Vesna Tomovska

Classical Rhetoric

Preface

The classical rhetoric constitutes the fundamentals of any other augmented or in conceptual terms altered rhetoric. The relation of memorizing and transforming the roots, the beginnings and the principles, is not a formal one nor was it declaratively maintained within the history of intellectual phenomena. The classical rhetoric, as a developed system of skills in discursive communication, essentially defines and permanently informs all the elements and relations of the verbal intercourse. While as a historical occurrence its inception and development makes part of a concrete space and time, the universality of its subject is surpassing the framework of the rhetoric's  historical concretization. Of far greater importance than merely qualifying the subject is the state of comprehensiveness and thoroughness of the classical rhetoric system. This treasury of theoretically approached and systematized phenomena  of practicing the speech in different sets of circumstances, represents an archive of the pertinent facts for understanding, interpreting and describing every verbal form.

The context of the classical antiquity surrounding the act of speaking and the oratory impelled the definition of the rhetoric in two directions: first, the rhetoric is an art of public discourse; second, the rhetoric is an art of persuasion by words. These generalized, no named definitions are summarizing the basics of the classical rhetoric theoretical interests and, subsequently, of every other rhetoric. Namely, as an art of speaking, the rhetoric investigates the capacity of the language in composing a form with particular capabilities for communicative relations. Therefore, fields which are today considered to be academic disciplines of specialized knowledge - linguistics, stylistics, aesthetics, criticism, narratology - are actually the native ground of the classical rhetoric. On the other hand, the rhetoric as an art of verbal persuasion reigns supremely (one would add - for a reason) over a very important field of logic and logical argumentation, ever since Aristotle joined rhetoric and the dialectic into an inseparable whole.

This book, entitled Classical Rhetoric, aims to offer an authentic and auctorial overview of the classical rhetoric as perceived in the synchronic and diachronic perspectives. The overview of the rhetorical system adheres to the conventional and lasting standard of requirements for documentation and systematization of the instances of the rhetoric during the age of classical antiquity. The content is presented in several larger thematic sections: Branches of Oratory (Genera causarum), Canons of Rhetoric (Partes artis), Arrangement (Partes orationis), Persuasive Appeals and Style (Elocutio). The instructive layer of the text is sourced from the writings of the classical authors on the rhetoric, mainly from Aristotle (The Art of Rhetoric), Cicero (On Invention, Orator, On the Orator), Quintilian (Institutes of Oratory). All aforementioned textual fragments were translated from Greek and Latin by the author of this book.

There are two, arguably, pivotal figures of the classical rhetoric that were selected to illustrate the diachronic overview: Aristotle and Quintilian. The first stands for the birth and the second one for the apogee of the classical rhetoric. The Aristotle’s The Art of Rhetoric, for the first time in the antiquity, that is to say, for the first time in the European civilization, is mapping the rhetorical system and its basic areas: the three kinds of oratory, the elements of the speech and the canons of the rhetoric. However, his most important contribution to the rhetoric is the theory of that which is convincing in a discursive context - a theory founded upon the rhetorical argumentation or the theory of that which is strong argument, proven in a convincing manner. On the other hand, notwithstanding his obvious didactic intention, in the Institutes of Oratory Quintilian compiled an ancient history of classical rhetoric. Namely, the author presents the didactic, that is to say, the rhetoric content as a pattern of chronologically ordered instances from the various systems of the classical rhetoric, then he proceeds commenting the contemporary accounts and explaining his preference for particular definition, notion, term that he deems to be the most suitable constituent of the body of rhetoric learning materials. Written in an accessible language and, in temporal terms, not so distant, this work of Quintilian is the first promoter of classical rhetoric in the Renaissance, wherewith its content breaks out the framework of the authentic and autonomous inception.

Notes about the rhetoric identity of Aristotle and Quintilian in this text are accompanied by a detailed overview of their rhetorical treatises, thus allowing insight into their content proper.

Во овој труд предмет на обработка е една епистола (4.) од збирката "Хероидес" на Овидиј и една трагедија од Еврипид-"Хиполит". Поврзувањето на овие облици се препорачува од митолошката традиција на содржините, но она што инспирира продлабочена и разграната херменевтичка постапка е можноста за нивно структурно поврзување и преплетување во единствен книжевен облик. Имено, независно од intentio auctoris ова женско писмо на Овидиј открива интертекстуална потенцијалност да стане дел од женската драма на Еврипид во некаква нејзина преддрамска состојба. Дополнително, оваа метасоработка на два книжевни облика од различна културна провениенција има капацитет да генерира интергенерички сличности и зависности условени токму од епистолата како еден хибриден или како еден обединувачки жанр.

