MIDDLE TO MODERN

THE MIDDLE AGES TO THE RENAISSANCE

After the fall of Rome, rhetoric continued to be important in education and life, and many of the ideas that came out of Ancient Greece and Rome remained influential during the Middle Ages—between 400 and 1,400 CE.

But there was something a whole lot more influential than rhetoric during the Middle Ages: Christianity. And because those darn Greeks and Romans were pagans (according to Christians, at least), a few things had to change to fit with this new worldview.

St. Augustine and the Middle Ages

There was one big figure in the Middle Ages whose views on rhetoric are super-revealing. When we want to know how rhetoric was viewed during the time, we turn to St. Augustine.

Augustine was one of the most influential Christian theologians of the Middle Ages (he lived from 354 to 430 CE). Augustine's education early career were focused on—you got it—rhetoric. Later in life, he turned away from that career in favor of dedicating his life to Christianity. (Source)

Augustine wrote a lot, but one of his works in particular addresses rhetoric. In Book Four of De docrtina christiana (On Christian Doctrine), Augustine tackles the subject. To get a taste of what he had to say, read a translation of the first three "chapters" (all of which are super-brief—no more than a paragraph or two) here.

As you read, did you noticed these phrases?

• "…the art of rhetoric being available either of truth or falsehood…"

• "…the faculty of eloquence is available for both sides…"

Remember how Quintilian was also concerned with the fact that rhetoric could be used for good and for bad? Augustine clearly agreed with him, but to Augustine, the "good" was pretty much limited to the interpretation and teaching of Scripture.

Because of the importance of the Christian church to so much of civilization during the Middle Ages, this view of rhetoric persisted for a good long time—until the Renaissance muscled its way onto the scene.

The Renaissance, the Humanists, and the Rationalists

The Middle Ages came to an end in the 1400s, when the Renaissance (1400-1600) began. This period in history saw the rise of Humanism, which was a movement fueled by a rediscovery of Classical Greek and Roman philosophies, especially the work of Cicero and Quintilian.

Humanism was a rebellion against the Middle Ages and its systems of theology and philosophy that emphasized traditional dogma. The Humanists introduced a whole bunch of new ideas and disciplines that we can't even begin to cover in this short history lesson. What you need to know is that the Greco-Roman study of rhetoric was again influential, and not just in the service of Christianity.

Besides Humanism, the Renaissance's Rationalist movement greatly impacted the way people studied and employed rhetoric—not because they saw rhetoric as paramount, but because they didn't. Instead, the Rationalists put objective, scientific truth ahead of rhetoric. (Source)

Probably because they thought it was more, you know, rational.

THE MODERN PERIOD

While philosophers and thinkers of the modern period (roughly the 16th through 19th centuries) were still very influenced by classical rhetoricians such as Aristotle, Cicero, and Quintilian, they added their own new ways of thinking to the mix. The early and late eras of the modern period saw three distinct movements in rhetoric: the epistemological, belletristic, and elocutionist movements. (Source)

And each of these SAT words brought a different emphasis to the discipline.

Instead of throwing a bunch of names and titles at you from these movements, we're going to stick to basic concepts. You'll probably recognize a lot of them as surviving today.

The Epistemological Movement

Epistemology, a.k.a. the philosophical study of human knowledge, had a big impact on the way rhetoric was described and approached.

Epistemologists asked questions like:

• What does it mean to say you know (or fail to know) something?

• How much do we know?

• Are there limits to what we can know?

• How can we use our reason, senses, and outside resources to gain knowledge?

• Do we really know as much as we think we do? (Source)

A branch of epistemology called empiricism also gained ground during the modern period. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, "Empiricists claim that sense experience is the ultimate source of all our concepts and knowledge." (Source)

Faculty psychology was a view of the mind as a collection of five faculties: understanding, memory, imagination, passion, and will. Philosophers who embraced faculty psychology crafted definitions of rhetoric that addressed the Big 5. (Source)

The Belletristic Movement

"Belletristic" comes from the Belles Lettres movement, which is French for "beautiful writing." The name pretty well sums up what this movement emphasized when it came to oratory: practitioners wanted to sound really pretty when they spoke.

Aww.

Because of the emphasis on aesthetics, this movement focused on developing the style and tone of speaking through structure, syntax, and figures of speech such as metaphor, hyperbole, and all that good stuff you learned about in high school English. (Source)

Belles Lettres wasn't limited to oratory—it branched out into other forms of language and writing, including fiction, poetry, and drama.

The Elocutionary Movement

The Elocutionary movement is the one we hinted at in this lesson's introduction: it emphasized effective delivery. This meant paying lots of attention to the sound of a speaker's voice as well as nonverbal elements of delivery including facial expressions, gestures, body language, and posture.

These Elocutionary guys were basically the definition of "detail-oriented."

The Elcutionary movement was most popular in the mid-18th century. However, there was somewhat of a backlash against this movement. Many began to view rhetoric as a bad thing, because if the Elocutionists were your only model, it started to seem like oratory and rhetoric were all about perfecting a smooth, sophisticated style of delivery at the expense of critical thinking and actually saying anything of value. (Source)

The organized Elocutionary movement died out, but it quite clearly lives on today. In fact, we'll spend several lessons of this course looking at effective ways a speaker can add style and pizazz to his delivery and control nonverbal gestures, posture, and all that good stuff.

Of course, those elements are only effective if you've prepared a solid speech with true informational value, too. You do not want to sound like a used car salesman.

What's Next

We've come to the end of our whirlwind tour of the history of public speaking. So far we've talked a lot about some key figures in the development of rhetoric and talked a bit about what rhetoric is, but we've purposefully avoided bringing up too many specific rhetorical techniques.

We did this entirely to confuse you.

Okay—not really. We did it because we're going to spend the entire next unit looking specifically at rhetorical techniques and how they apply to the kind of public speaking that happens today. (Because we're not sure there's much value in schooling you on the kinds of rhetorical techniques that would wow an all-dude, all-toga ancient Roman audience.)

Even though we'll be taking a decidedly more contemporary approach to rhetoric than Aristotle, Cicero, or Quintilian, they'll still be with us, in a way—lurking in the background and occasionally popping their heads in.