Question 6

What reform movements in education affected rhetorical theory and  pedagogy?  Ciceronianism  |  Ramism

“Ciceronianism” (Erasmus, Melanchthon, and Sturm; source: Judith Rice Henderson, "Erasmian Ciceronians"; Rhetorica, X.3 (Summer 1992))

Emulation of Cicero fueled Renaissance Humanism, beginning in Italy in 14th cen  - Petrarch; Salutati et al.   Cic. style was imitated more rigorously as more works were uncovered, copied, commented on, taugh

Humanism spread north in 15^th century; Cicero was likewise idolized; but reaction set in at that same time against slavish imitation and narrow study of Cicero to the exclusion of other writer

Desiderius Erasmus (1469-1536)

Controversy raged in learned circles in Europe; Erasmus strongly opposed narrow Ciceronianism, published Ciceronianus  “The Ciceronians” 1528; biting attack on other scholars who idolized Cic

Still, Cicero’s theory and practice of rhetoric formed the basis for developing patterns of education in Humanist Latin schools and gymnasia throughout Northern Europe (as it had in the south)

Erasmus was incredibly influential in the way education developed—his publications De copia 1511, De ratione studii 1511, and De conscribendi epistolis 1522 laid out a rationale and method for training boys in the Latin tongue and in classical culture

These treatises written with instructional purposes in mind (St. Paul’s School; private student Robert Fisher) and were required reading in countless other schools. Adoption in Germany by religious and educational reformers gives insight into the role of Erasmus and Ciceronianism in development of educated culture in 16^th cen. Europe. 

Erasmus’s program: teach a method of broad learning based on imitation of the classics, beginning with grammar (language and reading/interpretation of literature; seeing and imitating discourse and stylistic strategies at work in “the best authors”) and extending to rhetoric (putting to work practices learned in reading and exercising)

Letter writing a foundation of writing instruction and rhetorical practice: De conscribendis epistolis concerned first with addressing “schoolmasters” and impressing them with the proper method of organizing and carrying out studies in writing based on letters as the primary genre. (earlier version in print and manuscript circulation for at least 20 years)

Letters discussed in classical terms as “conversations between absent friends” but presented as full orations; E presented his colleagues with the reality of Cicero's (and others') practices in organizing letters as orations in spite of persistent theory among "Ciceronians" that letters must be "brief" and "informal": "The best letters of the ancients were those which were elaborated with the greatest care and skill" (Opus de conscribendis Fantazzi trans. 14); style should be flexible, not necessarily "plain" as Ciceronians taught (15); Brevity is relative to subject matter and time available to write, not to the length of the letter; considerations of audience and circumstances alone made a letter different from a book (14)

Ciceronian concepts such as 3 types of oratory transposed to letters; invention strategies seen as important for letters, even though they could be “mixed” and quite occasional:

Erasmus’ textbooks (both authorized and pirated versions) “copied” and used as source material in new German publications and school curricula in early 16^th cen. (German Reformation scholars also educators—Reformation very much an educational movement; Erasmus admired in spite of his remaining with RC church)

Phillip Melanchthon (1497-1560)—the major educational reformer in Reformation Germany.  M interested in training future "Reformation warriors," preachers and theologians; he adopted the ancient/humanist trivium as the base curriculum (activated in curriculum for new school at Eisleben 1525)—M. wrote three textbooks adopting E’s approach, but adding dialectical element neglected by E.  Letters prominent in study of Ciceronian practice and as imitatio exercises for students

·       Adopts E's principle that "learning the rules of grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic is the first step in imitation" (Rice 284)

·       Rhetoric works with dialectic to enable both understanding and composition of discourse; in 1531 he writes "these arts must be joined together, nor can one be perfectly understood without the other" (qtd in Rice 286)

Johann Sturm (1507-1589)—Gymnasium as Strassburg (became degree granting academy in 1566) became model for humanist schools throughout Europe and Britain. Curriculum totally Cicero-based (10 years of Cicero), far more narrow than E’s model concept.  Applied E’s methods thoroughly, even if not E’s spirit of breadth and depth of coverage of ancient authors. Notable features of instruction include;

·       Total reliance on Cicero's letters as study material and basis for imitatio--familiar letters in the early grades; longer speech-like ones for later

·       Stress on notebook strategies as E in De copia--but subject matter considerably narrowed to Cicero's writings

·       Builds on Erasmus/Agricola/Melanchthon/Camillo's evolving system of commonplaces or topics as means for students to analyze readings

·       Practice of double translation emphasized: translation of a model writer into the vernacular then delayed trans back into Latin; promoted in England by Roger Ascham in The Scholemaster (1570)

·       Intensive study of rhetoric with dialectic in last two years-imitatio remains main strategy

E’s reforms-owing much to Quintilian-helped reclaim broad liberal learning in the North, emphasized mastery of the discourse arts with chief model being Cicero’s pattern of eloquence; the oration remained the main genre, and was mapped onto others: letter writing; eventually literary genres.

