Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance Part 2

Although Aristotle, with philosophical caution, was careful to state that the function of rhetoric is not to persuade but to discover the available means of persuasion,[39] his successors were more direct, if less accurate. Hermagoras affirms that the purpose of rhetoric is persuasion,[40] and Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus defines rhetoric as the artistic mastery of persuasive speech in communal affairs.[41] But the anonymous author of the Latin rhetorical treatise addressed to C.

Herennius, long believed to be the work of Cicero, qualifies this by defining the purpose of rhetoric as "so to speak as to gain the a.s.sent of the audience as far as possible."[42] And the sum of Cicero's opinion is that the office of the orator is to speak in a way adapted to win the a.s.sent of his audience.[43] In his definition of rhetoric Quintilian makes a departure from the habits of his predecessors by defining rhetoric as the _ars bene dicendi_, or good public speech.[44] Here the _bene_ implies not only effectiveness, but moral worth; for in Quintilian's conception the orator is a good man skilled in public speech, and there are times when, as in the case of Socrates, who refused to defend himself, to persuade would be dishonorable.[45] Quintilian's precepts, however, are more in line with Aristotle than his definition. He busies himself throughout twelve books in teaching his students how to use all possible means to persuasion. The consensus of cla.s.sical opinion, then, agrees that the purpose of rhetoric is persuasive public speaking.

2. Subject Matter

If then the purpose of cla.s.sical rhetoric was to come as near persuasion as it could, what was its subject matter? Aristotle, following Plato,[46]

says in his definition "any subject," for any subject can be made persuasive. But this was too philosophical for his contemporaries and successors, who saw in their own environment that in practice rhetoric was almost entirely concerned with persuading a jury that certain things were or were not so, or persuading a deliberative a.s.sembly that this or that should or should not be done. Consequently Hermagoras defines the subject matter of rhetoric as "public questions," Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, as "communal affairs," and the _Ad Herennium_ as "whatever in customs or laws is to the public benefit."[47] The same influence caused Cicero in his youthful _De inventione_ to cla.s.sify rhetoric as part of political science,[48] and in the _De oratore_ to make Antonius restrict rhetoric to public and communal affairs,[49] although in another section he returns to Aristotle's "any subject" as the material of rhetoric[50] as does Quintilian later.[51]

Although Aristotle did state in his definition that any subject was the material of rhetoric, in his cla.s.sification of the varieties of speeches he practically restricts rhetoric as did Hermagoras, Dionysius, and the _Ad Herennium_; for here he finds but three kinds of oratory: the deliberative, the forensic, and the occasional, ?p?de??t????. Forensic oratory he defines as that of the law court; deliberative, of the senate or public a.s.sembly; and occasional, of eulogy and congratulation. Perhaps the most ill.u.s.trative modern examples of the third would be Fourth-of-July addresses, funeral sermons, and appreciative articles or lectures. Aristotle suggests that exaggeration is most appropriate to the style of occasional oratory; for as the facts are taken for granted, it remains only to invest them with grandeur and dignity.[52]

Occasional oratory seems to have given no little concern to the cla.s.sical rhetoricians. Since it existed to adorn an occasion, it had to be considered; but unlike the oratory of the forum or of the council chamber it was not primarily practical. Quintilian comments on this; for it seems to aim almost exclusively at gratifying its hearers,[53] in this respect resembling poetry, which to Quintilian, seems to have no visible aim but pleasure.[54] Occasional speeches relied much more on style than did those of the law court and senate, thus meriting Aristotle's adjective "literary," that is written to be read instead of spoken to be heard.[55]

Cicero, like Quintilian, considers these less practical, as remote from the conflict of the forum, written to be read, "to be looked at, as it were, like a picture, for the sake of giving pleasure." Consequently he declines to cla.s.sify this form of oratory separately, reducing Aristotle's three kinds of oratory to two. It is valuable, to his mind, as the wet-nurse of the young orator, who enlarges his vocabulary and learns composition from its practice.[56] Aristotle includes it in rhetoric; for in its field of eulogy, panegyric, felicitation, and congratulation, it too uses the available means of persuasion to prove some person or thing praiseworthy or the reverse.[57]

3. Content of Cla.s.sical Rhetoric

Cla.s.sical rhetoricians commonly divided their subject into five parts.

