stackpoole

The Relevance of Rhetoric

ed. by Edward V. Stackpoole, SJ and W. Ross Winterowd
(Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 1966)

Reading Notes by Adam Kissel

Winterowd, "Rhetoric: the Main Trends"
The main trends are:

Aristotelian theory
Ciceronian theory
The Renaissance and Ramus
Eighteenth century
Modern

1. Greece: Plato (Phaedrus, Gorgias) had denigrated R for being only a skill and not a discipline. Aristotle (Rhetoric) treated it systematically. R is about the means of persuasion--this implies a thorough awareness of the audience. Aristotle treats logic (proofs), rhetorical stance (speeches and audience), and style. Persuasion is about the necessary add-ons to mere logic, addressed to the particularities of the audience. "In short, Aristotle views rhetoric as a necessary evil in a society which is less than perfect[ly rational]" (6). But a plainer style, not seeking to arouse the emotions, should be used if a tighter argument is desired.

Important moral considerations were "the legitimacy of materials" and "the legitimacy of ... modes of proof" (9), though Aristotle's highest good for R was its ability to persuade.

2. Cicero: six works, more about the aesthetics/ornamentals, for wisdom is dead without eloquence. R can be treated as an art.

De Inventione: the moral argument for R was that "it gives the good man the power to persuade morally and wisely" (9). Cicero treats the matter of R rather than its ends, which are outside its scope. [but if form follows content, one cannot so easily distinguish these; see p. 10]

De Oratore: a long-winded dialogue between, mostly, Crassus and Antonius. Crassus argues that both style (form) and ends (content) must be mastered; Antonius argues that one will never master the content well enough, and so should focus on methods of style. See also my reading notes when I write them. Attention to audience; wit; passion; voice and gesture; sincerity. There must be a "reciprocity of emotions ... that must be unfeigned" (12). Style is vital; Cicero shows that it must be different than in "the speech of everyday life" (13). Crassus is the one to discuss style in all its seriousness.

Style is about "diction, lucidity, ornament, and appropriateness" (14). Diction is urbane and only thought about when a mistake is made. Ornamentation is not merely for aesthetics but for powerful affect, via amplification (laudation, censure, attack, protest, grace, moderation, gradation, nuances, metaphor). Good metaphor is inventive, clever, economical; it broadens the mind without distracting it; it appeals to the senses.

De Optimo Genere Oratorum; Topica; Brutus; Orator

Quintilian's Institutio Oratoria stresses the moral virtue of the orator. It treats, encyclopedically, education (what the orator needs to know), invention (discovering good arguments), eloquence, grammar, and "a delineation of the complete orator" (16). Language is to be suited to the audience. The complete orator needs to know law, customs, religion, and many common examples.

The classical period split R into invention, structure, memory, style, and delivery.

3. The Renaissance and Peter Ramus: Ramus emphasizes the distinction between dialectic [logic] and rhetoric. Therefore invention, structure, and memory are the province of logic, while style and delivery are reserved to rhetoric. Rhetoric (as Aristotle said) is used as a substitute for logic when you are dealing with a less than perfectly rational audience. So this version of R focuses on tropes and schemes, and it leans toward the ornate. Ramus stressed, in analyzing the R of texts, a close analysis of the text using critical reasoning and not just a naming of the tropes and schemes. This analysis made R able to teach by example. R was taught before logic, R seeming more natural. R became a huge topic in the Renaissance.

4. Eighteenth Century. Neo-classical period. Rediscovery of Longinus' "On the Sublime" combined with a new faith in man's ability to persuade entire societies effectively.

a. The great power of the sublime via perspicuity, grandeur, passion, language and figures, nobility, amplification, and "dignified and elevated composition" (quoting Longinus, 21) to elevate the mind in a unified lifting. One should emulate "previous great poets and writers" (qtg. L.). For Longinus, the written part of rhetoric must consider a universal audience, or at least a multiplicity of audiences through the ages. For the 18th century, sublimity was more about the content about which rhetoric speaks than about rhetoric itself. Figures of speech (e.g. simile) enable one to recognize the sublimity in figures of thought (e.g. metaphor).

b. The rising middle class wanted to get self-improved by learning how to be more eloquent. Here the vulgar popularization focused more on aesthetics and tropes and manner, in the "elocutionary movement" (24). But there remained a desire to use R's eloquence to move men and nations.

c. In contrast to b, perspicuity and the move to plain style, such as the language of science, were brought in to counter the disjunction between ambiguous language and the desire for mathematical precision in language.

Names: John Newton, John Holmes, Thomas Sprat, Hugh Blair.

Hugh Blair's Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1759) combined form and content, grandeur and sublimity. Awe, infinitude, vastness, solemnity, moral grandeur and heroism, and (on the negative side) obscurity and chaos. If a subject is sublime, then the language should illustrate that sublimity in all its complexity but without any use for ornamentation. Blair uses over 1000 pages to discuss both theory and practice, philosophy of language, and grammar study. Perspicuity consists of purity, propriety, and precision (see 27). The two kinds of style: periodic and coupé, should be used together.

5. Modern.

I. A. Richards, Meaning of Meaning (1923): with C. K. Ogden, he developed the ambiguities of the thought-symbol-referent triangle of relationships (we see a tree, we conceive the tree, we give a word "tree"). Richards' Practical Criticism (1929) taught the "power to understand" (qtg. Richards, 30) and showed ten ways this is lacking in the general population (see 31) while suggesting many more. His Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936) tried to get at the "theory of the metaphor and its function" (32), dealing with the problem of abstraction. Abstraction involves reasoning-in-context; we must beware false analogies by using reason.

Kenneth Burke is either loved or hated [so far I am in the second camp]. He discusses "patterns of experience" (34, qtg. Burke) as "consubstantial" universal archetypes constraining the possible artistic genres. Burke gets back to the implicit desires behind artistic forms. "This is an organic theory of form" (35). [Although Burke seems to be talking about literature, I have long suspected the same about music, so I am using the word "art."] Burke's Pentad in A Grammar of Motives (1945) is act-agent-agency-scene-purpose [but I don't find this especially novel]. All this is developed in A Rhetoric of Motives.

Booth, Wayne, "The Rhetorical Stance" -- how to be careful encouraging students to write well. Drawing on Barzun: "Students should be made to feel that unless they have said something to someone, they have failed" (393). At the same time it is wrong to downplay the subject's truth in order to overplay a controversial part of the subject [as the newspapers and news shows do]--it is not true to say that "to stir up an audience is an end in itself" (393) is to define good writing.