Progymnasmata--an answer for today's rhetorical pedagogy?

Abstract

The ancient preliminary rhetorical exercises, called the progymnasmata, are possibly not only a contribution to writing education, but also to our aim for epistemic reflections among our students. They could be received as an introduction to, and practical exercises in a more sophistic understanding of the relation between language and reality, and in a rhetorical vein, of the paradox that tells us that language and reality are totally separate entities, and yet indissoluble united; that we are masters of the paradox since it's up to us to choose the language by which we construct our reality.

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Rhetoric is an old art. So is the art of teaching rhetoric. In the earliest days of this teaching there were no established pedagogical system, every teacher had his own method. During the Hellenistic era, when the Greek culture, as a result of the conquests of Alexander the Great, dominated the Mediterranean region, a need for a more formalistic educational program evolved. It was given the name enkyklios paidea, the comprehensive education. In this education the art of rhetoric was an essential part, together with dialectic and grammar. The rhetorical training was soon organized according to a set of distinguished exercises, which were called progymnasmata, preliminary exercises.

Progymnasmata are specific exercises with an increasing degree of difficulty, starting with the fable and narration, and via chreia and maxim, refutation and confirmation, koinos topos--commonplace, encomium and vituperatio (praise and blaim), ethopeiaspeech--in-character and description, ending with the thesis and proposal of a law. They are mentioned the first time, to our knowledge, in the sophistic pseudo-Aristotelian Rhetorica ad Alexandrum (1436a), written during the fourth century BCE. The Roman rhetoricians are well familiar with the exercises, Cicero as well as Quintilian mentions several of the exercises. The most well-known and spread version of a collection of progymnasmata is Aphthonius' from the fifth century CE. One of the reasons for his fame is that he not only describes the exercises, but he also gives model-texts to encourage the students, and give them something to imitate.

Each exercise follows a set of steps that the student is supposed to follow in building the argumentative text. Take the exercise chreia for example, where the student is supposed to start from, and amplify a quotation. Aphthonius' example is:

   Isocrates said: "The root of education is bitter, but its fruit
   is sweet"
   Praise the one who said the words
   Make a paraphrase
   Explain the reason
   Bring forward an antithesis
   Make a comparison
   Give an example
   Adduce testimony from others
   Conclude with a short summary

One reason talking for the progymnasmata is its inherent pedagogical theory. Implicit suppositions in that theory are that all communication takes place within a cultural context, that this context is characterized by conflicting alternatives, and that the urge to speak and write stems from the desire to affect the course of events. As a modern reader of the program you are struck by how well thought-out the increasing degree of difficulty is, and how easy it is to replace the ancient themes with more modern ones. The ancient rhetorical exercises, like modern writing education, introduces basic rhetorical skills like narration, description, argumentation, and the students are trained in how to imagine and how to picture other peoples life and character in an understanding and persuasive way. And while this happens the students are introduced to world of rhetoric and it's vocabulary.

In the renaissance the exercises were used throughout the educational systems of Europe, and numerous editions of Aphthonius were printed. If you would have asked a European school-boy in the eighteen century who Aphthonius was, you would, perhaps with a sigh, most certainly get an answer. When the art of rhetoric was questioned in the nineteenth century, it affected the rhetorical teaching. The exercises were apprehended as stilted and schematic, and they seem to more or less vanish and be forgotten from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Today progymnasmata have received an increased interest lately. The renewed interest has been primary historical (Kennedy, Kraus, Hansson et al, Church, Woods, Burton, etc), but there is also an increased interest in the possible use of progymnasmata in today's rhetorical pedagogy (Hagaman, Comprone, Connors, D'Angelo, Crowley & Hawhee, etc). Even if there often is no clear-cut line between the two interests, it could be claimed that the latter interest, in a typical rhetorical vein, has been very much a hands-on interest, without much theoretical consideration of why the progymnasmata might well help us achieve the pedagogical goals of our teaching, something which perhaps could be considered as a shortcoming. The present paper is intended to answer the question of why might progymnasmata be a good device in our rhetorical teaching?

To be able to answer that question we must say something about the overall aim of a rhetorical teaching, what would be the salient features, and what would be the possible outcome of such a device? A pedagogical way of making tricky questions more manageable is to construct a dichotomy, something that might help scolars-teachers-students to recognize distinct features they otherwise might have missed. Constructing dichotomies could be very effective, as long as we remember that the dichotomy is a pedagogical construct, a metaphor, and not reality itself.

