The Progymnasmata: New/Old Ways to Teach Reading, Writing, and Thinking in Secondary Schools

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2008-07-19

The Progymnasmata: New/Old Ways to Teach Reading, Writing, The Progymnasmata: New/Old Ways to Teach Reading, Writing,

and Thinking in Secondary Schools and Thinking in Secondary Schools

Natalie Sue Baxter

Brigham Young University - Provo

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THE PROGYMNASMATA: NEW/ OLD WAYS TO TEACH

READING, WRITING, AND THINKING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Natalie Sue Baxter

Brigham Young University

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

Department of English

Brigham Young University

Master o f Arts

August 2008

A thesis submitted to the faculty of

All R ig ht s Reserved

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

GRADUATE COMMITTEE APPROVAL

of a thesis submitted by

Natalie Sue Baxter

This thesis has been read by each member of the following graduate committee and by

majority vote has been found to be satisfactory.

Date

Nancy L. Christiansen, Chair

Date

Deborah M. Dean

Date

Kristine Hansen

As chair of the candidate’s graduate committee, I have read the thesis o f Natalie Sue

Baxter in its final form and have found that (1) its format, citations, and bibliographical

style are consistent and acceptable and fulfill university and department style

requirements; (2) its illustrative materials including figures, tables, and charts are in

place; and (3) the final manuscript is satisfactory to the graduate committee and is ready

for submission to the university library.

Date

Nancy L. Christiansen

Chair, Graduate Committee

Accepted for the Department

Phillip Snyder

Accepted for the College

Date

Joseph Parry

Date

BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY

ABSTRACT

THE PROGYMNASMATA: NEW/ OLD WAYS TO TEACH READING, WRITING,

AND THINKING IN SECONDARY SCHOOLS

Natalie Sue Baxter

Department of English

Master of Art

Within the past two decades, theorists have begun to look back to the classical

rhetorical past for answers to modern dilemmas in composition teaching. Several

textbooks have been published that focus their teaching of college composition on the

classical tradition. While the movement to revitalize classical rhetoric is gaining strength

in universities, however, the benefits of this movement have not yet reached, in any real

way, the levels of elementary, middle school, or high school education.

This thesis shows how the classical rhetorical curriculum generally, and a specific

part of that curriculum, the progymnasmata, accomplish important aims of modern

composition approaches, while at the same time providing answers to modern

deficiencies in composition instruction, especially at the secondary level. The thesis

compares the progymnasmata and their accompanying pedagogy with the most prevalent

and up-and-coming approaches in composition teaching, including current-traditional,

expressivist, and social epistemic—including genre theory—approaches, and process-

based, or cognitive, composition pedagogy.

Modern theorists are finding value in the classical rhetorical curriculum because,

since the 1800s, advances in composition instruction are now recognized as reinventions

based, or cognitive, composition pedagogy.

Modern theorists are finding value in the classical rhetorical curriculum because,

since the 1800s, advances in composition instruction are now recognized as reinventions

of the classical past, recovering vital elements once present in rhetorical instruction and

then lost. The classical curriculum also provides solutions to problems in modern

composition approaches. Because modern theoretical approaches are partial reiterations

of the classical rhetorical tradition, and because the classical tradition can enable students

in ways modern approaches cannot, exploring the possibilities of teaching the

progymnasmata in secondary schools is worthwhile.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My thanks are due the following:

Dr. Nancy Christiansen. Since the first day of my first graduate class, History of

Rhetoric, you filled my mind with the wonders of a tradition that has changed lives and

societies. I hope it will change our schools and our children’s lives. Thank you for your

life of dedication to higher learning. Thank you for being my hero and my friend.

Dr. Dean and Dr. Hansen. Thank you for your bright ideas and continued support

throughout this long thesis project. Thank you for contributing to my knowledge through

classes, discussions in your offices, and your own written works.

My husband, Jonny. Thank you for your unwavering support, especially through

the hardest months. You went more slowly through your own schooling to make it

possible for me to do this. Thank you for being with the children and for telling me over

and over again that I’m smart and that I could do this. I love you.

Family and friends. Thanks to Mom, Grandma, Kris, Jon, and everyone else who

stayed with the boys so I could finish school. Mom and Dad, thank you for your prayers.

My sons, Taylor and Jacob. I dedicate this thesis to you. I know I had to be away

from you to write it. I hope what I have learned in my research will help me be a better

teacher at home as well as at school. I hope the two of you will work hard for the things

you want and become the persons you want to be. I love you forever, Mom.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. The Progymnasmata and their Rhetorical Contexts 1

II. Current-Traditional Rhetoric and the Progymnasmata 53

III. Expressivism and the Progymnasmata 85

IV. Social Epistemic Methodologies and the Progymnasmata 102

V. Process and the Progymnasmata 137

VI. Co nc lu s io n 147

DETAILED TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. The Progymnasmata and their Rhetorical Contexts 1

The Progymnasmata 6

The Progymnasmata and Precepts of Rhe t or ic 11

Aims of the Progymnasmata 17

The Progymnasmata and Pedagogy 25

Classical Revivalists 37

Scholars and the Progymnasmata 41

New Contexts for Old Exercises 48

II. Current-Traditional Rhetoric and the Progymnasmata 53

Writing Formulas 55

The Progymnasmata and Form 60

Modes of Discourse 71

The Progymnasmata and Modes 77

Co nc lu s io n 82

III. Expressivism and the Progymnasmata 85

The Progymnasmata and Expressivism 91

Co nc lu s io n 101

IV. Social Epistemic Methodologies and the Progymnasmata 102

Progymnasmata and Genre 115

Co nc lu s io n 135

V. Process and the Progymnasmata 137

The Progymnasmata and Process 142

Co nc lu s io n 145

VI. Co nc lu s io n 147

Adapting Exercises for Modern Needs 148

Progymnasmata in the Future 153

Baxter 1

CHAPTER ONE

THE PROGYMNASMATA AND THEIR RHETORICAL CONTEXTS

In 1649, John Milton published The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, a defense

for the right to execute a tyrant as well as for the people’s right to change their

government as they see fit. Forty six years prior, William Shakespeare had published his

Hamlet, a play well known today. On another continent, Benjamin Franklin presented a

speech titled, “An Argument Against Payment of Salaries to Executive Officers of the

Federal Government,”at the Constitutional Convention of June 2, 1787. These examples

of writing all have two things in common: first, they are all significant written works that

had powerful effects on persons and societies who read or saw them performed, and,

second, they are examples of progymnasmata (classical rhetorical exercises) including a

legislation exercise, a tale, and a thesis exercise. All of the authors were explicitly

instructed in the classical rhetorical curriculum and the progymnasmata, training that

provided a sound basis for writing in life situations where the authors change others’

perceptions and actions.

The progymnasmata—preliminary exercises in the classical rhetorical

curriculum—teach students to perform well in recurring life situations. The focus of the

exercises is action—speech acts, writing acts, and other acts. The exercises instruct

students in specific types of action such as praise and blame, deliberation, accusation and

defense, impersonation, elaboration, description, and narration. Students in this

curriculum also learn to read text as behavior, as an author treating an audience in a

certain manner. The progymnasmata teach students to make the best and most informed

decisions in performing acts and reading/ interpreting the acts of others. The exercises

Baxter 2

also prepare students for active participation in society and for ethical and useful

participation in their chosen fields of study and occupation. Additionally, the

progymnasmata introduce students to a great deal of the comprehensive classical

rhetorical curriculum. Outcomes of teaching the progymnasmata include development of

judgment, mental dexterity, and the ability to perform well in speaking or writing on

demand.

In this thesis I argue that the progymnasmata be considered (to a greater extent

than they have thus far been considered) for teaching in modern secondary school

classrooms, because the exercises accomplish the same valuable aims as prevailing

modern theoretical and methodological approaches in composition while solving

problems and limitations seen in those approaches in recent decades. The

progymnasmata do all of this while providing full rhetorical training for students in

accomplishable, incremental steps. In this thesis, I compare the progymnasmata and

what they teach with current-traditional, expressivist, and social epistemic composition

approaches, as well as process-based classroom pedagogy. I find that the progymnasmata

satisfy important goals of modern composition approaches, including aims of dividing

rhetorical theory in ways that are clear and teachable, teaching writing as enjoyable and

empowering, enabling students to critique text and context, teaching writing process, and

giving students experience writing in a variety of genres for a variety of aims. Teaching

the progymnasmata accomplishes these aims while solving problems of modern

composition approaches, specifically problems of formulaic teaching, restricted scope,

and inadaptability of theory for classroom practice. The progymnasmata offer a unified

theoretical and pedagogical schema for teaching principles of reading, writing, and

Baxter 3

thinking to students, a schema that can be adapted to suit the needs of secondary

classrooms today.

Teachers of composition have to look back to a past of writing, reading, and

thinking instruction that has all but been abandoned in modern practice in order to

discover the progymnasmata. Composition scholar D. C. Stewart argues that

composition instructors should study the history of writing instruction, saying, “It is wise

[…] to have the historical perspective. It gives theoretical depth and philosophical

breadth to our perceptions of this most important and intriguing enterprise we call the

teaching of composition” (143). However, a common perception among composition

t heo r ists is that “the past” of composition is a past we now call current-traditional

rhetoric. Deborah Dean, teacher and composition scholar, describes that past this way:

Some of us probably still remember the really old days: days when

teachers gave a writing assignment during Monday’s class—the weekly

t he me —and we wrote it at home, alone, and turned it in on Friday. We

wrote it by hand and recopied when we recognized mistakes. The papers

were returned, generally on Monday, with our grade indicated by a red

letter on the top. [… W]e looked at the grade and then put the paper away

as we listened to the teacher make a few comments and give us the current

week’s topic. We were on a treadmill. What happened between Monday

and Friday was up to us, as long as a clean, error-free paper was turned in

at the end of the week. It seems now like an old black-and-white movie.

(Strategic 2)

Baxter 4

I appreciate Dean’s story and have read similar descriptions of times past from

expressivist theorists Donald Murray and Peter Elbow and process theorists Janet Emig

and Donald Graves. Their stories help me appreciate where we no longer are. On closer

look, however, current traditional rhetoric began in the late 1800s. What about before

that? How were students taught before the late nineteenth century? What about authors

like Mark Twain, Herman Melville, Jane Austen? What about Shakespeare, Milton,

Dryden, and Pope? What kind of training did they receive? We have manuscripts from

learned civilizations dating back thousands of years. How did they learn to write? What

were their writing schools like? Composition theorists generally ignore a past before

current traditional rhetoric, and students now training in composition teaching inherit the

same restricted view of composition’s history.

Many reading and writing teachers in today’s schools are not familiar with a

curriculum developed over 2000 years ago by ancient Greeks and spread by the Romans

throughout the Roman Empire. This classical teaching of language and reason, called the

art of rhetoric, was employed throughout the Middle Ages (Murphy, “R he t or ic a l

H ist o r y” 5) and revitalized in its entirety during the Renaissance, following the

rediscovery of Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria and Cicero’s De Oratore and Orator.

Wr it ers during the early period of English literature with whom we are familiar—

Chaucer, Jonson, Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Pope, Swift, and others—were explicitly

trained in the classical rhetorical tradition (Corbett and Connors 26). Many colonial and

century American authors also studied rhetoric. Classical rhetoric was the center of

university and preparatory curricula for hundreds of years up until the late 1800s when,

because of the Cartesian paradigm shift, the classical curriculum began to be changed to

Baxter 5

fit modern education ideals (Murphy, “Rhetorical History” 4-8; Connors 354-361;

Christiansen 71-72). In many cases, the curriculum was reduced to make it simpler to be

taught. More recently, classical rhetoric has been replaced with modern theor ie s o f

literacy and composition.

Educators and others have thought it best, given changes in education and school

populations, to change language curricula to reflect those changes. In recent decades,

however, scholars, teachers, and community members lament literary crises that seem

only to be growing. Composition researchers Steve Graham and Dolores Perin, in 2007,

reported sharp declines in literacy. They write,

Along with reading comprehension, writing skill is a predictor of

academic success and a basic requirement for participation in civic life

and in the global economy. Yet every year in the United States large

numbers of adolescents graduate from high school unable to write at the

basic levels required by colleges or employers. (Alliance for Excellent

Education, 2006, cited in Writing Next 3)

Graham and Perin also summarize findings from other research which concludes that

“Seventy percent of students in grades 4-12 are low-achieving writers (Persky et al.,

2003),” “Nearly one third of high school graduates are not ready for college-level English

composition courses (ACT, 2005),” and “College instructors estimate that 50% of high

school graduates are not prepared for college-level writing (Achieve, Inc., 2005)” (7-8).

Clearly, adolescent literacy seems to be in decline and often public schools are blamed

for these declines and for what seems to be a failing English curriculum.

Baxter 6

Given our modern crisis in reading and writing instruction, a classical rhetorical

curriculum that stood in place and effectively trained students in rhetorical practices for

hundreds of years seems worthy of consideration for use in today’s instruction. Aims of

the progymnasmata, including the aims to speak and act well in all situations, are clear

and have meaning for students today. Pedagogical methods accompanying the

progymnasmata instruct in writing processes that are likewise meaningful for today’s

students. Teaching writing along with reading and thinking by means of the

progymnasmata trains students to perform well in speaking and writing situations in ways

perhaps more effective than methods of predominant current composition approaches.

To see how this may be so, it is first necessary to understand what the progymnasmata

are and what they teach.

The Progymnasmata

The progymnasmata, or preliminary exercises, are a series of fourteen exercises

that build on each other, each exercise requiring students to use and apply things they

have learned in previous exercises. These exercises were designed for schoolboys as

young as age seven and were taught in different variations until students (individually)

moved on to the two advanced exercises suasoria and controversia, usually around

sixteen years of age. Students eventually passed final examinations and were ready to

participate as adults in society usually between eighteen and twenty five years of age

(Bonner 14, Quintilian XII.6).

Each of the progymnasmata contains its own places, or areas of inquiry. The

Greek rhetoric instructor Aphthonius calls these places “considerations,” “parts,” or

“topics” through which the exercise may be accomplished. Like many parts of the

Baxter 7

classical curriculum, ancient rhetoricians determined places of the progymnasmata by

studying what people naturally do. For example, in order to determine the places of the

legislation exercise, rhetoricians studied and came up with a list of things a person

naturally considers when proposing a law. These considerations then became the places

for the legislation exercise. The process is referred to as art imitating nature, because

precepts and exercises (art) are built on typical or natural responses or considerations

(nature).

In essence, places are where thinking and composing begin. “Places” (from the

Greek topoi, Latin loci) signifies “places to find something.” Classical places are places

we go to find what to say and discover what arguments we might create. For example, in

the refutation exercise described by Aphthonius the places of the exercise are the obscure

and unconvincing, the impossible, the inconsistent, the improper, and the irrational. By

discussing each of these in turn regarding the idea or false assertion a student wishes to

refute—for example, how the assertion is obscure, how it is inconsistent, irrational, and

so on—the student will compose an essay that counters an inconsistent idea. Likewise,

the places of the tale exercise are the personal agent, the thing done, at what time, in what

place, in what manner, and for what cause (Aphthonius 265). By gathering matter

concerning each of these places, the student will construct a tale or narrative. “Place” is

an interesting metaphor, as places exist in a person’s own mind, as well as in outside

sources. A student will visit both to find the most suitable material for the cause.

The progymnasmata and their places are these:

Fable. The fable is a short story in which human attributes are depicted,

usually through animal characters. The fable is instructive and ends with

Baxter 8

an explicit moral. Places of the fable from Rainolde are retell the tale,

praise the author, place the moral, declare the nature of things contained in

the fable, have the characters reason with one another, make a similitude,

include an example to prove the matter, make the epilogue (B.j.).

Narrrative (tale). The tale is a short story in which characters interact. The

places from Aphthonius are the personal agent, the thing done, at what

time, in what place, in what manner, and for what cause (265).

Chreia. The chreia is an elaboration on a saying made by (usually) a wise

or famous person. The student is asked to enlarge on the saying,

exemplify it, and so on. The places from Rainolde are praise the author,

expound meaning, cause, contrary, similitude, example, testimony, and

epilogue (D.iiij.-E . j. ) .

Proverb (sententia). The proverb is much like the chreia, only the saying

expounded on is a generally well-known saying, not attributed to any

specific person. Places are the same as the chreia.

Refutation and Confirmation. These exercises ask students to confirm or

refute the truth or possibility of a story or statement. The places from

Aphthonius are state the false assertion of the opposition, exposition of

that assertion, obscure and unconvincing, impossible, inconsistent,

improper, and irrational (268). Places for the confirmation are the opposite

of those for refutation.

Commonplace. The student creates a speech praising/ extolling a virtue or

blaming/ deploring a vice had among mankind. The places from

Baxter 9

Aphthonius are the exordium, from the incompatible, exposition of the

matter, comparison, contrast, intention, digression, rejection of mercy,

lawful, just, rational, possible (271-272).

Encomium and Vituperation. The student praises (encomium) or blames

(vituperation) a person, place or thing, following the places of the

exercise, which are the exordium, genus (race, fatherland, forbears,

fathers), education (study, talent, rules), achievements (spirit, body,

fortune), comparison and epilogue (Aphthonius 273).

Comparison. Students decide which of two good things is better or which

of two bad things is worse and defend their position. This is a double

vituperation or encomium. Places are the same as for the encomium and

vituperation (Aphthonius 276).

Characterization (prosopopoeia). The student composes a speech that he

or she imagines a person (real, usually historical) would have given in a

certain situation. The places from Aphthonius are past, present, and future

(278).

Description. With this exercise, the student describes a person, place,

thing, event, or scene in vivid detail, following the places of chronological

or spatial order.

Thesis. The student creates an argument concerning a finite question,

meaning a question that has no definite answer, but has a definite scope,

i.e. pertaining to a specific person or entity. The places from Rainolde are

exordium, narration of the thing to be done, show it lawful, just,

Baxter 10

profitable, possible, include throughout objections of the opposition, and

co nc lu sio n ( O .j. -O. iij. ).

Proposal of/ Opposition to Laws. Following the places of the exercise, the

student proposes a new law or argues for or against an existing, ancient, or

fictitious law. Places from Rainolde are exordium; the contrary; show it

lawful, just, profitable, possible; answer objections, and conclusion

(P.iiij.).

The progymnasmata are central to the classical rhetorical curriculum. The idea

that the progymnasmata were central and always present in rhetorical training—fr o m t he

beginning and throughout that training—is so commonly accepted in classical rhetorical

texts it is a notion for which there is rarely made an argument. It was considered self-

evident, it seems. Quintilian, the great Roman schoolmaster, describes in twelve books

the rhetorical education of a student from birth to adulthood. After discussing

considerations in a child’s beginning education, such as whether it is best to school at

home or at a public school, Quintilian describes the first exercises the child will complete

while studying under the grammaticus, or elementary teacher. The exercises he describes

are the fable, proverb, chreia, and simple narrative or tale—the first four progymnasmata

(I.8-9). In his second book, after discussing at what age or stage a boy should be sent to

the rhetor (advanced teacher), Quintilian describes the work a student will do in the class

of the rhetor, namely, writing the more advanced progymnasmata - the narrative,

For other helpful synopses of the progymnasmata, see Christiansen, “The Master Double Frame” 75-76,

81-85; D’Angelo, Composition in the Classical Tradition 16-18; Murphy, A Short History of Writing

Instruction 62-69; Kennedy, Progymnasmata: Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric;

Cro wley and H a w he e , Ancient Rhetorics 384-427; and Corbett and Connors, Classical Rhetoric 484-488.

Baxter 11

refutation, confirmation, encomium, vituperation, commonplaces, thesis, and criticism of

laws (II.4). Rhetoric scholar James J. Murphy points out that Quintilian’s discussions do

not focus on “a question of whether the progymnasmata should be taught, but rather a

question of who should teach them” (A Short History 63). Throughout the remainder of

his Institutio oratoria, Quintilian describes principles taught by the progymnasmata—

fundamental principles of argument.

The Progymnasmata and Precepts of Rhet o r ic

The progymnasmata teach key precepts of classical rhetoric, including the three

genres of oratory, the five canons of rhetoric, and the classical standards of judgment or

decorum. First, the progymnasmata teach genres of oratory. Classical rhetoricians

divided all of oratory into three main genres: epideictic (also called demonstrative),

deliberative, and judicial (also called forensic). Quintilian calls these genres “types of

causes,” and claims that all oratory will fall under one of these three. The genres are

divided according to types of action, including praise and blame, persuasion and

dissuasion, and accusation and defense. Each of the genres of oratory contains its own

places or considerations, which places indicate ways a person reasons within the genre.

The places of deliberative oratory are given later in this chapter and the places of forensic

oratory are given in chapter four. The places of epideictic oratory (oratory for praising

and blaming) from the Renaissance scholar and rhetoric teacher Thomas Wilson are

these: “before his life,” including “1. the realm, 2. the shire, 3. the town, 4. the parents, 5.

the ancestors”; “in his life,” including “whether the person be a man or a woman, the

bringing-up, the nurturing, and the behavior of his life, to what study he taketh himself

unto, what company he useth, how he liveth, prowesses done either abroad or at home,

Baxter 12

his policies and witty devices in hoof of the public weal”; and “after his death,” including

“things that have happened about his death” (54-55). Wilson notes that many things may

be praised or dispraised: “men, countries, cities, places, beasts, hills, rivers, houses,

castles, deeds done by worthy men, and policies invented by great warriors” (54).

However, he notes that “most commonly men are praised for diverse respects” (54) and

that is why the places of epideictic refer most specifically to persons. The places show

that in the situation of praising or blaming a person, one considers specific

characteristics, situations, and qualities of the person.

The three classical genres of oratory are very old divisions of discourse, but ones

that still have application today. Quintilian argued that legal oratory is the master frame,

so to speak, for all oratory. To match Shakespeare’s axiom that “All the world’s a stage,”

Quintilian would perhaps have said that all the world is also a courtroom where every day

we put ideas and assertions on trial just as we do people. The confirmation and refutation

exercises grouped under judicial oratory make real this claim, and confirming and

refuting ideas is something people continue to do every day. The genre of deliberative

oratory also remains applicable in modern experience. Classical rhetoricians believed all

texts may be read in terms of the arguments they make, and if this is true, deliberative

oratory could likewise be considered the master genre. Today, as much as in ancient

times, people consider ways they should act in terms of what is expedient, safe, possible,

easy or difficult, and profitable—the places of deliberative oratory. And finally, praise

and blame, the main actions of epideictic oratory, have to do with determining the quality

of things and people, which we do in order to determine a course of action or to

determine whom or what to believe or follow.

Baxter 13

The “places” of the progymnasmata teach the “places” or considerations of the

three genres of oratory. For example, the places of the encomium and vituperation,

including genus (race, fatherland, forbears, fathers), education (study, talent, rules), and

achievements (spirit, body, fortune) coincide directly with the places of epideictic

oratory. All of the progymnasmata teach considerations of at least one of the genres of

oratory. Renaissance progymnasmata workbooks show that one of the first things

schoolchildren were taught was how progymnasmata fit with the three genres of oratory.

Many of these workbooks contain in the first pages a list of the progymnasmata with

brackets drawn to show that the fable, narrative, chreia, proverb, and thesis teach

deliberative oratory, the confirmation, refutation, and commonplace teach judicial

oratory, and the encomium, vituperation, impersonation and comparison teach

demonstrative oratory (Agricola, “Apthonii Progymnasmata” 5). In most cases, in

treating the places of the progymnasmata, students will draw evidence from the places of

the genres of oratory, and thus learn the places for these genres.

Second, the progymnasmata teach the five canons of rhetoric. Quintilian lists the

five canons of rhetoric as Invention, Disposition, Elocution, Memory, and Delivery.

Wilson describes these five briefly. He writes that when we invent, we search out things

that are true or likely concerning a matter (49). The progymnasmata teach invention in a

simple way, giving places for each exercise. The progymnasmata familiarize students

with places of logic as well. After invention comes disposition, or arrangement. Wilson

writes that it would be of little use to invent matter if we could not then organize that

matter and structure it in a way to fulfill a purpose. Students writing the progymnasmata

have to make decisions regarding structure and arrangement in each of the exercises. The

Baxter 14

places of the exercises also help students to gain an idea of logical and effective

arrangement of discourse. In addition, Quintilian explains throughout his work ways in

which progymnasmata fit into the arrangement of larger discourse. For example, fables

and proverbs serve as examples and proofs, a narrative describing the specific

circumstances of a matter follows the prooemium (first introduction) in most essays or

speeches, and confirmation and refutation are included in almost any argument.

Wilson continues his discussion of canons by asking what help it would be to

“find good reasons and know how to place them, if we have not apt words and picked

sentences to commend the whole matter?” (50). Such is the reason for the third canon,

elocution, or style, which Wilson summarizes as being able to beautify the cause. The

progymnasmata teach style through analysis of figures of speech and thought, and

imitation and practice of the same. Memory, the fourth canon, is important because it

teaches the ability to retain in one’s mind the things we have learned and want to share.

