Open Educational Resources
Document Type
Syllabus
Publication Date
Fall 2023
Abstract
Rhetoric has fallen on hard times today. When it isn't disparaged as "empty," it is dismissed as "mere." And so, we have empty rhetoric and mere rhetoric. We have politicians accused by their opponents of delivering campaign speeches full of … rhetoric. The accusation, if it sticks, is usually devastating to the accused. No one, least of all our politicians, appears capable of defending that rhetoric is a prerequisite for democratic government.
But it wasn't always so. This is a class about better times for rhetoric. Times when the greatest heroes of the day—like the fictional Achilles and the very real Pericles—were "doers of deeds" and "speakers of words." Rhetoric was taken seriously by those who loved it because it made democratic government possible and by those who despised it because it made democratic government possible.
I am referring to the "classical period" in the West, which (for the purposes of this class) I shall chart as beginning around the fifth century B.C. and ending around the fourth century A.D. This class aims to acquaint you with the vision of rhetoric during the classical period and to see whether that vision has any relevance today.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.
