Reflection 16

Rhetoric is one of the oldest disciplines of the entire world. The earlist sophist for rhetoric is found in the classical Greece. Originally, rather than texts the study of speech with the onset of wilder literacy rhetoric became more closer associated with the written word. Students were still required to learn grammar, letter writing, and a more modern version of rhetoric consiting largely of delivery and style. As the writings of Greeks and Romans rhetorical scholars became lost during the Middle Ages. Rhetoric kept losing it's intellectual edge. People put forth a lot of effort but as time passed on rhetorical theory was going through a long period of sad neglect. Even though rhetoric was still a part of the curriculum it was impoverished and most likely limited to the study of tropes or maybe even the figure of speech. Peter Ramus was a person who did a lot to push the margins of rhetoric. He chose to divide the the traditional cannons of rhetoric into a dialect version and a modified version of rhetoric which contained style and delivery. The Age of Enlightment did very little to bring the rhetoric fortunes, even though the rise of sciences during this time wanted clarity. Because of this the rhetoric turned it's back on the study of ornamentation and more towards issues of properness and the ignoring of fallacies even though it stayed a body of technical skills. Rhetoric found an advocate during the enlightenment who try to re-start rhetoric's epistemological dimension and it's overall importance to science and and also to humanities. This person was Giambattista Vico. But just like Augustine wasn't able to pull rhetoric out of the restrictive box religion put on it, Vico failed to save thetoric from the scientific reason of "new religion." Since rhetoric started to specialize in form and style, instead of content, it later on becanme a problem. Rhetoric itself, was imported from Greece anyways. Therfore, it was highly regarded and very suspious. The rhetoric specialty fascinated the adults, dominated the schools, and even gave a style to both literature and oratory. Later on it became a genre of it's own right. Controversia was a more difficult and advanced do5rm rhetoric. It was a made up legal case with a fake jury. It was broken down into three parts. The three parts were: sentantiae, divisio, and colres., Sentantiae were the arguments for and against during the case. The divisio was a skeleton statement of the legal points included. Last but not least, the colores was the conjectures abut motive or the reasons or explanmations for what happened.