Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student

Rating:
Summary: A Excellent Resource for Students
Review: As a college student, I am constantly looking for ways to improve my writing. In spite of accolades from English professors and contest committees, I feel I can never stop learning how to make my writing more effective. This book is, I'm sure, an excellent text for a course on rhetoric, but it's also a helpful resource for the student, to be placed alongside a dictionary and a thesaurus. It teaches the basics of logical arguments, organization, and style, using examples from antiquity to the present.

Rating:
Summary: A Excellent Resource for Students
Review: As a college student, I am constantly looking for ways to improve my writing. In spite of accolades from English professors and contest committees, I feel I can never stop learning how to make my writing more effective. This book is, I'm sure, an excellent text for a course on rhetoric, but it's also a helpful resource for the student, to be placed alongside a dictionary and a thesaurus. It teaches the basics of logical arguments, organization, and style, using examples from antiquity to the present.

Rating:
Summary: Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student
Review: For 35 years I have guarded with my life, my copy of Edward Corbett's book, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, thinking it was out of print. To my delight, when I was about to recommend it for a writing class I was going to teach, I found it on Amazon.com. Since the Back to Basics education movement of the 1970's the fundimentals of logic and expository writing are seldom taught in the public schools, resulting in a generation of adults with marginal communication skills. Edward Corbett's book fills a void, offering serious writers a set of guidelines for reasoned discourse. Corbett reviews rules of logic begining with Aristotle's syllogism, that device which permits the writer to examine the premises of his or her arguments and thus test their logical validity. He further examines the common fallacies of deductive and inductive reasoning, and gives the writer practical exercises to improve his logical skills. Corbett outlines the various approaches a writer might make to win an audience over, explains how to most effectively arrange the material, and suggests methods for selecting the most appropriate style and tone. Readings of classical and modern writers illustrate the principles Corbett presents. In short, this is a serious book for serious writers. It is a book to be treasured, a reference book for a lifetime. Thank heavens it is not out of print!

Rating:
Summary: Not for freshmen
Review: I bought this book after reading several articles written by Corbett. As a GTA, I hoped it might be useful in teaching freshman composition. Although I found it helpful, it is certainly not written for most of today's college freshmen. Although Corbett uses fairly simple language, the text fails to use principles of document design to present the information effectively. Although this text was originally intended to be used in teaching freshman composition, I do not believe that it will be as useful to me in the classroom as I had hoped. I would not, for example, be able to assign readings from directly from this text and expect my students to grasp the material. Today's college students appear to be far less willing to work to get the information they need from a text, and this text definitely requires work.

Rating:
Summary: Classical rhetoric was spoken, never written
Review: I came to this book through my Classical Rhetoric class as an undergrad. As someone with a pre-existing background in formal logic and rhetorical reasoning, there was little that was new, but most of it was recast from the mathematical model to the oratorical model. This si the penultimate text on classical rhetoric, and the inclusion of the progymnasmata exercises is an interesting option for structuring class assignments. Sometimes the text is a little dense, but it is also authoritative and generally a good resource for an introduction to argumentative logic and classical rhetoric.

Rating:
Summary: Classical rhetoric was spoken, never written
Review: I came to this book through my Classical Rhetoric class as an undergrad. As someone with a pre-existing background in formal logic and rhetorical reasoning, there was little that was new, but most of it was recast from the mathematical model to the oratorical model. This si the penultimate text on classical rhetoric, and the inclusion of the progymnasmata exercises is an interesting option for structuring class assignments. Sometimes the text is a little dense, but it is also authoritative and generally a good resource for an introduction to argumentative logic and classical rhetoric.

Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Tome
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Principles of Powerful Persuasion
Review: 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. Introduction
2. 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).

Rating:
Summary: Principles of Powerful Persuasion
Review: 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. Introduction
2. 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).

Rating:
Summary: Rhetoric is Required
Review: This book should be required reading for all college graduates.