Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum
About this course
The third art, and the last of the trivium. Grammar made you correct. Logic made you rigorous. This school makes you effective — and the order is not reversible: a person who is effective without being rigorous is dangerous, which is why rhetoric comes third rather than by accident.
The school is built on Quintilian's definition, and it is a claim rather than a pleasantry: the orator is a good man skilled in speaking — vir bonus dicendi peritus. The goodness is not decorative in that formula, and the case for it is a real argument which this module argues rather than asserts. Some of the most effective orators in history were not good men; Quintilian knows this and answers it, and his answer is tested here rather than accepted.
The module opens by putting the case against the whole art. Plato's charge in the Gorgias is that rhetoric is not an art but a knack — cookery for the soul, producing conviction without knowledge, equally serviceable to truth and to falsehood. It is a serious charge, largely deserved by the rhetoric Plato was looking at, and a student who has not felt its force will not understand why Quintilian's whole programme is shaped as a reply.
You may answer aloud in this school, and here that matters more than elsewhere. Delivery is one of the five canons. Demosthenes, asked what was first in oratory, said delivery; asked what was second, said delivery; asked what was third, said delivery. A rhetoric course assessing only written work would discard the canon its own authorities rank highest.
Led by Marcus Fabius Quintilianus Simulacrum
The question
Seven sittings on the first canon and on what the art is for. You
Outcome
The student can identify which of the three kinds of oratory a
Sub-units
Practice scenarios
You are advising an advocate. Her case is weak on the facts but she has found an argument that will work: it exploits a known prejudice in the tribunal, it is not *false* exactly, and it is very likely to succeed. She is not a cynic — she believes her client is in the right and this may be the only way to secure a just outcome. She has asked you, plainly, whether to use it.
Your goals