Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition from Ancient to Modern Times

George A. Kennedy

• Publisher: The University of North Carolina Press
• Year: 2003
• Print ISBN: 9780807847695, 9780807824672
• eBook ISBN: 9780807861134
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Since its original publication by UNC Press in 1980, this book has provided thousands of students with a concise introduction and guide to the history of the classical tradition in rhetoric, the ancient but ever vital art of persuasion.
Now, George Kennedy offers a thoroughly revised and updated edition of Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition. From its development in ancient Greece and Rome, through its continuation and adaptation in Europe and America through the Middle Ages and Renaissance, to its enduring significance in the twentieth century, he traces the theory and practice of classical rhetoric through history. At each stage of the way, he demonstrates how new societies modified classical rhetoric to fit their needs.
For this edition, Kennedy has updated the text and the bibliography to incorporate new scholarship; added sections relating to women orators and rhetoricians throughout history; and enlarged the discussion of rhetoric in America, Germany, and Spain. He has also included more information about historical and intellectual contexts to assist the reader in understanding the tradition of classical rhetoric.

Chapter 1
Traditional and Conceptual Rhetoric

“Rhetoric,” and its cognates in other languages, is derived from the Greek word rhêkorikê, the art or technique of a rhêtôr, or public speaker. The word first appears in Plato’s dialogue Gorgias, written in the second decade of the fourth century B.C., but dramatically set a generation earlier. In conversation with Socrates (453a2), Gorgias defines rhêkorikê as “the worker of persuasion.” “Persuasion” (peithô) was used in earlier Greek to describe what came to be called “rhetoric.”¹ Another Greek word often used of rhetoric is logos, literally “word,” but also meaning “speech, argument, reason.”

Rhetoric in Greece was specifically the civic art of public speaking as it developed under constitutional government, especially in Athenian democracy of the fifth and fourth centuries. This art was described and discussed in handbooks, speeches, dialogues, treatises, and lectures and was expanded and developed by teachers of public speaking, philosophers, and practicing orators to produce what we call “classical rhetoric,” social and political practices and a body of texts that describe or illustrate that practice. Classical rhetoric, in turn, was transmitted to the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the modern period, adapted to the needs of each era, but repeatedly drawing new inspiration from the major classical sources, especially from writings of Cicero, but at times from readings of Plato, Aristotle, Quintilian, or other Greek or Latin sources.

Rhetoric in the sense of techniques of persuasion is a phenomenon of all human cultures, and analogies to it are also found in animal communication.² All communication involves rhetoric. A speaker or writer has some kind of purpose, and rhetoric includes the ways of accomplishing, or attempting to accomplish, that purpose within a given culture. The Greeks and Romans thought of this purpose as persuasion, but by that they meant something more general than persuasion as understood by a modern social scientist. Purposes cover a spectrum from converting hearers to a view opposed to that previously held, to implanting a conviction or belief not otherwise entertained, to teaching or exposition, to entertainment and demonstration of the cleverness of the speaker. Persuasion can be accomplished by direct means, such as force, threats, or bribes, or it can be done symbolically by the use of signs, of which the most important are spoken and written words or gestures.

Every communication is rhetorical because it uses some technique to affect the beliefs, actions, or emotions of an audience. The simplest verbal techniques are pitch, volume, and repetition, as in “help, Help, HELP!” The white pages of the telephone directory show a relatively low degree of rhetoric. Their main rhetorical technique is alphabetization, which accomplishes the purpose of allowing a reader to find a particular name easily, and except for occasional flashes of bold type their author does not seek to influence a reader to call one number rather than another. The yellow pages are distinctly more rhetorical, seeking to make an effect upon the reader and using visualization of products and other typographical devices to influence a decision.

Some definitions will help to trace the influence and adaptations of classical rhetoric through western history. One is the concept of primary rhetoric. Primary rhetoric is the conception of rhetoric held by the Greeks when artistic techniques were first described in the fifth century B.C. Rhetoric was primarily an art of persuasion; it was primarily something used in civic life; it was primarily oral. Primary rhetoric involves utterance on a specific occasion; it is an act not a text, though subsequently it can be treated as a text. The primacy of primary rhetoric is a fundamental fact in the classical tradition: through the time of the Roman Empire teachers of rhetoric, whatever was the real situation of their students, took as their nominal goal the training of persuasive public speakers; even in the early Middle Ages, when there was reduced practical opportunity to exercise civic rhetoric, the definition and content of rhetorical theory as set forth by Isidore and Alcuin, for example, show the same civic assumption; the revival of classical rhetoric in Renaissance Italy was foreshadowed by renewed need for civic rhetoric in the cities of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and the great period of neoclassical rhetoric was the time when public speaking emerged as a major force in church and state in France, England, and America.

