Rhetoric

Rhetoric (from Greek ?????, rhêtôr, "orator") is one of the three original liberal arts or trivium (the other members are dialectic and grammar) in Western culture. In ancient and medieval times, both rhetoric and dialectic were understood to aim at being persuasive. The concept of rhetoric has shifted from time to time during its 2500-year history. Today rhetoric is generally described as the art of persuasion through language. Rhetoric can be described as a persuasive way in which one relates a theme or idea in an effort to convince. However, both the terms "rhetoric" and "sophistry" can be used today in a pejorative or dismissive sense, when someone wants to denigrate certain verbal reasoning as spurious.

References

Primary texts

The locus classicus for bilingual editions of Greek and Latin primary texts is the Loeb Classical Library that is published in the United States by Harvard University Press. For other translations, see the bibliographies accompanying the Wikipedia entries about each author.

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see the external links section for online editions of several important works, including"

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:Rhetorica ad Herennium

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:Cicero's De Inventione

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:Quintilian's Institutio oratoria

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:Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique

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External links

• rhet.net--an internet portal for rhetoricians
• Silva Rhetoricae
• EServer Rhetoric and Composition
• Figures of Speech by E.W. Bullinger Systematically Classified
• It Figures - Figures of Speech
• A Glossary of Rhetorical Terms with Examples by Division of Classics at The University of Kentucky.
• PDF edition of Janice Lauer's Invention in Rhetoric and Composition
• PDF edition of Michael S. Kochin's Five Chapters on Rhetoric: Character, Action, Things, Nothing, and Art
• Twenty Special Forms of Rhetoric: A humorous look at twenty non-traditional but nonetheless commonly used forms of rhetorical argumentation.
• An introduction to Rhetoric and rhetorical figures by Paul Newall at the Galilean Library, aimed at beginners.

Online primary texts

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• Online Greek and English editions of Aristotle's Rhetoric
• Online Latin edition of Rhetorica ad Herrenium
• Online Latin edition of Cicero's De Inventione
• Online Latin edition of Cicero's De Oratore
• Online English edition of Demosthenes' orations
• Online Greek editions of Demosthenes' orations
• Online Greek and English editions of Isocrates' Against the Sophists
• Online edition of 1576 edition of Susenbrotus' Epitome troporum
• Online edition of 1593 edition of Henry Peacham's The Garden of Eloquence
• Online edition of George Puttenham's The Arte of Poesie
• Online edition of Thomas Wilson's The Arte of Rhetorique