The progymnasmata are preliminary rhetorical exercises that introduce students to basic rhetorical concepts and strategies. Many progymnasmata exercises correlate with the parts of a classical oration (see arrangement). In classical rhetorical training, the progymnasmata were "structured so that the student moved from strict imitation to a more artistic melding of the often disparate concerns of speaker, subject, and audience" (O'Rourke, "Progymnasmata," in Encyclopedia of Rhetoric and Composition, 1996).
In the fourth edition of Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (Oxford UP, 1999), Edward P.J. Corbett and Robert J. Connors characterize the progymnasmata as "one of the most influential teaching methods to arise from the rhetorical tradition":
This term meant a graduated sequence of rhetorical assignments that students were asked to perform as they became more mature and experienced. Though such assignment sequences seem to have been part of rhetorical training from the fourth century B.C. forward, the two most famous sets of progymnasmata were those of Hermogenes of Tarsus, from the second century A.D. These sequences in Latin translations became the basis for most early rhetorical training from the patristic age up through the Renaissance.
The progymnasmata of classical rhetoric contained fourteen assignments ranked by the degree of complexity, rising cognitive demands, and increasing range of cultural knowledge they demand. The list of Aphthonius [c. 400 A.D.] includes the following items:
- Fable, or retelling of a folk tale.
- Narrative, either fiction or nonfiction.
- Chreia or Anecdote, a story based on amplification of a famous statement or action.
- Proverb, which asked students to amplify by arguing for or against some maxim or adage.
- Refutation, which disproved the persuasive point or a narrative.
- Confirmation, which proved the persuasive point of a narrative.
- Commonplace, which amplified on the moral qualities of some virtue or vice, often as exemplified in some common phrase of advice.
- Encomium or Praise, which expanded on the virtues of some person or thing.
- Invective, which censured some evil person or thing.
- Comparison, which compared two people or things and explored their comparative merits and shortcomings.
- Personification, the characterization of some fictional person by the use of appropriate language.
- Description, which created intense and graphic depictions of a subject.
- Argument, which created and supported a thesis or some general question, such as, "Is town life superior to country life?"
- Legislation [or Deliberation], in which the student argued for or against the goodness of a law.
Traditionally, the early assignments in this list were practiced by younger children as part of a basic language arts curriculum. Older students practiced the later assignments in courses on rhetoric.