One such dichotomy opposes rhetoric as an epistemic activity, and rhetoric as a device for influencing one's social surroundings. Pedagogical practice as well as theoretical considerations starting from the persuasio concept-to quote Aristotle: The art of finding the most suitable means for persuasion (Rhetoric 1355b)-could become very prescriptive in its character; rhetoric could be reduced to a number of rules which can help us to be as efficient as possible in our communication. If we are to take the epistemic ambitions of rhetoric more seriously, we rather have to highlight rhetoric as a device for helping us to be aware of differences and see possibilities. One postulate is that our choice of language to denote some given reality will determine how we will perceive that reality. An other is that persuasio has to do with actions--to be convinced or to chose to let something be part of what we call our knowledge, is an action--and the rationale for rhetoric is to guide us, both as senders and receivers, in our choice of actions. A theoretical support for this second postulate could be found in Aristotle's Rhetoric, where he writes, "The duty of rhetoric is to deal with such matters as we deliberate upon... The subjects of deliberation are such as seem to present us with alternative possibilities" 1357a. Facts are facts and not the duty of rhetoric, but what to do, we have to decide; for example, try to create a fact with our language choices. An epistemic rhetoric will stress the importance of that language choice, and the responsibility that follows. It could help us to sense other aspects of the seemingly objective surrounding world, and by that let rhetoric be a tool for conscious reflection over possible ways of action. It stresses, in other words, less a rules governed effect, and more a broader palette to choose from.

The notion of the epistemic character of rhetoric usually is traced from the concept of logos, in which language and thought are inseparable entities (for the ancient Greeks the word logos was used to denote language, thought, and their inseparable connection; an example of the latter is the first sentence of the Gospel of John "In the beginning was the word"--'logos'. 'Lexicon', as well as 'logic', has its roots in the word 'logos'). With this logos-understanding as a central part of an argumentation pedagogy, it is easy to see that argumentation is a means for an intellectual method, a method for the thought, to recognize differences and see other possibilities in our perception of our surroundings. The perhaps most central epistemological claim from a rhetoric perspective is that the whole triad of ethos, pathos and logos forms the ground for a reflected standpoint. Why do I believe that progymnasmata might help us with the epistemic ambitions of our rhetorical teachings? Just because it has been the program for basic rhetorical education for centuries doesn't mean it's automatically a suitable pedagogical choice for us today. On the contrary, you could expect to find good reasons for leaving the exercises behind.

One reason arguing for the progymnasmata is its mentioned inherent pedagogical theory. The progymnasmata also pay respect to aspects other than linear logic when it comes to form a reflected standpoint. It is demonstrated in the importance given to narration, in for example the exercises fable and narration. In modern rhetorical teaching there might be a risk for viewing rhetoric as a battle or a competition instead of listening and really trying to understand an imagined or actual antagonist. The progymnasmata might be a cure to such a winning and losing comprehension of the terms of communication. Throughout the exercises--see the chreia example above--there is an inventio moment, where the students are supposed to formulate anti-theses to their taken standpoints, contraries that could be seen as objections and reasonable counter-arguments, something that facilitates the understanding that there might be something to learn even from diametrically opposed opinions. But most of all, progymnasmata could be exercises in trying to understand, and come to turns with, the significance and impact of different language-choices when it comes to understanding and perceiving our reality, both as senders and receivers.

The transformation of the fable, by making it longer, shorten it, adding dialogue etc., is a typical example of this overarching goal of helping students pay attention to the significance of their language choice. Paraphrasing not only forces students to try to find the main idea and the moral of the fable, but also consider how different language choices make us perceive the transmitted way of looking at the world from a different point of view. But if progymnasmata is that constructive for our pedagogical aims, why were they abandoned? It can't just be due to a historical epistemological situation, such as the inception of modern science or the romantic movement? From the seventies and onward there has, in Sweden and elsewhere, been a blistering criticism of what has been called the knowledge of form, in contrast to knowledge of function. School knowledge has been seen as something formal that you only have use for in school, which is something totally different from how you use language in reality-language in function. The expression to practice swim strokes out of the water, has been used to try to catch that relationship. Even if I agree with some of the above critique, a contextualization of the exercises is often necessary to stimulate a reflection over the impact of the language choice for our opinions and actions.

What are the tools of a rhetorical pedagogy? From one point of view it could be said to be different devices for conscious reflection over what makes a communication-act successful, in other words metacognitive devices in the form of models and concepts that enable us and our students to analyze the communication situation, with its different purposes, senders, audiences etc. Putting it this way, the critique of more classical rhetorical pedagogy as practicing swim strokes out of the water, could be countered with the likewise effective metaphor of not wasting time and energy to reinvent the wheel. The rhetorical functions of the progymnasmata could be seen as recurring in different exercises and in different forms to give the student more and more difficult variants, with the functions forming more complicated interplay. The exercises are general enough to avoid reductionism, and specific enough to preserve distinguisability.

One of the possible advantages with progymnasmata as a pedagogical program is its recognition of both the dramatic and the argumentative character of a communicative act, something which is at the very heart of rhetoric with the understanding of the whole triad ethos, pathos, logos, as grounds for a reflected standpoint. From this point of view, all acts of communication could be seen as arguments for a justified way of looking at the world, and, by that, the justification for some kind of possible attitude or way of action. In the progymnasmata, this double role is found in all exercises. The exercises are parts of a rhetorical training aiming at successful argumentative skills, and the exercises emphasize the dramatic performance of the communication. As already mentioned, one of the many possible ways to work with one of the earliest exercises in the program, the fable, is to prolong or shorten it, inserting dialogue and/or making the moral explicit. The latter two clearly catch this double function of progymnasmata as a pedagogical rhetorical device for both the dramatic and argumentative function.

