English 622: Classical Rhetoric

When reading this week's chapters in Kennedy, I noticed that same old theme: the rise and fall and rise of the importance of rhetoric as a topic of study, and people worried that students can’t write. Rhetoric is one of the seven liberal arts, then it's reduced to a yoke between dialectic and grammar. Then since Charlemagne wanted his people to be more literate rhetoric gets more respect. Then it's back in the dumps until it makes a comeback in some of the Medieval universities in the 1300s.

I wonder what early Christian preachers were up against. Did pagans have sermons too?

Aristotle thought that a speech made in a high-flown or even pleasant style was too much. Rhetors, according to him, had to be neither too boring nor too poetical. Clarity was the most important oratorical virtue, though delivery was important only insomuch that "proper" delivery was needed to ensure that the audience took in the "just" message intended for them.

Thankfully Plato's stance against teaching rhetoric did not prevail; or else we would all have to get double majors in philosophy and rhetoric. Now we've reached the point where writers are writing about the teaching of oratory, rhetoric, and writing. I do believe this is the first time (or it feels like the first time, perhaps in part due to Spring Break) we’ve seen advice to teachers of rhetoric. I’m interested in how we are taught to teach; most freshly-minted T.A.s don’t get a lot of direct instruction in this department.

Poor delivery, it doesn’t get much play in rhetoric today. That’s one of the reasons I found the discussion of the physicality of delivery in Book III interesting.

Aristotle thought that delivery was acting and acting was an innate skill – maybe what Plato would call a knack. But Cicero disagreed; rather than import "the gesture of the stage" to oratory, he spent some time describing a basic body language for orators. From breathing to movement of arms and legs to eye movement, he's got tips for the novice rhetor. For "actions are the speech of the body".

So we go from Socrates' assertion that a rhetor must know the quality and content of each of his listeners' souls to "teenagers are horny and crazy, old people are bitter, and people in the middle are just right, like the middle bear's stuff in Goldilocks". That seems like quite a change. I'm going to take a risk here and say that Aristotle realized it was a tad impractical to have to know the character of souls before you could speak to someone (or a group of someones).

As much as I wanted to punch Socrates for being pompous, at least he didn’t induce sleep as much as Aristotle did at times. It did make me wonder though: how was this taught?

Socrates: “So you see, only by falling in love with a pretty boy can we experience a reminder of the beauty our souls saw in heaven.”

Phaedrus: "But what about women? Don’t they have souls? Don’t they get to experience love?"

Socrates: "Who cares? Now, when a philosopher and a pretty boy love each other very much, Phaedrus, the philosopher teaches the boy to nourish a nobility in his soul."

Never get involved in a land war in Asia - and never let Socrates ask you deceptively simple questions about good vs. evil.

(You have to read the title all long and drawn out, like the talking belly button episode -"The Voice" on Seinfeld. I hope at least one of you knows what I'm talking about.)