PREFACE
To interpret ancient rhetoric and poetic afresh from typical theory and practise is the first step toward interpreting those traditions of criticism which were most influential in the middle age. Medieval rhetoric and poetic in turn, besides illuminating medieval literature, prepare for clearer comprehension of the Renaissance renewal of allegiance to antiquity. Thus the historical survey needed to focus many important detached studies itself needs a preliminary volume of exposition. The influences of ancient oratory, drama, and story cannot be measured surely without more specific knowledge of ancient precept and practise, firmer grasp of ancient conceptions, than has been offered by any synthesis in English. Even in other languages the available compends are generally rather digests, or dictionaries of terms, than interpretations of leading ideas. Instead of risking once more the inadequacy and the forced emphasis that beset such a method, I have tried to make the most representative ancients speak for themselves.
Though the very choice of spokesmen interposes the chooser, scholars generally, I hope, will accept Aristotle for the theory of rhetoric as the energizing of knowledge, Cicero for its scope and skill in practise, Quintilian for its teaching, and so on through a list chosen for representative significances. Nor does the plan of spokesmen preclude sufficient indications of general theory and practise. It shows in Cicero the influence not only of Aristotle, but of Isocrates. In poetic, ancient epic art is revealed most definitely and most largely in the Æneid because Vergil, besides being one of the greatest of poets, was so studious a craftsman as to choose from all the ancient experience the most vital ways of narrative. Historically the New Comedy seems more significant than the Old; and the same consideration has included not only Ovid, but even Seneca. These analyses of ancient achievement are made complementary to ancient theory by being strictly limited to composition.
All the authors chosen have been already expounded and translated, some of them again and again, but rather as philosophers, or as orators, or as men of letters, or simply as Greeks or Romans, than as writers on composition. Yet composition was not only one of the greatest ancient achievements; it was a constant preoccupation and a consistent technic. No other body of technic is more thorough and comprehensive than ancient rhetoric; and few have been so generally recognized. Every writer had it in mind; and since commentators have often had in mind something else, I have felt myself bound always to explore the technical connotations of the originals, and usually to retranslate. Verification is facilitated by exact citation, and comparative study by the indexes. What may thus serve incidentally as a book of reference is primarily, however, a progressive exposition from ideas through principles to details. The Greek philosophy of rhetoric is confirmed and applied in the great period of Rome by the most influential orator of history. Aristotle’s theory and Cicero’s vindication put us in the best position to comprehend the method and the detail of Quintilian. This in turn guides appreciation of that abundant study of style which is exemplified typically in Dionysius of Halicarnassus and illuminated by the genius who wrote the De sublimitate. Through such spokesmen, with complementary technical analysis of ancient achievement, the way seems surest toward recovering inductively the ancient artistic experience.
This experience has remained too long in abeyance for speakers, writers, and teachers of English. In the United States, though composition has been studied during the past fifty years more generally, perhaps, than in any other country except France, neither our theory nor our pedagogy has applied very widely the ancient lore. Jesuit schools, indeed, have maintained the tradition of rhetoric, as have some others teaching composition consecutively through Latin; but in general the multitude of modern text-books of English composition shows little use of ancient experience. Thus it has been possible to propose as new, and even to try, methods exploded in Rome two thousand years ago. There is no question of reviving an equally exploded archaism. Nor need we fall again into the Ciceronianism of the Renaissance. Ancient deviation, as I have tried to show, is no less instructive than ancient progress. The point is so to comprehend what the ancients learned in singularly fortunate conditions as to guide our own theory away from vain repetition toward progressive realization of our own opportunities.
Metric, except where it bears incidentally on prose rhythms, has been deliberately excluded. In the present divergence of critical interpretation an entire volume would hardly suffice for a really contributory synthesis. The larger movements of poetic, dramaturgy and the development of verse narrative, show a consistency that warrants a synthesis of ancient poetic; and there is even greater consistency in ancient rhetoric. But we may not lightly speak of ancient metric, as if it were continuous from Greek through Latin. Nor is the metric of either Greek or Latin, significant as it is incidentally, necessary to the comprehension of ancient rhetoric or poetic.
The innovation of expounding rhetoric and poetic side by side was suggested by the demands of that historical treatment which is proposed for a later volume. But though it was designed for this larger purpose, it has meantime facilitated the immediate task. Actually the experience of the ancients seems to be best approached from their conception of composition as twofold. Logical composition and imaginative composition are, indeed, distinct; but each technic, defined within its own scope, helps to define the other by contrast. Making each more distinct, the contrast further exhibits interrelations and confusions highly significant for the history of both pedagogy and criticism. Not merely as archæology, then, ancient rhetoric and poetic demand reconsideration, but as the theory of widely suggestive experiences in the progressive art of words.
The bibliographies at the head of each chapter or section, and the notes, are strictly selective. Enumeration of what I have read myself could only embarrass the guidance of readers who wish to proceed from this book to further study. Omitting, therefore, all mere acknowledgment of my long and manifold indebtedness, omitting also the obvious books of reference, whether histories or topical digests, the apparatus directs immediately to interpretations either of the authors themselves or of those principles and habits of ancient art which seem most significant for the study, the practise, and the teaching of composition. For example, the references are not to Volkmann and Christ-Schmid, but to Heinze, Rhys Roberts, Hendrickson, Hubbell, to Sandys the editor rather than to Sandys the historian; and preference has been given to works in English.
Personal indebtedness begins with a scholar who was professor of Greek before he became professor of English. The late Thomas R. Price revealed the study of composition as embracing all ordered expression from a periodic sentence to a tragedy. The working out of that integrating conception has been furthered by so many colleagues that specific acknowledgment must perforce be limited to those interested immediately in this volume. Professor LaRue VanHook read my translation of Dio Chrysostom’s Oratio LII; Professor Nelson Glenn McCrea, the entire manuscript and the proof. For criticism of the manuscript I am no less deeply indebted to Professors Brander Matthews and Ashley H. Thorndike; for valuable suggestions on the proofs, to Professors Edward D. Perry, Frank G. Moore, and Donald L. Clark, and to the Rev. Professor Francis P. Donnelly, S. J. In 1920 Professor Rhys Roberts, after sharing his acute and sympathetic scholarship in conversation on the plan of both volumes, did me the honor to read in manuscript the first draft of Chapter II. High appreciation of all this generosity and a grateful sense of this fellowship of letters at once acquit these scholars of all responsibility for my interpretations and encourage my hope of contributing toward a more fruitful criticism of ancient composition.
C. S. B.
Barnard College
May, 1924