Definition:
The first of the five canons of rhetoric: the discovery of the resources for persuasion inherent in any given rhetorical problem. Cicero defined invention as the "discovery of valid or seemingly valid arguments to render one's cause probable" (De Inventione). In Latin, inventio; in Greek, heuresis.
Etymology:
From the Latin, "to find"Examples and Observations:
- "The importance of wisdom for invention appears in Cicero's assertion, made at the beginning of Book 2 [of De Oratore] and illustrated by its principal speakers, that no one can ever flourish and excel in eloquence without learning not only the art of speaking, but the whole of wisdom (2.1)."
(Walter Watson, "Invention," Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, edited by Thomas O. Sloane, Oxford University Press, 2001) - "Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing."
(Joshua Reynolds) - "Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist of creating out of void, but out of chaos. . . Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject and in the power of molding and fashioning ideas suggested by it."
(Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, 1818)
Pronunciation: in-VEN-shun
Also Known As: prewriting, discovery, inventio, heuresis
