The "So What" Question for Medieval Rhetoric

For last week’s post, Dr. Rice asked two profoundly relevant and fundamental questions germane to our course: ‘What do we take from reading medieval rhetoric in contemporary times?’ and ‘What lessons have we learned from them?’ In this week’s post, I’ll attempt to answer these questions, and I’d welcome your feedback and insights.

A glib answer would be that to understand the present sometimes negative view of rhetoric we need to understand its past, but that is an oversimplification of what is a complex answer. 

While Medieval times saw the rediscovery of classical Greek rhetors (e.g. Aristotle) the classical Roman rhetors (e.g. Quintilian and Cicero) were lost until the Renaissance. Medieval rhetors such as Augustine saw classical rhetoric as useful in the promulgation and support of Christianity. Instead using rhetoric as a tool to support the government, Medieval rhetors used it save souls. They also relied heavily on classical rhetoric’s prescriptive formulae for discourse (for both speaking and writing).  Medieval universities taught the “classical trivium”: grammar, rhetoric, and dialectic, and spent a lot of effort on getting their students to know “the rules”. 

[To digress for a moment, you may care to look up Mashall McLuhan’s groundbreaking thesis, The Classical Trivium, The Place of Thomas Nashe in the Learning of His Time, which is the very first interpretation of the Elizabethan writer Thomas Nashe, and which challenges his reader to accept a new direction for education: bring back the classical trivium! The ideas that would later shape McLuhan’s media analysis are also present here, as he details the use of grammar, dialectic, and rhetoric in classical learning. ]

Grammar, however, meant not just the rules for writing but also for style.  Rhetoric also was concerned with style, and the study of both of these gave the student the necessary grounding for the study of dialectic (oral argumentation on historical, religious, or legal issues)...and an excuse for public display. Then came the ars dictaminis, the art of composing letters, and ars praedicandi, the art of preaching. A good example of the ars dictaminis is Galileo’s Letter to Christina (see my previous post and responses). The first example of the ars praedicandi is thought to be Alan of Lille’s (1) set of 27 model sermons. Rhetoric also found an application in Medieval poetry (Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales come to mind).

Sermonizing, à la ars praedicandi, is certainly with us today—listen to any Evangelist and you will hear echoes of the past.  Argumentation, particularly legal argumentation, is also with us in our law courts and political arenas. Poetry, well that’s certainly still with us, although modern verse could be thought to be a rebellion against “the rules” imposed on it (not being someone who fully appreciates poetry unless it “rhymes”, I may be wrong here).

So what lesson can we learn from Medieval rhetoric that we can use today?   Rhetoric gives us a  framework,  a set of rules, so that we can express our thoughts clearly and in the right manner.  And as technical communicators, isn’t that what we strive to do?

(a) Alan of Lille. (d. 1203), poet, theologian, and preacher. He probably studied and taught at Paris c.1150–c.1185. Later he moved to the South of France and towards the end of his life entered the abbey of Cîteaux. His early theological writings include the incomplete Summa Quoniam homines, the Regulae caelestis iuris, in which he tries to state theological truths in a series of rules or axioms, and the allegorical poem Anticlaudianus (1182–3). He later compiled a dictionary of Biblical terms with literal, moral, and allegorical interpretations, an Ars praedicandi, to which was attached a set of 27 model sermons, and a Liber poenitentialis, the earliest medieval manual for confessors. 

From: E. A. LIVINGSTONE. "Alan of Lille." The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church. 2000. Encyclopedia.com. 15 Oct. 2010 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.