This writing is an analysis of an epistolary poem (4.) from the collection "Heroides" by Ovid and of the tragedy "Hippolytus" by Euripides. The connection between these two poetic forms can be made on the basis of the mythological tradition regarding the content. However, what enables a deeper and broader hermeneutic analysis is the possibility to connect them in terms of their structure and intertwine them into a unique poetic form. Namely , regardless of the intentio auctoris, this female letter by Ovid has an intertextual potential to become part of Euripides' female play in a certain form of a pre-play. Furthermore, this meta collaboration between two poetic forms from different cultural provenances has the capacity to generate intergeneric similarities and dependences enabled by the letter, as a hybrid or unifying genre.

The title of this paper invites the famous René Magritte's painting The Treachery of Images to suggest the basic thesis of this research. We can recognize Magritte's urge to warn and clearly distinguish the different ontological belonging of the painting and the object it represents as a methodological intention in two illustratively powerful philosophical topoi of Plato's philosophical system. 1. In the dialogue Cratylus Plato tends to differentiate the word from the object it refers to and commence a discussion on the "correctness of names". 2. In Phaedrus (275d) Plato clearly distinguishes the different capacities of expression and correctness with the written and spoken (verbal) word. What links Plato to Magritte is not only the establishment of the existence of "treachery", but this particular field of the visual used by these two authors to warn about a certain differentiation in the ontological belonging of the painting and the painted. Magritte's visual concretization is manifested with Plato as a semiotic equivalent of his visual vocabulary which he uses to present these ontological distinctions.

The intention of this paper is to observe Plato's Epistles as a unique epistolary message. The idea stems from the similarity of the topics covered in the letters, their intertwining, and even the fragmentary repetition of content, given the time frame in which they were written and the referent events characterized by a limited chronotope. The multiplication and perpetuation of the partnership between philosophy and politics lay the foundation of Plato's Epistles. The productivity of this union is investigated from a rhetorical perspective with the application of the rhetorical devices the author himself used in the letters as a strategy to provide a persuasive argument for his efforts to permanently unite philosophy and politics as the supreme good in the establishment and maintenance of an institutionalized community.

The endeavor of providing a precise and comprehensive definition of the rhetoric, from antiquity to the present day, remains inside the limits of an ongoing activity and has, consequently, produced numerous disparate interpretations and articulations. This situation is a result of a longstanding and uninterrupted rich tradition of the rhetoric, of its interrelation with other disciplines and of its capability to continually generate new fields of research and specialization.Definitions offered by the authors of the antiquity, may be divided in two categories and reduced to two generalized definitions:1. Rhetoric is an art of civic discourse and 2. Rhetoric is an art of persuasion by words. Neither the antiquity nor the centuries that followed ever pro-posed a single and constant definition of the rhetoric. However, the numerous attempts to give a strict and comprehensive description of the rhetoric in the antiquity emphasized several basic components of its identity. These are as follows: the art, the persuasion, the public and the language as a particular linguistic form. Each of these components is the object of research of different disciplines which continue to maintain the rhetoric's vitality and capability of innovating other intellectual fields.

In the Cratylus dialogue the etymological argumentation relying on the obvious convincingness of the etymologies in the discussions on the correctness of names is bounded by two poetics of the names. The first one [387c-390e], in the introductory part of the dialogue, in the first Socrates' "monologue", with an affirmative support to Hermogenes prepares and motivates the long line of etymologies that function as examples in the argumentative process. The second poetics [423b-425b, 430b-433d], positioned at the closure of the discussion, when Socrates addresses Cratylus, closes and, in a way, concludes the presented content of the etymological proofs on the accuracy of names. The position these two poetics assume in the Dialogue and their relation to the etymological line, one as the introduction and the other as the conclusion, necessarily define their discreetly implied argumentative role and influence. Namely, the first poetics is meant to reexamine Hermogenes' claim that names are conventions set by the people, that they occur accidentally and customarily, and to announce the examples that will prove that there is a more substantial connection between the names and the objects than the mere accidental choice. The second poetics, on the other hand, is meant to relativize Cratylus's conviction that names have their natural accuracy and that they correspond to what they denote and, based upon the already examined examples to point to the questionable claim that the essence of the denoted can be comprehended through the simple and seemingly natural equation between the name and the object based upon linguistic analogies.

