Deck 8: Enlightenment Rhetoric

Question 1

What expectations regarding the writing of women did Margaret Cavendish challenge?

Answer 1

Margaret Cavendish is seen as one of the first English women to write with the intention of seeking publication. She challenged the period's views on the role of women writers, their style, and chosen genres of writing. While most women were expected to write devotional literature, romances, or recipe books, she chose to write plays, poems, philosophy, and scientific works.

Question 2

By what means did Vico think the mind ordered the world and made civilization possible?

Answer 2

Vico believed that the mind ordered the world through the faculty of imagination rather than abstract reason. He believed that human thought began with an ability to make comparisons between objects through metaphor. He traces the progress of human thought through developing metonym, synecdoche, and finally irony.

Question 3

What, according to Vico, was the human capacity of ingenium?

Answer 3

Ingenium is the innate human capacity to grasp similarities or relationships. Vico says that this capacity was crucial for humanizing the world.

Question 4

What were Vico's principal objections to the philosophy of Descartes?

Question 5

What social forces compelled British people to seek education in rhetoric during the eighteenth century?

Question 6

What particular social developments in Britain alarmed Thomas Sheridan? What was his proposed solution?

Question 7

What negative effects did Thomas Sheridan associate with the decline in British eloquence?

Question 8

What were the goals of the Belletristic Movement? What effect did it have on the study of argument as a component of rhetoric?

Question 9

Why was Hugh Blair concerned to develop the quality of taste in his students?

Question 10

What theory of psychology influenced George Campbell's theory of rhetoric? How was this influence revealed in Campbell's theory?

Question 11

How may Campbell's interest in religious questions have influenced his theory of rhetoric?

Question 12

What did Richard Whately hope to accomplish through teaching his students rhetoric?

Question 13

How were presumption and burden of proof related for Whately?

Question 14

What was Maria Edgeworth's response to prominent Enlightenment rhetorical theories?

Question 15

The elocutionary movement of the eighteenth century offered training in oratorical delivery as a means of personal refinement and success. Even though this particular idea may be foreign to contemporary education, is an ability to speak effectively still a path to personal success or social status?

Question 16

Vico argued that myth-in its capacity to organize our experience-was a rational form of discourse and the foundation of logos or argument. What stories told today might have the organizational or ordering status of myth?

Question 17

What, for you, is the significance of style in speaking and writing? Is it important to clear communication? Is it an element in persuasion? If style is important to persuasion, should it be?

Question 18

George Campbell built his rhetorical theory on a particular view of the human mind. We have seen something like this in the suggestions Plato made in Phaedrus about the nature of the human soul. Vico speculated about the mind's development in terms of rhetorical devices. What view of the human mind and its workings might a contemporary rhetorical theory reflect?

Question 19

If she were alive today Margaret Cavendish might be a performance artist. What contemporary parallels do you see to her use of a rhetoric of display, and to her challenging of established norms about what can be discussed and by whom?

Question 20

What is your reaction to Maria Edgeworth using fiction to teach moral lessons?

Question 21

___________________ was a mid-seventeenth century English rhetorician who was not satisfied to write devotional literature or recipe books, had a "natural" or "wild" writing style, and is seen as a transitional figure between the Renaissance Humanists and the Enlightenment period.

Question 22

Vico used the term ____________________ to describe humanity's natural power of imagination to order the world through myth and narrative.

Question 23

The ___________________ Movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries emphasized considerations of style in rhetoric and expanded rhetoric into a study of literature, literary criticism, and writing.

Question 24

Whatley's concepts of presumption and __________________, which required the accuser to create sufficient doubt about the accused individual's innocence, can be seen in our modern day judicial system.

Question 25

Both Kumes and Blair emphasize rhetoric's ability to improve an individual's _________________, or their appreciation of aesthetic experiences, and believed that this would in turn improve one's life.

Question 26

__________________ was a female rhetorician during the Enlightenment period who used her extensive knowledge on both traditional and Enlightenment rhetoric to parody the rhetorical style of men at that time.

Question 27

In Vico's theory of the evolution of human thought through rhetorical devices, which of the following was the final stage of linguistic development?

A) Irony
B) Metaphor
C) Metonym
D) Synecdoche

Question 28

Which of the following is the term Vico gives for a human's intuitive ability to grasp similarities or relationships?

