classical rhetoric

The practice and teaching of rhetoric in ancient Greece and Rome from roughly the fifth century B.C. to the early Middle Ages.

Though rhetorical studies began in Greece in the fifth century B.C., the practice of rhetoric began much earlier with the emergence of Homo sapiens. Rhetoric became a subject of academic study at a time when ancient Greece was evolving from an oral culture to a literate one.

See also:

• Definitions of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece and Rome
• Rhetoric Review Questions


• Dissoi Logoi
• Glossary of Rhetorical Terms
• New Rhetoric
• Orality
• The Parts of a Speech
• Rhetorical Canons
• Sophists
• Techne
• What Are the Five Canons of Rhetoric?
• What Are the Progymnasmata?
• What Are the Three Branches of Rhetoric?

Observations:

• "Classical writers regarded rhetoric as having been 'invented,' or more accurately, 'discovered,' in the fifth century B.C. in the democracies of Syracuse and Athens. . . . [T]hen, for the first time in Europe, attempts were made to describe the features of an effective speech and to teach someone how to plan and deliver one. Under democracies citizens were expected to participate in political debate, and they were expected to speak on their own behalf in courts of law. A theory of public speaking evolved, which developed an extensive technical vocabulary to describe features of argument, arrangement, style, and delivery. . . .
  
  "Classical rhetoricians--that is, teachers of rhetoric--recognized that many features of their subject could be found in Greek literature before the 'invention' of rhetoric . . .. Conversely, the teaching of rhetoric in the schools, ostensibly concerned primarily with training in public address, had a significant effect on written composition, and thus on literature."
  (George Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton Univ. Press, 1994)



• Though most historical texts focus on the "father figures" of classical rhetoric, women (though generally excluded from educational opportunities and political offices) also contributed to the rhetorical tradition in ancient Greece and Rome. Women such as Aspasia and Theodote have sometimes been described as "the muted rhetoricians"; unfortunately, because they left no texts, we know few details about their contributions. To learn more about the roles played by women in classical rhetoric, see Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance, by Cheryl Glenn (1997); Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900, edited by Jane Donawerth (2002); and Jan Swearingen's Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies (1991).



• "From its origin in 5th century BC Greece through its flourishing period in Rome and its reign in the medieval trivium, rhetoric was associated primarily with the art of oratory. During the Middle Ages, the precepts of classical rhetoric began to be applied to letter-writing, but it was not until the Renaissance . . . that the precepts governing the spoken art began to be applied, on any large scale, to written discourse."
  (Edward Corbett and Robert Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford Univ. Press, 1999)