Abstract
Some time ago, I attended a conference on “Isocrates’ Rhetorical Education” occasioned by a fine book on the same topic.1 It was a stimulating event that served to reassert the significance of Isocrates’ political and social theory The conference also sought to explore Isocrates’ pedagogy and, in this effort, it was less successful That is, when the topic of pedagogy was raised at all, it was typically cast in the context of other, presumably larger issues, such as the relation of the paedeia to the Athenian polls. Indeed, the conference discussion always remained at a distance from what we might call the “practicalities of instruction.”
“I would rather make an able man than a learned man, I would also urge that care be taken to choose a guide with a well-made rather than a well-filled head; that both these qualities should be required of him, but more particularly character and understanding than learning; and that he should go about his job in a novel way.“
“The bees plunder the flowers here and there, but afterward they make of them honey, which is all theirs; it is no longer thyme or marjoram Even so with the pieces borrowed from others; he will transform and blend them to make a work that is all his own, to wit, his judgment His education, work, and study aim only at forming this.“
Montaigne, “Of the Education of Children”
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Notes
This 1998 conference was sponsored by POROI (The Project for the Rhetoric of Inquiry) at the University of Iowa to discuss Takis Poulakos’ book Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates’ Rhetorical Education (1997).
All references to Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria are to the Butler translation in the Loeb Classical Library edition and will list specific passages in parenthesis. When necessary, the text is abbreviated as 10. As in Chapter 5, citations from Cicero are from the Loeb editions.
See G. M. A. Grube’s “Theodorus of Gadara.” See also Grube 1965, 272–74.
Cf. Quintilian’s approach to his audience with Aristotle’s notion that the rhetor should avoid “warping” the judgment of the jury {Rhetoric 1354a).
In defense of Quintilian’s stature as a critic, if not a theorist, I should note Saintsbury’s comment that the Institutio is among “the fullest and most satisfactory applications of criticism” in the ancient world (290).
Murphy refers to Roman pedagogy as a “collation” of Greek methods (1987, xxix).
The popularity of declamation in the Greco-Roman world as a genre of public entertainment was in large part the result of its literary elements. In his study of Greek declamatory history, Russell notes that declamation in general, and suasoria in particular are inherently theatrical, featuring as they do an actor/rhetor performing the role of someone else, often under conditions of intense emotional distress (1983, 1–15). The emphasis of declamatory performance was often on the delivery of eloquent, even florid prose, heightened by routine appeals to sententiae (or ingenious language) and to the colors (expressions of pathos) rather than to persuasive value; i.e., by appeals to theatricality rather than argumentation (Bonner 1969, 71–83). Declamation, therefore, was a major contributor to the process that George Kennedy has called the letteraturizzazione of rhetoric, that shift in focus “from persuasion to narration, from civic to personal contexts, and from discourse to literature, including poetry” (1980, 5). It is because of this potential for “slippage” into fiction and theatricality that Quintilian is so insistent on the realism of declamation (2.10). However, insofar as the expansive, performative tendencies of declamation operate as an incentive to invention and a ludic complement to the constant demand of rhetorical instruction for common sense, they may well have served to keep their various audiences engaged, especially given imperial restrictions on ordinary discourse. And, in fact, the dual nature of declamation’s history as both a literary and rhetorical practice may also have contributed to its place as the crown of the Roman curriculum, the skill that coordinates the Roman passion for eloquence with an equal commitment to public affairs.
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Mendelson, M. (2002). Quintilian and the Pedagogy of Controversia . In: Many Sides: A Protagorean Approach to the Theory, Practice and Pedagogy of Argument. Argumentation Library, vol 5. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9890-3_6
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