After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century, European Christendom followed as its successor. Without diving too deeply into the history of the takeover of Christianity in Europe, I am sure we are all aware of how the Church became the most powerful source of influence within Europe. The Church’s power came to control every aspect of public and private life, including what people should read.
In the shift between Roman and Church power, many rhetorical works were lost. Medieval Europeans were more familiar with Roman works than Greek works, creating a gap in knowledge that they could possess. Along with this, educated members of European society were suspicious of the Roman and Greek classics, which were associated with a pagan past.
Once the classic rhetorical works began to be found again, scholars would translate the work to present it to the public, creating a slow spread of emerging rhetoric in Christian Europe. However, later Medieval Scholars would only present components of work that they would deem “useful,” often meaning presentable to the Christian Church.
With these ideas in mind, I would like to pose a question: how can we be sure rhetoric is being represented appropriately in our society when it has gone through so many radical changes through the centuries of its existence?
Although the rhetorical writings of the Greek and Roman philosophers have been continuously translated and analyzed as technology has advanced, I find it still hard to truly define rhetoric based out of an Ancient Greek or Roman standpoint because it is a culture that got lost in the Medieval Ages. Although Christian Europe did eventually move forward to accept works, especially with the help of St. Augustine, many libraries and information of rhetorical works were lost before that time, creating a lack of knowledge of what once was.
Even though we no longer live within the Middle Ages, the feelings towards rhetorical actions in that era are still present in today's society. For example, letter writing is still a quality that is treasured today since it is seen as a professional work of art. But how can we find letter writing so important when the Roman and Greek rhetoric encouraged the voice? The lost texts and cultures from the eras before the Middle Ages has created a distinct lack of judgement in the area of rhetoric.
Rhetoric is an ever changing art, meaning it can be defined by more than one thought. However, I believe our society today would have a much more profound use for rhetoric if the Middle Ages had implemented the ideas that the Ancient Greeks and Romans had. Instead, their voices were removed, causing the creation of new forms of rhetoric while erasing the values of what once was true discourse.
This is an interesting thought process and I enjoy the question you pose regarding the accuracy of what we consider to be rhetoric in our contemporary society. I certainly agree that the things we identify as rhetoric may not be 100% true to what the ancient Greek and Romans defined the practice as. Then again, there were still many discrepancies in the definition of rhetoric in this foundational time. True, our modern idea of the practice is an agglomerated fraken-rhetoric, but I have to wonder if this is more true to the roots of rhetoric than merely sticking with the base concept created in antiquity. Still, it is interesting to consider how the shifting of rhetoric throughout history, such as Medieval Europe, has seriously shaped what we do and don't consider to be rhetoric today.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if any texts were purposefully thrown out. For example, what if there were documents containing the works of Aspasia? Judging by the misogyny of the time and place, it would not be a surprise to me if her works were disposed of--or, even, attributed to someone else entirely! Also, what if there were more documents about the Sophists that were lost on purpose? There is so much knowledge we may have had access to if not for the biases of the people documenting history. I wonder how today's world will look in hundreds years--what will future rhetoricians have to say about the current world of communication? Something tells me they will have a lot to say about the concept of "post truth."
ReplyDeleteJennifer, I think you pose a really interesting question here. Our studies of comparative rhetorics and different cultural rhetorics seem to express that we can't trust that rhetoric is being presented fully. Letter-writing seems to still be so popular as a form of rhetoric today because it allows people who don't typically have a voice to get one. We see "open letters" all over the place, where people can write to an unknown person or a specific organization in a way that they can't speak.
ReplyDeletePart of me wonders if it's good that we don't follow the exact Greek and Roman traditions. While there are many admirable qualities about the way their communities ran, and we can certainly learn from them, there were plenty of issues. I, as a woman, particularly enjoy having the right to vote and speak (or write) my mind today. We wouldn't have that opportunity if we followed the strict Roman and Greek traditions. While the Middle Ages weren't exactly great times for women either, we still had more of a voice and at least somewhat more elevated status than in ancient Greece or Rome. We saw Catherine of Siena rise to a higher position in life because of her letter-writing abilities; if the Middle Ages valued oral tradition more than written tradition, would we still know today who she was?
>how can we be sure rhetoric is being represented appropriately . . ?
ReplyDeletelmao what is an "appropriate" representation of rhetoric? If you mean "more in line with those Greek lad's opinions," then I'd say we are pretty appropriate with out representation of rhetoric. The advent of radio and television have brought us back around to valuing the spoken word. I'd say the existence of the people who call themselves "influencers" more or less cements that idea as fact. Additionally, we play pretty fast and loose with ethics in modern rhetoric, which is very in line with what the Greek's viewed rhetoric as.
Perhaps you mean something more like "the messages of the Greeks and been translated, appropriated, and otherwise altered so many times as to make out modern understanding of them worthless". Well, that's anyone's guess ain't it?
It's so interesting and frustrating to question how destroyed works of rhetoric and writing would have impacted the rhetorical tradition and how it manifests today. It reminds me about how Nazis plundered pioneering works on trans medicine during WW2 that even today impact our understanding of trans and intersex people. Though the time period is different, I think we can assume history repeats itself and that we have lost a lot of works about early feminism, sex positivity, LGBTQ+ topics, and many others that are historically aligned with anti-Christianity.
ReplyDeletei remember in elementary school when our sunday school teacher of my church sat us down and talked about all the different changes to the translations were coming out and how mass and our classes were going to change, i think about this a lot and how translation after translation have changed what the bible said from its original language to the english version we use today, so much rhetorical tradition and works have been destroyed that have set us back, i do not think we can every know just how far-reaching christian rhetoric has affected our everyday lives
ReplyDeleteThe rhetoric that emerged in the Middle Ages was definitely restrictive; the people with the power to influence how we understand rhetoric definitely liked to install rules and regulations about how we should communicate "effectively." This is something I've been thinking about recently--throughout the "history of rhetoric" that we've seen so far, there have been many iterations of guidelines that orators/rhetoricians were encouraged to use, but we can't seem to get a solid grasp on the "True" way to go about rhetoric. This is because there is no true form rhetoric should take; something as fluid as language cannot be condensed into multiple categories and given a set of directions on how to use, though we (specifically Westerners) seem hell-bent on categorizing and making rules for anything in existence. This scientific way of understanding mixed with the Christian European view of "ethical" writing has produced a rhetoric that can be stifling and simply inaccurate in today's modern society.
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