The progymnasmata teach memory as students memorize passages of works for

presentation. Students also develop memory when the instructor performs a work orally

and students record what they remember from the instructor’s performance. The last

canon, utterance (now commonly called delivery), is explained by Wilson as the power to

speak what is in our mind and show others what we have to say. “Utterance,” explains

Wilson, includes all parts of presentation, including “a framing of the voice, countenance,

and gesture, after a comely manner” (50). With the progymnasmata, exercises are

delivered orally to the class as well as in written form to the instructor and perhaps to

peers as well.

Baxter 15

Third, the progymnasmata teach principles of decorum—standards of

appropriateness against which any spoken, written, or performed action may be

measured. The principles of decorum include plainness (using words the audience

understands), aptness (choosing material, form, style and delivery appropriate for the

occasion), composition (using a well-chosen form of organization and creating a flow of

ideas), and exornation (creating a beautiful and delightful work using high, medium, or

low style) (Wilson 188-189). Students writing the progymnasmata consider principles of

decorum both in reading the works of others and in creating their own texts. Students

consider audience, self, subject, and situation in relation to all four principles of decorum.

The idea of these standards is that students practice discernment and judgment and

choose appropriate words and the best combination of matter, form, style, and delivery

for the occasion. In the end, these standards lead students to cultivate “the ability to hit

upon the right solution when making decisions in the complexity of human affairs”

(Christiansen 72). The standards cultivate judgment.

Although times and cultures change, the standards of decorum have been part of

the classical curriculum since its beginning and have remained central. These same

principles (or precepts) regarding writing are found in grading criteria in modern writing

classes at all levels; even though the names and descriptions of the standards may be

different, the precepts are the same. The principles of decorum are grounded in the belief

that the rules by which we reason and speak are unchanging over time. In all times and

cultures, these basic principles apply.

The progymnasmata are the primary means by which students learn key rhetorical

precepts and governing principles of the language arts. Students learn the precepts

Baxter 16

directly through writing the exercises, or, naturally, in conjunction with them. Murphy

observes,

Quintilian suggests that the precepts operate throughout the program; this

could mean either that the master introduced the precepts at each stage or

that separate times were set aside for them. The Institutio oratoria does

not describe any separate segment for teaching precepts, though it would

seem logical that the older students preparing for Declamation would have

to know the principles of at least deliberative and forensic rhetoric [. . .].”

(A Short History 51)

Principles of epideictic, deliberative, and forensic rhetoric would naturally have been

taught in conjunction with the thesis and legislation exercises, as well as in preceding

exercises. Murphy’s observation that precepts operate throughout the program is correct,

because the progymnasmata, along with the steps of imitation, make up the program

Murphy describes, and both teach fundamental principles of classical rhetoric.

Murphy writes of the progymnasmata that the exercises turned precept into

exercise and the exercises turned students into men ready to participate in society (A

Short History 51). Quintilian declares his own confidence in the exercises when he writes

I would venture to say that this kind of effort will contribute more to

learners than all the textbooks of all the writers on rhetoric; these are no

doubt a great help, but how can they possibly so extend their range as to

go through all the specific cases that arise almost every day? [. . .] Precept

is less important than experience in almost every field. [. . . T]he practical

value of this method escapes no one. (II.5.14-17)

Baxter 17

The progymnasmata provide students with both precepts and practice necessary to

engage well in societal, occupational, and personal interactions throughout life. The goal

of instruction in the classical rhetorical curriculum is that of bringing students to make

wise decisions and perform well in life situations, specifically situations that call for

students to read, write, think, and speak. The progymnasmata are central to the classical

rhetorical curriculum because the exercises succeed in getting pupils to this end goal.

Aims of the Progymnasmata

Outcomes of the progymnasmata coincide with goals of Hellenistic education in

which the progymnasmata have their origin. These goals are performance- based. The

chief goal is to prepare students for civilized action and interaction in societies.

Christiansen explains,

“Classical education” is “Hellenistic education,” H.I. Marrou reminds us

in his renowned Education in Antiquity (95). In the generation after

Aristotle and Alexander the Great, when education became standardized

throughout the Greek world, rhetoric held center place in the curriculum.

Founded not on Plato’s, but Isocrates’s educational program, primary and

secondary schools prepared scholars in civilized practices through literary

and language-arts-based instruction. (“The Master Double Frame” 71)

In ancient Greece, the curriculum and its results were both called paideia. The

t er m paideia signified the curriculum studied in order to become educated, as well as the

end result. Richard Leo Enos describes the second meaning of paideia as “the virtue of

intellectual excellence,” and also “what it meant to be educated” (Murphy, A Short

History 15). If a person studied the paideia, he or she would become educated, achieving

Baxter 18

not only intellectual excellence, but moral maturity as well. Romans, who adopted the

Greek curriculum, translated the Greek term paideia into Latin humanitas, from which

we derive our term “humanities” today. Humanitas was understood as being that which

will develop the human.

The progymnasmata train students to develop the human qualities of eloquence

and wisdom. Eloquence encompasses the arts of thinking, speaking, writing and reading,

all taught together. Wisdom includes right reason and moral judgment. Quintilian writes

that the ideal orator (or person who has mastered the rhetorical curriculum) will be “A

good man, skilled in speaking” (XII.1.1). Quintilian believes the curriculum he describes

will produce such a man who possesses “not only exceptional powers of speech, but all

the virtues of character as well” (I.1.9). Isocrates, like Quintilian, believes the good

rhetor will possess “the power to speak well [which is] the surest index of a sound

understanding, and discourse which is true and lawful and just is the outward image of a

good and faithful soul” (Antidosis, in Bizzell, The Rhetorical Tradition 75).

In the classical tradition, the term for speaking well and applying the art well is

facilitas, or eloquence (Quintilian VII.1.34). True eloquence is measured by a student’s

ability to speak appropriately on any subject to any audience at any time,

extemporaneously (Christiansen 72). Christiansen describes facilitas as “ability in both

fluency and judgment”; such was considered “the mark of the genuinely cultivated

human” (72). Eloquence is developed as students complete exercises in listening,

thinking, reading, writing, and speaking—the progymnasmata and gymnasmata.

Quintilian declares that reading, writing, and speaking must be taught together if

we are to not waste our efforts in becoming half-prepared. He says,

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[Writing, reading, and speaking] are all so inseparably linked with one

another that if one is lacking, the labour spent on the others has been

wasted. Eloquence will never be mature and robust unless it develops

strength by much practice in writing. Without the models supplied by

reading, the whole effort will be adrift, and there will be no one at the

helm. Again, the man who knows what to say and how to say it, but does

not have his eloquence ready to hand and prepared for any contingency,

will simply be brooding over hoarded treasure. (X.1.1-2)

Isocrates explains, in addition, how speaking and thinking also go together. He wr it e s ,

With this faculty [of speech] we both contend against others on matters

which are open to dispute and seek light for ourselves on things which are

unknown; for the same arguments which we use in persuading others

when we speak in public, we employ also when we deliberate in our own

thoughts; and, while we call eloquent those who are able to speak before a

crowd, we regard as sage those who most skillfully debate their problems

in their own minds. [… I]n all our actions as well as in all our thoughts

speech is our guide, and is most employed by those who have the most

wisdom. (Antidosis, Biz ze l l The Rhetorical Tradition 75)

For both Isocrates and Quintilian, eloquence is only present where skills in reading,

writing, and speaking have all been practiced and developed fully. The progymnasmata,

accordingly, teach skills in reading, writing, and speaking all together.

The progymnasmata also teach moral action. Quintilian’s claim regarding

rhetorical training is that the good orator will be the “good man.” The progymnasmata

Baxter 20

train and develop the good and cultured human through explicit and implicit moral

instruction. According to modern composition scholar Frank D’Angelo, the

progymnasmata provide moral instruction “by encouraging speakers and writers to

discuss political, social, and domestic ethical issues and to debate them in speech in

wr it ing ” (Composition 2). In addition, he writes,

Some of the exercises inculcate moral lessons through the medium of

narrative based on the actions and words of the characters. Other

exercises such as the proverb or the anecdote offer moral instruction in

statement form, urging the audience to do good and avoid evil. Still others

do so by amplifying virtues or vices and by praising virtues and

denouncing vices. The chief aim of rhetoric in late antiquity, then, was

ethical and moral. (Composition 2)

The progymnasmata encourage students to consider issues and actions in terms of their

moral basis, and encourage students to develop their own moral standpoints.

Other parts of the progymnasmata and classical curriculum teach attention to

morals as well. The places of deliberative, epideictic, and legal oratory (the three

overarching genres of oratory) all teach students to consider aspects of human nature and

mo r a lit y. Deliberative oratory is based on ethical considerations including whether a

thing is honest, profitable, pleasant, safe, easy or hard, lawful and meet, praiseworthy,

and necessary. Each of these is then divided according to attendant considerations. For

example, under honesty we consider prudence or wisdom, justice, manhood, and

temperance. These are again divided. Under prudence or wisdom are contained memory,

understanding, and foresight. Under justice is considered common profit of the country,

Baxter 21

laws of nature, and custom. Under laws of nature, religion and acknowledging of God,

natural love to our children and others, thankfulness to all men, stoutness both to

withstand and revenge, reverence to the superior, and assured and constant truth in things

are all considered. Under custom is included bargaining, commons or equality, and

judgment given. Fortitude or manhood includes considerations of honorableness,

stoutness, sufferance, and continuance. Under temperance we include sobriety,

gentleness, and modesty. Under profitability is considered who will profit, when, where,

and wherefore. As for lawful, the considerations given are whether the law is godly, just,

necessary, and pleasant (Wilson 70-79).

Common logical topics learned through the progymnasmata also lead students to

consider aspects of human nature and morality. The place of conjecture leads students to

consider the will to do evil and the power to do evil. Definition calls for students to

examine contrary laws, laws made, ends of the law (intent), ambiguity, precedent, and

challenge. Under questions of quality are considered Nature, God’s law and man’s law,

custom, equity, true dealing, ancient examples, covenants and deeds antique. Wilson

explains all of these in detail. Places of epideictic oratory focus on the moral as well

since beings are praised for their virtuous deeds and honorable qualities of character.

As students learn places of deliberative, epideictic, and legal oratory and common

logical topics through writing the progymnasmata, they learn considerations for selecting

amid a myriad of alternatives. Such a method teaches discernment and judgment when

choosing the bases for action. Students learn to examine others’ motives and their own

motives, examine how they define things and how others define things, and examine the

types of law upon which morals are based and upon which decisions are based (this

Baxter 22

presents a more complex system of reasoning than asking “is this good or bad, right or

wrong?”). The curriculum encourages a deep look into the “laws” (societal, eternal,

natural, etc.) and definitions that govern assumptions. Quintilian argues that the

argument based on honorability will always be the best argument. Wilson discusses all

of the genres of oratory in terms of prudence, discretion, and using reason. Because the

progymnasmata teach bases for making decisions, lessons in discernment, judgment,

wisdom and reason are essential to the curriculum.

Refining moral sensibilities and cultivating the ability to make good judgments

are real goals of the classical curriculum and of the progymnasmata. It is evident in the

very early training of students and in preliminary exercises that the classical ideal of

creating cultured and moral individuals is thought essential, not additional, to speaking

well.

The goals of the progymnasmata—to teach students to think, act, and speak

well—are practical goals for individuals and societies, following Isocrates’ practical

approach to education. While some modern critics see the progymnasmata and classical

rhetorical curriculum as training for a limited elite in Greek and Roman societies, the

exercises within their rhetorical contexts present a general education that all students in

these ages went through. Training in the rhetorical schools educated students preparing

for many careers, not just for careers in law or government as is now commonly believed.

Murphy describes the Roman school system, inherited from the Greeks as “a system

[that] could be—and was—replicated over time and space” (A Short History 49). The

curriculum was the same for all students, with the only significant difference between

Baxter 23

students within the educational system being the time students would stay in school.

Murphy explains,

Obviously not every student went all the way through the course, just as

today there are many “dropouts” in even the best of schools. The poor

sent their children for only the most elementary education with the ludi

magister for grammar or the calculator for basic numbers. No doubt

many students had to content themselves with the instruction in grammar

without ever proceeding to more advanced studies with a rhetorician. (50)

What Quintilian describes in his Institutio oratoria is the complete educational system

that efficiently “provided literacy for many, competence for some, excellence for a few.

The dividing line separating these three levels of accomplishment was based simply on

the length of time the student could spend in the program” (Murphy, A Short History 51).

Students and teachers dating back to Hellenistic Greece valued rhetorical

education for what it helped students learn to do. Isocrates (now known as the Father of

Humanism) believed his training in language and judgment would produce the genuinely

cultivated man who would be able to hit upon the right solution in the complexity of

human affairs. For Isocrates, rhetoric includes study of discourse, reason, and wise

decision-making, which study leads a man to be an influence for good in the state, brings

so c ia l co hesion and improves both public and private life. Isocrates proposed the art

would help its students in their personal affairs, homes, families, and cities. He describes

the study of oratory as “those studies which enable us to govern wisely both our own

households and the commonwealth—which should be the objects of our toil, of our

study, and of our every act” (Antidosis, in Bizzell The Rhetorical Tradition 78).

Baxter 24

Historical evidence shows that Isocrates’ curriculum was successful in training students

to be an influence in the state. Enos writes that Isocrates’ school “produced not only

leading politicians but also historians and educators” (Murphy A Short History 33).

Romans also valued the practicality of the Hellenistic curriculum. George Clark,

in his The Education of Children at Rome, writes, “It has been often remarked that the

Romans were eminently practical, and we find this national trait no less conspicuous in

their educational system than in other departments” (3). Clark outlines how the

curriculum prepared students for many professions, including occupations in medicine,

architecture, mercantile and financial business, agriculture, instruction in higher branches

of learning, and occupations in government and law. The curriculum was understood to

be broad enough to encompass all of the needs each person would have in participating in

society, that participation taking whatever form it would.

Renaissance scholars also valued practical outcomes of the classical curriculum,

as do scholars today. Wilson describes the practical value of the art of eloquence and

reason as being a means by which men are brought “to live together in fellowship of life,

to maintain cities, to deal truly, and willingly to obey one another…” (42). This type of

peaceful living and maintenance of cities is brought about as students learn to participate

in societies and interact as citizens of societies. The principles of rhetorical training—

principles that teach individuals to read, write, think, and speak well—are applied to daily

situations throughout life, irrespective of formal occupations or social positions students

may later occupy.

D’Angelo points out that the progymnasmata “help speakers and writers develop

the rhetorical skills needed for participation in a civil society” (Composition 2). He

Baxter 25

writes, “The goal of a literary and rhetorical education is the cultivation of rhetorical

skills to enable speakers and writers to speak and write about public issues and to develop

an ethical framework for acting as responsible citizens (2). D’Angelo’s explanation

echoes that of James J. Murphy who writes that Roman rhetorical education “aimed at

practical ability rather than mere knowledge. This ability was to be ‘in’ the person, not in

his books” (A Short History 41). The outcomes of classical rhetorical education,

according to D’Angelo, include effective thinking, discrimination among values, making

of relevant judgments, effective communication, and performance of virtuous actions.

D’Angelo describes the literary- humanistic ideals of classical education as “general or

liberal culture combined with eloquence and civic virtue, for the common good.”

D’Angelo believes this common good may be had, not only in ancient nation-states, but

also in the emerging global community (Composition 21).

The goals and learning outcomes of the progymnasmata meet needs of students

today who are also in need of training in effective thinking, discrimination among values,

making of relevant judgments, effective communication, and performance of virtuous

actions. Students today need to be able to make wise decisions and take wise actions

both for their own good and for the good of the societies in which they live. The

progymnasmata can teach today’s students to be wise men and women skilled in

speaking, and can have as much of an impact for good on today’s students as the

exercises have in times past.

The Progymnasmata and Pedagogy

The progymnasmata are taught with repetition, and with increasing difficulty as

students progress. The progymnasmata are also taught in conjunction with steps of

Baxter 26

imitation, a process through which students learn to read and analyze texts, transform

those texts, and then correct and present their new texts before the class. Both of these

processes enable students to eventually function as their own teachers.

The progymnasmata are taught over and over again throughout a student’s

elementary and secondary training, each time with increased difficulty or with a change

of focus. For example, Quintilian describes how a pupil begins study at the very earliest

age by writing fables, narratives, and proverbs with the elementary teacher, or

grammaticus (I.8-9). Later on, the student again practices fables and more advanced

narratives with the rhetor (II.4). Even further along in study, the student practices

narrative as a part of larger speeches (IV.2) and learns ways in which proverbs and fables

function as proofs of arguments within larger works (V. 11). Confirmation, refutation,

encomium, vituperation, commonplace, thesis, and legislation exercises are all repeated

in similar fashion.

Christiansen gives evidence for repetition of exercises with variation and

increased complexity in the works of Theon, a schoolmaster of Alexandria, and Nicolaus,

a f if t h -century schoolmaster. According to Christiansen, Theon says the chreia may be

transformed by paraphrase, recitation, inflexion, comment, and objection. The chreia

may also be expanded or condensed, refuted or confirmed (97). In addition, Theon says a

chreia may be paraphrased in the manner of a maxim, in the manner of an explanation,

with wit, with a syllogism, with an enthymeme, with an example, with a wish, in a

symbolic manner, in a figurative manner, with double entendre, with a change of subject,

or in a combination of the forms mentioned above (Christiansen 97). According to

Christiansen, Nicolaus also indicates that young students use chreia mainly for inflexion

Baxter 27

while older students analyze and commend the chreia (97). Each exercise, then, may be

repeated in a number of ways throughout a student’s training.

It makes sense also that as students progress, the kinds of texts used as models

increase in complexity as well. Murphy notes, after explaining the process of classical

imitation, “The young lad who begins with a simple fable of Aesop ends up years later as

a young adult doing the same thing with a complex speech of Demosthenes or Cicero” (A

Short History 61). Students repeat the same processes and exercises many times, but

learn new things and develop increased skill each time.

The progymnasmata are taught in conjunction with what are now called steps of

imitation, which steps include the instructor’s choice of example texts, performance of

texts before students, and walking students through a close reading of each text, and the

students’ memorization of texts, transformation of original text or texts, correction of

their own work, and presentation of their new texts to the class. The steps of imitation

are detailed below.

Choice of Example Texts

In the grammar school, the grammaticus chose examples of good expression to

present to students. Quintilian argues that texts used as examples should be chosen from

the very best authors. He writes, “For a long time, the only authors to be read should be

the best and the least likely to betray our trust, and they should be read thoroughly, with

almost as much care as we devote to writing” (X.1.20). Quintilian takes the time to

create a lengthy list of proposed readings from various authors. He lists the mer it s,

strengths, and weaknesses of each author. With young students, model texts are to be

Baxter 28

examples of good expression. In advanced levels, the rhetor may use both good and poor

examples to instruct the class.

Performance of the Text

Progymnasmata are begun with the teacher performing or dictating an example

text, which the students write down. Quintilian writes that the grammaticus, who teaches

young students, reads texts aloud “to ensure that the boys follow the written word easily

and clearly” (I.8.9). Quintilian argues that reading and performing texts should be done

often, saying of the rhetor,

He should himself deliver at least one speech, preferably several, a day,

for his class to take away with them. For even if he provides them with

p le nt y of examples for imitation from their reading, better nourishment

comes, as they say, from the “living voice,” and especially from a teacher

whom, if they are properly taught, the pupils love and respect. (II.2.8)

This practice links text with performance, as the teacher’s performance is an

interpretation of a text. The teacher also becomes the character of that text. Students, in

this process, are also interpreting, because what the students write is their own

interpretation of their teacher’s performance.

Close Reading of the Text

The grammaticus explains in a close reading words and figures that to the

students are unfamiliar (Quintilian II.5.4). Later on, the rhetor also performs with the

older students a close reading of texts, pointing out merits and faults of the texts. In close

reading of texts, a teacher will not only give instruction himself, but also “ask frequent

questions and test his pupil’s judgment” so that students “will be led to form their own

Baxter 29

ideas and to understand, which is the object of the exercise” (II.5.13). Quintilian writes

that reading and closely examining texts will “contribute more to learners than all the

textbooks of all the writers on rhetoric,”(II.5.14) because in performing these analyses

teachers may go through specific cases that books containing general precepts may miss.

Also, it is more effective and more pleasant for the student to correct an existing text than

to be corrected in public.

Quintilian, in books one and two, discusses considerations in close reading of

texts. The primary consideration is what virtues (or excellences) of character does the

author possess? (I.1.10). Quintilian’s statement reveals that when reading text in the

classical tradition, we are reading for virtues of character. Those virtues are discovered

by looking at the text in all of the ways discussed in this section.

According to James J. Murphy,

This is the beginning of the application of judgment. The master literally

dissects the text. The immediate intent is to show the students how the

author made good or bad choices in wording, in organization, in the use of

figures, and the like; the long-range objective is to accustom the student to

what today we could call a ‘close reading’ of texts. (A Short History 56)

Students dissect texts in order to recognize good and bad choices of an author to either

replicate or avoid making again those same kinds of choices.

Quintilian’s students read text for attributes of correctness, clarity, ornament, and

appropriateness (I.5.1). Language is analyzed on the bases of reason, antiquity, authority,

and usage (I.6). Since the perfect orator is to be of sound understanding in many areas,

texts are also read for their soundness of judgment and knowledge in all subjects (I.10).

Baxter 30

Texts are expected to develop moral character, richness in vocabulary, and expose

students to both dignity and elegance (I.8.4-12). In addition, older students read texts for

parts of speech, metrical rhythms, and rhetorical composition, as well as improper and

proper usages, figures of speech and figures of thought (tropes), and historical allusions

(I. 8.13-21).

Quintilian describes the reading process thus:

Nothing must pass unnoticed: every noteworthy point of Invention or

Elocution is to be observed—the way in which the judge is conciliated in

the Prooemium; the clarity, brevity, and credibility of the Narrative; the

speaker’s plan and hidden artifice…; the wisdom shown in dividing the

materials; the delicate and dense argument; the vigour that stirs and the

charm that delights; the sharpness of the invective, the wit of the jokes;

and how finally the orator reigns over the jury’s emotions, forces his way

into their hearts, and makes their feelings reflect his words. As for

Elocution, he will point out the exact use, elegance, or sublimity of each

word; where Amplification is to be praised, and where the opposite quality

is to be seen; the brilliance of the metaphors, the Figures of Speech, and

how the Composition is smooth and well-formed […]. (II.5.8-9)

Again, what the grammaticus and rhetor teach students to see are authorial decisions.

Murphy observes that, in this analytic process, the reader “needs to reach back through

the wholeness of paragraph or argument to identify the microcosmic decisions made by

the composer” (A Short History 57). On a microcosmic level, and later on a

macrocosmic level, students are reading choices and authorial judgment.

Baxter 31

For more advanced students, Quintilian writes that it may sometimes be

appropriate to “read aloud bad or faulty speeches…and to point out what a lot of

expressions in these are inexact, obscure, turgid, low, mean, extravagant…” (II.5.10). In

all of this, the instructor must “ask frequent questions and test his pupil’s judgment” so

that the students “will be led to form their own ideas and to understand, which is the

object of the exercise” (II.5.13).

When analyzing an author’s stylistic decisions, students ask the following kinds

of questions:

 Does the author show selection and restraint? (Quintilian II. 12.6).

 Does the author know how to lower the tension? Does he constantly vary

his style, arrange his material, suit his action to the tone of each part of the

work, and, especially, keep within the bound of decency? (II. 12.10-11).

 Has the speaker planned prudently? (II. 13. 3)

 What decisions has the author made based on cause, time, opportunity,

and necessity? (II. 13.2). What are the causes, times, opportunities, and

necessities that have required these decisions?

 Does the author choose what is becoming and what is expedient? (II. 13.8)

 Does the author follow rules [or a theory] slavishly, or does he or she

practice discernment? (II. 13. 14)

 Is the speech prudent, consistent, virtuous? (II. 20)

 What can we tell about the character of the author? (II. 15.35)

 Is the speaker a good person? How can we tell? (II. 16)

Quintilian’s consideration of the “causes, times, opportunities, and necessities that

have required [the author’s] decisions” shows how considering the context of a piece was

part of reading texts in the classical tradition. Students would reflect on the author’s

Baxter 32

causes, times, opportunities, and necessities, as well as their own, and consider how and

to what extent these elements of situation dictate authorial decisions.

Quintilian and Wilson’s approach to style argues that patterns in text reveal things

about an author’s judgment and assumptions (since an author must assume certain things

about herself, her audience, subject, and situation, in order to make the decisions she

does). Authorial decisions may point to cultural and social values. The author must also

have reasons for making the decisions she does, and so choices also point to motive.

