These assigned readings tied completely to the importance of the Enlightenment ideals. During this time period, there was a huge emphasis placed upon sentence composition and being grammatically correct, and the use of exaggerations and colloquial words completely obstructed the true meaning of a phrase or piece of writing. Chapter ten within Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Writers is useful in that it addresses the sort of language devices used within Enlightenment writings. It became of great importance to address and analyze the appropriateness on a given situation, and the gauge the rhetorical strategies based on presented information. The Enlightenment was a crucial time period for the development of grammar, correctness rules, and the overall conventional niceties of language.
The Rhetorical Tradition readings were also interesting during this week. Giambattista Vico is a perfect example of the new ways of approaching intellectual thinking during the Enlightenment. Vico highly criticized Descartes for stressing that math and science are the only legitimate sources of knowledge. Vico believed that the arts and history were of great importance as well, which all affected the world of knowledge and rhetoric. He believed that rhetoric was a superior philosophy of knowledge, based on argument and conviction. To Vico, there are three stages to humankind. The first is poetic, when knowledge is generated by metaphor. The second stage is the heroic stage, where laws are working to preserving the organization of society. The third is the human stage, where human knowledge increases and alters the government of the people.
The segment on Thomas Sheridan is also interesting. He started out as an actor, but became very involved in the field of correcting language, becoming an advocate for the elocution movement. He believed that oratory was important, because it combined the arts with politics, showing a huge connection between the varying ways of thought.
Each of these segments were important, because they stressed the importance of the arts and politics in a connected way, and also discussed the development of language during the time period of the Enlightenment.
I also mentioned the emphasis on correctness during the Enlightenment and the way that specific terms obstructed clarity in writing. I agree with your statement that the readings in the Rhetorical Tradition were important as well because they highlighted the value of arts and humanities that I feel were being unfairly discredited during this time period, pushed aside in favor of concision, logic and science. Humanity is essential to rhetoric and while logic is important, rhetoric is a unique field in that it requires the balance of both to be effective.
ReplyDeleteI felt that this class period helped to clarify the connection between style and language during this time period. The Enlightenment emphasized greatly the importance of clarity, which can oftentimes be lost in colloquial and fanciful language. I think that Vico is one of the most influential writers during this time period, because he truly paved the way to showing the great importance of both science as well as the arts, as being divine pieces of knowledge.
ReplyDeleteI would also agree with Katie and Hannah's views on these readings. I had felt that up until this point in the class readings, logic and scientific thinking were the only supported ways of argument. However, from these readings we see that the Enlightenment period is truly growing into it's own. Rhetoric in this period became more focused on the humanistic approach.
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