In Defence of Rhetoric

452 Pages·1989·3.558 MB·English

by  Brian Vickers

Title Pages
In Defence of Rhetoric
Brian Vickers
Print publication date: 1989
Print ISBN-13: 9780198117919
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117919.001.0001
Title Pages
(p.i) In Defence of Rhetoric
(p.ii) Other books by Brian Vickers
(p.iii) In Defence of Rhetoric
As author:
Francis Bacon and Renaissance Prose (Cambridge, 1968)
The Artistry of Shakespeare's Prose (London, 1968, 1976)
Classical Rhetoric in English Poetry (London, 1970)
Towards Greek Tragedy (London, 1973)
Shakespeare: Coriolanus (London, 1976, 1981)
As editor and contributor:
The World of Jonathan Swift (Oxford, 1968)
Rhetoric Revalued (Binghamton, NY, 1982)
Occult and Scientific Mentalities in the Renaissance (Cambridge, 1984)
Arbeit, Musse, Meditation: Betrachtungen zur Vita activa und Vita contemplativa
(Zurich, 1985)
As editor:
Henry Mackenzie, The Man of Feeling (Oxford, 1967, 1987)
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Title Pages
Shakespeare: The Critical Heritage, 1623–1801, 6 vols. (London and Boston,
1974–81)
Public and Private Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Mackenzie-Evelyn
Debate (Delmar, NY, 1986)
English Science, Bacon to Newton (Cambridge, 1987)
(p.iv)
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Title Pages
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Amicis defensoribus rhetoricae
In Defence of Rhetoric
Brian Vickers
Print publication date: 1989
Print ISBN-13: 9780198117919
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117919.001.0001
(p.v) Amicis defensoribus rhetoricae
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Preface
In Defence of Rhetoric
Brian Vickers
Print publication date: 1989
Print ISBN-13: 9780198117919
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117919.001.0001
(p.vii) Preface
THE goal of this book is to remove the misapprehensions and prejudices that
still affect our appreciation of rhetoric. For many years scholars have been
telling us about the great importance of rhetoric as a key to understanding the
past, its history, literature, art, architecture, music—such distinguished writers
as E. R. Curtius, Henri Marrou, Erwin Panofsky, Sir Ernst Gombrich, C. S. Lewis.
Their encouragements to study rhetoric as a communicational system used for
over two thousand years to shape literary and artistic creation, and the critical
processes by which the arts were judged, have been matched by the work of
other more specialized students of rhetoric, amply represented in the
bibliography and notes to this book. Yet neither group has managed to overcome
the prejudices, or lack of response affecting people who otherwise take a wide
and keen interest in history, literature, and the arts. Some people are aware of
the importance of rhetoric, but have never bothered to find out how it works,
and are content to let someone else do it for them. In the memorable words of
Wilhelm Busch describing the common response to a stronglv-smelline cheese,
‘Bedenki Man liebt den Käse wohl, indessen / Man deckt ihn zu’ [‘Consider: We
like cheese well enough, but we still cover it up’].
Rhetoric is not merely put at a discreet distance, however, it is actively
distrusted, and attacked. By an ever-present irony, the first written accounts of
Greek rhetoric to survive come from rhetoric's most influential enemy, Plato,
attacks which anyone truly concerned to rehabilitate rhetoric cannot simply pass
by. I have long felt that the account of rhetoric, and politics, in the Gorgias was a
violent travesty of both disciplines, but not until I sat down to write the studies
that form Chapters 2 and 3 (in part) of this book did I realize just how
systematically Plato distorted both evidence and argument to build up his case.
Most of those who study Plato do so because he is a great philosopher, and
either ignore rhetoric altogether (as the indexes or contents pages to most
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Preface
modern studies will show), or endorse his view of it. To show how much
misrepresentation, (p.viii) animus, and covert manipulation of argument Plato
carries out I have used two outstanding modern editions of the Gorgias, by E. R.
Dodds and Terence Irwin. The resulting analysis is lengthy, but I make no
apologies for it on that account. As the later part of Chapter 3 shows, Plato's
travesty of rhetoric influenced Kant, Croce, and continues to influence a majority
of classicists and philosophers today. I hope that they won’t ignore this
discussion. I also attempt to validate the Sophists, whose reputation has never
recovered from the drubbing Plato gave it, drawing on Eric Havelock's
sympathetic account of Protagoras, and making my own evaluation of Isocrates.