Students judge whether motives and assumptions revealed in the text are consistent with

the author’s message, and that is how students determine the character of the author.

Students Memorize the Text

As students memorize texts, their memory is strengthened. Memorization of

model texts provides students a repertoire of word, phrases, and figures for later use.

Quintilian preferred that students memorize the best authors rather than their own

writing, which might contain errors. Quintilian recommends memorizing selected

passages of speeches or histories from the best authors. The reasons for memorizing

parts of these texts are fourfold:

For (1) it is a better exercise for the memory to take in other people’s

words than one’s own; (2) those who are trained in this more difficult task

will easily fix their own compositions in their mind, because these are

already familiar; (3) they will get used to the best models and always have

objects of imitation in their minds; (4) they will now unconsciously

reproduce the style of the speech which they have so thoroughly absorbed.

Baxter 33

They will also acquire a plentiful and choice vocabulary, and a command

of Composition and Figures…” (Quintilian II.7.3-4)

Memorizing a text causes students to create a close acquaintance with the text,

helping students see how parts of the text work together. As phrases that are rhythmical,

balanced, or striking are the ones most easily remembered, it makes sense that the

students would favor these structures and imitate them in their own writing.

Students Transform the Object

In the process of transforming a text, students have a variety of options, including

translation (students translate a text from one language to another), paraphrase (students

either shorten or expand a text, trying to capture the same meaning), metaphrase (students

change the genre of the text—for example, prose to poetry or vice versa) and imitation

proper (students produce their own texts by adding to the original text. The student may

keep the form of the original text and change the subject matter, or keep the subject

matter and change the form) (Christiansen 75-78, Murphy A Short History 59-60). In all

of these exercises the student is a new speaker speaking on a new occasion to a new

audience. In all of these exercises as well, the student is encouraged to vie with the

original. Quintilian writes that none of these activities should result in “mere passive

reproduction, but to rival and vie with the original in expressing the same thoughts”

(X.5.5). The goal is always to speak and write more eloquently, and with better

expression than the original. As the student advances, the extent to which he is able to

vie with the original should also progress.

Student Self-Correction

Baxter 34

As part of the process, the student reads her own work analytically, edits and

revises, and prepares to read her composition aloud to the class. This casts the student as

her own critic. According to Quintilian, a student may add to, take away from, or alter

what he or she has written (X.5.1). Quintilian notes that if a student has produced

“something more polished than ordinary” he may be permitted to memorize and recite his

own work as a sort of reward for hard work (II.7.5).

Student Performance of the Text

Murphy describes Roman classrooms as interactive, with teacher and peer

response a common practice. Quintilian argues for public education over private home-

schooling for this very reason. To him, students will learn more when they are together

because the comments made to one student will serve as admonition to all. The idea of

performing in front of peers also serves as motivation for the students to do well.

Quintilian does say that young students should not memorize and recite from

memory their own texts, unless, as mentioned, the student has composed something

extraordinarily polished. Students, for the most part, it seems, read aloud their

compositions to the class. For teachers and peers who respond to student texts, Quintilian

gives the advice that all should be heard attentively and quietly. Also, much

consideration should be given regarding quality of written works and oral presentations.

Quintilian warns that, in a classroom setting, “mutual praise without any regard to

quality...is a very dangerous enemy of study” (II.2.11). Classroom interaction where

students listen to each other and hear the response of their teacher essentially leads

students to “acquire judgment by listening as well as facility by writing” (II.2.12).

Baxter 35

The idea behind the oral component of instruction is that students have to be able

to use what they learn in daily life. Richard Leo Enos describes oral elements in

Isocratean education. He writes,

Study by imitation was important, but Isocrates also sharpened critical

thinking by debate exercises… There is also evidence that Isocrates

encouraged his students to discuss and evaluate in groups, so that they

would have comments coming not only from him but from peers as well.

He taught excellence in writing through exercises that bonded oral with

literary composition. (Murphy, A Short History 32)

Students who write progymnasmata exercises are affected by knowing that the exercises

will be performed in front of the class. The requirement for oral presentation builds in

motivation, according to Quintilian. It also encourages quality in writing, and causes

students to envision their written work as a performance as they are writing it. Students

are more prone to hear their own words, and even practice reading them aloud before

turning them in.

Quintilian suggests that students should be given the chance to demonstrate in

public settings what they have learned in class, and argues that this practice will also add

to the student’s education. Quintilian writes,

Indeed, however much private study has contributed, there is still a

proficiency which only the forum can give; the light is different, the aspect

of real danger is different. [… I]n court the judge sits silent, the opponent

bellows at them, no rash word escapes notice, all assumptions have to be

proved, and the speech that has been laboriously put together in long days

Baxter 36

and nights of study is cut short by the water clock. In some Causes,

indeed, you have to drop the swelling style and its continual mighty blasts,

and simply talk; and those well-trained persons just do not know how.

This is why one finds people who think themselves too eloquent to plead a

Cause! (XII.6.5-6)

Quintilian emphasizes here that performance in public settings of knowledge gained in

school will cause the student to practice discernment and good judgment, or fail to

perform well. The final test of the students is how well they perform in the drama of life

and how ably they act/ speak/ write in real social situations. Such a test is both

examination and continued education at the same time, and Quintilian recommends that

students have experiences writing for and speaking in public settings throughout their

years of study, not only at the end. A student “taken to the forum” as a youth, gains “new

knowledge of what the battle really is and what the object of his studies is” (XII.6.7). In

summary, Quintilian writes, “It is only when precept and experience come together that a

fitting return results from our efforts” (XII.6.7). Precept and experience come together

when students are able to practice in public or “real life” settings what they learn in

school.

The progymnasmata and the process of imitation teach students everything they

will need to know to do well in the final exercises, the suasoria and controversia. The

real drama of the classroom prepares students for oral declamations. Classrooms that use

c la ssical methods are dynamic, conversational, and controversial, not silent. When

student exercises are presented, student group feedback is given every day, after every

presentation. Students and teachers talk about their interpretations of words and actions.

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They give reasons, no doubt, for the comments they make. Students writing the

progymnasmata are actively engaged in discussing and reviewing their own and others’

works, and verbal presentations and performances of works by the teacher and by

students create dynamic classrooms.

The idea of repeating the exercises with increased complexity and of repeating the

process of imitation is to teach students to eventually become their own teachers.

Quintilian asks, regarding students, “After all, what else do we aim at by teaching them

except to ensure that they do not always need to be taught?” (II.5.13). Students who write

the progymnasmata a number of times learn the precepts the exercises teach to an extent

that the precepts become second nature. Likewise, students who repeat the process of

imitation again and again learn eventually to take themselves through the process,

without the help of an instructor. Students learn to critically read texts and to incorporate

what they learn from their reading into what they write. Thus, the process of imitation

ultimately teaches students to develop and practice discernment of good and bad choices

in writing, both in the writing of others and in their own writing. This teaching brings

students closer to the larger classical curricular goal of being able to act well and to judge

wisely in any situation, at any time.

Classical Revivalists

Within the past twenty years, scholars have begun to see a need to gain back some

of what has been lost from the classical rhetorical tradition. Robert J. Connors calls the

revitalization of rhetoric in our day “exciting” as it “has given us many novel pedagogical

techniques […]” (“Static Abstractions” 353). James J. Murphy claims, “[A] knowledge

of the rhetorical past can help us solve the problems of writing in modern America”

Baxter 38

(“Rhetorical History” 5). Several scholars have created new textbooks for college classes,

based on ancient rhetorics, including Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee’s Ancient

Rhetorics for Contemporary Students (2004), Richard Lanham’s Analyzing Prose (2003),

Frank D’Angelo’s Composition in the Classical Tradition (2000), and Edward P.J.

Corbett and Robert Connors’s Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (1999). While

the movement to revitalize classical rhetoric is gaining strength in universities, however,

the benefits of this movement have not yet reached, in any real way, the levels of

elementary, middle school, or high school education.

Christiansen discusses the need for educators and teachers to look to the classical

rhetorical tradition for insights concerning modern situations, saying,

Any discussion of what it means to read, what relations inhere between

reading and writing, literature and composition, “the word and the world,”

and how reading and writing should be taught must consider how these

questions can be answered from this tradition that not only invented the

language arts, but also influenced the literary achievements of Western

civilization for at least two millennia. The longevity of the tradition—the

fact that numerous educators from diverse cultures and time periods found

value in its precepts and methods—also invites a consideration of whether

those precepts and methods continue to hold value today. (“The Master

Double Frame” 72)

Christiansen is joined by others in the belief that the precepts and methods of the

classical tradition are worthy of scrutiny and possible reimplementation. D’Angelo

writes that the rhetorical tradition is a venerable tradition “whose practical usefulness has

Baxter 39

proved itself over many centuries and that remains relevant today” (Composition xiv).

Stanley F. Bonner, in his comprehensive work detailing education in ancient Rome,

writes that Roman education

is not merely a subject of antiquarian or specialized academic interest, but

one which has in several ways a continuing relevance far beyond ancient

Rome, and is not without significance today. It is concerned with human

relationships…with home as well as the school, and with those changes in

society which affect both home and school. (xi)

And Sharon Crowley and Debra Hawhee, modern rhetoric scholars who also see value in

t he c las s ica l t r ad it i o n, wr it e

ancient rhetoricians invented and taught an art that was immersed in the

daily traffic of human events and in communal discourse about them.

This art differed markedly from the modes of composition ordinarily

taught in school today, which present writers and speakers with an

abstracted set of pseudo-scientific rules that dictate how a finished

discourse ought to look. (Ancient Rhetorics xiv)

Donald Lemen Clark, in his Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education declares the

ancient art of teaching rhetoric has helped him in his own teaching, saying,

For the old art of teaching rhetoric, or the art of speaking well, has helped

me, at least, to identify and solve many of the problems which I have had

to confront in forty years of teaching thinking, speaking, and writing. As I

became aware, bit by bit, of ancient teaching wisdom, as I learned the

ancient precepts, imitated ancient methods, and practiced on generations

Baxter 40

of college students, I became increasingly effective as a midwife to others’

thoughts. And I have made some progress towards learning to avoid the

mistakes of other teachers. So it is my hope that I may make available to

younger teachers something of what I have learned. (ix)

Richard Lanham is yet another modern rhetoric scholar who sees value in

classical theory and pedagogy for modern instruction. Lanham, writing specifically

about classical language analysis, asserts that classical figural analysis will benefit

today’s students in ways modern composition approaches cannot. Lanham points out that

in order to truly analyze language there must be a way to classify basic types, a set of

names for the classes—a nomenclature. “Such a nomenclature has been available, in the

classical rhetorical writings, for over two thousand years,” he writes. “Rhetorical

analysis, using the classical terms at least, seems awfully old-fashioned nowadays. But if

a better set of terms has gained common acceptance, I don’t know of it” (Analyzing Prose

xvi). Lanham’s work shows the value of having a terminology, from the classical

tradition, for naming and describing what we see and hear in language.

Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert Connors, in their text Classical Rhetoric for the

Modern Student, argue that because rhetoric is pervasive in contemporary society “it

behooves us to be aware of the basic strategies and principles of this ancient art. If

nothing else, a knowledge of this art will equip us to respond critically to the rhetorical

efforts of others in both the oral and written forms” (25). In specific relation to writing

instruction, Corbett and Connors write that rhetoric can assist students in becoming better

writers. They explain,

Baxter 41

Students have too often been inhibited in their writing by the negative

approach to composition—don’t do this, beware of that. Classical

rhetoric…in the main, offered positive advice to help writers in the

composition of a specific kind of discourse directed to a definite audience

for a particular purpose. …[R]hetoric lay[s] down the general principles

that writers can adapt to fit a particular situation. At least, it can provide

writers with a set of procedures and criteria that can guide them in making

strategic decisions in the composition process. (25)

Corbett and Connors join other theorists who see the classical rhetorical tradition as

relevant and valuable for today’s students.

Scholars and the Progymnasmata

Several modern theorists have also found worth specifically in the classical

progymnasmata. D’Angelo writes specifically of these exercises that they “overcome the

problems of empty formalism, lack of purpose, and arhetoricality for which current-

traditional and other kinds of pedagogies have come under fire in recent composition

theory” (Composition xiv). D’Angelo’s book Composition in the Classical Tradition is

based entirely on the progymnasmata. Each of the twelve chapter details a

progymnasmata exercise, what it accomplishes, how it has been taught and how it may be

taught in a contemporary classroom. D’Angelo also champions classical imitation in

teaching the progymnasmata. Although he does not call his method imitation, D’Angelo

provides questions throughout his chapters to guide reading of model texts and student

writing of their own texts. The questions and models provided show that students are

Baxter 42

expected to critically read and analyze example texts, and use this reading to guide their

own creation of similar works.

Christiansen also advocates teaching the progymnasmata to students in her “The

Master Double Frame and Other Lessons from Classical Education.” After illuminating

lessons the progymnasmata supply both readers and writers, Christiansen states, “While I

add my witness that these pedagogical ideas work I also suggest that we can add to,

subtract from, substitute for, and transform them to meet the ever-changing needs of the

present” (95). Christiansen’s view matches the view of other theorists who agree that

classical exercises can and should be taught in ways that meet modern needs.

James J. Murphy likewise argues that pedagogical values of Roman writing

instruction, including the progymnasmata, “surely seem worth studying” (A Short History

76). Murphy argues that the progymnasmata can profitably be taught today, especially if

taught together in a sequence, saying, “Many of the individual exercises can be used

profitably today, of course, since each is largely self-explanatory. Nevertheless a modern

reader should understand that the full power of their use resides in their interrelation to

each other, and in their place in a proven sequence” (A Short History 75).

Other authors, including Edward P. J. Corbett and Robert Connors, Sharon

Crowley and Debra Hawhee, and George Kennedy all support the idea of teaching

progymnasmata in modern classrooms. Corbett and Connors and Crowley and Hawhee

all include in their textbooks teaching classical rhetoric a chapter outlining the

progymnasmata and giving examples of how the exercises were taught anciently and how

the exercises may be taught in classes today. Kennedy, in his recent Progymnasmata:

Greek Textbooks of Prose Composition and Rhetoric, states that the progymnasmata may

Baxter 43

be of interest to students of literature, as “In classical, medieval, and renaissance

literature, fable, narrative, chreia, ecphrasis, comparison, speech in character, and other

progymnasmatic forms were often combined in different ways to create epics, dramas,

histories, and the genres of lyric poetry” (ix). In addition, Kennedy states,

The handbooks of progymnasmata may also interest modern teachers of

composition, for they present a sequence of assignments in reading,

writing, and speaking which gradually increase in difficulty and in

maturity of thought from simple story-telling to argumentation, combined

with study of literary models. As such, the exercises were certainly

effective in providing students for centuries with verbal skills that many

students in our time seem less often to develop. (ix-x)

These authors all see benefits for students in learning the progymnasmata.

Richard L. Harp is yet another advocate of teaching the progymnasmata in

modern classrooms. Harp, in his article “Practicing What We Preach: Using the Classics

to Teach the Classics,” describes an integrated humanities program teaching the Great

Books developed by three professors at the University of Kansas in which “the classics”

are taught in conjunction with some of the progymnasmata. Students in the program read

Aesop’s fables, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and Homer’s Odyssey, and use what they learn

in their reading to write fables and narratives. Students then study Socrates’ Republic

and write comparisons of, for example, Platonic aristocracy, French aristocracy in the

eighteenth century, and United States democracy. Students also work to strengthen their

memory, by first not being allowed to take notes on lectures, and second, by memorizing

notable English poems (a total of ten poems each semester per student). Students select

Baxter 44

lines from poems they have memorized to expand, in the form of the chreia and proverb

exercises, by “elaborat[ing] upon the statement by means of a fable, and incident from a

history and one from an epic poem, a line or passage from a poem they know by heart,

and finally, to apply to it an incident from their own lives or from their observation of

contemporary social or political affairs” (485). Students do not write all of the

progymnasmata, only these five. However, the five progymnasmata are taught very

much the way progymnasmata were taught anciently with the best of literature as models.

Instructors in the University of Kansas course also model exercises for their students,

shaping lectures on literature in the form of a thesis “expanded upon by means of the

exercises contained in the progymnasmata, and the professors are in effect required to

review all of their own education in order to locate significant examples and arguments

that would support or attack the thesis” (487). Harp claims, “In this way a teacher

becomes something more than merely a dispenser of rhetorical precepts; he must also

himself embody those precepts and his authority over his students might then flow

naturally from the kind of example he sets” (487).

Harp’s advocacy of teaching the progymnasmata in conjunction with the Great

Books is strong. Harp, in comparing the University of Kansas humanities program’s use

of the progymnasmata with methods of many ordinary freshman composition programs,

states, “Grammatical correctness and term paper antisepticness, which in the absence of

substantive material becomes the frequent subject of the freshman course, are no proper

substitutes for demonstrating the myriad ways in which students can use great literature

to understand and express the nature of their own experience” (486). Harp also argues

that grammar, logic, and rhetoric cannot be taught in isolation, but must be taught “in

Baxter 45

union with the greatest expressions of significant human experience” (486) as they are

taught in the progymnasmata.

In addition to other theorists listed, educators Joseph J. Comprone and Katharine

J. Ronald both support combining classical progymnasmata with modern composition

approaches in order to benefit students. Comprone, in his “Classical ‘Elementary

Exercises’ and In-Process Composing,” suggests that teachers, by combining classical

imitation as taught in conjunction with the progymnasmata with more recent writing

across the curriculum pedagogies, will help students “develop both general l it e rac y

processes and particular reading and writing skills” (11). Comprone advocates teaching

copying, paraphrasing, summarizing, translating, and amplifying as methods for teaching

students to write, for example, a general science essay. Comprone concludes,

These exercise and assignment traditions can be integrated, and if they are

integrated, students will come to feel a part of language as it has been used

in the past as well as a part of the more modern process of coming to know

and discover through writing. (12)

Comprone and Ronald in their “Expressive Writing: Exercises in a New Progymnasmata”

also argue that current work on expressive discourse, learning theory, and the classical

progymnasmata may be combined to create “a flexible yet systematic heuristic model for

writing teachers” (38). Comprone and Ronald suggest a new version of exercises that re-

integrate processes of reading and writing, calling for students to examine another

writer’s thinking. The exercises also advocate oral presentation of writing.

Other supporters of the progymnasmata include Tina Hansson and Anders Sigrell

who currently head the Swedish Progymnasmata project, “From Aphthonius to the

Baxter 46

Writing Process,” sponsored by Swedish Tercentary Foundation. Unpublished papers

delivered at recent ISHR conferences in Warsaw, Poland, and Los Angeles, California,

by authors Manfred Kraus, Alan Church, and Gideon Burton all also strongly support use

of progymnasmata in classrooms. Some of these authors’ works will soon be published.

I also advocate using the progymnasmata to teach reading, writing, and thinking,

specifically in secondary schools, as the exercises provide needed solutions to problems

in modern composition approaches. While I agree with much of what these theorists who

advocate the use of the progymnasmata think and feel in regards to the exercises, the

view of the progymnasmata expressed in this thesis differs in some important ways from

views expressed by other theorists. For example, while I greatly admire D’Angelo ’s

work dedicated to teaching the progymnasmata, one difference between my

understanding of the exercises and his is that D’Angelo includes as example texts many

texts of quite poor quality, including quite a few excerpts from newspaper articles. While

such examples may provide subject matter for exercises, they do not provide quality

examples of good writing upon which students may build or with which they may

productively rival.

My understanding of the progymnasmata as central in the classical rhetorica l

curriculum also differs from Crowley and Hawhee’s and Corbett and Connors’s

presentation of the exercises as peripheral. Corbett and Connors and Crowley and

Hawhee include the progymnasmata at the end of their texts on rhetoric, after chapters on

canons of rhetoric, logical topics, and imitation. These authors and their texts seem to

propose that precepts of classical rhetoric are taught apart from the progymnasmata,

Baxter 47

while my argument is that the progymnasmata were used to instruct students in the

precepts.

The program Richard L. Harp describes makes good use of progymnasmata in

teaching reading and writing; however, my understanding of the progymnasmata differs

in one important way from that of Harp, who writes that, while the University of Kansas

program emphasizes important parts of rhetoric—memory and invention—the program

has “not been able to devote much time to the subordinate matters of arrangement and

style” (486). Harp continues, “Style and arrangement clearly must be taught in a classical

rhetoric program. Our conclusion is, though, that this can be deferred past the underclass

years” (486). My argument is that style and arrangement are not subordinate matters of

rhetoric, and that these elements were and should be taught in conjunction with other

elements of the progymnasmata; furthermore, it is not difficult to do so. Harp reports that

students, upon being assigned to write fables and fairytales, created texts that were

“lifeless and unsatisfactory” (480). Harp and other professors then reviewed with

students “the basic elements of the story: conflict and climax,” (480) and noticed a

change for the better in student writing. What the professors could have done from the

beginning is teach close reading of the model texts and analysis of stylistic elements and

patterns of arrangement in order to point out to students elements that make certain fables

and narratives vibrant and satisfying. Such was done classically in conjunction with

teaching the progymnasmata. With the program Harp and his associates already have in

place, they may add close analysis of texts and implementation of patterns learned to help

students better construct their own exercises. Patterns of arrangement are also already

embedded in teaching the places of the progymnasmata.

Baxter 48

A last difference between my understanding of the progymnasmata and that of

authors Joseph Comprone and Katharine Ronald who propose new “progymnasmata” for

students is that Comprone’s and Ronald’s proposed exercises do not offer students all of

the benefits and understanding of key precepts of rhetoric the classical exercises offer.

Comprone and Ronald create exercises through which students read texts, write personal

responses to the texts, read their responses aloud, and write new responses to other

students’ responses. Comprone and Ronald see value in certain aspects of classical

teaching of progymnasmata, including integrating acts of reading, thinking, writing, and

speaking. However, the exercises Comprone and Ronald propose draw much more fr o m

modern expressivist theory and ideas of reader-response literary criticism than from the

classical progymnasmata.

While differences exist between theorists who support the idea of teaching

progymnasmata in modern classrooms, it is important that so many theorists see value in

these exercises that, until recently, have been largely forgotten and unknown to

educators. There is also great variety in what theorists see to be of value in teaching the

progymnasmata, a condition that is also encouraging. Bringing a variety of perspectives

to the table, theorists who study the progymnasmata can together find ways to adapt the

exercises to meet the needs of modern students and classrooms.

New Contexts for Old Exercises

In contemporary reading and writing theory, more than once a theorist has

thought long and hard about a particular problem and finally come up with a solution;

however, unbeknownst to them, that solution was already part of classical rhetorical

training. For example, Marie Foley, thinking of ways to escape formulaic teaching of the

Baxter 49

five-paragraph essay thought of new ways to teach introductions and conclusions. Foley

teaches students, “Their introduction is an occasion to make connection with their

readers—appeal to them, anticipate their needs—and orient them as to the direction of the

coming journey. The concluding paragraph is not merely the slot for reiterating main

points; it marks the destination of the journey. It develops the final, most significant

point or the climax or the surprise” (234). Quintilian, on the subject of the introduction,

writes that it is the student’s opportunity to win the favor of his hearers (IV.1.2-3).

Quintilian’s next 18 pages detail different ways the student may accomplish this, and

what considerations are to be taken with regard to situation, subject matter, audience, and

so forth. Following the introduction come the narration in which the student gives

relevant information surrounding the case, and the division and proposition, in which the

student orients listeners in regard to what is to come. Quintilian spends another 39 pages

detailing all of these parts, their considerations, and how one may go about constructing

them. As for conclusions, Quintilian teaches that the conclusion is the student’s

opportunity to refresh the memory of those listening, and, more importantly, the final

opportunity to “win the judge’s good will…and excite and assuage his emotions”

(VI.1.11). He states that “here, if anywhere, we are allowed to release the whole flood of

our eloquence” (VI1.52). Quintilian thereafter devotes 24 pages to detailing concerns in

regard to conclusions.

What Foley probably never realized is that what she was trying to teach her

students was something that had been taught, recorded, and discussed in a good amount

of detail over 1900 years earlier. She could have looked back and drawn from an

abundant rhetorical past. Foley’s case isn’t an isolated incident. Whole theories of

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modern composition—current-traditional, expressivist, cognitivist, socia l

constructionist—often unknowingly bring back forgotten elements from the classical

rhetorical tradition.