The perhaps most typical example of this double function is the exercise ethopoeia, speech-in-character, where the students are supposed to write a speech of a historical or mythical person and perform it in a way that makes this person's ethos evident to the audience. Prof. Manfred Kraus had an interesting paper at the ISHR-conference (International Society for the History of Rhetoric) in Warsaw 2001 on the question, why are so many of the examples handed down to posterity ethopoeia with female characters? One possible answer is a strict economical one. If the schoolboys in the future were to write speeches for female clients, they had better have some praxis in how to frame the ethos of a woman. Another reason is the possibility of seeing the ethopoeia as an exercise in empathy, an exercise in not just understanding but also in seeing the world from another person's perspective and feeling the emotions that perspective offers. But the exercise is always understood, or at least could be understood as either part of an argument or as an independent argument concerned with future actions. No reflected standpoint or decision of future action takes place without for example encomium/vituperation, praise or blame.

From a rhetorical point of view, every act of communication gives the attentive audience the role of a judge, and the sender the role of an advocate for the entitlement of one way of looking at the world. The sender asks the receiver to agree with this judgment. Looking at rhetorical pedagogy this way, a key-term is choice. We are able to look at the world from many different perspectives; we have to make a choice, and we must chose a suitable language to be able to understand and deal with the possible implications on future actions that this perspective offers. In the same way, we are as receivers responsible for how we choose to interpret, understand and judge the choice of the sender. To put it programmatically: The main concern for a rhetorical pedagogy is to help us see differences, make the most constructive choices, and take responsibility for those choices (one way of understanding the well-known Quintilian vir bonus-concept), and the role or impact the language choice has in this process.

Focusing students' attention on the decisions that make up a text, the meaning and quality of these decisions, generates analytical understanding of text production emphasizing judgment and artistry, with the purpose of developing the students ability to judge and make good decisions. In some contexts it could be problematic to speak of 'a good decision'; the choice of words could easily lead to the apprehension of one good decision, in line with the philosophical understanding of the singularity of truth. From a rhetorical point of view there is of course no such thing. The rhetorical epistemology could be framed as perspectivism, that the 'truth' and 'a good decision' depends upon the chosen perspective, which leaves us with a number of truths and good decisions. But just because there are a number of right decisions does not disqualify from the responsibility to choose, and there are wrong decisions being made (we have all experienced that, after all). Nevertheless, rhetorical perspectivism is not a nihilistic relativism where everything could be equally good or true. Accordingly, progymnasmata could be seen as a series of exercises which could help us how to recognize the impact of different language-choices on our perception and construction of a reality. I have mentioned a few of the exercises, and I hope the examples were clear enough to indicate that this goes for the rest of the exercises.

Litterature

Aristotle. Rhetoric (trans. Rhys, R. W.). In: The Complete Works of Aristotle. The Revised Oxford Translation (Ed. Barnes, J.). Princetown University Press 1984.

Burton, Gideon. Unpublished paper at the ISHR-conference in Warzaw, Poland, 2001.

Church, Alan. Unpublished paper at the ISHR-conference in Warzaw, Poland, 2001.

Conley, Thomas. "Rhetoric in the European Tradition". The University of Chicago Press 1990.

Corbett, Edward J, och Robert J Connors. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. 4th ed. Oxford University Press 1999.

Crowley, Sharon, och Debra Hawhee. Ancient Rhetorics for Contemporary Students. 2nd ed. Allyn and Bacon 1999.

D'Angelo, Frank. Composition in the Classical Tradition. Allyn & Bacon 2000.

Hagaman, John. "Moders Use of the 'Progymnasmata' in Teaching Rhetorical Inventio". Rhetorical Review, 5.1 (1986): 22-29.

Hansson, Stina. Head of the Swedish Progymnasmata Project, sponsored by The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Comprone, "'Elementary Exercises' and In-Process Composing". Freshman English News, 17.1 (1988): 11-13.

Kennedy, George. Progymnasmata: Greek textbooks of prose composition introductory to the study of rhetoric. Tuscalum: Museum Press 2000.

Kraus, Manfred. Unpublished paper at the ISHR-conference in Warzaw, Poland, 2001.

Woods, Marjorie. "Later Middle Ages Poetic Composition Teaching". In A Short History of Writing Instruction. Murphy, J. J. (ed.). Davis: Hermagoras Press 1990.

Anders Sigrell, Umea University, Sweden

Anders Sigrell is assistant professor in Rhetoric at the Dep. of Scandinavian Studies. He spent the academic year 2001-2002 as a Visiting Scholar at the Dep. of Philosophy, University of Texas at Austin. He is currently working in the Swedish Progymnasmata project "From Aphtonius to the Writing Process," sponsored by The Swedish Tercentary Foundation.