It seems to me that their school, with its conception of rhetoric as public debate
in a society guaranteeing free speech, a debate in which both sides of the case
are heard and those qualified to vote come to a decision binding on all parties,
has much more to offer us (although such a society continues to seem Utopian)
than Plato's equation of it with cosmetics, cookery, and other more disreputable
arts designed, according to him, to satisfy base pleasures rather than promote
knowledge.
One part of this book, then, lives up to its title as a defence of rhetoric by
actively engaging with its attackers. Yet, as a reading of Chapter 3 will show, I
regard such controversies between rhetoric and philosophy as pointless,
ultimately damaging to both sides. It is only because rhetoric has been given
negative connotations of insincerity, mere display, artifice, or ornament without
substance, that I think the argument worth engaging in. More important is to
understand what rhetoric really can do in the right hands, at the right time.
Aristotle defended rhetoric against Plato on several heads, but on this one he
made the general point, which I imagine most people who study it would agree
with, that rhetoric is a tool which, like all other human resources, can be abused.
(He excluded virtue from this category—but he did not know Othello.)
Contemporary history will confirm the truth that all forms of knowledge, even
science, can be misused for evil purposes. Studies of totalitarian rhetoric, then,
are valuable, if depressing, analyses of the power of the word and other forms of
communication in the wrong hands. (Plato claimed that all rhetoric belonged to
tyranny, except his own.) By ‘the right hands’ I mean those of public speakers
and (p.ix) writers in a state where free speech is still possible; by ‘the right
time’ I mean one in which rhetoric is still flourishing.
Rhetoric has existed for two and a half millennia, but its fortunes have always
depended on external factors, whether political—in Rome free speech was
drastically curtailed once emperors ruled; or educational—it figured strongly in
the school curriculum between 200 BC and AD 400, and again between 1450
and 1850; aesthetic—its dominance over music and the visual arts being only
challenged by the rise of non language-based aesthetic systems. In the first part
of this book I have treated rhetoric as a general cultural phenomenon, in
historical and analytical terms. In Chapter 1 I begin, as rhetoric itself began,
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Preface
with real life, showing how eloquence was seen as a natural phenomenon,
practised by all human beings, merely written down and systematized in
rhetoric-books. Then I give a brief history of rhetoric in the time of its first, and
lasting formulation, together with an introduction to the major texts in classical
rhetoric, from Aristotle to Tacitus. I also outline the main teachings of rhetoric
on the processes of composition, the attitude of the orator or writer towards his
audience, and the concept of style. It is a rather summary treatment of these
topics, but I wanted to make this book relatively complete within itself, given the
obvious limitations on size.
Chapters 4 and 5 carry on the historical survey into the Middle Ages and the
Renaissance, respectively. These chapters started off as my own attempt to
understand why the medieval treatises on poetry were so different from those in
the Renaissance. What I ended up writing was a study, first, of what happens
when a body of knowledge gets broken up in the process of transmission, the
fate of the classical rhetoric texts during the Middle Ages, and what becomes of
a culture when its basic assumptions and institutions cannot be reconstituted.
The converse process, the rediscovery of texts, learning how to fit them into a
newly-recovered sense of place and time, gave Renaissance rhetoric a
remarkable boost, resulting in thousands of books and hundreds and thousands
of readers between the time of Petrarch and Wordsworth. Rhetoric developed
new literary genres, notably the letter and the oration, and helped writers of all
kinds—including scientists such as Kepler and (p.x) Galileo—to structure their
work clearly and make their arguments more effective.
From these essays in historical analysis I turn back to the nature of rhetoric, and
the link between style and persuasion. One important theme of Chapter 5 is the
way in which Renaissance rhetoric laid increasing stress on its power to move
the reader's or listener's feelings, the concept of movere, with a parallel
emphasis on developing elocutio, understood not just as style but as expressivity.
In Chapter 6 I show that the crucial link in this process was the doctrine of the
figures and tropes, which were seen as recording powerful emotions in normal
speech, recreating those emotions in a speaker, and so arousing them in the
audience. Contrary to what even historians of rhetoric have thought, both
classical and Renaissance rhetoricians had an explicit rationale for these
individual forms of style to which they, and everyone who had an education in
Europe over a 400-year period, devoted so much time and energy.