James J. Murphy makes a comparison to illustrate why modern teachers should

build on the classical past. He writes

Is this all just impractical antiquarian hogwash? Consider just one

example of old principles reshaped to fit modern needs: when the internal

combustion engine made motor cars possible, the cars used regular

carriage wheels. The vibration ruined the delicately constructed engines,

so Charles Goodyear invented the pneumatic tire to fit that ancient

invention, the wheel. The wheel itself had worked for thousands of years,

but the motorcar wheel had to be rethought and replanned to fit modern

times. (“Rhetorical History” 10)

Murphy, with this example, calls for educators to come to understand the principles of

classical rhetoric, and then make a modern adaptation work to suit our needs. Too often,

as in Foley’s case, we teachers spend immense amounts of time and energy “reinventing

the wheel,” so to speak. When the methods and theories we have studied (usually those

from the past two or three decades) begin to fail us, we believe that we have to figure out

new and better ways to teach reading, writing, and thinking, and that we have to do it

practically on our own. Some quite brilliant and helpful techniques have been come up

with in this way; many, however, have turned out to be reproductions of parts of the

classical rhetorical curriculum. If this is the case, we might instead choose to start out

Baxter 51

with that curriculum, and, rather than ignoring it or being afraid of its complexity, learn it

and build on it.

The classical curriculum has been rejected because of its complexity. However,

Robert Connors makes the statement, “If [mistakes of current traditional rhetoric] teach

us anything, it is that we as teachers must always be wary of neat, comprehensive-

sounding conceptual schemes that are easy to teach but that have no real contact with

what students need to learn” (“Static Abstractions” 367). In recent decades new theories

have arisen that point out the complexity of writing in real, social, multi-genred

situations, and differences between these situations and conceptual schemes like current-

traditional rhetoric that simplify writing to an extreme degree. We are moving back

toward the value of a complex scheme for writing instruction.

The goals national organizations like the NCTE, IRA, and CCCC have published

for learning and writing in the language arts, and in relation to assessment, have much in

common with classical goals for instruction. Student preparedness to perform well as

members of society is highly valued. According to the statements of these organizations,

students are expected to learn to read, interpret, evaluate, and respond to texts, and to

learn how to engage with a variety of audiences for a variety of purposes. Students are

also to learn strategies and processes for composing in many genres and social settings.

The organizations also believe methods of writing assessment should improve teaching

and learning.

The progymnasmata, within their rhetorical contexts, offer practical methods for

fulfilling both classical and modern goals of reading and writing instruction. Goals of

classical rhetorical instruction, including development of natural talents for practical

Baxter 52

purposes, development of moral judgment, mental dexterity, and the ability to judge well

and perform well in speaking or writing on demand are goals that find value in today’s

world. The classical curriculum offers practical methods (and exercises) for teaching and

assessing all of these aspects of learning. If we will improve student learning, we will

have to consider methods and objectives of a forgotten curriculum.

Baxter 53

CHAPTER TWO

CURRENT-TRADITIONAL RHETORIC AND THE PROGYMNASMATA

What is known as current-traditional rhetoric developed in the nineteenth century

and remained dominant in classrooms through the 1970s when challenged by rising

theoretical and pedagogical movements begun in the 1940s (Connors, Composition-

Rhetoric 15). Robert J. Connors describes the development of current-traditional rhetoric,

calling it “composition-rhetoric” as current-traditional rhetoric is neither current

(enjoying an ongoing sense of development), nor traditional (adherent to or developed

from the older, classical rhetorical tradition) (5-6). Connors explains “this composition-

rhetoric grew out of and interacted with concurrent cultural trends [of the nineteenth

century], as American college and university teaching were shaped by pressures that were

economic, political, and theoretical” (4). Catherine Hobbs and James Berlin give

additional insight into such concurrent cultural trends, describing current-traditional

rhetoric as “positivistic and rational, offering writing as an extension of the scientific

method” (Murphy, A Short History 253). The new rhetoric of the nineteenth century was

“schematic, structural rhetoric” characterized by its “love for lists, rules, and [l]aws” of

composition (Connors, “Static Abstractions” 356). Connors explains that the idea of

having precise “Laws” for composition matched the enthusiasm of the nineteenth century

for all things “rational” and “scientific.”

Although what we know as current-traditional rhetoric was not, in Connors’

findings, a unified, unchanging phenomenon, basic elements of at least later versions of

this rhetoric are understood to include (1) pedagogy that esteems formal and mechanical

correctness, also called a “product” approach to teaching writing; (2) classification of

Baxter 54

discourse into modes: description, narration, exposition, and argument; (3) style taught in

terms of unity, coherence, and emphasis; (4) analysis of discourse into words, sentences,

and paragraphs, and (5) a preoccupation with the informal essay and research paper

(Composition-Rhetoric 12-14). This chapter focuses on two residual features of

nineteenth century current-traditional rhetoric that continue to have strong presence in

today’s composition classes: writing formulas and modes of composition. Teachers who

focus on these elements in class do so for several reasons: writing in modes is required on

state exams, and modes and formulas of writing are codified, simple to teach and to

grade. Teachers may also, knowingly or by default, accept larger educational and

political goals associated with current-traditional rhetoric.

One goal shared by those who developed and first implemented current-traditional

rhetoric was the goal to simplify rhetorical curricula taught to students in universities and

secondary schools. Numbers of students enrolling in educational institutions increased

rapidly year after year from the mid 1800s on. Student bodies in the 1800s and later

enjoyed wider diversity than they had previously, including diversity in level of

educational preparedness. In response to increasing numbers of disproportionably

prepared students, teachers began to use grammar drills and to teach formulas of writing

to bring students up to levels of competency in writing expected at the secondary and

college levels. In a time when the scientific was also increasingly valued, being able to

teach students fixed, seemingly scientific “rules” and divisions of composition, like

modes and formulas for arrangement, lent credibility to composition instruction while

making composition teachable for a large and diverse student population.

Baxter 55

Composition curricula were also changed to meet values of rising technical and

vocational colleges, including the value of education as preparation for vocation.

Current-traditional methods continue to be valued as a productive system for teaching

composition to rising professionals. Hobbs and Berlin describe the rise of current-

traditional rhetoric as taking place at the same time the modern high school and college

came into being. In these schools, following the German research university model,

curriculum was specialized rather than general and the overall purpose of the schools

“was to train certified experts in the new sciences to produce the knowledge that would

move capitalist society forward” (249). According to Hobbs and Berlin, “The new high

school and college then were part of the creation of a meritocracy—a hierarchical class

structure in which the certified professional is given an inordinate amount of power and

reward for solving the problems considered worth solving by the demands of corporate

capitalism” (254). Hobbs and Berlin note that the certified professionals trained in

modern schools “usually find through their scientific decision-making process the

solutions to problems that best serve their own class interests” (254). Thus, current-

traditional rhetoric is an epistemology “complicit with a politics designed to preserve the

interests of corporate capitalism and the university-trained experts who serve it” (253).

The idea that current-traditional rhetoric continues to promote values of modern technical

and vocational colleges provides one explanation for current-traditional rhetoric’s

continued strong presence in classrooms and on state exams.

Writing Formulas

The most widely taught formulas of writing in modern composition classes are the

five-paragraph model and the Schaffer curriculum guide. The five-paragraph model—

Baxter 56

introductory paragraph including thesis statement, three supporting paragraphs, and

concluding paragraph—is a model that still has strong presence in much of secondary

school composition instruction and state writing exams. Teachers value the five-

paragraph model because most students easily understand it. Papers written following

the model are also easy to grade: teachers may look at the introductory paragraph, find

the thesis statement containing three main points, and read the first line of the next three

paragraphs to make sure all of the three main supporting points are discussed. If all

supporting points are discussed, the paper may receive an ‘A’ grade. If only two

supporting points are presented, the paper receives a ‘B’ grade, and so on.

The second formula taught in classes is the Schaffer curriculum guide developed

in 1995 by Jane Schaffer, a teacher in San Diego. It is now taught in schools across the

country. Schaffer’s formula advocates a four-paragraph essay, with each paragraph

following a specific format. For example, body paragraphs are arranged in this order:

Topic sentence, concrete detail #1, commentary #1a, commentary #1b, concrete detail #2,

commentary #2a, commentary#2b, concluding sentence (Wiley62). Mark Wiley explains

that each body paragraph must have eight sentences and contain concrete details (CD)

and commentary sentences (CM). A CD “is any kind of specific detail such as facts,

evidence, examples, proofs, quotations or paraphrase, or plot references” (62). A CM is

the writer’s own analysis, interpretation or reaction.

The Schaffer model follows these rules:

The ratio of 1 CD to 2 CMs must always be maintained… Body

paragraphs must have at least two chunks [groups of 1 CD and 2 CMs]

and be a minimum of 100 words. Introductions and conclusions must be

Baxter 57

40+ words, with the introduction containing at least three sentences and a

thesis somewhere in the first paragraph, while conclusions must contain

all commentary and provide a finished feeling to the essay. (Wiley 62)

Schaffer claims these numbers were created after calculating ratios and counting words in

hundreds of high-scoring AP exam papers. The method she proposes reflects patterns

found in the highest scoring papers. Schaffer’s method of instruction is constructed to

take forty-five days to teach, including prewriting and peer-editing activities where

students count the number of words in each other’s papers and make sure all parts of the

paper fit the correct pattern. Teachers comment on papers in the same way, counting

words and matching papers to the prescribed pattern. Given the tenets of the model,

educators who adopt the Schaffer curriculum guide do so with the idea that the approach

will lead students to score well on AP exams and other writing tests. Educators also

adopt the Schaffer approach because it is a straightforward approach, one that takes

relatively little time to teach and to evaluate. In addition, the approach lends itself easily

to machine scoring, which scoring reduces grading time for teachers and test scorers.

Teachers who teach the five-paragraph model believe the model provides students

a point of departure and needed instruction in form. Many middle and high school

teachers feel that form, in some way, needs to be taught. David Peter Noskin, in his

“Teaching Writing in the High School: Fifteen Years in the Making,” writes that, in his

first year of teaching high school, it became quickly apparent his students needed

structure. He felt, in a sense, that his college professor had betrayed him, instructing him

in processes of teaching writing which involve little or no structure and which are “too

messy and idealistic for the realities of secondary education” (34). Critics who argue in

Baxter 58

favor of the five-paragraph model contend that the model provides students with “a

structure, a format, a plan,” and salvation from a “menacing blank sheet of paper”

(Chauncey 80,82; Smith 16). Alison Kuehner argues that the five-paragraph model is a

“useful step for beginning writers” that helps students “overcome writer’s block,” while

teaching “the primary concepts of an essay” (83).

The five-paragraph essay is argued to be a form that is used in professional,

“real-world” and high-stakes testing writing situations. The model presumably also works

as a constant for many students learning to perform in new writing situations. Scholars in

favor of the five-paragraph model cite research that finds the formula helps students in

testing situations, especially in tests where time limits are imposed (Kueher 83, Smith

16). In addition, scholars argue that the five-paragraph essay is a form that recurs

countless times in professional, “real-world” writing and in their own writing (Chauncey

82, Smith 17). Learning the five-paragraph model may help students transition from one

kind of writing to another where basic requirements for structure remain the same.

Taking the five-paragraph essay from students, according to one critic, is like “pulling the

rug out from under them, further reinforcing some students’ belief that English is subject

to the whim of the teacher” (Kueher 84).

The five-paragraph model and Schaffer curriculum guide have their critics,

though, and those critics name two main drawbacks of teaching formulas: formulas stifle

exploration of ideas and formulas eliminate the need for judgment. Marie Foley, in her

essay “Unteaching the Five-Paragraph Essay,” claims that formulas and formula writing

thwart student discovery of new ideas and encourage superficial discovery and research.

Foley writes that the five-paragraph formula “relieves students of the need to probe

Baxter 59

relationships” (232). She gives an example of a student who, while writing about three

benefits of jogging—health, weight control, and stress reduction—discovers an

interrelationship between feeling healthy and looking trim that reduces stress. Because

the model calls for only three areas of discussion, the student will probably “let the

insight slide,” not knowing really what to do with a fourth observation (233).

The Schaffer curriculum guide is seen to hinder creativity and development of

students in ways similar to the five-paragraph model. Mark Wiley claims the Schaffer

model stifles exploration and interpretation of issues and inhibits discovery through

writing. The model, in Wiley’s view, sends the wrong message to students and

“uninformed teachers” about what writing really is. He states, “Formulaic writing of the

kind Schaffer advocates forces premature closure on complicated interpretive issues and

stifles ongoing exploration” (64). As an example, Wiley claims that writing we do

concerning literature “should reflect the connections we make in our own lives, the

tentativeness of those interpretations, the complexity of the human drama, and the often

unanswerable questions that inevitably remain with readers” (65). Formulaic models do

not allow for this kind of discovery through writing. Wiley explains that the Schaffer

curriculum guide also impedes development of students since teachers who use the

Schaffer model have difficulty helping students advance beyond the formula. “Teachers,”

he writes, “while acknowledging that students must move beyond the Schaffer method if

they are to continue improving, were nevertheless left wondering what to do next.

Unfortunately, there is no next in the Schaffer approach” (63).

With both the five-paragraph model and Schaffer curriculum guide, the tendency

toward strict formulism is also a noted danger. Critics acknowledge that student

Baxter 60

discovery and understanding of writing is limited when an instructor requires an exact

number of supporting paragraphs, concrete details, or commentary sentences, and bases

grading on student adherence to those strictures. Such devotion to formula can narrow

students’ perceptions of what writing entails. Rather than being encouraged to make

choices in writing and examine the effects of those choices, students are taught to

conform to a prescribed procedure. Progression beyond the formula is also never taught

or is discouraged until some later state. Most of all, strict devotion to formula eliminates

the need for students, peers, and teachers to exercise judgment and to base decisions in

writing on larger considerations of self, subject, situation, and audience.

The progymnasmata offer solutions to problems seen in current-traditional

teaching of formulas. These exercises provide structure and starting points for students,

so students don’t have to begin from nothing, but without limiting students in ways

modern formulas are seen to do.

The Progymnasmata and Form

The progymnasmata succeed in teaching form without using formulas, in a way

that encourages in-depth exploration of issues, creativity, and use of judgment throughout

the writing process, and without creating a break between classroom writing and real-

world experience. The progymnasmata accomplish this by first teaching form through

the “places” of each exercise. As outlined in chapter one, places provide starting points

through which students find suitable material for their cause. Places also give an idea of

how a composition may effectively be ordered. For example, Aphthonius explains the

places through which the refutation exercise is accomplished. His description includes

indications for how the exercise may be organized. Aphthonius writes,

Baxter 61

It is necessary for those engaged in refutation to state first the false

assertion of the opposition; next, to add the exposition of the matter; and,

then, to use these topics: first, the obscure and the unconvincing; after this,

the impossible, the inconsistent, and the improper; and, finally, to add the

irrational. (268)

The form for the exercise is already present in the assignment of the exercise and the

places given. The student then takes each of the places of the exercise and finds or

creates matter for that place until each place has been treated.

While this presentation of places may seem at first like it could offer a good

formula for writing, two considerations refute the idea. First, each exercise, which is a

unique genre, contains its own places, meaning the places of each exercise, or genre, are

different from the places of the others. Because each exercise contains its own places,

students learn there is not one set formula for content or arrangement that applies to every

kind of composition. The second consideration is that the standards of judgment taught in

conjunction with the progymnasmata are the standards of decorum. Students are

evaluated primarily on the basis of how what they write (and how they arrange their

discourse) meets the needs of and is appropriate for situation, self, audience, and subject.

Where principles of decorum are the primary bases for evaluation, students cannot follow

the form of an exercise slavishly without detriment.

The progymnasmata give no prescriptions for numbers of sentences or paragraphs

for each place of the exercise, and so students focus on ideas, rather than on requirements

for length. In writing a thesis exercise, for example, a student seeks to examine a

question (political or speculative) by examining how something is lawful, just, profitable,

Baxter 62

and possible, which considerations are places of the exercise. If the question under

examination is whether a person should marry, and the student is treating the place of

profitability, for instance, the student will find the best arguments and proofs he or she

can to show that marriage is profitable. The goal is not to write a certain number of

paragraphs or sentences, but to prove, to the best of the student’s ability, that marriage is

profitable. In completing the exercise, the student may find it takes three paragraphs to

defend well the idea that marriage is profitable, and only a few sentences to defend the

idea that marriage is possible. Determining necessary length for treating each place

requires the student to exercise judgment.

Places listed in any of the progymnasmata also offer a guide, rather than a

formula, for arrangement. Wilson, in describing the ordering of discourse advises

students to “consider the nature of the cause itself, that the rather he might frame his

whole oration thereafter” (51). In other words, the nature of the composition points to

how it should be ordered. Accordingly, places of the progymnasmata do not have to be

treated in a set order, but in the order that makes the most sense given the subject,

situation, and so on. Places of each exercise are generally listed in an order that would

make sense in most situations, but students are not discouraged from making judgments

in regard to the order in which they treat places. The progymnasmata provide natural

patterns for organizing discourses within specific genres, but those patterns are workable

and changeable, not set in stone.

The following is a legislation exercise that illustrates flexibility in content and

arrangement. The student follows the places for the exercise of creating an exordium,

showing the contrary, showing the proposed legislation lawful, just, profitable, and

Baxter 63

possible, answering objections, and providing a conclusion, but decides to add a place:

expediency. This student chooses to arrange her composition in the order of the places as

they are listed in the exercise, but could have also chosen another order. The student also

determines to what extent she treats each place in her composition. Places for the

exercise appear in brackets, each place located above the paragraph that treats that place.

A Proposed Amendment to the BYU On-Campus Recruiting Policy

[exordium]

Last week, Blueline Marketing held a training meeting in the BYU

Wilkinson Center for their newly-recruited summer sales representatives,

mostly students from UVSC and BYU. Despite the fact that Blueline

Marketing has been reported to the IRS and the Better Business Bureau for

tax evasion, illegal hiring, withholding payment from employees, and

misrepresentation of benefits, and that at least one BYU official has

expressed awareness of the misdeeds of this company, the company has

been recruiting students again for this year’s summer sales program, on

the BYU campus, for the past two months. What is troubling about this is

that Blueline Marketing is probably not the only less-than-honest company

being allowed to recruit BYU students on-campus.

[the contrary]

The BYU official website for On-Campus Recruiting advertises to

companies, saying,

Are you seeking interns or full-time candidates? BYU is home

to over 29,000 students from around the world who are anxious

Baxter 64

to make a difference in your organization. Meet these students

through on-campus interviews or information sessions. Contact

our Manager of Recruiting Services to schedule a visit.

The website offers opportunities to companies to set up on-campus

interviews or information sessions, but what are the policies that will

protect the students from being recruited by a dishonest company? If we

look through the website further, we find only two: a policy for recruiting

f or f ull-time jobs, and a policy for recruiting for internships. The policies

are so briefly outlined that, together, they take up less than a page.

What is stated in the policies makes it clear that a company like

Blueline should not be offering BYU internship credit, as they did last

summer. The first requirement listed in the policy for recruiting for

internships, states, “Internships must be paid. (No commission sales).”

How is it that companies, specifically those which recruit for summer

sales, that in no way fulfill the requirements stated by either of these two

policies, are still found recruiting and holding training meetings on the

BYU campus, working under the guise that they are endorsed by the

university? The answer is simple: there is no specific policy or policy

enforcement that prevents them from doing so.

[expedient]

If BYU does not wish to come under scrutiny for allowing

dishonest companies to recruit and take advantage of their students, then it

would be wise to summarily amend their On-Campus Recruiting Policy to

Baxter 65

specifically prohibit commission sales companies, especially those who

have record of dishonest dealings, from recruiting or holding training

meetings on-campus.

[ la w fu l]

A few considerations need to be made regarding construction of

this amendment. First, BYU is a private university and may lawfully

establish any policy that does not disagree with federal regulations for

private universities. The decision of who may be allowed to perform

business recruiting on a private university campus is strictly up to the

university.

[just]

Second, in considering any policy regarding on-campus recruiting,

the university’s first consideration should be the safety and well being of

the students. Those who know much about BYU know that much is

expected of BYU. Parents who send their students to such a university

expect the university to be a safe place for their children, a place where

students will not be met with duplicity or deceit.

[profitable]

Third, it is important to remember that BYU students can gain a lot

through the right kinds of internships and employment opportunities.

BYU students are trained to make contributions to society, outside of the

school, and internships and employment can provide them an opportunity

to do this. On a purely practical note, internships and employment provide

Baxter 66

many students with needed funds to continue on in school. But a

dishonest company that does not pay employees promised commission,

after students spend money to travel to and live in cities across the nation,

can cause students to lose a lot of money. Surely BYU doesn’t want to be

held responsible for endorsing dishonest companies and allowing them to

contract with BYU students.

[possible]

This policy will not be difficult to enforce. It will call for hiring

one person who will request reports from the Better Business Bureau, IRS,

state Divisions of Labor, etc. regarding each business that asks to recruit

on the Brigham Young University campus. If the company meets all of

the requirements stated in the On-Campus Recruiting policies, and has

clean business records, they will be invited to recruit on the BYU campus.

This policy will need to be clear, in ways that our current policies

are not. If a company has been reported for fraudulent behavior in the

past, there will need to be an established amount of time the company will

need to have been free from fraud before being allowed to recruit on the

BYU campus. This requirement will be the same for every company. I f a

company has changed its name within a specified number of years, the

previous company will also need to be investigated.

[answer objections]

An argument will be made that this policy will turn away

companies that would otherwise have recruited on our campus, and the

Baxter 67

answer is yes, it will—but only the dishonest ones. Those companies who

have a record of illegal action or fraud will not want to be investigated,

and we do not want them on our campus. For all of the other companies,

it should be noted that, because of the efficiency of the staff BYU hires,

this process will not take long, and as soon as they are cleared they may

recruit.

[conclusion]

Blueline Marketing has been allowed to recruit and to train BYU

students on BYU’s campus, despite a record of fraudulent activity. This

summer they will put more students in danger of being cheated and forced

into debt. It is my hope that BYU will not be found responsible. But it is

my greater hope that, by this time next year, companies like Blueline will

not be found recruiting BYU students or holding their summer sales

training meetings anywhere on the BYU campus.

Natalie Baxter, February 2005, Brigham Young University

The progymnasmata offer what composition theorist John Hagaman describes as

both a free and structured heuristic (22). Hagaman believes that “a way of addressing the

problem of how teachers can integrate free and structured inquiry effectively can be

found in the classical progymnasmata, exercises designed to train the classical student in

the art of inventio” (22). Hagaman believes the places of the progymnasmata train

students “to view their subjects from multiple perspectives,” such as looking at how an

idea is lawful, just, profitable, and possible, and not just one of these. Hagaman also

claims the progymnasmata are “sequenced to guide the student through several patterns

Baxter 68

of thinking” (25). Yet students have freedom in writing the exercises, including freedom

to select and expand subjects as the students see fit (26).

The places of the progymnasmata encourage in-depth exploration of issues by

requiring students to look into core human values of equity, justice, expediency,

profitability, safety, possibility, propriety, rationality, consistency, and credibility, among

others. For some exercises the sheer number of places will require students to look

deeply into issues from a variety of angles and to reject preliminary or superficial

conclusions. Of course teachers still have the responsibility to guide students toward in-

depth exploration and breadth of research, and to point out the inadequacy of superficial

exploration when it happens.

Consequently, teachers will also find that the progymnasmata do not preclude

creativity. In fact, having a general form already laid out lets students spend more time

finding what they want to write about and writing it. Students also still create authentic

works, even when writing the same exercises and following the same guidelines. With

respect to originality and the progymnasmata, it is important to note that each student

writing these exercises comes from a unique social, economic, cultural, political, and

environmental situation. Students draw on their own socially and environmentally

situated perspectives to complete assignments. The places are more specific than, for

example, the five-paragraph model’s mandate to find any three instances of support of a

topic, but general enough that each place may be treated in numerous ways. Students

researching the same issue will find different sources and interpret the same sources

differently or highlight certain sources over others. Seeing how several students treat the

same topic and even the same sources differently can teach students in the class valuable

Baxter 69

lessons about the situatedness of knowledge and interpretation. In addition, students who

will perform in front of others who are completing the same exercise may feel

encouraged to find original things to say about a topic. When that is the case, students

may list their first ideas on a topic, then search past those ideas to others in order to

explore ideas other students will be less likely to explore. Such incentive to explore

topics in depth and from a variety of perspectives can be great preparation for high-stakes

and AP testing, which often reward students for treating topics in original ways.

Critics of the five-paragraph and Schaffer models are concerned that “real world”

writing or even college writing will ask students to do something more than or different

from writing to a formula. With the progymnasmata, exercises are based on types of

occurrences that happen regularly in everyday life, for example, the opportunity (or

necessity) to refute a false assertion or confirm a right assertion, which a schoolchild may

do among friends on the playground, a senator may do in a press conference, and a

mother may do in settling a dispute between her children. Because the exercises are

already developed with “real world” experiences at their core, there is no break between

the form of the exercise and what happens or will happen in the everyday life of the

student, a consideration that perhaps explains the longevity of these exercises. The

progression that is to be expected for students, then, who write the progymnasmata, is not

progression from a “school” formula to “real-world” writing, but rather progression from

first learning and using the places as starting points, to knowing the places so well they

become second nature. The goal of precept becoming second nature is written of time

and time again in classical texts. Students also progress by dealing with more and more

sophisticated subjects as the exercises are repeated throughout the students’ training.