This a.n.a.lysis of rhetoric into _inventio, dispositio, elocutio, memoria_, and _p.r.o.nuntiatio_ is to all intents and purposes universal in cla.s.sical rhetoric and must be understood to give one a valid idea of its content.[58] _Inventio_, so often lazily mistranslated as "invention," is the art of exploring the material to discover all the arguments which may be brought to bear in support of a proposition and in refutation of the opposing arguments. It includes the study of arguments and fallacies; and is that part of rhetoric which is closest neighbor to logic. The kinds of argument treated in the cla.s.sical rhetoric were two: the enthymeme, or rhetorical syllogism; and the rhetorical induction or example. In the practice of rhetoric _inventio_ was thus the solidest and most important element. It included all of what to-day we might call "working up the case." _Dispositio_ is the art of arranging the material gathered for presentation to an audience. Aristotle insists that the essential parts of a speech are but two: the statement and the proof. At most it may have four: the _ex ordium_, or introduction; the _narratio_, or statement of facts; the _confirmatio_, or proof proper, both direct and refutative; and the _peroratio_, or conclusion.[59] This is the characteristic movement of rhetoric, which, as is readily seen, is quite different from the plot movement of poetic.[60] The parts are capable of further a.n.a.lysis.

Consequently most writers of the cla.s.sical period subdivide the proof proper into _probatio_, or affirmative proof, and _refutatio_, or refutation.[61] And the _Ad Herennium_ adds a _divisio_, which defines the issues, between the statement of facts and the proof.[62] Ca.s.siodorus divides the speech into six parts[63] and so does Martia.n.u.s Capella.[64]

Thomas Wilson (1553) offers seven.[65]

The third part of rhetoric is _elocutio_, or style, the choice and arrangement of words in a sentence. Quintilian's treatment of style is typical. Words should be chosen which are in good use, clear, elegant, and appropriate. The sentences should be grammatically correct, artistically arranged, and adorned with such figures as ant.i.thesis, irony, and metaphor.[66] Correctness is usually presupposed by the rhetoricians. To the sound of sentences all cla.s.sical treatises give an attention that seems amazing if we forget that in Greece and Rome all literature was spoken or read aloud. The sentence or period was considered more rhythmically than logically, and subdivided in speech into rhythmical parts called commas and cola. The end of the sentence was to be marked not by a printer's sign, but by the falling cadence of the rhythm itself.

Furthermore, great care should be taken to avoid hiatus between words, as when the first word ends and the word following begins with a vowel. But the glory of style to the cla.s.sical rhetorician lay in its use of figures.

Here rhetoric vindicated its practicality by a preoccupation with the impractical; and here, as in a.n.a.lysis, rhetoric bore the seeds of its own decay. Although Aristotle devoted relatively little s.p.a.ce to the rhetorical figures, later treatises emphasized them more and more until in post-cla.s.sical and in mediaeval rhetoric little else is discussed. The figures of course had to be cla.s.sified. First there were the _figurae verborum_, or figures of language, which sought agreeable sounds alone or in combination, such as ant.i.theses, rhymes, and a.s.sonances. Then the _figurae sententiarum_, or figures of thought, such as rhetorical questions, hints, and exclamations.[67] Quintilian cla.s.sifies as tropes words or phrases converted from their proper signification to another.

Among these are metaphor, irony, and allegory. In our day we consider as figures of speech only the cla.s.sical tropes, and indeed Aristotle pays little attention to the others. He says that in prose one should use only literal names of things, and metaphors, or tropes[68]--which therefore are not literal names but subst.i.tuted names. For instance in this metaphor, which Aristotle quotes from Homer, "The arrow flew,"[69] "flew" is not the literal word to express the idea. Only birds fly, reminds the practical person. Max Eastman has pertinently called attention to the fact that it is only to rhetoric, which is a practical activity, that these figures are indirect expressions, or subst.i.tuted names. Apostrophe is not a turning away in poetic, because in poetic there is no argument to turn away from.

Rather in poetic it is a turning toward the essential images of realization, as metaphor in poetic is direct, not indirect, because in poetic a word that suggests the salient parts or qualities of things will always stand out over the general names of things.[70]

The last two parts of rhetoric, _memoria_ and _p.r.o.nuntiatio_, are really not permanent parts of rhetoric, but only of the rhetoric of spoken address. _Memoria_, the art of memory, did not mean to the Greeks and Romans the art of learning by heart a written speech, but rather the art of keeping ready for use a fund of argumentative material, together with the features of the case which the speaker might be pleading. The discussion of it in the treatises is usually an exposition of the mnemonic system of visual a.s.sociation, the discovery of which is ascribed to Simonides. Cicero deliberately leaves a discussion of _memoria_ out of his _Orator_, because as he says, it is common to many arts;[71] and the Dutch scholar Vossius in the renaissance denied that it was a part of rhetoric.[72] _p.r.o.nuntiatio_, or delivery, has also been found hardly an integral part of rhetoric. It is concerned with the use both of the voice and of gesture. Quintilian, for instance, records the effectiveness of clinging to the judge's knees, or of bringing into the court room the weeping child of the accused.[73] Aristotle discusses only the use of the voice.[74]

Thus cla.s.sical rhetoric was almost exclusively restricted to the practical oratory of persuasion. In the republics of Greece and Rome a mastery of rhetoric gave its possessor political power; for by persuasive public speech a public man could gain a following by defending his clients in the law courts, and influence the destinies of the state by his deliberations in the legislative a.s.sembly. As long as these republican inst.i.tutions prevailed, the theory and practice of rhetoric continued to be sound and practical.

