English 622: Classical Rhetoric

I may have to come back and revise this post, but I'm wondering specifically about all of the contextual stuff at this time. As I think our readings have suggested (and like usual maybe I missed something), it seems like the printing press, the protestant reformation and Ramus are all happening relatively around the same time. I do find it interesting that part of what comes out of the reformation is the idea that anyone can have a direct line to god and Ramus is arguing seems to me to amount to anyone's ability to do rhetoric.

Augustine's rhetorical priorities

1. Speak the truth
2. Speak with clarity
3. Speak with eloquence

If anyone can complicate these for me, I certainly welcome it. Boiled down, this is what I got from Augustine.

With all of Longinus's talk about thunderbolts flashing forth and scattering everything, I just couldn't resist.

Right.

So Longinus's essay on the sublime clearly seems to put him in the "rhetoric as adornment" or "rhetoric as communication" camp. He's not so concerned with invention because WHAT you say is largely a product of innate genius whereas HOW you say something is where the rhetoric comes into play:

In section XXXI, Cicero really got me thinking about the liberal arts and rhetoric because he seems to be advocating against a certain kind of specializaton.

If I'm reading him write, Cicero argues that there are all kinds of specialists out there such as "philosophers on justice, on the duties of life, on the establishment and administration of civil government, and on the whole systems of moral and even natural philosophy" (227). He continues to argue that the orator should only take from these specific disciplines what he needs and shouldn't actually spend time specializing:

When I was flipping through Book 3, I had to stop immediately and read chapters 10 and 11, which include "Bringing-Before-the-Eyes" in the subtitle.

Aristotle argues that each type of rhetoric has its place in time. Deliberative is concerned with the future. Epideictic is concerned with how things are currently. And judicial is concerned with the past. This struck me as interesting because in Aristotle's mind, the judicial rhetoric is concerned with who did what and whether or not it was illegal.

If your introductory composition student says, "Gee, this was a great class because I learned a lot about manipulating people and getting what I want."

You might be sophist.

One of my office mates has a "You might be a Redneck if..." calendar on the wall and after reading Isocrates I was wondering if Jeff Foxworthy would be open to marketing a new product along those same lines.

I've been thinking about exploring memory for the first paper, but maybe someone can help me out. I'm having trouble narrowing it down to a figure or does memoria count as a rhetorical concept in classical rhetoric.

This has some connections (that are pretty obvious at this point) to the work we've been reading in Modern Rhetoric as well about archives and historiography.

Hello, my name is Tom Sura, and I'm a second-year PhD student in rhetoric and composition. My scholarly interests include writing program administration, professional writing, and archives. Just ask Mark Hannah.