ancient to medieval rhetoric

5th C BCE to 15th C CE, this period "holds the

seeds of the theory of rhetoric debated and
developed in contemporary intellectual circles"
(Covino & Jolliffe 165).
the conventional history
• Plato didn't      this instruction. said the
... Sophists could "not teach rhetors to
speak the truth, and thus that their art
was questionable." the sophist,
• democracy in Sicily, 5th C BCE Isocrates, who also taught, is noted as
brought a judicial system + need 4 an exception -- he never accepted a fee
people to learn to speak as (Covino & Jolliffe 61.)
prosecutors or defendants
• Plato calls 4 an "ideal, philosophical rhetoric"
• Corax wrote handbooks  (dialectic), still enamored of his former
teacher, Socrates, and his seemingly
magical gifts.
• imitating Corax, some found
success, and thus more handbooks• Aristotle responds w/ his Arts of
or "techne" were Rhetoric. "rhetoric as the counterpart of
produced (prescriptions 4 successful dialectic, in which rhetors would be able
oration)
to establish a 'truth' and persuade
an audience to accept it."
• the Sophists ("philosophers,
mathematicians, and musicians")
started to offer instruction in good • Aristotle into "probable truths"
public speaking ("show pieces")  (enthymeme) to Plato's "episteme"
(certain knowledge) (Covino & Jolliffe 165)
and then ...
later (84 BCE, De Inventione; 54 BCE, De
Oratore), in Rome, Cicero combines much of
the earlier Greek work on rhetoric -- "the
handbooks, the sophistic teaching, and the
philosophical rhetoric of Plato and Aristotle"
and devised "a theory of public speaking
particularly suited to his time's political and
social context."

later, "the Roman Quintilian synthesized

about seven centuries of rhetorical theory,
creating a body of thought about oratory and
eloquence that was then adapted and put to
use in the spread of Christianity throughout
western Europe." (recall "Vir bonus dicendi
peritas," or "the good man speaking well" --
ethics, morals, values, and whatnot) (Covino &
Jolliffe 165. 
 lexicon + concepts (note: these are porous membranes, these cell walls. see?)
      public 
    private
• dialectic and rhetoric as "counterparts," complimentary
• protrepticus (the "journey" of philosophical enterprise. the
"movement." associated with Aristotle) • (ideal) dialectic (Plato's "elitist" skill,
• polis
4 a "chosen few"). natural talent required.
• agora
not easily reducible to teachablity.
• democracy
• dialectic (integrated by the Sophist "Isocrates [who] rejects • episteme (certain knowledge. for Plato
the philosophical insistence on the possibility of teaching arrived at via ideal, philosophical dialectic
transcendent knowledge"; it "is immoral because it teaches based upon true premises). also, naturally,
social isolation." in Antidosis, he argues the need for "an ideal considerable meaningful in terms of
rhetoric that could incite practical political action [guided by "public" and "publicness," as in, what we
phronesis or practical wisdom] and at the same time be come to know as knowledge (however we
ethical" (Covino & Joliffe 61). arrive at such knowledge), but in Classical
• epistemic rhetoric: (4 the Sophists, rhetoric could be taught Rhetoric terms, it is more often associated
beyond an "ideal." Arguing not from transcendent, a-priori with Plato's essentialism, foundationalism,
truths but from diff perspectives (dissoi logoi), rhetoric could and certainty.
generate a version of contextualized truth. a way of
generating "intersubjectively verifiable" truth (Cherwitz).
• enthymeme: rooted in the dialectic "syllogism." based not on
"true" but probable premises. it is a "partial syllogism" (i.e.,
"Socrates is mortal, therefore human"), audience expected to
supply the middle term. debated for centuries, Lloyd Bitzer
(20th C) focused on the probable nature of the enthymeme as
key.