The poetics of the onomatologist, the one who devises names, and the onomatician, the one who gives names, are not defined in a precise interrelation. These two poetics are not the point of the discussion; they have a mediative role to call forth the process of naming as an establishment of a certain relation between the names and the objects. The poetics of the onomatologist points the attention towards the paradigm of the idea of the name as the carrier of the object essence upon which the name is devised. Thus, naming is defined as a procedure with a bigger responsibility towards the one that is being named. The poetics of the mimesis, according to which the name is a verbal representation of the object, questions the possibility of completely reflecting in the name the content of the object and points to the correctness according to a manifestation of chosen elements as carriers of the object identity. Thus, naming is released of the duty to find a natural connection between the name and the object as a precondition to correctness.

The literary fabric of the epic poem Odyssey is organized by the two elements of an odyssey, the voyage and the return. The themes of the return (book 1-7 and 12-24), in the compositional scheme of the Odyssey, surround or girdle the voyage (8-11) which clearly shows the circular composition of the epic. The work devised as such points not only to the presence of an author, but in this particular case, also to a cognizant attitude towards the mythological heritage and the skill in devising a poetic entirety.

The literary themes of the Odyssey, concentrated upon the motif of return and the motif of voyage, are not found in the same layer of the mythological mass, neither are they a product of an identical building procedure. The voyage Odysseus tells about during the feast at king Alcinous (8-11) consists of numerous episodes found by the Poet in the mythological storage, especially in its deeper layers. Their ancientness, their proximity to the primeval, their intactness by the literary intervention is proved by their fairy, supernatural, sorcery features. The author finds the numerous episodes of the voyage unbound in the mythological heritage and binds them into a narratological string by introducing the integrating character of Odysseus who appears to be the carrier of the plot of all the mentioned ventures.

The other element of the odyssey, the return, is brought into the literary space of the epic also from the anonymous, pre-authorial tradition, but unlike the voyage, it is to be found in the younger layers. The motif of the hero's return home after a long absence was literary very active in the epical oral works and rendered an entire series of poems. The poems that literary communicate the return of an Achaean hero form the Trojan War are memorized in the tradition under the collective title Nostoi. 

The presence of the Poet is evident in the organization of the inherited mythological and literary tissue into a single poetic whole. Odysseus' voyage is situated in the very pivot of the epic, but it was not assigned a lot of space, only four books out of a total of twenty-four. This condensing of the matter has its rhetorical justification. Namely, the linearity of the episodes that by their narratological nature possess the wideness, or endlessness, to fill in a huge epical space, are narrowed by the Poet into a closed whole and the themes are organized into a minimalist form of a reportage. Thus, the voyage of Odyssey becomes a tale within a tale of his return. In such literary circumstances, the centripetal aspect of the events related to Odysseus' return to Ithaca can integrate the episodes of the voyage, which by their nature pertain to a completely opposite kind of orientation. The centrifugal aspect disperse the character around the unknown parts of the wide and unexplored Sea, driving him away from Ithaca. The return of Odysseus is meant to pick up the scattered themes and aim them at stabilizing within a single literary form with a circular composition.

The aim of the author of the treatise On Sublimity was to write a genuine τεχνολογία (1.1.) on sublimity in response to an earlier treatment of this subject by Caecilius. The main question that is stated at the very beginning of the discussion is whether there is ὕψους τις (...) τέχνη (2.1.). The term τέχνη is defined throughout the treatise 1. As part of the creative process in cooperation with nature/gift and 2. as θεωρία and ἐπιστήμη of the object of the creative process. The τέχνη is the main part of the three sources of sublimity, namely the proper construction of figures, nobility of diction and dignified and elevated composition (8.1.). But, τέχνη is as well part of the two other constituents of the sublimity which are for the most part congenital, namely the ability to conceive great thoughts and powerful and inspired emotion (8.1.). The discussion of the sources of the sublimity has a kind of conclusion in the state that the perfection of the work depends on the conjunction of the nature/gift and the τέχνη (36.4.). Finally, according to the content of the treatise, the τέχνη also participates in the process of the reception of the literary text. The persuasiveness of the text depends upon the πειθώ and the ἔκστασις as the two different reactions to the two different levels of the text, one emotional and the other which depends on τέχνη (1.4.). The treatise On Sublimity shows in actu that the answer on the question of the beginning, whether there is a τέχνη of sublimity, is an affirmative one. So, it seems possible to suppose that the word τέχνη was a part of the title of the treatise and that the title once was Περὶ ὕψους [τέχνης] or [Ἡ] περὶ  ὕψους [τέχνη].

