From Institutes of Oratory
Quintilian
Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Thomas Conley
Chapter Three: Late Classical and Medieval Greek Rhetorics
From Institutes of Oratory
Quintilian
Quintilian was born in the province of Calagurris in Spain, the child of well-to-do people who had attained Roman citizenship. He went to Rome during the empire, but was like Cicero in his background and training. Quintilian only took on male students when he became a rhetoric instructor; he was awarded the first imperial endowed chair of rhetoric by Vespasian in 71. While it is true that deliberative oratory was severely curtailed during the empire, there was still need for good forensic and epideicticrhetoric. Vespasian was a reformer and believed a good rhetorician could teach the “correct’ methods of oratory and ensure a better everyday running of the empire, hence his decision to endow Quintilian with a state supported chair. In this pursuit of “good” oratory, Quintilian often called for a return to the good style of Cicero.
Quintilian is often held up as an example of the decline of classical rhetoric since he focused on forensic and epideictic rhetoric, and was primarily a pedagogue and not a politician nor political reformer.
His style tends to be lit review, aligning himself with one of the “masters,” and then procedding with his argument. These reviews are concise enough that they have become the source for the content of several lost works.
Quintilian is the premier instructor; while all the rhetoricians we’ve read thus far assert the importance of working with the young, Quintilian is the first to go into such depths about pedagogy and practices. Moral philosophy figures large into his methodology. B&H point to this as the reason why he was so well liked by Christian rhetoricians from the early Middle Ages until the 19th century.
“Oratory that does not move its hearers toward the good is not ‘rhetoric,’ by Quintilian’s definition. Natural ability and learning contribute equally to rhetorical skill (a departure from Isocrates and Cicero, who gave natural ability primacy). Mastery of rhetoric should be considered as ‘virtue’ because it entails intimate knowledge of the good” (362).
“In a trope, words are turned from their usual meaning to something quite different, whereas figures simply use words in a slightly unusual way, unlike everyday speech” (363).
Quintilian gives much less attention to kairos, or the situation of the speech, than do other rhetoricians, such as Aristotle. Thus it seems that Quintilian defines propriety much more in terms of the speaker’s integrity, which should be steadfast. But this emphasis could also reflect the reduced opportunities in Quintilian’s day for using rhetoric in real-life times and places. (363)
“‘Presence of mind’ or grace under pressure is crucial to success” (363) in Quintilian’s system.
From Institutes of Oratory
Within in the first few lines Quintilian is asserting that the there was a better time when all the professionals knew there place. I figure that better time was 80 years before when Cicero was still alive (364).
On page 366 chapter two is an entire section concerning the paternal teacher. I think this is used against educators today so as not to compensate them for their work; they are paid less since it’s a job where being concerned about money would seem to violate Quintilian’s maxims about the ideal teacher.
(367) The idea the best and most skilled should teach the youngest and most malleable has been long forgotten. The model is now to teach preceptors by having them teach undergraduates, usually at what’s considered the “entry level” courses into a discipline. An interesting example of how the current episteme picks and chooses from history what it wants to point to as the foundation for its current practices–if you place this into juxtaposition of Quintilian’s idea of the upstanding moral and ethical instructor, which has been codified into current practice.