Secondary rhetoric, on the other hand, refers to rhetorical techniques as found in discourse, literature, and art forms when those techniques are not being used for an oral, persuasive purpose. In secondary rhetoric the speech act is not of central importance; that role is taken over by a text. Frequent manifestations of secondary rhetoric are commonplaces, figures of speech, and tropes in written works. Much literature, art, and informal discourse is decorated by secondary rhetoric, which may be a mannerism of the historical period in which it is composed. Secondary rhetoric, however, contributes to accomplishing the purpose of the speaker or writer, but indirectly or at a secondary level. It provides ways of emphasizing ideas or making them vivid. It enlivens the page and relieves the tedium of the reader. It may demonstrate the writer’s education, eloquence, or skill, and it thus often makes the writer more acceptable to an audience.

It has been a persistent characteristic of classical rhetoric in almost every stage of its history to move from primary to secondary forms, occasionally then reversing the pattern. For this phenomenon the Italian term letteraturizzazione has been coined. Letteraturizzazione is the tendency of rhetoric to shift focus from persuasion to narration, from civic to personal contexts, and from speech to literature, including poetry. Such slippage can be observed in Greece in the Hellenistic period, in the time of the Roman Empire, in medieval France, and from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries in Europe, and still occurs to today: rhetoric as understood in English departments of colleges and universities is largely secondary rhetoric. The primary cause of the letteraturizzazione of rhetoric was probably the place given rhetoric in education through the centuries, combined with limited opportunities for public speaking and an increased role for writing in society.

There is also a secondary rhetoric in arts other than literature. In antiquity, the analogy between rhetoric and painting or sculpture was repeatedly noticed—by Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian among others—and an analogy to architecture is occasionally mentioned as well. Writers on the arts sometimes borrowed terminology from rhetoric. In the Renaissance and later, treatises on music, painting, and other arts borrowed the structure and categories of classical rhetoric. Rhetorical techniques are also evident in political propaganda throughout history, in which forms of speech, writing (inscriptions, for example), drama, ritual, art, architecture, and public works and largess were combined to strengthen or impose the power of the regime.

Traditional rhetoric is rhetorical practice as found in traditional cultures that do not use writing and have been relatively untouched by western civilization. The forms and functions of rhetoric in societies without writing are discussed in a recent book by George A. Kennedy, entitled Comparative Rhetoric, published by Oxford University Press. Among the themes of that book are that rhetoric in traditional societies is primarily a means of attaining consensus, and the existence all over the world of levels of formal language required for serious discourse. The book also discusses rhetoric in ancient societies in the Near East, India, and China where writing was introduced. Although oral societies generally have words for an “orator,” for various speech genres, and sometimes for rhetorical devices, and many accord high honor to eloquence, conceptualized theories of rhetoric are found only in societies that use writing, and even there full conceptualization is slow to emerge. Speakers cannot explain well how they do what they do, and skill is learned by imitation, not by rule. This includes the early history of rhetoric in Greece. In The Apology (21e) Plato makes Socrates ridicule the inability of fifth-century Athenian politicians and poets to describe what they were nevertheless often able to do well.

Conceptualization of rhetorical techniques, the synthesis of a meta-rhetoric, as it is sometimes now called, has taken place in sophisticated, literate societies in varying degrees depending on the practical need for rhetorical instruction, the extent to which the society is introspective, and the rhetorical values the society holds. The Instruction of Ptahhotep, written in Egypt in the early second millennium B.C., is sometimes regarded as the earliest handbook of public speaking.³ In third-century B.C. China, Han Fei-tzu wrote a work on power politics that includes discussion of ways to persuade,⁴ and about the same time Kautilya in India wrote an extensive discussion of politics and rhetoric that has features in common with Greek rhetorical theory.⁵ A major difference between metarhetoric in Greece and in other literate cultures is that in Greece theories of rhetoric were developed largely for speakers in the lawcourts, whereas elsewhere judicial rhetoric is not a major consideration; and only in Greece, and thus in western Europe, was rhetoric separated from political and ethical philosophy to form a specific discipline that became a feature of formal education. Isocrates and Aristotle, despite great differences in their thinking, were largely responsible for this second development.

In an attempt to understand the nature of rhetoric and its historical manifestations we are fortunate to have on record descriptions of the circumstances and contents of speeches, and thus of traditional rhetoric, that were composed before the conceptualization of a metarhetoric. Such records exist in the Near East, China, and India. In the West, early Greek literature, and in particular the Homeric poems Iliad and Odyssey, give a vivid picture of speech in a society that did not yet use writing. The poems are the artistic result of a tradition of oral composition describing great events of the end of the second millennium B.C. They probably attained approximately the form in which we read them in the eighth century and were written down, perhaps from dictation, in the following century. It is true, of course, that neither of these works is a verbatim account of what someone actually said. What matters is that speech as found in the poems provides a detailed picture of what and how someone might have spoken under the conditions imagined, and they contain also observations about the nature and functions of speech of a traditional nature. Additional evidence comes from two other early Greek poems, Theogony and Works and Days by Hesiod.⁶

Rhetoric in the Homeric Poems

The Homeric poems portray Greek society before the introduction of writing. This society had its own oral poetry, the songs of bards on heroic or mythological subjects. How such poetry can be created and transmitted is now reasonably well understood from study of modern oral poets in the Balkans and other areas.⁷ Oral bards do not memorize songs as a whole but recreate them on each delivery from common elements: the structure of folktales; themes or incidents useful in the telling of many stories, such as festivals, banquets, sacrifices, duels, councils, or journeys, adapted to the needs of the context; and formulas or verbatim repetitions consisting of whole passages, single lines, phrases, or epithets useful as building blocks in the narrative. A bard learned the craft by listening to other bards, trying to imitate them, and accumulating a reservoir of structures, themes, and formulas. In the singing of a really successful bard there is also an element that neither the bard nor the audience fully understands: “inspiration.” The bard feels a god, in Greek poems a “muse,” singing to and through him.