In spite of his public stance against Ciceronianism, Erasmus remains one of strongest proponents of the style of learning and civic scholarship exemplified by Cicero, Pliny, and others.  Melanchthon built a German model of teaching that was inspired by Erasmus' brand of "flexible" and practical Ciceronianism; Sturm strengthened the educational curriculum but reduced scope of learning with narrow focus on Cicero  Other lesser teachers followed in E's and M's steps and reduced their scope further (how could they not?) in order to propagate educational methods and curricula.  As some scholars have said, this can be seen as the beginning of turning humanism (active, interactional, dialogic) into the Humanities (fixed body of subject matter, learned as "information")

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Peter Ramus (1515 - 1572)

Ramus objects to the traditional authority of Quintilian and Cicero as theorists of discourse.  (from "Arguments in Rhetoric against Quintilian," Bizzell and Herzberg, The Rhetorical Tradition, 2nd edition)

Quintilian's teaching is based on traditional categories, intermixed with speculation, lore, experience (contradiction and ambiguity)

R's teaching is based on simplified categorization--consistency (attempted) throughout; R refuses to recognize the content or intent of Quintilian's work

Is R being fair to Q?  No--but it suits his plan and makes his point.

Brutinae quaestiones  (James J. Murhpy, ed. Peter Ramus's Attack on Cicero. Trans Carole Newlands.  N.P: Hermagoras, 1992.  3-29)

General complaints against Cicero: his digressions, boasting, reliance on dubious authority of other rhetoricians

Praise of C based on C's actual performance--his speeches are superior to anyone else's, in which C demonstrates the uses of logic excellently.  But C's theorizing on logic and rhetoric are confused and second rate, according to Ramus.

Ramus's Plan for Reforming the Liberal Arts

W. S. Howell, Logic and Rhetoric in England: 1500-1700 (1956)

F. P. Graves, Peter Ramus and the Educational Reformation of the Sixteenth Century (1912)

R's primary focus was to establish true definitions of each of the liberal arts based on principles from Aristotle's logic (in spite of criticisms of Aristotle elsewhere)

Since antiquity, the merging of traditions and varied educational practices had resulted in a confusion of the arts, especially the trivium, in Ramus's mind. Such a confusion had resulted in redundant teaching and long years of repetitive study, as well as confusion about such things as invention of arguments, the definition and use of topics, the classification and "ownership" of the figures and tropes, and the role of moral philosophy.  

To set this right, Ramus proposed to use three laws of Aristotle's Posterior Analytics as principles for ordering the arts in new ways.  Diagram.

Redefining the Trivium

Ramus was the kind of reformer who "used one part of the old order to revise that order as a whole, rather than the sort who abandoned the old order and adopted a new" (Howell 150)

The teaching of each art was built on the three ancient pillars of liberal education which the humanists inherited from Quintilian (although it was first made famous by Isocrates): nature; system or theory; and practice. 

To properly arrange the theory in each art, three laws from Aristotle used as guiding principles are

1. Lex veritatis, "The Law of Truth," used to eliminate propositions from the liberal arts that were only true at times; "to be true, something must be true always"

2. Lex justitiae, "The Law of Justice," allowed sifting out of one art anything belonging to another; "to be true, something must be exclusively true"

3. Lex sapientiae, "The Law of Wisdom," allowed the clarification of subject matter in each of the liberal arts by placing things with their nearest class, e.g. "grammar is an art, not grammar is a form or grammar is an activity"; Thus, the Law of Wisdom is a means of ordering subjects or propositions--hence syllogistic proofs--from the most general to the most specific.  The Law also is at the root of the famous "Method" of Ramus

R's essential reform over scholasticism:

Scholasticism followed Aristotle's two systems of logic: one for absolute truth (science), another for probable truth or opinion (rhetoric and dialectic)

Ramus said there is only one type of logic, since there is only one kind of knowledge although knowledge applies to different subjects. Thus also there is only one theory of invention and arrangement for both logicians and rhetoricians as opposed to two in Aristotle and Cicero; and that theory falls under logic or dialectic.

R's inventional scheme was topic-based, but it reduced the umber of topics from 28 in Aristotle, may more in Quintilian, to ten: causes, effects, subjects, adjuncts, opposites, comparisons, name, divisions, definition, witnesses (Howell 156)

"Arrangement" or "judgment" means the creation of proofs through constructions of syllogisms

Method is the ordering of syllogisms from general to particular, with true progression

Ramus was not a modern--he did not believe in induction as a way of arriving at knowledge. In law, he did not stress inartistic proofs (i.e., evidence as "witnesses"). But he influenced logicians and many rhetoricians to focus on how arguments are made, and he relegated rhetorical emphasis on style to a different class of interests.

