Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism by Donald Lemen Clark
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page 32 of 193 (16%)
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realization, as metaphor in poetic is direct, not indirect, because in
poetic a word that suggests the salient parts or qualities of things will always stand out over the general names of things.[70] The last two parts of rhetoric, _memoria_ and _pronuntiatio_, are really not permanent parts of rhetoric, but only of the rhetoric of spoken address. _Memoria_, the art of memory, did not mean to the Greeks and Romans the art of learning by heart a written speech, but rather the art of keeping ready for use a fund of argumentative material, together with the features of the case which the speaker might be pleading. The discussion of it in the treatises is usually an exposition of the mnemonic system of visual association, the discovery of which is ascribed to Simonides. Cicero deliberately leaves a discussion of _memoria_ out of his _Orator_, because as he says, it is common to many arts;[71] and the Dutch scholar Vossius in the renaissance denied that it was a part of rhetoric.[72] _Pronuntiatio_, or delivery, has also been found hardly an integral part of rhetoric. It is concerned with the use both of the voice and of gesture. Quintilian, for instance, records the effectiveness of clinging to the judge's knees, or of bringing into the court room the weeping child of the accused.[73] Aristotle discusses only the use of the voice.[74] Thus classical rhetoric was almost exclusively restricted to the practical oratory of persuasion. In the republics of Greece and Rome a mastery of rhetoric gave its possessor political power; for by persuasive public speech a public man could gain a following by defending his clients in the law courts, and influence the destinies of the state by his deliberations in the legislative assembly. As long as these republican institutions prevailed, the theory and practice of rhetoric continued to be sound and practical. |
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