The attraction of rhetoric as an instrument of persuasion and instruction was
recognized by its sister arts, music and painting. In Chapter 7 I follow the ways
in which theorists of both arts took over from the rhetorical treatises such
concepts as the duties of the orator (to move, to delight, to instruct), the
importance of the fable (historia) as an imitation of life—the main principle in
both music and painting—and even the tropes and figures. Some of these
essentially verbal devices can be transposed to an art not based on language,
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Preface
but only up to a certain point. Both composers and painters found the general
teachings of rhetoric more useful than its details.
The last chapter traces the survival of rhetoric in the modern novel. In it I show
how the figures and tropes that we find in Aeschylus, Shakespeare, or Racine,
are used again, and to very individual purposes, in novels by Joyce, Orwell,
Randall Jarrell, and other more recent writers. The same point could be made
about modern poetry in English, a topic well worth pursuing.
Finally, in the Epilogue, I survey the current state of rhetoric studies and try to
judge which directions are likely to prove fruitful, and which not. In the
linguistic theories of Roman Jakobson, and in the deconstructionist criticism of
Paul de Man, I find, rhetoric is once again fragmented, as it was in the Middle
(p.xi) Ages, but now reduced to two or three tropes only, or else forced into a
critical theory of opposition and self-destruction. This unfortunate degeneration
of rhetoric in some ahistorical (or even anti-historical) schools of literary
criticism is set against the range and fertility of rhetoric studies which accept
the relevance of history.
Another writer wanting to defend rhetoric might have opted for a briefer
treatment, with more emphasis on the polemical element. It seemed to me
important to include an exposition of the content and emphases of rhetoric as a
coherent system, rather than only describe perversions of it—especially since I
could not assume any shared knowledge among people likely to use this book.
The result is rather lengthy but, I hope, at leastr clearly structured and argued. I
have wanted to convey an accurate overall view while also giving enough detail
to re-create the reality of the text, and show how rhetoric actually works. All I
can hope for now is to find open-minded readers, who are interested to see what
case can be made for rhetoric and against its enemies, and who have not already
prejudged the issues. I invoke the ‘candid reader’, in the older senses of that
word, from ‘innocent of evil’ to ‘generous’, well-disposed. May you read this and
be persuaded by it!
In Chapters 1 and 6 I have used some material that appeared first in my Classical
Rhetoric in English Poetry (1970), long out of print, while Chapter 3 draws on an
essay published in Rhetoric Revalued (1982). In all cases this material has been
rethought and rewritten.
I am grateful to all the scholars, poets, and dramatists from whom I have learned
about rhetoric, and especially to the friends to whom the book is dedicated. They
are not responsible, of course, for my errors or opinions. I should like to thank
Kim Scott Walwyn of Oxford University Press for her patient encouragement of
my work, and Alice Park for her efficient copy-editing. Andrea Eckert and Sabine
Köllmann of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin have kindly helped with the last
stages of typing. I am as ever much indebted to my Zurich assistant Dr Margrit
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Preface
Soland for her care with my manuscript through its many metamorphoses, not
least its final appearance on a video screen
Cambridge-Zurich-Berlin B.V. (p.xii)
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List of Illustrations
In Defence of Rhetoric
Brian Vickers
Print publication date: 1989
Print ISBN-13: 9780198117919
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: October 2011
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198117919.001.0001
(p.xv) List of Illustrations
1. Pisano: The Last Judgement: the Blessed 247
(Duomo, Siena)
2. Donatello: The Feast of Herod 247
(Duomo, Siena: the Baptistery)
3. King Edward VI: School notes on rhetoric 262
(British Library)
4. Rubens: ‘Quos Ego’ (Neptune Calming the Tempest) 317
(The Harvard University Art Museums, Fogg Art Museum, Purchase:
Alpheus Hyatt Fund)
5. Masaccio: The Trinity 347
(Santa Maria Novella, Florence)
6. Bell's Standard Elocutionist: Frontispiece 376
(Cambridge University Library)
I am grateful to the institutions listed above for permission to reproduce
their copyright material.
(p.xvi)
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