The Art of Elegance

Reading about the 'rounded education' was very familiar to me - grammar, arithmetic, geometry, music, astronomy, logic, and rhetoric. I never, however, connected any of this with the study of style. I've always known style to be present in writing, but I really have never put two and two together - so to say -until after reading the chapters assigned for this week. Composition, for me, has never really been an art form, but looking at the five component parts of rhetoric centered on an analysis of this art gave me a little bit of an 'ah-ha' moment. "Invention, the modes of discovering arguments; arrangement; expression, which included the study of style in argumentation; memory; and delivery, including both pronunciation and gesture" (30) are the five components Conley describes. I suppose this explanation lends itself to style and an art form. As a teacher, I have been going through the motions of teaching these five components not really thinking about how powerful they can be.

What I got from the readings is that rhetoric is an art form that can allow individuals to draw conclusions of their own based on the delivery of the message given. The means of delivery portray how righteous and true the speaker is. We were introduced to Cicero and the ideal orator. I see a lot of the Ciceronian theory alive today. The better the speaker, the better the person. After I read all of the readings this week, I immediately thought of George W. Bush and President Obama. Eloquence is essential to delivery and style. I think back to the addresses of the former president and how ignorant he sometimes sounded. His message was lost because he was not an elegant speaker, even though he had sometimes very good and sometimes very questionable messages, as do all politicians. Then I compared him to our current president, who is a phenomenal speaker. He is very poised and sounds very educated. His style creates that impression for many Americans. So how does this relate to the reading? Well, looking at what Pliny said about Trajan and how it was said, it is apparent that style matters. Pliny was able to mix the facts with ideals and create expectations that are acceptable for everyone.

Elegance is impressive. Dancers, women, clothing, jewelery, etc. that is considered elegant is often admired. When something is admired it is sometimes coveted. And when something is coveted, it can often be stolen or imitated. People say imitation is the greatest compliment; so it seems to me that when Cicero, Quintilian, Pliny, Philodemus, and Dionysius took from their predecessors and teachers, they were admiring, coveting, and imitating ideals and theories to create elegance in their rhetoric. This relates to my favorite quote on pg 43 of Conley: "Rhetoric did not wither under the emperors, it just changed tactics." This statement is true throughout history and that is how style creates the message and the response, the elegance.

The argument that rhetoric is an art form remains to be seen; however, the ability to speak to many and change the impression of thought is definitely a talent. I don't know if talent and art are interchangeable. Speaking publicly takes practice, writing well takes practice, communicating thoughts clearly takes practice, so if this is to be considered art, then art is in the eye of the beholder.