Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student

This book is a must-have for all those who wish and need to grasp the essentials of rhetoric and logic. Corbett and Connors allied erudition and teaching experience to guide readers through the maze of terminology and concepts that would elude even the most hard-working, self-taught students. But they practice what they preach: they are clear, simple, thorough and convincing, and they provide you with exercises as well. Now I think I will go back to Sister Miriam Joseph's The Trivium better equiped to understand what she was talking about. Enjoy!

I'm writing this review as a high schooler who wanted to learn more about this fascinating topic, but was not given the opportunity in school to learn it. I studied rhetoric using a dozen or so books on the topic, with this book as my main staple. The book is 'comprehensive', meaning it covers the basics and the theory, but not the actual application, although a few sections within this book intends to do just that. So if your English teacher is doing a great job on making your essay sound better, you might not want to trouble yourself with 80% of this book's content, although the section on exemplary works and figures of speech may be a great boon to your writing style. Certainly the best way to learn rhetoric is to read exemplary works by many different authors and learn from their different styles. However, if you want to learn rhetoric, but don't know where to begin, I would strongly recomment this book.

Rhetoric has come to be seen as a discipline for frauds and charlatans. It has the connotation of artful trickery and deception. No matter what you may think of rhetoric, you engage in it each and every time you try to prevail upon someone to see things your way. Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. Any artform practiced by mortals can be (and is) misused by unscrupulous villains. Those who decry rhetoric for its susceptibility to misuse overlook this point: Rhetoric, properly understood and applied, is the best defense against misused rhetoric.For a good grounding in the basics of rhetoric, the student need look no farther than this textbook. It is not easy reading, but diligent study will equip the reader well for the tasks of analyzing, defending, and making arguments. The book aims at the written word, but the principles apply as well to the spoken.The book divides itself into six chapters:1. Introduction2. Discovery of Arguments (Deciding what to say).3. Arrangement of Material (Marshalling your arguments for greatest effect).4. Style (How best to speak/write your arguments).5. The Progymnasmata (Exercises in rhetoric).6. A Survey of Rhetoric (History of rhetoric from Ancient Greece to modern times).

Make no mistake. This is a textbook, not a leisurely "how to" book on how to write more creatively. The author is clearly oriented towards the classical rhetorical styles of ancient Greece and Rome, resurrected in the Renaissance, and largely a lost art after the Victorians. Despite the textbook orientation, it is a book the unschooled student of rhetoric can pick up and "study." I emphasize "study." One cannot breeze through this book. And, while many of the issues addressed apply to both writing and speaking, clearly this is a rhetorician's skillbook, not a grammarian's. The book is divided into three parts: Part I develops a strategy for speaking/writing as a cohesive whole; Part II develops the modes of argumentation, particularly the syllogism; and Part III, perhaps the least important in today's universe of knowledge, develops the tropes particular to rhetoric. There are better books on each of these three parts, but no book that incorporates all three any better. Take notes. Study. And you'll be richly rewarded.