Baxter 70

The progymnasmata themselves have been criticized as appearing to have been

“meticulous,” “strict,” and “dogmatic” (Marrou 173-175), and “impersonal” (Connors,

Composition-Rhetoric 300). The exercises with places laid out for students may appear

too structured; however, in writing the exercises, students find the structure is helpful.

Students who have written the progymnasmata report that having places for an exercise

allows them to spend more time choosing a subject and developing what they want to

say, rather than spend the bulk of their time figuring out where to begin or how to go

about treating the topic. Places in the progymnasmata do not constrain, but rather free up

invention. In addition, when writing the progymnasmata, students don’t follow a form

blindly, but rather judge for themselves how to treat all of the places, and in which order.

Students may also include places not named in the exercise if they see fit. For example,

if a student is refuting the saying of a famous person, the student may choose to combine

places of the chreia and refutation exercises. Places of an exercise should be those that

best help a student fulfill the purpose of the exercise. Places of the progymnasmata have

been formulated to do just this, but, again, the places are not set in stone.

Of course those who are looking for a formula can try to turn the progymnasmata

and their places into formulas by perhaps teaching the order of places as inflexible or

requiring a certain number of sentences or paragraphs per place, but that is not how the

exercises are meant to be taught. There are those who are mechanically minded in our

field, those who seek scientistic, lock-step formulas for teaching writing, and generally

find or create them. For this reason it is necessary to understand that the progymnasmata

cannot be removed from the rhetorical precepts they teach and the pedagogy by which

they are taught and still retain their optimal use for students. For example, in order for

Baxter 71

the progymnasmata to work, the standards for evaluation must continue to be the

principles of decorum and performance, and teachers should not lapse into checking off

places that have been explored.

In summary, writing formulas currently used in secondary writing instruction

provide needed structure for students, but at the expense of creativity and critical

thinking, while also becoming a crutch for students, one that limits progress. Places in

the progymnasmata exercises provide structure and starting points for students, but do not

limit students in the same ways current formulas do. Places provide a variety of

directions from which a student may approach a certain writing task; they aid both

creativity and critical thinking, while also providing structure. Because places of the

progymnasmata are different for each exercise, students also learn that there is no one set

form that will unfailingly work in every writing situation. Form changes with genre and

purpose, and this is clear in the way progymnasmata are taught. In the end, students learn

principles of form that apply in a variety of oratorical and formal genres, principles that

apply in various writing situations and situations of everyday life. Thus the

progymnasmata fulfill the current-traditional desire for a teachable and practical method

for instructing in form, without relying on formulas that, in the end, impede the

development of students.

Modes of Discourse

Modes of discourse—exposition, narration, description, argument, and

(sometimes included) poetry—were created by current-traditional composition theorists

and continue to be taught in classes today. Modes of discourse grew out of faculty

psychology of the late 18

century. Faculty psychologists believed the human mind

Baxter 72

consists of separate powers or faculties, including the intellect, the emotions, and the will.

Hobbs and Berlin explain that composition theorists in the 19

century connected mental

faculties with genres of discourse they called “modes.” In this view, exposition and

argument correspond with the faculty of reason or intellect, description and persuasion

ar ise fro m t he e mo t ions and will (Murphy, A Short History 253). Ferreira-Buckley and

Horner trace the advent of the modes of discourse to Alexander Bain, an immensely

popular psychology teacher who also taught rhetoric, and who delineated the modes of

discourse as narration, description, exposition, argument, and poetry (Murphy, A Short

History 200). Connors points out, however, that although Bain popularized the modal

system and became the “father of composition,” the idea of a multimodal rhetoric existed

before Bain, beginning with George Campbell and Hugh Blair, and it was manifested in a

handful of secondary and elementary level “grammar and composition” textbooks

between 1800 and 1830 (Composition-Rhetoric 210-223).

It is easy to see the influence of faculty psychology in Campbell’s The Philosophy

of Rhetoric (1776) where he writes, “All ends of speaking are reducible to four; every

speech being intended to enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move

the passions, or to influence the will” (Philosophy I, qtd. in Connors Composition-

Rhetoric 214). Campbell, in his Lectures on Systematic Theology and Pulpit Eloquence

(1807), explicates five different sorts of sermons including explanatory, controversial,

commendatory, pathetic, and persuasive (Lectures 133-35, Composition-Rhetoric 214-

215). The difference between Bain and the score of teachers and theorists who went

before him is that Bain, unlike others “who merely mentioned their modal terms in

passing […] used the modes as an organizing principle in his English Composition and

Baxter 73

Rhetoric [1866]” (223). After Bain, the modes became “accepted not merely as a

classification of discourse, but as a conceptualizing strategy for teaching composition”

(223).

The theory of faculty psychology was debunked almost as soon as it developed,

but teaching “modes” stuck for a number of reasons. One was that they came out in a

time when, as Connors explains, categories and “rules” of composition were highly

valued. The rational and scientistic approach to composition fit the values of the new

1880s technical college. Another reason for the popularity of modes Hobbs and Berlin

explain is that modes present an “objective, disinterested, and mechanical rhetoric” (254).

This rhetoric taught to an emergent class of professional experts reinforced the authority

of those experts “and concealed the economic and political sources of power on which

their claims to privilege were based” (254). Modes became the most popular strategy for

teaching composition to the rising class of professionals, and according to Connors, “By

1920 the origin of the modes was lost in the mists of time; they had presumably been

carved in stone during the Paleolithic Age” (Composition-Rhetoric 226).

Current-traditional rhetoric remains a strong presence in secondary schools,

despite criticism and abandonment beginning in the 1940s and continuing until now.

Connors asserts, “More students have been taught composition using the modes and

methods than any other classification system, and these classifications still exert a

powerful influence today” (Composition-Rhetoric 210). Interestingly, one fourth of the

new rhetoric texts published by Pearson Longman for college students and teachers in

2007 focus specifically on modes of discourse. Teaching modes at the high school level

Baxter 74

is more prevalent still. George Hillocks, in his 2002 study of state tests, found that four

of the five states included in his study test their students in modes of writing (21-27).

Modes are usually presented in middle and high school texts in sections or units

students work on throughout the year. For example, in The Writer’s Craft, a newer and

widely used textbook for grades nine through twelve, students work through ten sections,

including sections on personal and expressive writing; observation and description;

narrative and literary writing; informative exposition: classification; informative

exposition: analysis; informative exposition: synthesis; persuasion; writing about

literature; reports; and writing for assessment (Blau, Elbow, and Killgallon vii-xvi). The

first seven of these sections come directly from the modes of discourse.

Typical of a modern modes approach, each section in The Writer’s Craft is

designed to take a few weeks to complete. For those weeks students practice writing in

the mode that is the focus of the section. In The Writer’s Craft, the text guides students

through prewriting, drafting, and revising activities in each section that lead the student to

create, for example, a piece of expressive writing in the first unit. When students

complete the personal and expressive writing unit the class moves on to a new unit on

observation and description. Students are taught conventions for each type of writing.

Also typical of a modern modes approach, the longest and most detailed section or set of

sections are those on expository writing. Students often learn additional “methods of

exposition” such as definition, comparison/contrast, or cause/effect. In The Writer’s

Craft, students learn as methods of exposition classification, analysis, and synthesis.

Often these methods of exposition become papers in the course; students will write a

comparison and contrast paper, or an analysis paper, for example.

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Both students and teachers may value a modes approach to writing. Teachers like

modes because the modes offer a simplified schema of teaching writing. Connors

describes the modes as being “convenient to teachers” (“Rise and Fall” 455). Like

formulas of writing and grammar drills, modes of discourse offer structure and a

teachable method, even if that method turns out to be somewhat restricting. Students and

teachers may both also value modes of discourse because working through these modes

offers some sense of progression, for example, a progression of beginning with personal

expressive writing and working toward exposition and argumentation. Some textbooks

even highlight progression experienced in working through modes, such as progression

from personal to impersonal writing, or from writing what we know to writing things we

do not yet know. Lastly, because modes include argumentative or persuasive writing and

expressive writing, and because modes can be combined with process instruction, a

modes approach lets expressivists, cognitivists, and rhetoricians who see rhetoric as

argument all have their day in the composition classroom.

One benefit of modes teaching is the benefit of teaching students to write in more

than one mode of discourse. Even if a student only ever learns to write in these four

modes of discourse, he or she will at least learn that writing is different for different

situations. He or she will learn to create narratives and descriptions and to perhaps argue

persuasively a cause. And he or she will learn principles that do apply in a variety of

writing situations.

Connors points out that in the face of a growing number of formal genres students

were expected to learn in the early 1900s—letters, reports, proposals, editorials,

narratives, poetry—current-traditionalists clung to the modes of discourse as a way to

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condense and group such genres in teachable ways. Modern teachers face the same

conundrum. Which genres do we teach and why? Do we group genres, and if so, how?

Modes of discourse organize an almost innumerable array of formal genres into a

workable number of discourse modes. If teachers teach principles governing each of

these discourse modes, they don’t have to teach an overwhelming assortment of genres.

Being able to delineate a few seemingly encompassing modes of discourse, as it turns

out, is extremely helpful for creating a teaching procedure. To most, these modes seem

as logical a scheme as any for dividing discourse types.

Modes teaching has been criticized, however, for presenting a methodology that

does not actually foster improvement in student writing. Albert Kitzhaber in 1953

asserted that modes represent an unrealistic view of writing by promoting formula and

ignoring social context of writing (Rhetoric in American Colleges 220-221, qtd. in

Connors, “Rise and Fall” 453-454). More contemporary theorists find that modes offer a

schema of discourse easily taught and learned, but one that valorizes classification over

teaching ways “writing is actually done” (Connors, “Rise and Fall” 454-455). Connors

points out that, despite criticism of modes dating back to the 1950s, “even today the

modes are accepted by some teachers despite their lack of basis in useful reality” (“Rise

and Fall 455). One 1986 study finds disparity in quality of student writing performance

across modes of discourse. Because of such disparity, evaluations of students tested in

only one or a few of the modes are unreliable (Kegley 147). However, as Hillocks notes,

state assessments continue to test students in modes of discourse.

Sharon Crowley describes as a great weakness of the modes the fact that aims of

discourse are assigned and limited to particular genres of discourse. Crowley points out

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that in the writings of Campbell and even Bain, aims of discourse were primarily

considered. According to Crowley, Bain names the ends of discourse as three, “to

inform, to persuade, to please” (English Composition and Rhetoric, A Manual 1, qtd. In

Crowley, “Response” 89). Bain’s ends of discourse are similar to Campbell’s: “to

enlighten the understanding, to please the imagination, to move the passions or to

influence the will” (Philosophy 1). Bain’s formulation of modes is built on two

assumptions: first, the assumption that ends of discourse correspond to departments of the

human mind (following faculty psychology), and second, the assumption that intention

dictates formal features of kinds of texts (“Response” 89). Bain and those who followed

him separated modes of description, narration, exposition, persuasion, and poetry, and

linked them to individual aims of discourse “to inform, to persuade, to please.”

According to Crowley, the weakness of Bain’s theory of modes is the notion of aims as a

means of classifying discourse. Modes theorists, in order to create a simplified teaching

schema, turned aims of discourse into a brief list of discourse types that, in theory,

represent all aims of discourse.

Modes teaching can be both prescriptive and limiting, enforcing the idea that

writers only persuade when writing in “persuasive” genres, only share personal

experiences when writing in “narrative” genres, and so on. Modes instruction also

restricts types of reasoning to particular modes of discourse: comparison and contrast

belong to expository writing, for example, and ignores the fact that all areas of inquiry

(classical logical topics) apply in all writing genres. In reality, expressive, literary, and

persuasive writing make use of comparison as much as does expository prose.

The Progymnasmata and Modes

Baxter 78

The progymnasmata solve problems of the modes because they do not attach

forms of discourse to separate aims of discourse—the aims to teach, delight, and

persuade—classical aims associated with the entire rhetorical art. If a student applies

well all of the principles learned in the progymnasmata, the student will teach, delight,

and persuade in every genre. In addition, the progymnasmata show students that all

genres of discourse are ultimately persuasive, and that all logical topics, such as

definition, similarity, difference, cause, effect, and others, apply in all genres, not just in

“expository” writing. Finally, the progymnasmata teach exposition, description,

narration, argument, and poetry; however, the progymnasmata do not teach these as

mutually exclusive modes but as parts of discourse that function separately and also

within larger discourse. In short, the progymnasmata accomplish what the modes

accomplish and more.

In classical theory, the distinctions of modes just do not stand up. The classical

tradition does not connect mental faculties with forms of discourse. All discourse, in the

classical conception, engages the mind, emotions, will, and character of its participants.

The degree to which the reason, emotions, etc. are engaged is determined by a complex

combination of choices both speaker and listener or reader and writer make and other

attendant circumstances. The connection modes do have with classical theory is that the

three aims of discourse that both Bain and Campbell reference—the aims to teach,

delight, and persuade—come from classical rhetorical theory. Campbell was perhaps the

last true classicist of his time, although influenced as well by faculty psychology.

However, classically, the three aims of discourse—all of them together—are

accomplished when an orator sufficiently considers and applies all parts of the

Baxter 79

curriculum: places, topics, parts of decorum, genres of oratory, canons of rhetoric, and so

on. The aims do not constitute genres of discourse themselves.

In classical understanding as well, all genres of discourse are ultimately

persuasive and the progymnasmata show this. Classically, all texts are arguments.

According to Christiansen, some of the progymnasmata are obviously arguments: the

chreia, proverb, refutation, confirmation, encomium, vituperation, comparison,

commonplace, thesis, and legislation (82). Christiansen argues that even the remaining

exercises—the fable, tale, description and impersonation—are seen as arguments. For

example, tales function as proofs within larger works. In a description exercise, the

author vividly describes a scene or a thing or events, but always with the purpose of

moving the audience to do something, to understand, think or feel something they did not

previously understand, think or feel. And the impersonation works as an argument for

what the author thinks the person would have said in that situation, which, in turn, creates

an argument for what the author believes the character to be like or to have been like.

Christiansen also points out that, ultimately, the fact that a student must examine and vie

with an original text makes all exercises an argument between student and previous

authors, since the student argues, so to speak, for a new and better way to tell a story,

confirm a myth, and so on (82-83). In these ways, the progymnasmata teach that all

genres are persuasive and that all texts create arguments.

All of the current-traditional modes of discourse are fundamentally persuasive:

narrative, description, and exposition, as well as argumentation. Narratives and

descriptions create their own arguments as described above. Exposition, which involves

writing informatively from a variety of logical standpoints such as definition, cause and

Baxter 80

effect, etc., also persuades. When we inform others, there is an expected outcome. If we

define something, we expect others to accept or reject our definition. If we look at

causes and effects it is to learn something so we will know how to act. Every expository

act informs someone’s decisions and actions and is therefore persuasive. The separation

of persuasion into its own mode of discourse, when all of the modes are fundamentally

persuasive, does not make as much sense as teaching that all genres are persuasive.

The progymnasmata further teach logical topics as applying to all kinds of

discourse, not to a mode called “exposition.” In modern teaching of expository writing,

theorists have taken classical logical topics described by Aristotle, Cicero, and others,

including definition, genus, species, property, similarity, difference, contraries, conflicts,

antecedents, consequences, adjuncts, causes, effects, conjugates, and quality, and have

separated them into kinds of writing. The logical topics, however, apply in any kind of

writing. The topics describe various logical standpoints a writer may take, and writers

and speakers always speak and write from a logical standpoint, irrespective of genre.

Students gain experience with logical topics through the progymnasmata and their

places. The places of the chreia and the proverb, for example, include the cause, the

contrary, analogy, example, and testimony of ancients. The places of the refutation

include the obscure, the unconvincing, the impossible, the inconsistent, the improper, and

the irrational. To write on each of these places, students will have to consider quality of

arguments and evidence, contraries, conflicts, and similarities and dissimilarities between

reality (based on experience and evidence) and the statement being refuted. In addition

to these logical topics, in determining possibility and self-consistency, students may have

to reason concerning antecedents, consequents, adjuncts, causes and effects. The

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commonplace includes places of incompatible, comparison, intention, lawful, just,

rational, possible, which coincide with the logical topics compatibles, similarities and

dissimilarities, and conjecture. In determining possibility, once again, the student may

have to visit other logical topics. Encomia and vituperations include the places of genus

(a logical topic), race, fatherland, forebears, and fathers (coinciding with the topics

quality and antecedents), education, achievements, spirit – courage or prudence, body –

swiftness or strength, fortune (power, wealth, friends). All of these last places relate to

the logical topic “quality” as well. The exercise ends with the place of comparison

(relating to similarities and dissimilarities, and contraries). The proposal of a law, or

legislation exercise, also focuses on quality (of a law). The specific places given in the

exercise include the lawful, the just, the useful, and the possible.

The fact that the progymnasmata teach logical topics as applying in all genres is

significant because students learn to approach topics from various logical standpoints and

to deeply analyze situations. Students also become able to analyze others’ logical

approaches to issues. Students who are familiar with all of the topics will be able to see

which ones are being considered in any speech or written work, and which ones are being

left out. For example, a student familiar with the topics can question why an organization

argues for a policy on the basis of precedent rather than consequences or effects.

The progymnasmata do actually teach all of the current-traditional modes, but not

as separate modes. Discourse types, the way the progymnasmata present them, are not as

fixed nor as separate as modes teaching suggests. For example, the progymnasmata teach

narratives and descriptions as their own exercise because both of these stand as individual

text types; however, narratives and descriptions also serve as parts of other works.

Baxter 82

Narrative, for instance, can appear as a proof, a statement of facts, or a digression within

an argument. Descriptions can also appear as proofs, and serve well in moving the

audience in the conclusion of a work. Exposition can be a part of any of the exercises,

and the logical topics usually taught in modern classes in conjunction with exposition are

taught in the progymnasmata in all of the exercises. Persuasion is taught as part of all the

exercises with the view that all texts are arguments. And poetry, which is sometimes

included as a mode, is taught by the progymnasmata as students will recreate poetic

works into prose works or vice versa as one form of transforming an original text into a

new work. The progymasmata do teach all of what is included in the modes, and

therefore accomplish what the modes accomplish, but the progymnasmata, because they

do not restrict persuasion, exposition or logical topics to a mode, and because they teach

description and narration as parts of discourse that can function alone or as parts of larger

discourse, rather than as mutually exclusive modes, avoid the tendency of modes to

oversimplify and formularize facets of writing that are more complex and less mechanical

than modes of discourse suggest.

Co nc lu s io n

Current-traditional teaching of modes of discourse and formulas of writing offer

the modern teacher an efficient and relatively simple schema for teaching writing. The

modes and formulas can help students learn aspects of writing that will prove useful in

professional and academic careers. However, critics argue that modes and formulas

present writing in a way that is too simplified, teaching writing as a process of following

the “rules.”

Baxter 83

The progymnasmata offer many of the same benefits seen in current-traditional

methods—a workable set of methods for teaching writing, preparation for professional

and academic writing—while also supplying solutions to some of the problems current-

traditional methods create. The progymnasmata answer problems of writing formulas by

teaching forms as flexible and adaptable for situations, encouraging student creativity and

exploration of issues, and teaching forms that are relevant to real-world experience. The

progynasmata offer, as an alternative to modes of discourse, the view that all genres of

discourse are ultimately persuasive, that all aims of discourse are accomplished by

applying well the full art of rhetoric, and that all logical topics also apply in all genres of

discourse. The progymnasmata teach genre in a way that emphasizes the interconnected

nature of genres in ways that modes teaching does not. The progymnasmata also teach

narrative, description, exposition, argument, and poetry in ways that make more sense

than teaching them as modes.

In the end, the progymnasmata accomplish goals that are in some ways similar to,

but not the same as, those of current-traditional rhetoric. The progymnasmata, through

their places, provide students with starting points for composing. The progymnasmata,

unlike current-traditional methods, however, provide students with avenues for creativity

and in-depth exploration and discovery regarding subjects. The progymnasmata also

emphasize judgment over following “rules” or formulas of writing. Where current-

traditional methods seek to simplify the rhetorical curriculum, but do so at the expense of

eliminating important principles, the progymnasmata teach complex principles of an

expansive rhetorical curriculum through basic exercises repeated over and over again

with increased complexity. The methods of the progymnasmata are approachable for

Baxter 84

teachers and students. Because the progymnasmata offer these specific benefits in

response to problems with current-traditional methodologies, the progymnasmata provide

a sensible alternative to current-traditional modes and formula teaching in secondary

schools.

Baxter 85

CHAPTER THREE

EXPRESSIVISM AND THE PROGYMNASMATA

Expressivism is often associated with Peter Elbow, Donald Murray, Ken

Macrorie, and the 1960s; however, modern scholar James Berlin asserts, “Expressionistic

rhetoric developed during the first two decades of the twentieth century and was

especially prominent after World War I in response to current-traditional rhetoric” (484),

and composition and rhetoric scholar Robert J. Connors points out that valuing personal

taste in writing began as early as the late 1700s with Hugh Blair’s Lectures on Rhetoric

and Belles-Lettres. Indeed, the value of the natural and idiomatic self seems evident in

Richard Whately’s writing in 1828 that claims a student must “be encouraged to express

himself (in correct language indeed, but) in a free, natural, and simple style” (Elements of

Rhetoric, in Bizzell, The Rhetorical Tradition 1013). Whately believed that the student

allowed to write on matters of interest to him would produce prose that is “lively,

unfettered, [and] natural” (1013). With the nineteenth century Romantic Movement,

writing instruction shifted remarkably toward the personal. Connors finds that

romanticism “began to appear openly and in earnest in composition after 1870” when,

“For the first time, students are told that their responsibility is to be original in their

writing, and usually this meant writing from observation” (Composition-Rhetoric 313).

Connors notes that “after 1900 personal writing was (and has remained) a large part of

composition” (318).

Berlin describes the metamorphosis of expressionistic rhetoric from “a scheme

arguing for writing as a gift of genius, an art accessible only to a few” to a “gift” that is

“democratized, writing becoming an art of which all are capable” (484). More modern

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conceptions of expressionism have become fixated on the individual and on processes of

self-discovery and self-expression. Historian and scholar Martin Nystrand describes the

Dartmouth Seminar in 1966 in which an instructional alternative to current-traditional

teaching—an approach emphasizing “personal growth”—was proposed (12).

Expressivists generally agree that self-discovery and originality of expression are of

supreme importance in writing, regardless of the genre in which one is writing. Modern

expressivism is also concerned with empowering the individual by teaching the

individual to find and use his or her o wn voice.

The main claim of modern expressivism is that the ultimate standard for good

writing is that an author is true to his or her own self. When a writer is uninhibited by

exterior influences, that is what constitutes “true” writing. Main learning goals of

expressive approaches to writing include the goals of helping students find confidence

and enjoyment in writing, helping students discover their own individual voices, and

empowering students to ultimately rely on themselves and not on an audience for

evaluation of their writing (Berlin 485-486). Several classroom strategies are designed to

carry out these ends, including writing in genres that are personal in nature, engaging in

abundant freewriting and brainstorming, and encouraging students to trust themselves as

wr it er s.

Expressive theories of writing encourage writing in genres that are “personal” in

nature. Students are encouraged to “write what they know,” meaning to write from

experience. Margot Soven, in Teaching Writing in Middle and Secondary Schools:

Theory, Research, and Practice, describes the expressive approach as the “personal

growth” approach to teaching. Writing classrooms that adopt such an approach “invite

Baxter 87

students to write personal narratives about topics of interest to them…” and include

“many activities for personal writing” (205). Teachers assign “journals, personal

responses to literature, and creative writing based on personal experiences” (205). These

types of assignments focus on originality of expression and encourage students to write

on subjects familiar to them. One personal example of this approach comes from my

literature class, my junior year of high school. We were instructed by our teacher to each

keep a journal of any kind of thoughts we wanted to record. He collected the journals,

“read them,” and wrote a few, carefully non-judgmental comments in them like

“Interesting,” or “What happened next?” We received credit if we had done the

assignment. This assignment encouraged us to “express our individual selves” and

focused, more or less, on topics of interest to us. Another example of an expressive

assignment is the commonly assigned Personal Essay in first-year writing classes through

which students learn to question their own interpretations of events in their lives.

Students in secondary schools prepare for the personal essay genre by writing memoirs,

as is shown in the Writer’s Craft textbook which assigns students to write an essay

describing an autobiographical incident (25-28). Personal writing is often seen as easy

and familiar for students, and so often precedes teaching of other genres in classes that

teach, for example, argumentative genres in addition to personal genres.