Ramus and Rhetoric:

R's lens for viewing rhetoric and the other arts was the scholastic system of mental training and its educational apparatus. R wanted most of all to rationalize the curriculum by revamping the subject matter, which would in turn make teaching more straightforward and effective. To accomplish this, he reduced redundancies between rhetoric, grammar, and logic by strictly delineating their subject matter. The matter of rhetoric was communicating well, in speaking and writing.  He assigned this to the expressive or external aspects, and dialectic retained the internal or cognitive parts; both had been present in ancient oratory for cultural and historical reasons, but couldn't remain so in his new scheme.

In order to gain traction in this cause, he had to confront the ancient authorities head on. This drew attention to their inconsistencies and gained Ramus notariety, even if it was strongly negative in many places.  Ramus admired the achievement of Cicero and even Aristotle (possibly not Quintilian, although he used many of his ideas) but denied that their achievements meant that their subject matter must remain intermingled or current pupils and teachers. 

Problems with R's curriculum:

Walter J. Ong, Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue (1958)

Walter Ong points out that with R's severe truncation of rhetoric, it becomes a support system for dialectic--no "thinking" allowed in rhetoric, so it had to be attached to a suitable art that provided content. But medieval tradition always had taught rhetoric ahead of dialectic in schools, since d. was considered as the more difficult and mature subject. Ramus also did this in his college; but this meant that young boys were learning and practicing ornate expression without the theory for generating meaningful content. Thus a contradiction existed that was left unresolved: how to get young boys to think well enough to perform well in rhetorical exercises and be prepared for the later dialectic while preaching that the art of thinking was primary and that rhetoric embellished thoughts already formed.

Related to this, Ramus's scheme promoted the separation of thought and language in an extreme way.  Where ancient teachers tried to educate the whole person through a long education in rhetoric, the new curriculum of Ramus tried to do the same through parceling out different skills and mental habits in separate arts.  His rhetoric taught the variations in words (and delivery of them with voice and gestures) but not the rationale or method of communicating persuasive ideas.  Words were looked as the clothing of thought; though was its own entity, silent and preeminent; voice was secondary. This presaged later developments in philosophy and pushed the humane arts farther into the past.

Later developments in logic, rhetoric, and culture in relation to Ramus:

The "spatialization" or visualization of discourse and all knowledge--charts become means of codifying the new relationships between subjects in an art.  And the uses of the arts become moe individualized and silent, taken out of the social sphere of rhetoric or even disuptation.  "Ramism [is oriented] toward an object world (associated with visual perecption) rather than toward a person world (associated with voice and auditory perception)" (Ong 287)   Ong implies that the advent of print technology made these changes possible (in controlling space more accurately) and likely (in creating a mental orientation toward individual reading and print documents)

"Ramist rhetoric belongs to a critical period in the history of these Western artes sermocinales and suggests interrelationships between developments in these arts and the development of letterpress printing, the perfecting of the textbook, the burgeoning of a potentially infinite number of "sources" or "subjects" in the curriculum, and finally the emergence of modern science itself" (Ong 288). 

"In this economy where everything having to do with speech tends to be in one way or other metamorphosed in terms of structure and vision, the rhetorical approach to life--the way of Isocrates and Cicero and Quintilian and Erasmus, and of the Old and New Testament--is sealed off into a cul-de-sac" (Ong 291) 

In brief, the ways educated people looked at the world began to shift toward observation, private reading and cogitation--the "I think therefore I am" of Descartes.  Language and thought moved farther apart so that language was less and less regarded as the companion of thinking but the poor cousin of logical internal discourse. (Some attitudes toward written composition in the 19th and 20th century academy may find their roots here.) 

"The effectiveness of the obscure forces at work here can be appreciated only if one remains aware of the obscure and mysterious nature of rhetoric itself....As at its beginning..."rhetoric" in Ramus' day is a complex and somewhat protean product of educational needs and theory, working at its center toward a philosophy of expression, but derivative in fact less from such a philosophy than from a complicated pedagogical situation never entirely under control" (Ong 291).  This situation involved rhetoric as a subject taught after grammar and before dialectic, only to youngsters in a foreign language, controlled by silent written and printed documents composed by people who were mostly long dead.  In this context, Ramistic rhetoric can be seen as one in a succession of curricular reforms--it was never designed to be strong theoretically. As rhetoric never was nor is, compared with other areas of study.