In connection to Lois’ questions for this week
On 370 on the bottom of the page seems to be the warrants behind using current-traditional pedagogy (a la Matsuda). The problem withthis is context. Teaching composition in this way is out of line withQuintilian’s recommendations because he is describing the education of young children, not young adults. This, I assert, leads to a composition classroom out of touch withthe demands placed on the undergraduates. This leads into the other complication a few pages later (372): methods used to teach in this fashion. The examples are all specifically Hellenistic culture, which means adopting this methodology in today’s world presumes an affinity with the culture and the myths of the dominant culture (in the US, a combination of Hellenistic/W. European tropes, figures, and myths). This denies the social history of the US (a history of immigration and therefore a society of several different myth/value systems; and gatekeepingbased on these more Anglo myths/figures/tropes), and is even at odds with the dominant model of education in the US (to varying degrees dependent on level, ie, primary, secondary, and post-secondary). Public primary and secondary education is geared towards entrance into the university system, and except at the most traditional universities, education is seen as the means to obtain a voucher for a job. This is also embedded within the history of the United States and its universities; ever since the wide-scale adoption of the German model university and the pejoritization of the traditional American college, there has been no need–and more importantly–nor want for a system of education which creates good citizens through the teaching of argumentation/oratory/rhetoric/grammar using the myths of America as the training fodder. Utility has become the emphasis, that is, utility of skill sets that a student can apply to their chosen professional field, not the limited scope of teacher, lawyer, or state minister as Quintilian supposes is the future of all students. The reading of esoteric texts, acquiring a deeper understanding of those texts, and through this deeper understanding come to understand the appropriate ways to compose, speak, and execute an argument is out of vogue. While we may still do this in the humanities, this would be why the humanities are so underfunded. No one supports the humanities–there are no donors to endow chairs of rhetoric or literary studies or creative writing–because our society’s milieu places no value on it. The continuance of the humanities comes chiefly by the largesseof the institutions where the department is located, and this is due primarily to a sense of obligation coupled with the logistical fact that most education departments are located in the humanities section of the university. Making new primary and secondary teachers falls under a more general utilitarian category; there is always a job market for such professionals.
Some of Quintilian’s ideas are still in force within rhet/comp, but also take into consideration how rhet/comp is chided for thinking such things as “whatever is inactive or deficient should be invigorated or supplied” (378). The commonplace is that students should “come ready” to do work at the university level, we should only have to teach how to write elegantly, not teach critical reading, thinking, or research. Our gatekeepinghistory coupled with the classism, racism, and sexism of the academy makes this almost impossible.
On 382, paragraph 6, Quintilian makes comments about unlearned speakers practicing all kinds of crude behavior, and not knowing how to “properly” speak in public. The issue becomes, I think, Quintilian’s idea of kairos. There may be times where an “uneducated” approach works; not all audiences are of the educated classes. This, of course, would have been most unlikely in imperial Rome. Why would anyone of the higher caste be speaking with someone not of his class to either argue or persuade?
386-389 Quintilian begins to describe how rhetoric is defined and runs through several definitions before approving this one: “oratory is the art of speaking well” (389). I assume that while this may seem amorphous or dangerous, Quintilian’s pre-occupation withmoral and ethical teachers for the training of young men is how he gets around placing restrictions in the definition about truth or justice.
390-391 Quintilian echos Cicero in the belief that oratory was the impetus behind civilization and that language is the one thing man has over other animals.
393 Quintilian argues it is not wrong to use a falsehood when speaking, what is wrong is not to know the difference between truth and falsehood; falsehoods should be used strategically. The only goal of the art of oratory is to speak well, not exactly, and like all other arts, the speaker can not be chastised for making some things stand out and other appear to be less important than the object in the foreground (painting metaphor). The problem is the emphasis on speaking well as the end goal of oratory. It begs these questions: by whose standards? who is to decide? for what causes? Quintilian says the speaker will know when he’s spoken well–even if he is not victorious in his cause–but that seems to suppose a moral victory which can be divined through an examination of conscience using a uniformed, homogeneous cultural education as the foundation. This would be problematic in current times.
They also charge oratory with having recourse to vicious means, which no true arts adopt, because it advances what is false, and endeavors to excite the passions. But neither of those means is dishonorable, when it is used from a good motive, and, consequently, cannot be vicious…Unenlightened men sit as judges, who must, at times, be deceived, that they may not err in their decisions. (394)
The above quote I find problematic as it seems exceptionallyunethical. I can try and make it less problematic with context, that is, in imperial Rome there was no promise of governmental transparency or expectation of public deliberation on future actions, so if the chance arouse to somehow persuade through forensic speech you had to do whatever it took to be victorious since there was no recourse once a decision was passed. Still, think how this concept has been abused over the years by those who believed they were the best men acting in the best interest of the masses. How can this concept work within a society supposedly egalitarian and run through means of a democratic republic? This is something that would come from an empire. The one, or few, making choices for the many since the few are the best trained for such a situation.