As for style, expressive models equate style with “voice,” a term defined in a

number of ways: an expression of the writer’s personality; a quality of good writing; a

moment of truth, passion, or flavor. Expressive theorists value the “authentic” voice

congruent with a writer’s individual personality. This voice belongs uniquely to one

writer and comes forward on its own when that writer writes in personal genres, free

Baxter 88

writes, and brainstorms. The view of style as authentic voice is congruent with

expressive view of writing as “the discovery of the true self” (Berlin 484), and the

expressive goal of writing as “authentic self expression” that “lead[s] to authentic self-

experience for both the writer and the reader” (484). The concept of authentic and honest

voice is key in expressive pedagogy. Donald M. Murray writes, “voice is the quality,

more than any other, that allows us to recognize excellent writing” (21). He goes on to

explain that an effective voice “causes things to happen for [readers] as they happened for

the writer or narrator” (24). Although this quality is key, there seems to be a lot of

variation on what voice is or means. Peter Elbow describes voice as a unique way of

writing that “resonates” with an individual’s distinct personality (Writing With Power

281-288). Vicki Spandel writes, “For me, voice is a moment of truth, or what I

sometimes call ‘the chill factor’” (20). Spandel believes that individual experience helps

to shape a person’s “personal definition for voice” (20). Spandel quotes a rubric that

defines voice as “passion” and “flavor,” and a student who adds her interpretation: “It’s

when you feel the exclamation point even though it’s not there” (19). Certainly, voice

seems a difficult concept to pin down.

Expressivist theory also believes the key quality of voice cannot be taught.

Because students are believed to already have within themselves everything they need in

order to write well, expressivist pedagogy aims to liberate individual voice, rather than

teach it. In Telling Writing, Ken Macrorie states, “all good writers speak in honest

voices” (15). The way to allow an individual’s honest voice and distinct personality to

come forth during writing is through abundant brainstorming and free writing. Elbow

writes that students will “improve [their] writing more through free writing and sharing

Baxter 89

than through any other activity…” (24). The idea is that when given enough opportunities

to freewrite and brainstorm, a writer’s natural style appears. As mentioned, expressive

theories of writing encourage writing in genres that are “personal” in nature: personal

narratives, journals, personal responses to literature, and creative writing based on

personal experiences. These types of assignments focus on helping students feel

enjoyment in writing and drawing out the student’s authentic, uninhibited voice.

Expressivists intend for students to learn to trust themselves as writers and to

assert their own individuality in the face of current political, economic, and so cia l

arrangements; however, Berlin points out, “Strategies for doing so must of course be left

to the individual” (487). Expressivist writers Elbow and Murray do both offer advice to

students in this regard. Berlin quotes Elbow in saying, “we need to learn to write what is

true and what needs saying even if the whole world is scandalized. We need to learn to

eventually find in ourselves the support which—perhaps for a long time—we must seek

openly from others” (Writing With Power 190, Berlin 486). Murray also writes, “[T]he

writer is on a search for himself. If he finds himself he will find an audience, because all

of us have the same common core. And when he digs deeply into himself and is able to

define himself, he will find others who will read with a shock of recognition what he has

written” (A Writer Teaches Writing 4, qtd. in Berlin 486). Although this advice is freely

given, no classroom strategies for teaching students to trust themselves as writers and

individuals are presented. Theorists also make clear their advocacy of individual protest

against political and social forces, but offer no ideas for what form such resistance might

take, as that would eliminate individuality in the protests.

Baxter 90

An expressive approach can benefit students in certain ways. Expressivist

theories teach honesty as an important element in writing, an element that is apparent in a

person’s style. Expressivism also brings needed attention to creativity and enjoyment in

writing. An added benefit of expressive teaching is that of teaching students to trust

themselves as writers rather than placing full trust in “rules” or formulas of writing, as

students are encouraged to do under the current-traditional paradigm.

Expressivism, however, has also been criticized for limiting students. For

example, expressivism has been criticized for limiting instruction to genres that are

considered personal, expressive, or creative, and for limiting students to one option for

style—the personal expression option. Patricia Bizzell criticizes expressivists for

harming students by failing to teach academic language, which puts students at a

disadvantage when they must write within the academic disciplines (Bizzell, “Cognition”

215-216; “What Happens” 295). Another problem with instruction in expressive genres

is that teachers feel disinclined to grade these genres for fear of thwarting students’

creative development. Students in expression-centered classrooms are often given credit

for completing assignments only. Expressivism has been further criticized for assuming

that students already have within themselves everything they need in order to write well,

thus expressivists refuse to offer instruction in components of good writing. Spandel

points out that refusing to instruct on any aspect of writing is unfair (20). From my

experience, when teachers teach “personal” genres of writing, it becomes easy to adopt

an opinion a co-instructor expressed to me regarding a personal essay assignment. She

said, “Some students do really well at this type of writing and some just don’t. Not every

student is a creative writer.” Expressive assignments call for a conception of style or

Baxter 91

voice that is intuitive and offer no instructive help for students who struggle (other than

the idea to “keep writing”). Such assignments seem minimally useful to students and

teachers who hope to understand and master style. An added limitation of an expressivist

approach to writing is that it does not teach students principles for inventing, other than

encouraging brainstorming and freewriting. Expressivism also does not teach principles

of form. The idea is that an uninhibited writer will discover on her own the form that is

most natural for what she is trying to accomplish.

The Progymnasmata and Expressivism

The progymnasmata offer solutions to problems in expressive pedagogy. The

progymnasmata teach what may be called “voice,” by encouraging creativity and use of

humor in writing the exercises; however, “voice” is included in a larger art of style, a

teachable art that is more encompassing than the expressivist concept of voice. The

progymnasmata, in addition, blur distinctions between creative and argumentative genres

and give students experience with a variety of genres. And finally, the progymnasmata

teach students to cultivate judgment by giving students a good sense of the general

criteria for good writing, while also teaching students to consider and value the response

of an audience of peers and instructor, making writing and speaking both a personal and a

social experience.

The progymnasmata encourage the creation of “voice” by giving students room to

be creative. Because the places of the exercises free up invention, as discussed in the

previous chapter, and also provide forms that are wide open for creative adaptation,

students feel free to make their own renditions of the exercises as individual as they

would like. Many students find that the exercises, because of their simplicity and

Baxter 92

heuristic nature are enjoyable to write. For example, the places of the fable from Rainolde

are retell the tale, praise the author, place the moral, declare the nature of things

contained in the fable, have the characters reason with one another, make a similitude,

include an example to prove the matter, and make the epilogue (B.j.). A classmate in my

English 613 Rhetorical Criticism class, Chris, wrote and presented a fable to our class

following these places. True to what has been said about the places and judgment, Chris

chose to treat many of the places of the exercise, but not all of them. Chris chose to

transform Aesop’s well-known fable, “The Hare and the Tortoise,” by expanding the

fable and changing the ending. Her rendition reads

Then there was the Hare. What shall I say more? There was the Hare. Of

the swift, there was not a swifter one among all of Aesop’s creatures; of

the long-eared, his ears were the longest; of all track champions, he was

the Nike in the forest of Reeboks, the cheetah in a jungle of pronghorns,

and the Dauer 962 LeMans in a brickyard of Camaros. What shall I say

more? There was the Hare.

“I shall demolish any beast with two legs,” said the Hare. “I am a cocky

jerk. I have the longest ears and the fastest paws in the Milky Way. Eat

squid. Whether I win or lose, I will throw a temper tantrum so loud and so

political, that the fox will be forced to o’er turn the results of whatever

race you are stupid enough to challenge me to.”

“I am stupid enough to challenge you to a race,” said the Tortoise, green

and slower than snails. For my innocence and naivety will win the hearts

of generations, regardless of my pace (which my friends have told me is

Baxter 93

‘slow and steady,’ not that I would say so much of myself). Certainly, it is

a universal fact that the most likeable character wins, in the hearts of all

men everywhere, if not the physical race around which an entire fable may

be written.”

“You’re on,” said the Hare, who had eaten Wheaties for breakfast and was

stretching his quads next to the pear tree.

The fox shot the gun, but there was a false start on the part of the Tortoise,

who was trying to win the role of underdog, but who instead was made to

look like a cheater.

Christine Spencer, September 2004, Brigham Young University

The open form of the fable exercise encouraged Chris to be creative and to use her own

voice.

The progymnasmata teach “voice” by encouraging use of humor in the exercises.

Chris’s exercise, as she has written it, turns out quite humorous. It’s easy to tell she had

fun writing it. We, as a class, enjoyed listening to her read it to us as well. So many of

these exercises have us laughing, no surprise—laughter was highly valued in the classical

curriculum. The progymnasmata give students a chance to learn to use humor. One

reason is that, because the exercises are taught using classical imitation, the

progymnasmata lend themselves to parody. In transforming a text, it seems natural to

play off of the first text. The new text then becomes the old text and others may play off

of it. Another way the progymnasmata teach humor is through class presentations.

Students presenting works to a classroom of peers quickly learn that humor is highly

valued and that laughter is one of the most gratifying responses of an audience; it

Baxter 94

immediately means the audience is on your side. Thus, in classes where students write

and present the exercises, students often come up with ways to make each other laugh.

My memories of the first class in which classmates and I wrote the progymnasmata are

that the exercises were so funny; they were fun to write and to listen to.

An example of using humor in writing an exercise comes from another classmate,

Dave, who created a narrative by writing an extended speech for one of the characters in

the film A Christmas Story. Dave chose to rework Ralphie’s petition for a Christmas gift,

which reads, “What I want for Christmas is a Red Ryder BB gun with a compass in the

stock and this thing that tells time. I think everybody should have a Red Ryder BB gun.

They are very good for Christmas. I don’t think a football is a very good Christmas

present.” Dave creates humor in his exercise by amplifying the original text through

inflated language (the figures bomphiologia and hyperbole), extensive epithets such as

“insignificant petition,” “remarkably simple Christmas gift,” “adult-scorned but

adolescent coveted …”, “functional merits,” and so on, and allusions to scripture. Dave’s

exercise reads:

My most humble, insignificant petition for a remarkably simple Christmas

gift (yet one of lifesaving importance), a gift that, if granted, would deem

all other Christmas gifts received in my entire lifetime of no consequence,

is the adult-scorned but adolescent-coveted Carbine Action Two-Hundred

Shot Lightning Loader Range Model Air Rifle, also known as the Red

Ryder BB gun. Indeed, I ought not even expound the greatness of such a

gift, but the circumstance compels me to do so. […]

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Surely, this is no ordinary BB gun, for although ordinary BB guns

certainly have their functional merits of firing silver projectiles, the Red

Ryder BB gun functions with an efficiency one-hundred fold that of an

ordinary BB gun. The Red Ryder BB gun also has a compass in the stock,

which lends an additional degree of use to those tracking encroaching

enemies in the exposed territory of one’s backyard. And surely, the other

component of the Red Ryder BB gun—“this thing that tells time”—is

equally crucial to assisting those members of secret societies in being

punctual in listening to secret messages transmitted via radio waves.

C le ar ly such benefits, which extend far beyond the life of the gift, could

not be gleaned from something as trivial as a football.

Indeed, following this lengthy amplification of the nature, nobility, and

utility of the Red Ryder BB gun, adults who have heretofore scorned this

blessed, yea, even the holy grail of Christmas gifts, yea, even the Father

and Hope of all BB guns, would do well to speedily repent of their

obstinate pessimism, rash dismissal, and unjust condemnation and

prohibition of the Red Ryder BB gun and thereby omit from their

vocabularies “You’ll shoot your eye out!” and bestow into the hands of

their adolescent children, the wonderfully awesome and noble Red Ryder

BB gun. Now is the time to act, before the opportunity to purchase and

distribute this priceless gift fades into the night of darkness, wherein no

labor can be performed.

David Stock, September 2004, Brigham Young University

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The progymnasmata do teach “voice,” but not by ever calling it that. The

progymnasmata do not explicitly focus on bringing out students’ individual voices. That

is because the notion of the individual voice and individual genius has only really gained

strength since the Romantic Period. Classical theory has more in common with modern

day social constructivist theory that proposes a person’s “voice” reflects more his or her

educational, social, and familial past and present, and his or her socio-cultural and socio-

economic past and present surroundings than an actual consistent and unique personality.

There is room, in the progymnasmata, however, for all elements of a student’s individual

experience to be brought into play. The progymnasmata encourage “voice,” not by trying

to stimulate the discovery of an authentic self, but by providing open forms with which

students may be imaginative and creative in individual ways.

The idea of voice is also encompassed in and teachable through the larger

classical art of style. Instructors of the progymnasmata teach style by walking students

through close reading of texts, and looking specifically at elements of style—metaphor,

simile, allegory, hyperbaton, alliteration, zeugma, isocolon, epimone, asyndeton,

parenthesis, bomphiologia, enargia, euphemismus, synecdoche, metonymy—figures of

speech and thought of which there are hundreds. Students identify elements of style

(figures) and then practice them, imitating a text’s constructions and creating their own.

Once a student has mastered a figure of speech or thought, the student will be able to use

that figure in his or her own writing, keeping in mind the principles of appropriateness or

decorum that govern all choices for style.

This process of learning style, however, does not prevent students from

developing a style that is honest or individual to them. Because student s w il l fa vo r so me

Baxter 97

stylistic patterns over others and come to enjoy how certain stylistic elements work

within certain settings, students still create their own styles in writing. Stylistic choices

continue to be individual, although more informed and less haphazard when students

receive training in style. Like expressivist theories, classical theory agrees that honesty

in writing is an important element and that honesty is apparent in a person’s style;

however, unlike expressive theories, classical theory believes that honesty is not a style

itself, but is manifested where stylistic choices are self-consistent and where message and

style are consistent with each other.

Methods of the progymnasmata for teaching style oppose the expressivist idea of

voice as unteachable, and some theorists feel the classical approach makes more sense

and is better for students. Composition theorists Joseph J. Comprone and Katharine

Ronald agree that many things that “nineteenth-century romantics, with their emphases

on the expressiveness of writing understood as undefinable and rationally uncontrollable

processes, can be empirically studied, are reducible to systematic theoretical analysis and

description, and – ultimately – can be made into pedagogical models” (37). Comprone

and Ronald continue:

Certainly this does not mean that we will ever be able to reduce the

teaching of writing to a totally mechanical system of mental and physical

operations that behavioral theorists might have once argued was possible,

but it does mean that we can, as a profession, organize ourselves around a

set of heuristic operations that are neither too mechanically simplistic nor

too romantically mysterious. (37)

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The progymnasmata taught in conjunction with classical imitation offers such a “set o f

heuristic operations” that takes style from the realm of mysterious and undefinable to the

realm of controllable and learnable for teachers and students.

The progymnasmata also avoid the criticism of teaching only one or a few kinds

of discourse. While the preliminary exercises do give practice in what are considered

creative genres of writing—tales, fables, descriptions, and characterizations, they also

provide experience in other genres, such as refutation and confirmation of ideas or

stories, proposal of laws, praise and blame of persons or things, creation of arguments

concerning issues of finite scope, and expansion of sayings and proverbs. Rather than

separate fiction and non-fiction, the personal essay and the persuasive argument, the

exercises blur the lines between the two. For example, in an encomium, a student may

praise a person, real or fictive. A student may praise (and one has praised) a fly—a real

insect, but an encomium praising a fly turns into a comedy. Fables are written about

fictitious characters; however, the moral is an admonition applicable to real life and the

narrative its proof. The characters in a tale are also created, but may represent true

persons. Even a “true” tale about real persons is a fabrication of sorts, because it

represents the point of view of one individual. In proposing a law, a student may discuss

an existing or an imaginary law. And refutation or confirmation of a myth or historic

event reveals the fictitious nature of some of the “factual” stories we have grown up with.

The progymnasmata teach creativity and argumentation together, and teach genres

in a way that assigns equal importance and validity to many kinds of genres. The

progymnasmata’s blurring the lines between fiction and non-fiction and between creative

genres and genres that do the “real-world’s work” differs from expressivist division of

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creative/ expressive genres from argumentative/ communicative genres and emphasis of

creative/ expressive genres over other genres of writing. Blurring the lines between

fiction and non-fiction, creative and argumentative, helps students understand all genres

as fundamentally argumentative, and causes students to realize that creativity and other

kinds of social action coexist in many genres. The progymnasmata do teach both

expressive and communicative genres with equal emphasis and importance. The first few

of the progymnasmata, including the fable, tale, chreia, and proverb, may seem both more

expressive and less sophisticated than later exercises of confirmation, refutation, thesis

and legislation. However, the fact that preliminary exercises are repeated throughout a

student’s training with varying levels of difficulty emphasizes the importance and

complexity of all exercises. Comprone and Ronald, who argue for using a sequence of

assignments based on classical progymnasmata in secondary classrooms, point out that

the sequence of the progymnasmata “moves […] from expressive to transactional writing.

[… H]owever, the sequences are recursive” (39).

Finally, the progymnasmata teach students to cultivate judgment by giving

students a good sense of general criteria for good writing—the principles of decorum,

which principles center on the relationship between a speaker or writer and his or her

audience. In writing, we still consider how well the audience will understand us; how

well the material, form, and style we have chosen fit the occasion; how well our words

and ideas flow together, and to what extent the audience will be willing to listen to us,

based on the beauty and variety of our composition. These principles have not lost their

applicability over a few thousand years because they are built on basic human needs and

Baxter 100

desires—the need to understand and be understood, the desire to hear that which pleases

the ear, and the need and desire to trust those who are most knowledgeable.

The principles of decorum are built on the idea that speaking and writing are

social actions, a notion expressivists do not always embrace. Isocrates’ rhetorical

curriculum, we remember, was constructed to help students become able to engage in

public discourse in many spheres, and teaching students principles of decorum helps

students make good judgments as they express themselves to others. Instead of

encouraging students to rely solely on themselves and to ignore audience, as do both

Elbow and Murray, the progymnasmata teach students to both trust their own judgment,

based on understanding of universal principles, and to consider and value the response of

an audience of peers and instructor. Writing, as taught by the progymnasmata, is not

solely a personal experience, but is more often a social undertaking.

In the pedagogy of the progymnasmata described earlier, students practice self-

correction of their works and then present their works before peers and instructor. Self-

correction involves considering principles of decorum. Seeing the principles in action,

however, does not happen until students present their works before others and gain a

response. Students have to be able to see that response in order to tell whether the

decisions they made had the effect the students had hoped for. And so students who

write the progymnasmata learn to value the response of instructor and peers, in addition

to valuing their own judgment and correction of their work. Methods of self-correction

and public presentation seem, simply, more helpful to students than leaving students to

their own resources. Where much writing students will do throughout their lives will

have a public audience, instruction focused on writing for a private audience, and

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instruction that eliminates the scrutiny of others, disadvantages students and ill-prepares

them for the future.

Expressivists may here argue that students can make judgments concerning

wr it ing on their own by following their intuition, which claim is valid regarding students

who, by nature or by upbringing, have developed social aptitudes. Principles of decorum,

however, can help even these students improve their abilities to make good judgments in

social interaction. Principles of decorum also make teachable aspects of discourse that

seem intuitive for some students but that are not so intuitive for others.

Co nc lu s io n

The progymnasmata offer instruction in some aspects of writing that expressive

methodologies teach, such as individual creativity, and in some aspects of writing

expressive methodologies do not teach, such as invention, arrangement, style (including

voice), and principles for evaluating writing. The progymnasmata do foster creativity

and enjoyment in writing and sharing writing, but do so without limiting class instruction

and student writing to writing in genres deemed personal and expressive. Because the

progymnasmata offer these benefits to expressivist teaching, teaching the progymnasmata

in classrooms that favor expressivist methodologies can expand student understanding

and provide valuable additions to what is now being taught.

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CHAPTER FOUR

SOCIAL EPISTEMIC METHODOLOGIES AND THE PROGYMNASMATA

According to James Berlin, social epistemic rhetoric began in the late 1960s with

theorists Kenneth Burke and Richard Ohmann, gathering over the next twenty years other

spokespersons such as Richard Young, Alton Becker, Kenneth Pike, Kenneth Bruffee,

Ann Berthoff, and Patricia Bizzell (488). One stimulus for the movement was that

theorists saw a lack of concern for social aspects of writing in current-traditional,

expressive, and process approaches (see next chapter). Although there are many points

on which social epistemic theorists disagree, one element that unifies them is “a notion of

rhetoric as a political act involving a dialectical interaction engaging the material, the

social, and the individual writer, with language as the agency of mediation” (Berlin 488).

In essence, individuals interacting through the medium of language are influenced by

material and social conditions always present, and interaction itself is a political and

social act. Unlike other modern composition approaches described in this thesis, the

social epistemic approach takes into consideration historical and social aspects of

discourse. In addition, social epistemists critique economic, political, and social

arrangements by critiquing dialectical interactions that take place within and between

those arrangements.

Social epistemists have developed genre theory, the newest composition-teaching

methodology and most recent expression of social epistemic rhetoric. Dean explains how

the teaching of genre and of social situation coincides. Dean writes,

By definition, genre is discourse that arises out of recurring

communicative acts in certain social situations. […] Understanding genre

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requires some understanding of the social context it arises from as well as

an ability to read a text with certain considerations of the social nature of

its context in mind. (Strategic Writing 54)

Genre theorists Amy Devitt, Mary Jo Reiff, and Anis Bawarshi explain that genre

theory sees genres “not simply as types of texts but as forms of rhetorical action

that are intimately related to forms of social organization and action” (xvii). By

“rhetorical action,” the authors mean actions of speakers and writers meant “to

accomplish something with language” (6). While some versions of genre theory

in the classroom focus solely on teaching formal features of genres, other genre-

based classroom approaches teach students to read, write, and critique with the

situational and social functions of genres in mind.

Although genre theory is not completely unified, most genre theory

instruction can be seen as accomplishing at least part of three main goals. The

first goal is that of teaching students strategies for working within genres. The

second goal is helping students develop genre “awareness,” what Devitt calls “a

cr it i c a l co nsciousness of both rhetorical purposes and ideological effects of

generic forms” (Writing Genres 192). Critical genre awareness is developed as

students learn to analyze ways genres respond to and derive from situations, and

to consider ways genres create or reinforce social relationships. The third goal is

that of bringing students to critique and conscientiously embrace or resist, through

writing, social ideologies witnessed in, created by, or enforced through genres.

The last goal is realized when students learn to critique social roles of readers and

writers as well as distribution of social power and privilege enforced in the forms

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of genres, and then to act on their new understanding as students create their own

renditions of genres.

Much of genre theory instruction focuses on teaching students to write a variety

of formal genres, because writing within different genres is now required in state core

curricula and on state exams. Some teachers create assignments that lead students to use

several genres to accomplish one purpose. For example, Dean relates the story of two

seventh-grade teachers who assign their students to write about a day in a place they like.

Students are required to compile in a short book writing that takes the form of a variet y o f

genres such as personal letters, rules, instructions, and short reports (all functional genres

required by the state core curriculum), and other genres such as packing lists, recipes,

maps, wanted posters, daily schedules, store receipts, and poems (Strategic 56). The

purpose of the assignment is to train students to use a number of genres to accomplish a

writing task, such as the task of communicating to an audience what a day is like in a

certain place. Such training Devitt proposes will provide students with more “potential

antecedents…for addressing new situations” (qtd. in Dean, Strategic 57). Another

assignment requiring students to write in more than one genre is the multi-genred

research paper, an assignment that allows students to combine with the traditional genre

of the research paper other genres such as poetry, articles, essays or letters. The

assignment encourages students to recognize ways in which certain types of thinking and

expression are promoted or restricted by genre, in addition to giving students experience

working within genres.

Baxter 105

Teaching formal genres benefits students in other ways as well. Some genre

theorists see teaching form as liberating for students, as form guides structured search and

also enables creativity. Of form as heuristic, genre theorist Richard Coe writes,

Form, in its emptiness, is heuristic, for it guides a structured search. Faced

with the emptiness of form, a human being seeks matter to fill it. Form

becomes, therefore, a motivator for generating information. Like any

heuristic, it motivates a search for information of a certain type: when the

searchers can anticipate what shape of stuff they seek, generation is less

free, but much more efficient; by constraining the search, form directs

attention. (“An Apology for Form” 18)

Devitt also points out that “genres constitute the already existing from which the creative

writer diverges, but they also constitute the divergence” (152). Knowing expectations of

genres allows writers to both work efficiently and effectively within genres and also to

determine what will be unique in their particular writing task or instance of the genre

(153).

In order to teach genres, instructors teach students to analyze scenes, situations,

and genres. This analysis encourages the use of model texts (usually called genre

samples) in the classroom. Students learn to work within a genre by analyzing patterns

within genre samples and noting how those patterns reflect scene and situation. Devitt,

Reiff, and Bawarshi claim this is how students turn “their reading of a scene into their

writing in a scene” (xxi). In explaining ways students analyze scene, situation, and

genre, I draw from the text Scenes of Writing by Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi because it is

currently the most used text in genre theory instruction. Most other authors who provide

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examples of genre theory instruction in the classroom take their examples directly from

Scenes of Writing or create exercises by adapting exercises from the Scenes of Writing

text.

Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi define three key concepts of genre theory: the

scene—the overall setting where communication happens, the situation—the rhetorical

interaction happening within a scene, and the genre, “a common way of responding

rhetorically to a situation” (7). For example, within the scene of a criminal trial we find

the situations of swearing in witnesses and testifying, and, within those situations, the

genres of courtroom oaths and testimonies. Genre is also described as a repeated “pattern

of action” within a situation that is “widely accepted by participants in the scene to guide

them as they act in that situation” (21). Genres “all involve certain conventions for using

language to accomplish efficiently and effectively certain tasks within the situation” (22).

In this model, it is within the genre that rhetorical actions take place, and in those

rhetorical actions, a writer or speaker makes choices, including choices of vocabulary,

sentence structure, tone, persona, organization, and supporting evidence. The writer’s

understanding of scene and situation affects these choices.

First, in analyzing the scene, students ask questions of what kind of “place” the

scene is (for example, a courtroom is a scene as is academia), who the participants are,

and what objectives the participants share. In Scenes of Writing, a student who wants to

place a classified ad is encouraged to analyze a scene this way:

You might start by defining the groups of people involved in this scene

and their shared objectives. One group involved includes the subscribers

to the newspaper who come to this place where communication happens

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(the classified section) with the shared objectives of looking for a

product/service to buy or sell. Another group of people in this scene is the

newspaper’s classifieds staff, whose shared objectives are to sell

advertisement space and to compile all of the necessary information for

selling the product (name, price, contact number) of service while

maintaining the newspaper’s policy of brevity and space for other ads.

The group of those (including you) who place ads may even share some

objectives with the classifieds staff, such as the objective of brevity, since

the cost of advertisements is per word. (10)

The authors make the claim that knowledge of the scene is critical because it helps guide

choices regarding content, language, length, and format. For example, “knowing that the

classified staff needs to pack many ads into a small space and that they charge by the

word, you will understand why your ad must be short” (11).

In analyzing situation, students ask questions regarding participants (who they

are), subject (what it is), setting (where the interaction is taking place), and purpose (why

the writer is presenting the subject in this way). For example, Devitt, Reiff, and

Bawarshi ask students to read three editorials that discuss drilling for oil in the Arctic

National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) and then to reflect on how “when [the editorials]

were published, who wrote them, and who would be reading them” determine how the

editorials treat the same topic differently, and how “shared objectives, beliefs and values

of the differing scenes (the national conservation organization, the academic scene, and

the corporate scene) affect rhetorical choices the writers make and “how the writers

Baxter 108

present themselves” (Scenes 21). Analyzing situation helps students make connections

between characteristics of genres and a genre’s participants, subject, setting, and purpose.

In analyzing genre, students look at a number of samples of the same genre and

determine commonalities among the samples. Students look specifically at content (what

kind of information is typically included or excluded), appeals to the audience (following

logos, pathos, and ethos), structural patterns (what the various parts are and how they are

organized), format (including layout, appearance, length), syntax (sentence structure,

length, complexity, patterns and passive or active voice) and diction (word choice and

connotation of words). Finding common patterns in the genre samples in each of these

areas helps students do what others do when writing within the genre. This type of genre

analysis provides students with strategies for working with unfamiliar genres as well as

genres with which students are already familiar.

The second goal of genre instruction is teaching students critical genre awareness,

or, in other words, strategies for thinking critically about genres. Students learn genre

awareness by looking particularly at how genres respond to and derive from situations.

For example, Dean, in Genre Theory: Teaching, Writing, and Being, writes that students

learning about résumés “may recognize how the features respond to a social situation—a

busy reader who wants to gather information specific to the situation quickly” (31).

Students also cultivate genre awareness by asking questions regarding the social and

ideological workings genres permit, create, or reinforce. Using the terms described

above, students analyze what patterns found in the genre reveal about situation and scene.

Students thinking critically about genres ask the following types of questions

regarding a genre:

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 What do participants have to know or believe to understand or

appreciate the genre?

 Who is invited into the genre, and who is excluded?

 What roles for writers and readers does it encourage or discourage?

 What values, beliefs, goals, and assumptions are revealed through the

genre’s patterns?

 How is the subject of the genre treated? What content is considered

most important? What content (topics or details) is ignored?

 What actions does the genre help make possible? What actions does

the genre make difficult?

 What attitude toward readers is implied in the genre? What attitude

toward the world is implied in it? (Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi 94).

Students working through these questions seek to connect structural, stylistic, and idea

features of genres with the values, beliefs, goals, assumptions, and world-view those

features reveal. For example, Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi give the example of

terminology used in military settings, and as a specific example, the use of the word

“rack” instead of “bed,” the term “rack” implying a hard surface on which items are

stored. Implications of the term “rack” de-emphasize the human and emotional qualities

of military personnel who sleep on the racks. In thinking critically about word choice

and connotation, the authors posit that use of words like “rack” dehumanizes soldiers so

they will be able to think of themselves more as objects than humans with feelings in

order to perform under the horrible conditions of war; soldiers are spoken to this way and

learn such terminology as part of their training and socialization into the military scene

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(51-52). Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi’s critical analysis of word choice in military

language is based on what the authors know about the scene and situation, as well as the

genre. The authors claim that this kind of critical genre analysis allows outsiders to “gain

insight into both behaviors and values of the participants in the scene” (52).

A second example for uncovering values, beliefs, goals, assumptions, and world-

views implicit in textual patterns comes in an essay from Perri Klass in which Klass

analyzes jargon and abbreviations that doctors and nurses use when communicating with

each other, their use of expressions that place the patient as the subject of the verb, and

employment of baseball metaphors. In Klass’s evaluation, these language patterns reveal

assumptions of the medical scene and those who participate in it that doctors are at liberty

to criticize patients as long as the criticism is in code, that patients are responsible for

their own physical state, and that patients’ feelings are subordinate in importance to

doctors’ getting their work done.

Analysis leads to critique, the third goal of genre instruction. Critique takes

critical reading one step further into questioning the practices that a genre reflects and

enables. Because communities or groups of people use certain genres, a critique of a

genre often becomes “a part of a larger critique of the […] community and its typical

assumptions, beliefs, and practices” (151). Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi also claim,

“Critiquing genres can also help explain how and why some genres might fail to function

effectively in a scene of writing” (153). The authors give as an example a student who

uses the five-paragraph essay in a college-level writing course and discovers the genre is

not sophisticated enough to help her accomplish all she wishes to in the class.

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The critique of genres is a valued part of genre-based instruction, because such

can potentially lead persons to change genres to make them more equitable or effective.

Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi give two examples of how genre critique leading to change.

The first is a student critique of wedding invitations that points out a cultural irony in

how wedding invitations appeal mainly to brides while at the same time least serving the

bride’s self-interests by reducing the bride to a piece of property that is being transferred

from parents to husband. Evidence for this critique is drawn from analysis of patterns of

color, drawings, lettering, and wording in wedding invitations. The second example is a

scholarly critique from Randall Popken who analyzes the résumé genre and concludes

that patterns of “subjectless sentences,” physical restraints of length, overall structure and

prescribed categories, and limited kinds of acceptable topics in résumés support the

conclusion that résumés “depersonalize[] job seekers, portraying them as commodities

that can be sold” (159). Given the social variables relating to genres, it may be easier for

students to change the characteristics of a wedding invitation than of a résumé. Changing

the traditional format of any genre will have consequences of some sort. The idea of

critique is, “If you understand a genre’s limitations when you write it, you might be able

to resist its embedded assumptions” (162). Genre theory teaches students to be aware of

possible consequences of resisting the conventions of genres and to make decisions with

both their own ideas and beliefs and also possible consequences in mind.

The questions guiding critique of genres differ from those guiding analysis of genres.

Questions for critiquing genres are these:

 What does the genre allow its users to do and what does it not allow

them to do?

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 Whose needs are most served by the genre? Whose needs are least

served?

 In what ways does the genre succeed the most? In what ways does it

fail?

 Does the genre enable its users to represent themselves fully?

 Does the genre limit the ways in which its users can do their work?

 Does the genre create inequalities among its users that lead to

imbalances of power?

 Do the assumptions that the genre reflects privilege certain ways of

doing things?

 Do those privileged ways of doing things run counter to the supposed

objectives of those who use it and the scene in which it is used?

 Does the genre allow its users to do certain things at the expense of

others? And if so, at what cost? (Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi 161).

Asking these questions of genres should help a student to critique assumptions, values,

beliefs, and goals of communities or groups that use the genres. A students who

questions the beliefs and practices of communities or groups through genre critique can

better decide to what extent he or she will identify with those beliefs and participate in

those practices.

Peter Clements suggests a methodology for accomplishing all three genre theory

goals with students by moving students through three stages of using genre: a textual

stage in which students closely read and compare examples of a genre, a contextual stage

in which students focus on ways specific features and patterns of texts work to achieve

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rhetorical purposes, and a critical stage, which extends the discussion to social roles that

genres instantiate (206). Clements first asks his students to analyze genre samples,

looking at noticeable characteristics of sentence structure, vocabulary, and transition

signals in terms of their purpose in the genre (207). Clements then moves his students

through a series of three steps developed by Devitt, Bawarshi and Reiff in which students

study the situation of the genre, identify and describe patterns in the genre’s features, and

analyze what these patterns reveal about the situation, in order to learn about situational

variables underlying genre (209). In the last stage, students focus on social roles of the

reader and writer made evident in the text’s patterns. Clements walks his students

through questions created by Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi (listed above) for critiquing

genres. In the process of critique, patterns in genres give students concrete ways o f

drawing conclusions about “how readers and writers are constituted through the

genre…how texts assert specific forms of authority, and how they signal affiliation with

discourse communities” (212). Clements has used this pedagogy in first-year writing

classes; a few instructors have used it in secondary schools.

A genre theory approach to instruction has many advantages. It offers the

practical benefit of teaching students strategies for writing in many genres and for

familiarizing themselves with unfamiliar genres. Students learn through a genre-based

approach to write in personal, academic, and public/ workplace scenes and genres. A

genre theory approach also offers students strategies for analyzing writing in terms of its

larger social context and for critiquing both elements of genre and larger elements of

society and social expectation.

Baxter 114

Genre theory resurrects important elements of classical rhetoric. First is the

teaching of form as heuristic and the idea that form enables creativity. A second element

is the recognition that formal features of texts reflect the situations that evoke those texts.

In teaching writing as socially situated, genre theory brings back an attention to context

that was had in the classical tradition. Third is an attention to stylistic patterns in texts

that is absent in all other modern composition theories. Along with this attention to style,

genre theory reinstates use of example texts in teaching students to write. Fourth is an

attention to assumptions, beliefs, and values embedded in patterns of writing and

speaking. Genre theory is the first composition theory to recognize ways in which

elements of text reflect values of a society. And fifth is the teaching of writing as a series

of choices that have immediate social consequences. In teaching students strategies for

making informed decisions regarding the extent to which they will adhere to or depart

from a genre’s expectations, genre theory takes a sort of middle stance between current-

traditional rhetoric and expressivism regarding the role of the writer. Where current-

traditional rhetoric teaches students to follow the “rules” no matter what, and expressivist

teaching encourages breaking from conventions regardless of consequences—f or

example, if your boss wants you to write a memo and you feel like writing a poem, write

a poem—genre theory presents a good middle ground where students learn expectations

of genres and consequences (both positive and negative) of breaking from those

expectations.

Another benefit of genre theory is the positive effect it has had on teachers and

school boards in teaching them to consider that teaching genres can be the same as

teaching ideologies. Dean quotes Romano who urges teachers to “examine our courses

Baxter 115

and school curricula for genre hegemony. Does one genre dominate?” (“Teaching” 174,

qtd. in Dean, Genre Theory 26). If one genre dominates, teachers and school boards are

reinforcing certain ideologies for students and ignoring others (26).

A last benefit of genre theory is the teaching of genre critique through which

students consider influences of society and ideology on forms in writing and make

decisions regarding how to act based on what they have discerned. Bawarshi points out

that “Genres […] carry with them social motives—socially sanctioned ways of

‘appropriately’ recognizing and behaving within certain situations—that we as social

actors internalize as intentions and then enact rhetorically as social practices” (“Genre

Function” 341). Teaching students to critique genres helps students to challenge existing

social motives manifest in forms and patterns of discourse, even possibly motives and

assumptions that the student has formerly complacently internalized. Purposeful

acceptation or rejection of social motives and the forms and patterns that support or

communicate those motives can potentially change societies.

Progymnasmata and Genre

Genre theory is good, but not perfect. I see three primary drawbacks, all of which

are answered in the progymnasmata exercises: first, genre theory’s teaching of

identifying patterns in texts is too limited to optimally help students; second, genre theory

de-emphasizes decisions of individual persons by speaking of what genres “do” instead

of what writers or speakers do through genres; and third, genre theorists and teachers of

genre disagree on their definitions of genre and on what the emphasis in genre-based

instruction should be. In this regard, some genre theorists want to expand the realm of

Baxter 116

the genre to include all social action while teachers of genre see practical benefits of

teaching genre as form.

First, genre theory’s methods for teaching patterns in genres, at least the methods

presented by Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi, limit students to analyzing texts for patterns in

content, appeal, structure, format, syntax, and word choice. From a modern perspective,

this brief list seems adequate. It is only when compared with classical rhetoric’s naming

of over 500 such patterns (called figures) in text that the genre theory approach appears

wanting. Students of genre theory who are taught to notice patterns in content, appeal,

format, syntax, and diction are given the further instruction and clarification in Scenes of

Writing that “appeal” refers to logos, pathos, or ethos, “structure” denotes ordering of

items, “format” indicates layout, appearance, and length of a document, “syntax” refers to

length and complexity of sentences, and “diction” denotes word choice. One limitation

here, aside from limitation in scope, is that students are not taught names (other than the

five general terms listed above) for patterns they see in texts. Rather, students are

instructed to notice general characteristics of texts and to name or describe the patterns

they see. It is not that genre theory denies that names of figures of speech and thought

can be taught, but rather that no widely used genre theory approach yet teaches names for

figures.

Classical theorists named and described hundreds of figures, which students can

learn to identify and replicate. Students do not necessarily have to learn all 500 figures,

but learning names for some is a great benefit. When students learn a name for a pattern,

and have that pattern pointed out to them, the pattern becomes easier to recognize. A f t er

learning what a certain figure is and does, students can more knowingly use figures and

Baxter 117

create the text effects they wish to create. In light of the fact that hundreds of figures of

speech and thought have been identified, it seems unfair to expect students to both

recognize and rename all those patterns on their own. The expectation for students to

identify and describe many text patterns without aid is an approach of starting from

scratch that needlessly wastes student energy.

One rebuttal to the idea of teaching students names for figures in order to help

students identify patterns in texts comes from the constructivist approach that theorizes

that students retain more from working at discovering things than they do in a traditional

approach that teaches students figures and names and then has students identify and use

figures. The constructivist approach may require much time and energy on the part of the

student, but constructivists would say the result is worth the time. Empirical evidence

suggesting which approach truly takes more time and which approach is more productive

for students is not readily available; however, from my own experience, learning names

for and being provided with examples of figures in texts has helped me to learn and

become familiar with many more figures than I believe I could have on my own.

Knowing names for the figures also gives me a nomenclature, as Lanham suggests, that

enables me to discuss figures with other students and teachers. That is not to say that

students have to learn the Greek terms for figures. Thomas Wilson gives many figures

described in the Greco-roman tradition English names. Students and teachers today may

do the same.

Genre theory offers the most complete modern pedagogy for teaching elements of

style; however, this pedagogy is not nearly as complete as the classical approach.

Through genre-based instruction, students learn to analyze genres for patterns in content,

Baxter 118

appeals, structural patterns, format, syntax, and diction. Through recognizing patterns of

appeal, structure, and so on, in genres, students can become self-conscious regarding the

same kinds of patterns in their own writing. Students taught this way see writing as a

process of making choices; they will analyze the choices that others have made and make

their own writing choices. Close analysis of texts and the idea of assimilating best

features of texts are both part of the classical tradition. The classical tradition also

teaches students to notice how all decisions in a text relate to context, “for no quality

belongs to any part of utterance outside of the complex or context of speech in which the

part is found” (Quintilian I.5.4).

The progymnasmata offer a broad pedagogy for teaching patterns in speech and

writing. The classical approach teaches students many different kinds of patterns and

many names for the patterns they see, with the idea that having a name and an example of

a pattern makes the pattern easier to see and to practice in the student’s own writing.

Learning figures, their names, and the patterns the names represent, can be valuable for

students as it give students a vocabulary for what the author does and a point of departure

for creating new text effects. For example, it is easy to create a metaphor once you know

what one is and have seen a few. Students are often surprised and delighted to learn

there are names and descriptions for what an author does.

Students can also replicate figures seen in other texts in their own works. I wrote

a description exercise after examining figures in Louise Plummer’s “First Things First.”

The subject matter of my exercise is different from Plummer’s subject material, but I try

to create some of the same kinds of patterns Plummer creates and use figures she uses,

Baxter 119

including vivid detail (prosopogrophia), descriptions of sights and sounds of a place

(topographia), asides (parenthesis), and simile. The following is my description exercise.

Fishing

I remember fishing with my Dad like most people remember their

fa vo rit e Christmas. Mammoth Lakes in the summer, Florence Lake

around September, just before it snows, even the small and muddy Big

Rock Creek was a pleasant relief from the desert we called home.

All around us was desert, the thick smell of sage brush, and the hot

desert stillness that breaks only when a car passes or a raven crows from a

Joshua tree. Everything seems to be in slow motion in that heat; even

sound is too hot to move quickly. The thought of that rippling, gurgling

water that spills over and through the rocks crowded together, and those

shady trees whispering and swaying, dropping their leaves into the water,

was enough to send us piling into the car with fishing poles flung helter-

skelter across the seat tops any way they would fit, and tackle boxes stored

under our feet. As soon as all arms and legs were inside the vehicle, we

would go.

“We” is the six of us—Mom, Dad, my two sisters, one brother, and

I. Those were the Big Rock Creek trips, where Mom would usually bring

and set out a nice picnic, then sit and read her book. Chrissy and Lisa,

who didn’t like to fish, would play in the water and climb up and over the

big rocks that explained how the creek got its name.

Baxter 120

As children, we were drawn to the water, and the stream, to us,

was beautiful. As soon as we got out of the car, we would run down,

hopping and climbing over the warm rocks to the stream, to see how big it

was. We would dip our hands in the cold water and feel it push at our

fingers. There were trees growing in and around the water, and even

though the air was still warm, the soft, cool breeze coming out of the

canyon would rustle the leaves on the trees and brush our faces.

Dad would almost always let me fish with him, and even share his

pole, since my poles were usually hand-me-downs from Robert, and by

the time I got them, the reels and bails didn’t work so well.

I think I liked fishing for the water and the fish. The water was

cool and just kept slipping by, like it had somewhere to be by dinnertime.

And there’s that sound that comes when the water hits a rock just right and

makes that “Gunk, Gunk” sound like a big swallow an actor does to show

everyone he’s swallowing. Then there are the higher-pitched sounds like

wet fingers touching a tin bell over and over again. I guess that rhythmic

repeat of the sounds, new water hitting the same depreciations in the

rocks, over and over again, is what makes water sound like it’s talking to

you. And then sometimes it’s singing to you, and I remember the time

that Dad stood by the creek and waved his arms like a conductor, and he

asked me, “Can’t you hear it?” It was God’s music to him.

And the fish, the fish were beautiful. Not like you see wrapped up

in Styrofoam and plastic at the grocery store. These fish would shine in

Baxter 121

the sun and they would jump and bend on the line, scales gleaming and the

light shooting off of them; and the sun would catch the fish and the water

splashing, all at once, in a moment of perfect art. I liked the feel of a fish

in my hands, cold and slick. I always wanted to just hold the fish and

admire it for a moment before I let it go. Robert taught me to point the

fish upstream and push the water into its gills so that it would be okay

when it swam away.

Sometimes I would sit behind Dad and watch him fish and I would

try to be really still so as not to scare the fish with my shadow. That’s

what makes me think that maybe what I really liked about fishing was my

dad. Dad, who worked late hours, Dad, who had to spend evenings with

clients on the telephone, Dad, who always rubbed his eyes like he had a

headache during the prayer over dinner. Out here, Dad was just him, he

was happy. He could conduct the music of the stream and show me how

to cast into a difficult spot. He could joke with Robert about how many

fish they would catch and tell us stories from his growing-up days.

We don’t go fishing so often anymore, but I see that sort of

happiness in Dad every once in a while—when he sits and watches his

grandchildren play or shows us the new trees he has planted in the yard.

He still works a lot, but I think he enjoys it more now that the market is

better.

Dad always says that he wishes he had been home more with us

kids when we were little. He got his degree in psychology and wanted to

Baxter 122

be a schoolteacher or counselor, but he couldn’t make enough to support a

family, and that’s why he went into realty. Then the market fell and he

struggled all those years, sometimes sleeping at the office, just to make

ends meet.

I still get that lump in my throat when I think about Dad. I think

that’s why I love to remember those fishing trips and the way he loved the

trees and the sky, and the water. That hike up around Florence Lake that

one summer, with the sun streaming in through the trees and all the lit t le

colored leaves, the size of pennies, falling down everywhere, made it feel

like we were in another world, a perfect world.

Dad said the universe has music, that day that he was conducting.

I think he was right. Someday we will go fishing again, maybe at the end

of this summer. We can touch the water and listen to it slide over the

rocks, and it will be music, and happiness, all over again.

Natalie Baxter, March 2005, Brigham Young University

Examining the techniques (or use of figures) in another author’s writing helps me to vary

and expand my own technique (or the figures I use) in writing. D’Angelo writes that this

process of observing figures in texts and practicing those figures in writing spares novice

writers the painful stumbling and fumbling through “all of the embryonic phases

characteristic of an evolving style (“Imitation and Style” 283). Furthermore, observing

and practicing figures helps students internalize alternate modes of expression (290).

Having a vocabulary of figures also keeps students and teachers from drifting into

abstraction. Often students struggle with creating the text effects we describe to them

Baxter 123

when we say, “Be sure to maintain a sincere tone,” or, “create a story that is engaging and

humorous.” Some students struggle with the nuances of these somewhat abstract

descriptions and others like them, and those students feel unsure of what teachers mean.

Giving students examples of how authors create works that are engaging and humorous,

pointing out specific patterns and giving names for those patterns gives students a more

concrete idea of how authors create style that works. Practicing discourse patterns leads

eventually to their becoming second nature.

A second problem of the genre theory approach is genre theorists’ tendency to

focus on what genres “do,” and to use terminology that places responsibility for the

perpetuation of ideologies and social expectations on genres, rather than on persons or

communities. The authors of Scenes of Writing cannot seem to decide which have more

power—genres, or writers and speakers. Throughout the text, the authors treat genres as

entities responsible for their actions, saying that genres “enable users,” that genres “limit

users,” that genres “create inequalities among users” (161), that genres “fail to function

effectively in a scene of writing” (153), and so on. Really, if a genre “failed to function

within a scene,” doesn’t that mean the person who chose to use that genre in a certain

setting made an incorrect or ineffective choice of genre, not that the genre itself is

deficient? Referring to genres as though they are accountable themselves for the poor

decisions of writers and speakers shifts responsibility from writers and speakers who use

genres to genres, and seems as illogical as a child saying it was his arm who hit his

brother and not himself. The language used by genre theorists creates an ideology itself,

one that enforces a sort of “group think” where no individual or group is truly responsible

for the patterns that “occur” in genres.

Baxter 124

Genre theorists sometimes contradict themselves in their references to genres as

acting agents when they sometimes intermittently refer to genres as tools. Devitt, Reiff,

and Bawarshi, in the same text quoted above also make statements like “Genres do not

change magically on their own; people change genres…” (163, emphasis in original), “As

attitudes, ways of knowing, and goals change, people revise already existing genres and

sometimes develop new ones that more effectively reflect these new attitudes, ways of

knowing, and goals” (162, emphasis added), and “Genre critique can help reveal

shortcomings in the ways we communicate and act in our various scenes” (159, emphasis

added). And so the idea of genres as tools of communication is not negated entirely by

genre theorists, but theorists’ referring to genres as both agents and tools is confusing.

In connection with genres being assigned the status of agents in themselves is the

idea that genres represent the values and beliefs of whole societies. While patterns in

genres may certainly reveal assumptions, values, beliefs and goals of persons and

communities that use those genres, the idea that a genre sample (so, a text) represents

primarily the views of a society de-emphasizes the autonomy of the individual author,

treating authors and speakers more as mirrors of their surroundings than as self-directed

beings. In addition, teaching genres as representations of societal goals and beliefs has

important implications for students trying to critique and change genres. Where patterns

in genres represent the beliefs and values of whole societies, critiquing and changing a

genre appears to be the equivalent of challenging a whole society, which can be quite

intimidating for a single student. The process may also seem futile to many students who

are taught that, through the process of changing genres, perhaps, over time, society’s

values eventually change (see Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi 162-163). Devitt does point

Baxter 125

out that genre theory does consider choices of individual authors, but usually considers

those choices in light of how the author conforms to or subverts established expectations

of the genre, which acts entail consequences such as acculturation or diversion from the

no r m (De v itt Writing Genres 141). Analysis of even individual choices, then, focuses

primarily on societal values and on an individual’s willingness to support or reject

established social expectations.