A) Sensus communis
B) Eloquentia
C) Alohomora
D) Ingenium

Question 29

For which of the following reasons did Thomas Sheridan believe that an emphasis on elocution and rhetorical delivery should be implemented in British education?

A) He believed it would politically equalize the British class system
B) He believed it would improve religion, morality, and government
C) He believed it would improve diplomacy with other countries
D) He believed it would lead to finding a perfectus orator

Question 30

Which of the following rhetoricians created a theory of persuasion that emphasized using reason and arguments to convince an audience, and to stir passion and emotions in order to get that audience to act?

A) Hugh Blair
B) Thomas Sheridan
C) George Campbell
D) Richard Whately

Question 31

Which of the following is not one of the psychological faculties George Campbell borrows from Bacon and Locke to shape his view of rhetoric and psychology?

A) Imagination
B) Will
C) Understanding
D) Eloquence

Question 32

Which of the following was the term Vico used that meant "rhetorical wordplay or wit" and that he believed was key to the capacity for discovering metaphors?

A) Acutezza
B) Psyche
C) Ingenium
D) Sensus Communis

Question 33

Vico agreed with Descartes' view of rhetoric, and with the idea that only mathematical proofs accessed truth better than rhetorical symbols.

Question 34

Enlightenment rhetorical theory marked a turn away from traditional concerns such as memory and invention systems, and toward aesthetic matters such as style and good delivery.

Question 35

In the eighteenth century, people from the British countryside sought education in rhetoric and writing in order to shed rustic indicators, and as a way to gain upward mobility in English society.

Question 36

George Campbell believed that Christian orators were under less pressure than ancient rhetoricians to persuade others of virtues because God would help Christian orators with this task.

Question 37

The Enlightenment period saw a more concrete shaping of a sense of "the public" and "public domain" which created a model of rhetoric as participation in the public sphere rather than oratorical competition.

Question 38

Vico's work on myth and narrative and their ability to shape civilization was largely ignored in his own day as myth was often dismissed by Enlightenment thinkers.

Question 39

Provide the term for the following definitions:
-The innate human capacity to grasp similarities or relationships, as discussed by Vico.

Question 40

Provide the term for the following definitions:
-The rhetorical device or trope in which the part substitutes for the whole.

Question 41

Provide the term for the following definitions:
-Rhetorical movement in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that emphasized considerations of style in rhetoric.

Question 42

Provide the term for the following definitions:
-The responsibility to bring a case against the status quo sufficient to challenge its enjoyment of presumption.

Question 43

Provide the term for the following definitions:
-Eighteenth-century term for reasoning from evidence to more or less probable conclusions on practical issues; the kind of reasoning employed in rhetoric, and appropriate to issues such as those presented by politics, ethics, religion, and economics.

Question 44

Provide the term for the following definitions:
-A "pre-occupation of the ground," in Whately's terms. An idea occupies its place as reasonable or acceptable until adequately challenged.

Question 45

Provide the term for the following definitions:
-In Kames and Blair, a developed appreciation of aesthetic experiences.

Question 46

Provide an overview of Vico's thinking on the role of ingenium in the development of human societies, and of rhetorical tropes in the development of human thought.

Question 47

Identify the negative effects that Thomas Sheridan associated with the decline in British eloquence during the eighteenth century. What movement did Sheridan help to initiate to counteract these effects?

Question 48

How does the belletristic movement represent an expansion of the boundaries of rhetoric? Identify two writers connected with the movement.

Question 49

What, for Hugh Blair, was meant by the term "taste"? What benefits did he believe developing taste would bring?

Question 50

What theory of psychology influenced George Campbell's theory of rhetoric? How was this influence revealed in Campbell's theory of persuasion?

Question 51

In what ways might Richard Whately's view of rhetoric be seen as similar in conception to that of St. Augustine?

Question 52

Explain the relationship between presumption and burden of proof in Whately's theory of argument.

Question 53

Identify the various social forces that compelled British people to seek education in rhetoric during the eighteenth century. Identify two major rhetorical movements during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries that were educational in nature, and the methods and goals of each movement. Link specific authors and works to each movement.

Question 54

Compare and contrast the rhetorical theories of Giambattista Vico, George Campbell, Hugh Blair, and Richard Whately. What were the specific concerns or goals of each? What would a student of rhetoric have learned from each writer? Which theory do you find the most interesting, and why.