The next 11 screens provide an overview of rhetorical instruction as it was handed down through the generations, what today we call the handbook tradition, as opposed to the philosophical and the literary traditions. We might also call it the "how to" tradition. Pick up any first year composition textbook and you will see remnants and hear echoes of what follows. Books about style are also descendants, as are books about public speaking. There's more to rhetorical instruction than the canons, but looking at them is the best way to get a broad perspective on rhetorical education. We will develop these disciplines in detail as the semester progresses.
The idea that there were five canons of rhetoric was a Hellenistic development (323 BCE - 30 BCE). Nevertheless, at least as far back as Aristotle the field had four. Aristotle's Rhetoric does not offer advice on memory as a rhetorical tool, but he did leave a philosophical book called On Memory and Reminiscence.
Here is Cicero on the parts of rhetoric.
Since all activity and ability of an orator falls into five divisions, . . . he must first hit upon what to say; then manage and marshal his discoveries, not merely in orderly fashion, but with a discriminating eye for the exact weight as it were of each argument; next go on to array them in the adornments of style; after that keep them guarded in his memory; and in the end deliver them with effect and charm. (Cicero, De Oratore)
The five canons are as follows:
| English | Latin | Greek |
| Invention | Inventio | Heuresis |
| Arrangement | Dispositio | Taxis |
| Style | Elocutio | Lexis |
| Memory | Memoria | Mneme |
| Delivery | Actio | Hypocrisis |
I'm giving you them in all three languages to underscore how different they are in translation. In particular you should think about the cultural differences between inventing and discovering -- inventio and heuresis, creating and locating.
You can learn a great deal about a rhetoric by looking at which of these offices is emphasized. Literate rhetorics, for example, have always tended to ignore delivery and memory because they seem obviously irrelevant to words written on a pieces of paper. The Enlightenment's focus on scientific method for discovering what to say, coupled with an almost transcendental commitment to the idea of natural facts, objective truths, left rhetoric with nothing but style to teach and it was restricted to the "plain" style, no emotion, no poetry, just the facts.
In contrast, memory was paramount for Plato because he thought truth the ultimate goal of discourse and defined truth as "alethia", un-forgetting. Plato believed, or said he did, that before we are born we know everything but as we enter the world, we have to cross the river lethe and when we do, our memories are erased. Thus learning becomes remembering what was once known. This idea of memory is very far from recollection or memorizing, which is how the rhetorical tradition has tended to deal with the office of memory, but it's a story that reminds us that we can't take the definition of words for granted, and it also underscores an important characteristic of the rhetoric of the period we are considering.
Ancient Greek rhetoric is predicated on tradition. While a unique way of expressing something was generally prized, what was said needed to belong to conventional wisdom to be persuasive. References to Homer as proof for right action were far more likely to succeed than a detailed argument from scratch, for example. The place where this preference most manifests itself is in the idea of the topics, which are patterns of thought and common forms of understanding. See the section on topics for more on this, but the basic point that, "True wit is nature to advantage dressed / what oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed" (Essay on Criticism), although Alexander Pope said it hundreds of years later, is emblematic of conventional thinking in general and Greek rhetoric in particular. Identifying conventional thought with "nature" by the way, is a form of rhetoric if we define rhetoric as any linguistic effort to reify, concretize, or naturalize and thus promote a thought. How can you argue with nature?
The idea that all discourse is based on patterns, patterns of thought, patterns of speech, structural patterns (genres), and sentence patterns is very rhetorical.
At its best and at its worst, the rhetorical tradition has analyzed existing examples of discourse, identified recurring patterns, and then presented the patterns to learners. First you learn the pattern. Then you learn to reproduce the pattern. Then you learn how to embellish or deviate from the pattern. Rhetoric's emphasis on patterns is why it is often thought of as formulaic.
The canons can be seen as forming a pattern of composition, a kind of writing process, if you set them out in the right order.
Each canon is linked below. If you want to read the sections in order, click the Next button at the bottom of each screen. Use the links below if you want to jump straight to one or jump around.