Blackwell Reference Online

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‘The duty and office of Rhetoric,’ Francis Bacon wrote in The Advancement of Learning , ‘is to apply Reason to Imagination for the better moving of the will’. To that end the art of rhetoric dominated Renaissance culture as it dominated the curricula of early modern schooling. The reason Bacon refers to is represented by Aristotelean dialectic, concerned with those things in life about which we cannot have certain knowledge. Aristotle's dialectic was based upon topoi , or places by means of which one could discover everything there was to say about any given subject. The imagination pertains to the power that bodies forth images and the language that shapes them. It meant using figures of speech to affect the emotions. It was by means of such language that the passions were engaged and the will was moved. Obviously classical in origin, rhetoric for the humanists was a means of attaining both a literature and a civilization comparable to that of Augustan Rome. For the leading sophist in Greece and possibly the first rhetor, Isocrates, rhetoric was a means of teaching Greeks how to be politically and legally effective by means of their tongues. In Greece and again in the Renaissance persuasive speech was recognized as a civic responsibility and the ultimate accomplishment of any individual life. The training itself in early modern schools and universities across Europe, drawing ... log in or subscribe to read full text