◽  
pp. 15-76
Author(s):  
A. E. Douglas ◽  
A. E. Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Great Benefit ◽  
Original Text ◽  
Roman Oratory ◽  
Rhetorical Instruction

This chapter provides the original text and translation of Book II of Cicero's Tusculans. It explains how Roman oratory is in decline and points out why it is time to seize philosophy from the Greeks, arguing both sides of each case and appealing to a sophisticated literary public by paying proper attention to style. It also follows Philo in separating formal rhetorical instruction from the philosophical disputation. The chapter mentions the interlocutor in Book II, who speaks of the great benefit he has gained from the preceding day's discussion of death. It analyses how benefits of the discussion of death come to a person of suitable character.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-38
Author(s):  
Alberto Rigolio
Keyword(s):  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Public Debate ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
Opinion Formation ◽  
Rhetorical Instruction

Although some scholars have written of an end of dialogue coinciding with the rise of Christianity, the composition of prose dialogues was far from moribund during late antiquity. During this period, Christian authors exploited and transformed the ancient dialogue form in the composition of new, culturally contingent forms of dialogue, which were designed as tools of opinion formation within the religious controversies of the time. The burgeoning production of these prose dialogues sheds light on the cultural toolbox of late antique writers and readers, and, by extension, on their education and culture, but it also shows that the prose dialogue was a form of choice for many Christian authors. The extraordinary success of the prose dialogue in late antiquity indicates the endurance and the evolution of ancient rhetorical instruction and traditions; in addition, it helped propagate the idea that orthodoxy would be recognized as the correct and rational doctrine in the context of a public debate.

Aristotle

2018 ◽  
pp. 129-172
Author(s):  
Caroline Bishop
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Question ◽  
Classic Model ◽  
High Esteem ◽  
Rhetorical Instruction ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter examines Cicero’s adaptation of Aristotle in his rhetorical works. Cicero considered Aristotle a somewhat remote figure, and associated him with times of political withdrawal and intense study. Yet he also held Aristotle in high esteem as a classic, especially for his contributions to rhetoric: Cicero was taught by his instructor Philo of Larissa that Aristotle invented the debate on both sides of a general rhetorical or philosophical question that for Cicero represented the tangible union of philosophy and rhetoric necessary for the ideal orator. When Cicero faced the prospect of further political inactivity after Caesar’s assassination, he decided to fully embrace Aristotle’s didacticism by composing his Topica, a how-to manual for this sort of debate that would make his ideal orator (who, of course, resembled Cicero himself) into a classic model in Roman rhetorical instruction.

Rhetoric and Humanism in Quattrocento Venice

2003 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 652-694 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Cox
Keyword(s):  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Key Factor ◽  
Rhetorical Instruction ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis essay examines the development of humanistic rhetoric in fifteenth-century Venice, taking as its starting point a remark of Ermolao Barbaro's on the inadequacy of academic rhetorical instruction as a preparation for the practical oratorical skills necessary to Venetian civic life. It is argued that the context of Barbaro's remark is a series of humanistic polemics on rhetoric that took place in Venice and Padua in the latter decades of the Quattrocento, culminating in the famous debate of the 1490s on the authenticity of theRhetorica ad Herennium. As the essay shows, a consideration of these debates reveals the way in which local, contextual factors inflected the development of humanistic rhetorical culture in Italy, the key factor here being the continuing importance in republican Venice of a live tradition of deliberative debate.

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