In the Pindar’s epinikion the poet and the victor belongs to each other. This relationship comes from unbreakable connection between the victory and the song and it is a part of contextual elements of the form. The closeness of the poet and the victor within the poem is based on the fact that they own the power that the other people do not. Pindar believes that the victory is manifestation of the arete, and the poem is manifestation of the wisdom. Both, the arete of the victor and the wisdom of the poet are the gifts from the gods and they can be not learned. The Pindar’s epinikion embody the relationship between the poet and the victor as the guiding structural principle of the poem.

The violation of the female by the male, which upset the orderly arrangement of polis and, at the same time, is a crime against the oikos, provokes female action in comedy. The women who set the plot in motion do not become male, even they plan to act in social (male) context. They remain their own female characteristics; their action is typically female and is aimed at a feminine goal (harmony, love and co-operation).

A detailed analysis of the creative method applied by Aristophanes in his comedies, shows a possibility for the same method to be used as a mode of examination not only of his comedies, but also of any literary text. Although we are dealing here with two different kinds of text, fictional (comedy) and nonfictional (literary criticism), this specific method of analysis seems to eliminate the differences. The method shows a clear tendency to annul the traditional relations between all participants in the literary communication, as a relation between subject and object. The result is a widely open possibility to create a complex text with various meanings, which presupposes the simultaneous use of many interpretative modes.

In Aristotle's Rhetoric the laughable is not a marginal phenomenon. First of all, the laughable is defined through its concretization, the laughter, and the laughable things as one of the things that are pleasant and bring the soul into a state of happiness. In Rhetoric Aristotle also refers to his definition of the laughable in Poetics where it is defined by its anthological essence as a particular defect, failure and disgrace that does not involve pain. Depending on the context, Aristotle relies upon either one or the other definition when describing this phenomenon in the rhetoric system. The laughable is a phenomenon that determines one of the possible states of the character of the listeners to the oration, which means that it participates in the process of persuasion, in its aspect regarding the properties of the audience. The laughable, as a concretization of the laughable talk, that is jests, is directly and quite often included in the linguistic idiom as a powerful means of modeling the meaning of the words intended to render certain influence upon the listeners. The laughable also plays a particular role in the segments of the oration: in the Introduction and, which is especially significant, in the Argumentation. Therefore, the laughable in the rhetoric of Aristotle, and therefrom imported by the other rhetoric concepts, is dispersed throughout different rhetoric fields as a powerful generative factor in the comprehensive and manifold process of persuasion.

Aristotle's rhetoric and poetics can be considered on several levels. First of all, as a chronological relation between the two discussions, which is part of the broader field of study of the tradition of Aristotle's corpus of works. Further on, as a comparative deliberation of Aristotle's rhetoric and poetic concepts within his philosophical system. And finally. a third form of observation is also possible, referring to Aristotle's discussion Poetics and its rhetoric, or more precisely, its rhetoricalness.

If we consider carefully the texts of Poetics and Rhetoric, we can see a confusing instance of intercrossed references which occur through the formulation οἱ (λόγοι) περὶ ποιητικῆς/ περὶ ῥητορικῆς. This plural is understood by some philosophers as reference to different and other discussions composed by Aristotle which refer to these topics and which could also include Rhetoric, that is, Poetics, but which could also be excluded from the mentioned group. But, we can assume that the notes in Rhetoric and Poetics, in the form of the text as we know it today, were made in different periods of his academic career. Therefore, we can not establish a clear and precise relation of chronological preference of one discussion over the other, since the intercrossed references point to their simultaneous time of origin.

The intercrossed references in Aristotle's Poetics and Rhetoric point to the closeness of their contents and the possibility of their collaboration. This is mostly due to the generic kinship of these two intellectual fields which are on the Aristotle's philosophical map marked with the notion τέχνη, which integrates the skillful production and the expertise knowledge, where the knowledge is a precondition for the production.

Among the numerous generic markers of these two intellectual skills, the thought (διάνοια) is a field of research where the theoretical interest of the rhetoric and poetics overlap. The descriptions of this feature, which can be seen in Poetics [1450b11-2], judging by the choice of referent notions (proving, general opinion), seem as if quoted from Rhetoric. The absence of a precise guideline in the text of the discussion points to the Philosopher's spontaneous attitude towards the rhetoric as an academic discipline, which naturally interchanges with the contents of the poetics. Being closely related to the speech, the thoughts evolve into rhetoric; so, in the poetics of the drama they make a rhetorical element. The thoughts in the drama, therefore, define the objective of the speech, which is proving, denying, arousing feelings. In other words, the thoughts define the cogency of the speech, its argumentative feasibility within the entities (the fable). And cogency is the key feature that organizes Aristotle's entire rhetorical system and is embedded into his definition of rhetoric [1355b25-6].

