August 20, 2008, 10:45 am by Ian

Crowley and Hawhee’s first chapter in Ancient Rhetoric was great as a refresher to the broad implications of rhetoric of the past and the present. It was great to reread the history of how rhetoric came to be, recalling the “pillars” of ancient rhetoric, and reading a fair analysis of the state of modern rhetoric.

Although the first chapter serves well as a refresher on the finer points of rhetoric and composition, I was glad to find new terms and information that I had not heard of before in my other classes; commonplace (progymnasmata) is one such term. Although this term is something I should have learned long ago, I found it helpful to see that rhetoricians of the past had a term for inconclusive drivel that modern debates usually devolve into. The examples illustrating progymnasmata opened my eyes to the amount of discourse in my daily life that is validly open to debate and observation. I find commonplace assumptions to be an unfortunate natural part of regular discussion, and it interests me what other commonplaces are being overlooked in daily discourse.

I was confused my some of the examples used in the section “Just the Facts Please”. The example of instant replay and the NFL had some deep, almost philosophical air to it. Indeed the examples fairly placed the idea of testimony over perspective in a good light, the whole logic equation did make me stumble and reread this section more than once.