Rhetoric as performative art 396.
The way, indeed, in which many have proceeded and still proceed in the practice of speaking, I consider either as no art…as it is called, (for I see numbers rushing to speak without rule or learning, just as impudence or hunger has prompted them,) or as it were a bad art, which we term …for I imagine that there have been many who have exerted, and that there are some who still exert, their talent in speaking to the injury of mankind. (397)
Training was/is limited to the few, and those who are hungry or called “impudent” by the gatekeepers of society (teachers) are often those who have no access to power or the economic means to become gatekeepers.
Chapter III on 403 is the best example of Quintilian as the ultimate pedagogue. This entire chapter is devoted to study, and how and where and with what materials a student should use. Notice, too, this chapter and the next two deal with composition. Writing is the spring from which good oratory springs up.
Page 418: Quintilian maintains that all a speaker need do to be a good person skilled in speaking well; the good person is born and a product of nature. This good person uses his skill to win, or at least draw a moral victory from his oration. After several examples of ethically dubious situations, the main thrust appears to be that the orator forces his will upon the situation; that he make his will and opinion manifest through speech; that he perform a speech act which upholds the ideals of Hellenistic culture.
The idea that literature can inculcate moral fiber through exposure sounds alot like 19th century foundations for English Studies/belle lettres (421).
Rhetoric in the European Tradition
Thomas Conley
Chapter Three: Late Classical and Medieval Greek Rhetorics
Hermeognes is the stand in for all Eastern Greek Rhetoric in this chapter (he appears to be the great man figure). His notion of argument differs from Aristotle as the central element isnt the syllogism, but the procedure of topical ergasia, a sort of argument close to that in Cicero (69).
The long explanation of the ergasia(the working up to the final claim and conclusion) can be found on 54-55. To understand how it works, think about sermons in the homiletic tradition. Long, drawn out, and a complete chain of text and claims to persuade the listener. Hermogenes uses several divisions in teaching argument, but the divisions are for pedagogical purposes, not philosophical agenda.
Conley asserts the method is extremely different from the syllogism-based notion of Aristotle, but it is coherent and closer to what orators actually do in advancing a claim than the syllogism model (56-57). Actual discursive arguing is important for Hermogenes, meaning expression is more important than form in this style.
Hermogenes work was produced in the “Second Sophistic,” a phrase coined by Philostratus. It defines a literary-rhetorical movement. As in the Plato’s youth, rhetoricians were traveling and teaching and the texts that would be authoritative in rhetorical theory and practice for the next thousand years were written. During this time attempts were made to reconcile the claims of philosophy and rhetoric and the stage was set for the assimilation of “pagan” rhetorics into the culture and activities of early Christianity (59). Display oration was huge at this time, but also this was an era where rhetoric went into the classroom; several rhetoricians, like now, were training new initiates to take their place in the culture of power.
Generally speaking, the prime function of imperial oratory–that is speeches given at imperial functions–is held to have been mainly one of conveying to the public the ideas and values of the rulers, thus performing many of the functions of a state-controlled press ina society without newspapers…The audiences of these speeches were confined to the elite insiders. Thus, while the speeches may certainly be seen to embody an ideology, they cannot be equated with propaganda. (62)
Public declamations given at festivals, on the other hand, were propaganda. These speeches given by travelling orators help spread the image of a united people with a common and shared culture/heritage, even if the material conditions didn’t match.
The church fathers are mentioned on 62-63. Most, according to Conley, were actually trained rhetoricians. This is why there is such a distinct similarity between the homletic tradition and the rhetoric of Hermogenes. Also, several of the early fathers disliked the scriptures and eventually rewrote them in a style more pleasing to them.
Byzantine rhetoric is divided into various ages starting on 64. The interesting things is that the 11th and 12th centuries are considered the period in Byzntine rhetoric–mostly, though, because this is when most extent texts were written. Historiography and history don’t appear to unbiased here.
