Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum
About this course
Module 1 produced material. This module puts it in order, and rests on a claim: order is not neutral.
Logic is indifferent to sequence — a syllogism is valid whichever premise comes first, and LA 1200 had nothing to say about presentation because there was nothing to say. Persuasion is different. The same arguments, differently ordered, produce different assent from the same audience. That is an empirical claim about attention, it is testable, and every advocate who has restructured a losing case knows it is true.
Six parts, held as a default rather than a law: exordium (make them attentive, receptive, well-disposed), narratio (the facts — brief, clear, plausible), partitio (what is agreed and what is at issue), confirmatio (the proof), refutatio (the answer), peroratio (recapitulation and appeal).
But the list is the easy part. The real teaching is in three questions it does not answer: in what order the arguments themselves should go; whether to answer the opponent before or after your own case; and whether to include a weak argument at all — which the tradition genuinely disputes and Quintilian declines to settle.
Two sittings are uncomfortable by design. 2.3 requires you to write two truthful narratives of the same events with opposite effects, and then say whether either was dishonest. 2.4 requires you to concede something, which students resist because the instinct is that conceding weakens a case — and the tradition's view is the opposite.
Spoken exercise is used. A structure that reads well may be unfollowable when heard, and you should discover that by hearing your own.
Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum
The question
Eight sittings. You begin by arranging your own Module 1 arguments
Outcome
The student can arrange a set of arguments into a speech, choosing the
Sub-units
Practice scenarios
A colleague's submission is failing. The material is good — every argument sound. But the panel has twice interrupted to ask questions the submission answers on page four, and one member has formed a view it contradicts on page six. He believes the panel is not reading carefully.
Your goals