4. Rhetoric as Part of Poetic

Implicit in Aristotle and throughout cla.s.sical literary criticism there is a clear-cut distinction between poetic and rhetoric. Aside from the metrical form of poetic, accepted by all but Aristotle as a distinguishing characteristic, and the non-metrical form of rhetoric, the essentially practical nature of rhetoric marked it off to the Greeks and Romans as something quite different from poetic and infinitely more important in education and public life. But however clear-cut this distinction may be in principle, in practical application there is rarely to be found such ideal isolation.

Aristotle, for instance, carries rhetoric bodily over into poetic by including Thought, d??????, as the third in importance of the const.i.tuent elements of tragedy.[75] This Thought is the intellectual element in conduct, and in drama is embodied not in action, but in speech.[76]

Aristotle says,

It is the faculty of saying what is possible and pertinent in given circ.u.mstances. In the case of oratory, this is the function of the political art and of the art of rhetoric. Concerning thought, we may a.s.sume what is said in the _Rhetoric_, to which inquiry the subject more properly belongs. Under thought is included every effect which has to be produced by speech, the subdivisions being--proof and refutation; the excitation of the feelings, such as pity, fear, anger and the like; the suggestion of importance or its opposite.[77]

This is a transfer of the content of rhetoric to poetic, but poetic remains an art of imitation. Imaginative realization of the life of man would be incomplete if the characters in a narrative or in a drama did not use the same rhetorical art as do the characters of actual life. The poets justly carry over rhetoric when the scene demands it, and have often proved themselves excellent rhetoricians. Quintilian praises the peroration of Priam's speech begging Achilles for the body of Hector,[78]

and Cicero gives a rhetorical a.n.a.lysis of the speech of the old man in the _Andria_ of Terence, where the arrangement is especially appropriate to the character of the speaker.[79] Norden, therefore, seems to go too far in giving this as an example of contamination of poetic by rhetoric.[80]

Dante remains an excellent poet when he puts into the mouth of Virgil that persuasive speech to Cato in the first canto of the _Purgatorio_. Antony's speech in _Julius Caesar_ is the best known modern example of the legitimate place of rhetoric in poetic.

5. Poetic as Part of Rhetoric

Just as rhetoric is justly carried over into poetic when in the realization of a character or situation a speech must be made or conduct rationalized, so poetic is constantly utilized by the orator. Public speech would be less persuasive if the characteristic imaginative qualities of poetic were excluded. The ideas and propositions of rhetoric would most ineffectually reach an audience if they were not made vivid.

That rhetoric is not thus made synonymous with poetic is due to the fact that in rhetoric the images exist to illuminate the concept, while in poetic they are woven into the movement of the plot. Oratory, like poetry, is emotional, as Longinus a.s.serts.[81] Cicero phrases the aim of the orator as "docere, delectare, et movere," to prove, to delight, to move emotionally.[82] The vividness and emotion, as well as the charm, of poetic are indispensable in attaining the ultimate aim of rhetoric-- persuasion. The orator must be himself moved, according to Quintilian,[83]

just as the poet, according to Aristotle.[84] That essential quality, indeed, of poetic, the realization of character and situation which presents vividly a situation or event to the mind's eye of the reader or hearer so that he seems to partic.i.p.ate in the action and vicariously live through it, was incorporated into rhetoric as ????e?a, a figure of speech.

There petrified in an alien substance, this characteristic quality of poetic was transmitted to another age which knew of it through no other source.[85] Thus a successful orator narrated with descriptive vividness the circ.u.mstances, for instance, of a cruel murder, and even dramatized, speaking now in the person of one actor, now of another, the situation which he was endeavoring to realize for his audience. He was thus enabled better to carry his audience with him to his ultimate goal of persuasion.

But though rhetoric might for the moment thus borrow poetic, and though poetic might borrow rhetoric, the two remained distinct in the large, each conceived as having its own movement, its composition, distinct from that of the other.

