Rhetorical Practice

This chapter surveys key aspects of rhetorical practice in Byzantium, with a focus on the middle and late periods. The first section maps out the generic landscape of Byzantine rhetoric, which, in addition to oratory in the narrow sense, can be argued to comprise virtually all of (highbrow) literature, including poetry. While it is true that Byzantine rhetoric is particularly rich in texts of the demonstrative type such as encomia, the essay asserts against claims to the contrary, that forms of deliberative and judicial rhetoric continued to exist in Byzantium and appear in fact ubiquitously once one broadens the scope beyond secular oratory. After a brief sketch of the place of rhetoric in higher education, the chapter proceeds to discuss the various steps involved in composing and performing a rhetorical text. In this, it follows ancient and medieval precepts for the so-called tasks of the rhetorician—invention, arrangement, style, memory and delivery—and shows their relevance for the practice of writing and reciting texts belonging to various rhetorical genres. Throughout, this chapter argues that scholarship on Byzantine rhetoric has focused too narrowly on panegyric and on matters of style, and that attention should turn to long-neglected aspects of argumentative technique that were at the heart of Byzantine rhetorical theory and education and that can be found in a wide array of textual genres, particularly in religious literature.

Particularities of defense in judicial rhetoric

The article examines the linguistic particularities of defense in judicial rhetoric that have not considerably changed since Antiquity. As at present the interest in judicial rhetoric has increased, it is necessary to carry out its comprehensive analysis with the consideration of its modern modifications. In the course of history, judicial rhetoric has preserved its main rules to be used in Modern Times by Western culture advocates for defense purposes. Special attention is paid to stylistic devices, phonetic means and linguistic features to discern that are most frequently used by the advocates in their defense speeches. As stylistic devices are the best means of persuasion of the jurors and public in court, they are indispensable in advocates’ defense speeches and are the focus of the given paper. As the advocates’ defense speeches concentrate mainly on persuasion and thus with emotions rather than reason the author focuses on the expressive language means.

Shakespeare's Essays

This revisionist study argues that the Essais of Montaigne—made available to Shakespeare and the English-reading world via John Florio’s translated Essayes in 1603—were a crucial factor in the composition of later Shakespearean drama. While the change in monarchy, the revived interest in judicial rhetoric, and the alterations in Shakespeare’s acting company undoubtedly helped shape plays such as Measure for Measure, King Lear, and The Tempest, this book contends that Shakespeare’s reading of Montaigne is an under-recognized driving force. Both authors quest for approaches to self, knowledge, and form that stress fractures, interruptions, and alternatives. Indeed, Montaigne himself claimed, in his “Of the Force of the Imagination,” that “Some writers there are, whose ende is but to relate the events. Mine, if I could attaine to it, should be to declare, what may come to passe….” In testing—essaying—Montaigne’s writing, Shakespeare, like his French forebear, focuses on possibility, multiple selves, and brave new worlds—what has not been but might yet be.

CONVINCING COMMUNICATION IN THE FORM OF COMIC INFORMATION INFLUENCE IN JUDICIAL SPEECHES A.F. KONY

the problem of the research is to resolve the question of the philosophical and legal basis of judicial speeches in persuasive communication in a comic form. The purpose of the study: to identify the specifics of argumentation in the comic form in the judicial speeches of A. F. Kony. Currently, the problem of the need to strengthen the humanitarian component of training lawyers, including on the basis of judicial rhetoric, is being comprehended. This is due to the need to strengthen the persuasive communication in judicial speeches, mainly in processes with participation of a jury.

Les hérétiques savent-ils écrire ? Les hérésiologues « critiques littéraires » de leurs adversaires

Deconstructing one’s adversary’s image is a traditional tool of judicial rhetoric. Cicero, for example, represents adversaries as illiterate, unable to write or speak. The heresiologists, as Jerome or Augustin, could have been influenced by this strategy. They ask, Do the heretics know how to write ? Their answers vary according to which authors they have in mind and which text genre they use. In the Catalogue of Famous Men Jerome emphasizes the heretics’ literary talent, because of the genre in which he is writing, but also since they are dead. In his polemical works, influenced by judicial speech, he represents the relevant heretic as unable to write, because, as a heretic, he is unable to do anything, and because he is outside the church ; by deconstructing the heretic’s image, Jerome wants to avoid the others to be contamined by heresy. For Augustine, the heretic can write well, even too well ; and for him the problem is precisely that. Augustin emphasizes the heretic’s skill to highlight the heretic’s danger, caused by his eloquence.