In the society described in the Homeric poems and in other traditional societies the world over, to a degree also in literate societies, public speaking is learned the same way. A would-be orator listens to older speakers and acquires knowledge of past precedent, as well as a sense of rhetorical conventions, formal styles, and what is effective. Through imitation and practice the speaker builds self-assurance in speaking and acquires techniques and a collection of examples, stock phrases, and themes. The Homeric orator is always understood as speaking extempore, and sometimes with inspiration from a god.

Achilles, the hero of the Iliad, is said to have been taught by Phoenix to be “a speaker of words and a doer of deeds” (Iliad 9.443). These are the two great areas of distinction for the Homeric hero, and Achilles and Odysseus excel at both. Because the Homeric poems, after being written down in the seventh century B.C., became the textbooks out of which Greek students learned to read and were venerated as the bibles of the culture, the attitude toward speech in the Iliad strongly influenced the conception of the orator in Greco-Roman civilization. As in most other cultures, an eloquent speaker is greatly admired, but unlike most other cultures, where harmony and consensus are valued, the Greeks not only tolerated but admired open contention. The Greek male orator, like the Greek male athlete, seeks to win and gains honor from defeating an opponent.⁸ Anger, retribution, and personal attacks were acceptable in public. This is evident in the spirited debates, even mud-slinging, between Agamemnon and Achilles beginning in the first book of the Iliad, and acceptance of contentious debate remained a distinctive feature of Greek culture and has remained a characteristic of western rhetoric except when constrained by autocratic government or religious authority.

Unlike Achilles, Telemachus, the son of Odysseus, has been left at home, and in the opening books of the Odyssey he is faced with the difficult situation of how to deal with the suitors besetting his mother. He has had no model in oratory. In the second book he succeeds in summoning an assembly of the men of Ithaca, before whom he presents his complaints, but he lacks adequate authority to prevail, even though the goddess Athene gives him a physical charisma beyond his years. The effective Homeric orator must have authority. It comes partly from a position in society by birth, but must be bolstered by what he has done, by how he carries himself, by what sanctions he can bring to support his words. Because personality is important, different styles of delivery emerge. Menelaus is described as speaking rapidly, clearly, and simply, while Odysseus bursts out in a veritable storm of oratory (Iliad 3.212–24). Nestor, oldest of the orators, is garrulous, but his words are compared to honey (Iliad 1.247–52). Such differences become important in defining the characters of style and delivery in classical rhetoric.

Classical rhetoricians later became interested in defining the species of oratory: When are speeches employed and how do they differ with different functions? Beginning with Aristotle, the usual classification is into deliberative, judicial, and epideictic forms. Deliberative rhetoric was viewed as concerned with determination of the advantages of some future action; judicial rhetoric with the determination of the justice or legality of a past action; epideictic with praise or blame of what was honorable or dishonorable. The Homeric poems do not reveal any perception of different kinds of oratory or any indication that, as in some traditional societies, different dialects or levels of formality were regarded as appropriate for different settings, but oratory is used in a variety of contexts. Many of the occasions for speech in the Homeric poems are personal encounters, more appropriate for conversation than for oratory, but when Odysseus is asked in the Odyssey to tell who he is, he regularly replies with a formal speech—and regularly the contents are totally fictitious. Lying was endemic in western oratory from its beginning and produced the repeated, if ineffective, protests of Plato and other philosophers that the only valid rhetoric was that speaking the truth. In addition to casual encounters, oratory in the Homeric poems is engendered by formal deliberative occasions, often with open clash of opinions and allegations. These include meetings of the council of leaders of the army; the assembly of the soldiers in the Iliad or of the citizens of cities in the Odyssey; and embassies, both official such as that to Achilles in Iliad, Book 9, or unofficial as in Book 24. Some speeches in councils, in assemblies, or on embassies are declarative, in that a person with some power or authority simply announces what he is goin...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• CLASSICAL RHETORIC
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Epigraph
• Chapter 1 Traditional and Conceptual Rhetoric
• Chapter 2 Technical Rhetoric
• Chapter 3 Sophistic Rhetoric
• Chapter 4 Philosophical Rhetoric
• Chapter 5 Rhetoric in the Roman Period
• Chapter 6 Literary Rhetoric
• Chapter 7 Judeo-Christian Rhetoric
• Chapter 8 Greek Rhetoric in the Middle Ages
• Chapter 9 Latin Rhetoric in the Middle Ages
• Chapter 10 Classical Rhetoric in the Renaissance
• Chapter 11 Neoclassical Rhetoric
• Chapter 12 Classical Rhetoric in the Twentieth Century
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index