Chapter IV

Cla.s.sical Blending of Rhetoric and Poetic

1. The Contact of Rhetoric and Poetic in Style

The coincidence of rhetoric and poetic is in style. They differ typically in movement or composition; they have a common ground in diction. And in this common ground each influenced the other from the beginning of recorded criticism. Aristotle says, for example, that the ornate style of the sophists, such as Gorgias, has its origin in the poets,[86] while the modern student, Norden, a.s.serts that the poets learned from the sophists.[87] The evidence at least points to a very marked similarity between the styles of the sophists and of the poets in the fourth century B.C. This is well ill.u.s.trated by the literary controversy between Isocrates and Alcidamas, both sophists and both students of the famous Gorgias. Alcidamas reproaches Isocrates because his discourses, so elaborately worked out with polished diction, are more akin to poetry than to prose. Isocrates cheerfully admits the accusation, and prides himself on the fact, affirming that his listeners take as much pleasure in his discourses as in poems.[88]

That there are characteristic differences in style between rhetoric and poetic Aristotle justly shows when he a.s.serts that while metaphor is common to both, it is more essential to poetic. Consequently in the _Rhetoric_ he refers to the _Poetics_ for a fuller discussion of metaphor.[89] At the same time he says that metaphor deserves great attention in prose because prose lacks other poetical adornment.

Furthermore, epithets and compound words are appropriate to verse but not to prose. And though both verse and oratorical prose should be rhythmical, a set rhythm, a meter, is appropriate only to verse.[90]

A distinction between the style of poetic and of rhetoric similar to that of Aristotle is maintained by Cicero, but the distinction was losing its sharpness. In the _Orator_ he considers the orator and the poet as similar in style, but not identical. Formerly rhythm and meter were the distinguishing marks of the poet, but the orators in his days, he says, made increasing use of rhythm. Meter is a vice in an orator and should be shunned. The poet has greater license in compounding and inventing words.

Both prose and verse, he adds, may be characterized by brilliant imagery and headlong sweep.[91] The only essential difference between Cicero's treatment of style and that of Aristotle is that whereas Aristotle had shown imagery to be an integral part of poetic, Cicero felt it both in poetic and in rhetoric to be superadded as a decoration. Whether or not this difference was caused by lack of discrimination on the part of Cicero, his position was at least in line with a tendency which in later criticism received increasing development. Both the poet and the orator, he says, use the same methods of ornament,[92] and the orator uses almost the language of poetry.[93] And again, in a phrase which was taken up and repeated for fifteen hundred years, the poets are nearest kin to the orators.[94]

2. The Florid Style in Rhetoric and in Poetic

But the public interest in style was increasingly comparable to that in athletic agility. As Socrates applauded the dancing girl who leaped through the dagger-studded hoop,[95] the popular audience of imperial Rome was delighted at a clever turn of speech, a surprising rhythm, or a startling comparison. Literary study of style in occasional oratory must have been extensive and extravagant at a very early date, to judge by the rebukes of such practical speakers as Alcidamas. Moreover, such stylistic artifice as was practiced and taught by Gorgias, Isocrates, and other sophists crept into tragedy, says Norden, beginning with Agathon.[96] The result was that with the poets style became as it had become with the sophists, an end in itself. The epideictic orators became less orators and more poets, and the poets cultivated less the characteristic vividness and movement of poetic than those turns of style which began in oratory.

Thus it was very natural that the discussions of artistic prose in the treatises of the later rhetoricians should be copiously ill.u.s.trated by quotations from the poets, and that the poets should, in turn, be influenced in the direction of further sophistical niceties by the rhetorical treatises on style, such as those of Demetrius and Dionysius of Halicarna.s.sus, who devoted whole treatises to style alone. The obsession of style is well exemplified by a comparison of Dionysius and Longinus in their discussion of Sappho's literary art. Longinus praises her pa.s.sion, and her masterful selection of images which realize it for the reader, while Dionysius, no less enthusiastic, points out that in the ode which he quotes there is not a single case of hiatus. Dionysius is here much the more characteristic of his age, as he is in his belief that there is very little difference indeed between prose and verse. Longinus, while showing the relations of rhetoric and poetic, keeps the two apart; Dionysius draws them together. To Dionysius the best prose is that which resembles verse although not entirely in meter, and the best poetry that which resembles beautiful prose. By this he means that the poet should use enjambment freely and should vary the length and form of his clauses, so that the sense should not uniformly conclude with the metrical line.[97] In this regard he would approve of Shakespeare's later blank verse much more than of his earlier because it is freer and more like conversation. Thus, to Dionysius, the diction of prose and the diction of poetry approach each other as a limit.

3. The False Rhetoric of the Declamation School

Later antiquity carried the mingling further in the same direction. As time went on, the over-refinement and literary sophistication of the florid school of oratory became more and more powerful. The puritan reaction of the Roman Atticists in the direction of the simplicity of Lysias defeated itself in over emphasis and ended in establishing coldness and aridity as literary ideals. Such a jejune style could never hold a Roman audience, and Cicero in theory and in practice took as model not only Demosthenes, but also Isocrates. As Roman liberty was lost under the Caesars, style very naturally a.s.sumed greater and greater importance.

Bornecque has shown that the strife of the forum and the genuine debates of the senate no longer kept tough the sinews of public speech, and the orators sank back in la.s.situde on the remaining harmless but unreal occasional oratory and on the fict.i.tious declamations of the schools.[98]