Connors, Robert J. Essays on Classical Rhetoric

Connors, Robert J., “The Revival of Rhetoric in America” Essays on Classical Rhetoric and Modern Discourse. Southern Illinois UP: Carbondale. 1984.

“The earliest rhetorical instruction and theory in America were not classical in nature; they were informed not by Aristotle, Cicero, or Quintilian, but by Peter Ramus and Omer Talon” =B

“the first ‘revival’ of classical rhetoric actually took place in eithteenth-century America and can perhaps be best associated with John Ward’s A System of Oratory (Longdon, 1759), which Warren Guthrie views as the most pervasive synthesis of Greek and Roman theory then available” (1). =B

“Ironic as it may seem, the growing emphasis on writing in colleges, particularly the shift from oral to written evaluation of students, also played an important role” (4). =B

Scholars of oral rhetoric chose not to be ignored by English departments anymore and struck out on their own to form the National Association of Academic Teachers of Public Speaking. (6).
PARAPHRASE.

“Not until the late 1930’s and the early 1940’s did the first signs of a second revival of rhetoric begin to emerge” (8). =B

“The rediscovery of classical rhetoric in its application to writing pedagogy began in 1962, when P. Albert Duhamel and his collegue Richard E. Hughes published Rhetoric: Principles and Usage” (10).

“The impact of this rhetorical revival on composition studies was confirmed by the 1963 CCCC” (10). =B

“The twentieth-century revival of rhetoric entails a recovery of the classical tradition, with its marriage of a rich and fully articulated theory with an equally efficacious practice” (15).