The collaboration of poetics and rhetoric is made possible by the speech as a basic element of the verbal communications which are the objects of theoretical observation of both disciplines. The speeches in the drama, either in the form of a monologue or a dialogue, are a kind of orations. These orations can be integral, as the prologues and messengers' reports, or segmented to smaller entities as verbal intercourse among the characters of the drama.

The thoughts (διάνοια) are shaped into orations by means of the linguistic idiom (λέξις, elocutio) which is a recognizable and essential element of Aristotle's rhetoric and his poetics. Aristotle dedicates considerable attention to the language and its creative capacity both in his Poetics (chapters 21-22) and his Rhetoric (book 3, chapters 1-12)

The contents of Rhetoric and Poetics permeate in regards of yet another common identifying element: the performing aspect of the orations, that is, of the dramatic speeches. The rendering of the oration (ὑπόκρισις) goes along with the stage presentation, the performance, or as Aristotle names this activity, the watching (ὄψις).

The most subtle in the numerous relations which can be established between Aristotle's poetics and his rhetoric is also the one which can be discerned as rhetoricalness in the very text of the Poetics. Namely, despite the fragmentation and the damages of the Text, we can clearly see the application of the rhetorical skill to which the Philosopher dedicates a special discussion. The most obvious point there is the author's tendency to compose an argumentatively consistent language form in order to attain his, in this case, theoretical cogency. In that sense, the attention is focused on the point which is in the rhetoric referred to as parts of the oration, and in the poetics as the composition of the entities as the most important part of the poetic, that is, the rhetoric work.

Democritus uses the things which are almost conventionally referred to as divine to denote a special quality which tells of an unusual and non-standardized structure which is capable of behaving and acting beyond the frames of the norm, as a creation of an other, new reality. Consequently, his divinity is not transcendental as Plato's, it has no identity of a force, a power which settles inside the poet form the outside and is only temporarily present, but it is immanent to his structure, to his physiology as a special, unusual quality of the elements and their compositions.

Defined as a theory directed towards its own practice rhetoric points to the possibility for interchanging the area of theory and the one of practice, i.e. to the need of a metamorphosis of its frames. As such, rhetoric is applicable not only in composing speeches, but also in composing other artistic forms based on language.
In Apuleius’ novel Metamorphoses, the presence of rhetoric is seen on several levels: subtext, subject and form. Being a part of the subtext, its elements are integrated into the novel through different kinds of  literary metamorphosis.
By examining the scope of possible meanings of the phrase "vocis immutatio", it can be taken to refer to the poetological way of composing the literary art form, but also as announcing as its subject "milesian" stories – a specific language form, which is to be introduced from the Greek into the Latin literary tradition.
Finally, on the level of form, the novel resembles a speech of a particular kind, the so called diatribe – a fictional speech which serves as a rhetorical exercise. This can be proved through an examination of the presence of various rhetorical phenomena.

Greek drama, though dependent on writing, develops at the point of transition from one system of cultural communication to another, from an oral to a written. Still, Greek drama continues sensitivity to the performative context and modes of oral communication. The Greek drama is completely public, oral and visual; which means it is entirely performance. It presents, or represents, the myths which touch the central values of the society.

The problem of the lost time as time of salvation presented by Hesiod and Plato
is stated in four levels:
1. Hesiod in Works and Days by mythological reminiscence finds illo tempore Dike which is lost in his present times.
2. Hesiod in Theogony in some ritual way returns ad principium end participates events from illud tempus.
3. Mnemosyne: Memory is prerequisite for creative work of poet in Plato’s literary theory as can be find in dialogue Ion.
4. Anamnesis is the basic supposition in Plato’s theory of knowledge.

Обработката на книжевен текст е сложена постапка која опфаќа низа активности. Овие активности имаат задача да обезбедат целосен и компетентен пристап кон текстот, односно, кон неговите, од една страна, текстовни и контестуални чинители, а од друга страна кон неговите книжевни и некнижевни детерминанти. Тоа подразбира претходно ситуирање на текстот на хронолошката и културна мапа на која тој ѝ припаѓа, а натаму, негова деконструкција, или раслојување на составните елементи, при што треба да се воочи и да се дефинира книжевната вредност на јaзичните елементи.