The kind of text analysis students are taught in conjunction with the

progymnasmata emphasizes authorial choices and judgment in text acts. While authorial

choices are considered within social and historical context, the choices of the individual

author, nonetheless, remain the central emphasis of textual analysis. This focus on the

judgment of the author is built on the classical understanding of text. Christiansen

explains that, in the classical tradition, all texts are read as “purposeful ‘acts’ before

hearers in a certain place, time, and social situation” (73). Christiansen continues,

The “text” is motivated behavior, composed of signs (verbal only one

kind) that point to the speaker’s decisions and their meanings in the larger

social context. The meanings include the speaker’s explicit and implicit

interpretations of reality, both that which is the subject and that which is

the context of the discourse, and the speaker’s character, both the persona

(image) that he or she intentionally adopts and the person (identity) that

unintentionally emerges from the text’s totality. The text’s subject is the

so c io -physical-psychological world and the context includes both that

world and the moral world—the relationships between the speaker and the

audiences, as well as the assumptions the speaker makes about the

Baxter 126

characters of self and audience, the relationships inhering between them,

the appropriate way to treat audiences, and the bases for good judgment.

(86)

In this classical definition of text, signs (including behavior) point to the speaker’s

decisions, which have meaning within a larger social context. Text points us to an

author’s assumptions and his or her bases for judgment, as well as his or her

interpretations of social, physical, moral and psychological realities. Text, in all the ways

we read it, points back to the author. With this view, patterns within texts point more to

an author’s interpretations and internalizations of social and physical conditions than to

those social and physical conditions themselves.

Of course when reading text, students consider context. Quintilian explains that

parts of text, such as words, do not hold meaning outside of context, for “none of these

qualities belongs to [a word] except in so far as it is part of a complex or context of

speech: we praise words when they are well adapted to the matter” (I.5.3). The classical

consideration of context is a comprehensive one. Again, Christiansen explains

In the irreducible context, there is always the speaker (who has been

shaped by many environmental influences, but who also shapes self and

environment) using a medium (signs) to comment on a subject (some

aspect of “reality”) in a certain manner (behavior) in order to elicit a

response from an audience (who has been shaped, but also shapes) with

whom the speaker shares physical, historical, cultural, and moral

experiences. (87)

Baxter 127

In this definition of context, physical, historical, cultural, moral and environmental

influences are not seen as the sole elements of context, nor as existing absolutely, but are

perceived by readers and writers, speakers, and listeners who make decisions and behave

in certain ways based on their perceptions of the exterior world. In this understanding, if

the persons who are making choices and perceiving realities are left out of context, that

view of context is incomplete.

Genre theory does not teach students to critique a speaker’s bases for judgment,

aside from considering social and political influences, nor does genre theory teach

students to assess an author’s perceptions of moral realities. Rather, critique of genres

focuses on how elements of a genre are effective in relation to task and context, with

context signifying socio-political-physical conditions. The concern in adding critique of

moral grounds is a concern of inculcating moral values in a world where a moral “true

north” is not agreed upon. However, teachers of rhetoric in ancient Greece and Rome

and in the Renaissance (periods and places that adopted very different interpretations of

moral values) understood that agreement on moral values is not requisite for teaching

students to recognize and critique moral grounds. Each student will formulate critiques

of other works from the viewpoint of his own moral compass, which does not have to be

altered by the teacher. Classical practice simply acknowledges that perceptions of moral

realities are always present in texts and presents those perceptions for critique.

In the classical reading of texts, it is clear that authorial decisions are paramount

and that responsibility for authorial choices remains with the author. Student are taught

to consider, for example,

Baxter 128

[…] the way in which the judge is conciliated in the Prooemium; the

clarity, brevity, and credibility of the Narrative; the speaker’s plan and

hidden artifice […]; the wisdom shown in dividing the materials; the

delicate and dense argument; the vigour that stirs and the charm that

delights; the sharpness of the invective, the wit of the jokes; and how

finally the orator reigns over the jury’s emotions, forces his way into their

hearts, and makes their feelings reflect his words. (Quintilian II .5.8-9)

Authorial choices are seen as direct reflections of the wit, the accomplishment, and good

judgment of the author. Reading text in terms of authorial decisions also places

responsibility on the writer or individual as an agent who makes his or her own choices.

Although certainly affected by society and common ideologies, the individual, in the

classical tradition, is still accountable for the beliefs and values he or she assumes.

The view of text as representing the choices of an individual author has important

implications for students. With emphasis in analyzing texts placed on analyzing the

judgment of the author, students are also taught that when they transform a text, they are

vying with the author and that author’s judgments seen in the text, not just a text itself

without an author. The text is not seen as something static or an authority itself, nor as a

reflection of context without the interpretation of a person, but as a creat io n

demonstrating decisions and perceptions of an author, and it is those decisions that

students challenge and make over again for themselves. Students practicing classical

imitation are already given the confidence of knowing they are vying with the best

authors and being taught they have every right to do so. In addition, the idea of

transforming a text by challenging one author and one author’s decisions is a more

Baxter 129

accomplishable feat than the idea of one student challenging the views of a whole

society.

A third drawback of genre theory is a split between theory and classroom practice,

which split is critiqued by genre theorists themselves. One ongoing discussion/ debate in

genre theory occurs between some teachers of genre who are interested in the practicality

of teaching genre as form and some theorists who conceive of genre as action rather than

form. Theorists who lean more toward genre as action also often claim that students

cannot really learn genres (as ways of acting) except by being immersed in the situations

that use the genres. Essentially, they claim there is no way to teach genres in school

except as rules or the kinds of writing we do in school (Freedman 766).

For a while several genre theorists have sought to extend the definition of genre to

mean more than groups of texts with similar formal features. Carolyn R. Miller wrote the

groundbreaking essay for genre theory in 1984, “Genre as Social Action,” in which she

defined genres as “typified rhetorical actions based in recurrent situations” (159). Anis

Bawarshi, in 2000, wrote, “[G]enres have come to be defined as typified rhetorical ways

communicants come to recognize and act in all kinds of situations, literary and

nonliterary. As such, genres do not simply help us define and organize kinds of texts;

they also help us define and organize kinds of social actions, social actions that these

texts rhetorically make possible” (“The Genre Function” 335). Bawarshi goes on to

claim that “genres constitute all communicative action” (336). Devitt expresses the same

sentiment when she claims in her essay, “Genre, Genres, and the Teaching of Genre,”

that what is “new” about genre theory is “the study of genre as action rather than form, as

a text-type that does something rather than is something” (606). Devitt highlights the

Baxter 130

progress of theorists who have come to “treat genres as dynamic actions that entail much

more than form alone” (606).

The application of what is called contemporary genre theory (focusing on genre as

so c ia l act io n) o ver traditional genre theory (focusing on genre as form) proves somewhat

challenging for some teachers. Some genre theory teachers see benefits of teaching

students to recognize and replicate the formal features of many genres, thus giving

students a repertoire of genres to use in personal, academic, and workplace settings. Also

pointed out earlier is the idea that teaching form benefits students as form offers

heuristics, guiding structured search, and also enables creativity by constituting that from

which authors may diverge. Traditional genre theory is practical and beneficial for

students and teachers, but contemporary genre theorists claim that teaching genre as form

lends itself to formulaic teaching of genres. Some who prefer what genre theory has to

offer in terms of teaching form criticize contemporary genre theory for ignoring form

completely. Traditional theorists also criticize some contemporary theorists who claim

genre cannot really be taught at all outside of its true context, and therefore genres (aside

from school genres) cannot be taught in the classroom. A middle ground between the

two extreme views has been found by theorists Devitt, Reiff and Bawarshi in Scenes of

Writing who see genres as changeable forms whose patterns reveal values, beliefs, and

assumptions of society, rather than merely seeing genres as forms to learn and follow.

Problems in teaching genre may come from how genre is defined and delineated.

Devitt, Reiff, and Bawarshi define genre as “a common way of responding rhetorically to

a situation” (7), where “rhetorically” means using language to accomplish something (6).

The definition of rhetoric as the use of language to accomplish something is interesting—

Baxter 131

do we ever use language without the intention of accomplishing a purpose? More

guidance in the meaning of “common” in the definition of genre would also be helpful.

What exactly is common or typical among groups of genres other than formal features?

Purpose? Stylistic elements? Methods of reasoning? Situations that evoke the genres?

Textual appearance? Devitt writes that there is no single standard for what determines a

genre, and says, “[A] genre can be classified as narrative or fiction or novel or

bildungsroman; another as persuasion or argument or essay or article or editorial” (146).

Here, Devitt names both formal genres and genres delineated by purpose. Perhaps, then,

genre theorists and instructors can agree to teach genre as form and genre as other things

as well.

The progymnasmata offer a few solutions to the action/ form dilemma that genre

theory experiences by teaching a combination of formal genres and genres delineated by

purpose and methods of reasoning, and by also teaching genres of oratory, genres

delineated by the social actions they accomplish. First, the progymnasmata teach both

formal genres and genres defined more by their social purposes and attendant methods of

reasoning. The exercises teach formal genres such as the fables, tales, chreiae, proverbs,

impersonations (dramatic monologues), and theses. In addition, the progymnasmata

teach genres based on purpose: refutation, confirmation, encomium, vituperation,

comparison, and legislation (proposal). It is important to note, however, that even when

learning to write formal genres, students are taught by each exercise to engage in certain

actions specific to that exercise such as representation, elaboration, impersonation, and

argumentation. The fourteen progymnasmata, then, may be described as genres of social

action indicating things we do within a setting, such as praise and blame, refute and

Baxter 132

confirm, expound, retell, describe, argue, characterize, etc. Thus, progymnasmata teach

form and purpose, or social action, together.

Progymnasmata also teach genres of oratory, genres delineated (for teaching

purposes, although they overlap) by the social actions they accomplish—praising and

blaming, persuading and dissuading, accusing and defending. Each genre of oratory

contains considerations that indicate common patterns of reasoning appropriate to the

actions of praising and blaming, persuading and dissuading, accusing and defending, and

so genres of oratory link social action with reason and teach both. The places of the

progymnasmata teach places of the genres of oratory—ways to reason about matters at

hand, and so the progymnasmata teach reason, along with social action and form.

The progymnasmata, by teaching places of genres of oratory, teach students

principles that govern both reason and action within large spheres of social action. For

example, the places of the commonplace exercises teach places of judicial oratory such as

the will to do evil, power to do evil, definition, contrary laws, general laws, special laws,

man’s law, God’s law, custom, equity, true dealing, ancient examples, covenants and

deeds authentic (Wilson 131). The commonplace exercise, an exercise amplifying the

evil things connected with anyone and then applied to all who take part in that thing, for

example, a speech against a traitor applied to all traitors, leads the student to explore

intention or motive, or, in other words, the will to do evil. The student may also call for a

rejection of mercy based on how the thing done is not lawful, just, or rational. In

determining whether a thing is lawful, the student will logically consider laws of nature,

man’s law, God’s law, contrary laws, custom, and past examples. In determining

whether a thing is just, the student will consider definitions of justice, along with

Baxter 133

principles of equity and true dealing. And in determining rationality the student will

consider nature itself, laws and custom, definition, and past examples. Other places of

the commonplace exercise, including the digression where the student will reproach the

evil-doer’s past life, and the place of possibility, coincide with places of epideictic and

deliberative oratory, respectively, which brings attention to the fact that genres of oratory

overlap. Students writing the progymnasmata, then, gain practice with a large theoretical

framework of reasons and evidence for claims, which operates as a reference point from

which to critically evaluate the bases of their own and others’ assumptions and claims. In

addition, practice in the genres of oratory causes students to examine social constructions

such as man’s law, custom or common practice, and social definitions of justice, equity,

and true dealing. Combining these benefits of instruction with teaching formal genres is

beneficial for students.

Teaching genres of oratory (large genres of social action) through the

progymnasmata (smaller genres of social action connected with the larger genres), in

addition to teaching modern formal genres (such as cover letters, résumés, curriculum

vitas, essays, reports, memos, letters, web pages, etc.), can present for instructors one

solution for overcoming the split between genre as social action and genre as form that

genre theory now experiences. The progymnasmata, by teaching genres of oratory, teach

students strategies for understanding, reasoning in, and engaging in large spheres of

social action such as praising, blaming, deliberating, defending, and so on. However,

there are modern formal genres and perhaps even genres of social action that the

progymnasmata do not cover. Modern teaching of the progymnasmata should include all

genres (formal genres and genres of social action) relevant to students’ lives.

Baxter 134

Another argument that may connect genre theory with the progymnasmata is an

argument Devitt makes concerning antecedent genres. Devitt argues that, because no

writing class can teach students all of the genres they need to know to succeed, writing

classes can teach what Devitt terms “antecedent genres,” genres that are particularly rich

in what they teach students and that “serve as antecedents for a wealth of future roles and

activities for students” (Writing Genres 205). The progymnasmata, because they teach

invention, arrangement, style, memory, delivery, reason, logic, imitation, and decorum all

together, represent the kind of rich genres Devitt speaks of, genres that prepare students

for future roles and future action. Devitt proposes, “Selecting genres with the most

potential as antecedent genres for a particular student population while teaching how to

learn genres […], may be the most responsible reaction to these facts” (205). Her

proposal is reasonable, and the progymnasmata may serve as genres that carry the most

potential as antecedent genres for many students. Teaching students the progymnasmata

in addition to formal genres may prove beneficial for students.

Neither instruction solely in forms nor instruction solely in oratorical genres

seems sufficient for students today. Today’s students must learn strategies for working

within a wide variety of formal genres in order to function in modern commercial,

political, social, and academic communities. Genre theory instruction teaches students

valuable skills for writing genres, and guides students in critical analysis and critique of

social situations that affect generic forms. Genres of oratory, however, are genres of

action relevant to larger discourse communities than are formal genres, and so learning

these genres is also important. For example, the formal genre of the résumé is relevant to

business professionals, while the oratorical genre of deliberation is relevant to almost all

Baxter 135

communicating beings. Learning formal genres teaches students principles of form,

while learning genres of oratory teaches students principles of reason and action within

social situations. As genre theory is interested in genres as types of social action,

classical rhetoric’s grouping of genres according to the social actions they accomplish

may interest genre theorists.

Co nc lu s io n

Genre theory offers important benefits for students and advances in noteworthy

ways beyond other modern composition approaches. Genre theory also resurrects

important elements of the classical tradition lost to composition instruction for hundreds

of years (although genre theorists do not always credit the classical tradition for these

“innovative” approaches). Genre-based pedagogy instructs students in writing genres in

ways that are crucial for student advancement in our modern genre-plentiful world.

Genre theory and the progymnasmata could be combined in ways that would

enrich composition instruction now. While genre theory benefits students in many ways,

the progymnasmata offer needful additions. Classical analysis of texts, as taught in the

pedagogy of the progymnasmata, teaches students to challenge authors and their

philosophical and moral standpoints revealed in authorial decisions. Genre theory needs

to do this and does not. Genre theory teaches students to challenge social, economic,

political and environmental constructs. The progymnasmata do this to some extent, but

could do so even more. Certainly there seems to be opportunity for expanding our

understanding of reason and social action, and our students’ capacities to reason and to

act well in social spheres, perhaps more effectively than anyone ever has before, i f we

Baxter 136

would willingly combine parts of genre theory with classical rhetoric and the

progymnasmata—ironically, the oldest and the newest composition approaches that exist.

Baxter 137

CHAPTER FIVE

PROCESS AND THE PROGYMNASMATA

In response to current-traditional rhetoric and its disregard for processes of

writing, the cognitivist movement leading to process-based composition instruction began

in the 1970s. Cognitive theorists like Janet Emig, Sondra Perl, Linda Flower and John

Hayes researched the writing processes of both experienced and less experienced writers.

They found differences between these two and posited that if inexperienced writers could

learn and imitate the process of experienced writers, their writing would improve.

Cognitive theory is behavior-focused; the main assumption underlying the theory is that

if students learn behavior appropriate to effective writing, they will write effectively

(D’Angelo, Process ix, Gregg and Steinberg 145). The goal of the cognitive approach is

to teach students to gain control of their own composing process in order to become more

efficient writers, and more effective with their readers (Flower and Hayes 2, qtd. in

Berlin 482).

Process pedagogy has been argued to be just that—a pedagogy, rather than its

own epistemological approach as are current-traditional rhetoric, expressivism, and social

epistemism. Patricia Bizzell argues in her “Cognition, Convention, and Certainty,” that

process teaching can be combined with any other epistemological approach, and not alter

that approach. A look at a 1998 textbook for teaching writing in secondary schools

shows that what Bizzell proposed has come about. In the textbook, A Writer’s Craft, the

book’s authors organize its chapters following current-traditional modes. However, in

working through each chapter, a student is taken through the steps of prewriting, drafting,

and revising. Dean, in Genre Theory: Writing, Thinking, and Being, also proposes ways

Baxter 138

that genre theory instruction can be combined with teaching prewriting, drafting, and

revising. Cognitivist writing process functions, then, as a pedagogy that combines well

with other writing approaches.

In original cognitive research, the writing process of experienced writers is

described in three general phases of planning, translating and reviewing. Each of these

phases is drawn out in detail so less experienced writers can follow experienced writers’

processes. The research notes, however, that for experienced writers, these processes of

planning, translating and reviewing are recursive, rather than linear. Writing process now

taught in schools follows original cognitivist research to some degree. The writing

process with which many students and teachers have become familiar is a process

involving three main composing activities: prewriting, drafting, and revising.

Modern writing process, including prewriting, drafting, and revising, is generally

taught at the secondary level through a series of activities students are asked to complete.

Prewriting activities common in modern classrooms include brainstorming, webbing,

diagramming, and freewriting. Dean, in Strategic Writing: The Writing Process and

Beyond in the Secondary Classroom, proposes that prewriting should also teach students

strategies of inquiry, of both drawing from one’s own experience things to say and

drawing information from a variety of outside sources (24-34). Prewriting activities help

students find what to say. Prewriting activities lead to drafting. Students will take, for

example, their web diagram and begin to form sentences and paragraphs that flesh out the

ideas generated through prewriting. When enough paragraphs have been written, the

student has a first draft. Revision in modern classrooms can take several forms. Students

can work together in groups and critique each other’s work, then revise taking into

Baxter 139

considerations those critiques. Students may submit a draft to their teacher for evaluation

and then make changes to their work. Students may also use a grading rubric as a

reference for revision.

Teaching writing process in schools gives students an alternative to the kind of

current-traditional instruction Dean describes (quoted in chapter one), instruction based

on a weekly theme with grading based mostly on grammar and no instruction whatever

given regarding what process or processes might help students accomplish their writing

tasks. Dean writes, “What happened between Monday and Friday was up to us, as long

as a clean, error-free paper was turned in at the end of the week” (Strategic 2). Students

taught in the current-traditional paradigm received grades for their final written products,

which products students were rarely, if ever, allowed to rewrite after grading took place.

Dean describes the experience as being on a treadmill, and it is this repetitive and

product-centered teaching that cognitivist theorists challenged in formulating and

promoting a theory for teaching process in writing classes.

Theorists see potential in process-based instruction, but see problems in the

implementation of process in the classroom so far. First, criticisms of teaching writing

process in schools point out the drawback that the “writing process” is usually presented

to students as three linearly occurring activities, rather than a recursive process. Original

cognitive research describes the writing processes of experienced writers as recursive,

rather than linear; however, in modern secondary classes where students learn the

“writing process,” students generally first complete various prewriting activities, then

write multiple drafts, and finally revise. Dean points out that when process “goes to

school,” “It generally gets put into a pattern that fits school more than the individual”

Baxter 140

(Strategic 3). Certainly, teaching process as three sets of activities helps the teacher to

plan daily class activities and take an entire class through the “process” together. Dean

describes how some teachers have even fit the new idea of writing process into the old

pattern of the weekly theme by having students prewrite on Monday, draft on Tuesday

and Wednesday, revise on Thursday, and turn in their final assignments on Friday.

Students taught a linear process gain the perception that prewriting must always happens

first, followed, of course, by drafting, and only when drafting is complete do the students

revise. Experienced writers know their writing process is not so uncomplicated, nor so

linear.

Second, teachers teaching writing process are also criticized for prescribing

writing process activities without helping students understand why such activities could

or should be helpful to the students in their writing. Students who are required by their

teachers to complete steps of the “writing process,” but who are not taught (or not

convinced of) reasons why those steps might be helpful, often become frustrated and,

instead of finding ways to make the writing process work for them, find ways to appear

to have gone through the required process without really doing so. Students will “rough

up” drafts, create a web diagram once the final paper has been completed, and so on.

Arthur Applebee suggests that in many classrooms, “process activities have been

divorced from the purposes they were meant to serve” (102). One example of process

being divorced from purpose is the story of a student who knows what he wants to write

and feels ready to begin writing, but whose teacher requires him to create a web diagram

anyway in order to complete “the process” (Baines et al. 68). The purpose of the

prewriting activity is to aid students in finding what they want to write. If a student

Baxter 141

already knows what he wants to write, the prewriting activity may not be necessary.

Teachers entirely devoted to teaching “the process” harm students by ignoring the

purposes of that writing process. When this happens, students rarely see how a writing

process may be of value to them.

A third critique of process instruction argues that such instruction has caused the

pendulum to swing too far the other way, leading teachers and students to focus solely on

process and not at all on finished written products. Baines et al. point out problems in

“the classic process classroom” in secondary schools. One problem is teachers who

“mostly give As to those who turn something in and Bs to those who don’t write much or

who fail to turn in the cluster or rough draft. The only students who get Cs, Ds, or Fs are

those who refuse to write anything” (69). For teachers who teach only the “process” of

writing, the only fair thing to grade is the extent to which students have engaged in that

process, which leaves the question of whether students will produce written products of

any quality up to chance.

Finally, a fourth criticism leveled at process approaches is that students are often

taught to complete all parts of the writing process for every writing assignment, where, in

reality, not all writing tasks call for the same writing process, and not all parts of the

writing process will be equally helpful to students in every writing situation. Arthur

Applebee argues that some parts of the “writing process” are more appropriate for certain

writing tasks but not for others (104). For example, certain genres or the task of writing

for certain audiences may call for extensive prewriting and revising, while writing in

other genres or for other audiences will not. Students may extensively prewrite and

revise in the process of preparing a lengthy report for school, but follow a different

Baxter 142

process in writing a personal letter or e-mail. In classes where students are taught only

one writing process and not taught to consider process in terms of writing situation and

task, students again experience writing process as a set of extra tasks to accomplish rather

than as a help to their writing. When teachers neglect to point out connections between

specific writing tasks and parts of the writing process, process becomes formulaic.

The Progymnasmata and Process

The progymnasmata offer answers to deficiencies in the application of the modern

process approach by teaching two different processes: a process relating to the five

canons of rhetoric, and a process of imitation, both of which are recursive, fundamental

to the development of writing, focused on product and process together, and which

encourage judgment on the part of the student in regard to the processes students choose.

The progymnasmata teach the five canons of rhetoric: invention, arrangement,

style, memory, and delivery (detailed in chapter one), which present for the student a

recursive process of composition. The canons are not a step-by-step process, but rather

groups of considerations and actions the student will repeatedly explore throughout the

process of creating and presenting a work. Although the canons may be considered in

order, they often entail each other. For example, invention and style influence each other.

If a student creates a metaphor (a stylistic feature), for instance, the student is also

inventing matter. Also, when revising syntax, for example, content is altered to a degree.

Style and delivery are also related since style gives indications for how a text is to be

delivered. Memory relates to invention since inventive matter comes from inside the

mind as well as outside sources, and memory relates to style and arrangement because

stylistic features and patterns of arrangement a student will use are often patterns

Baxter 143

encountered in earlier experience and remembered. Memory and arrangement both aid

delivery. And so students will generally not consider the canons in a specific order each

time they write, but will rather work within each canon a number of times throughout the

process of composition.

Another process taught with the progymnasmata is the process of imitation, also

described in chapter one, which process intertwines with the canons of rhetoric.

Imitation involves the instructor’s choice of example texts, performance of the text, and

close reading of the text with students, and the student’s memorization of the text,

transformation of the text, self-correction, and performance of the new text. These steps

intertwine with the canons of rhetoric. For example, places of the progymnasmata aid

invention and arrangement, as described in chapter two; however, having a model text or

model texts also gives students ideas for invention and also arrangement, since students

analyze authors’ inventive strategies and decisions regarding arrangement. Style is also

taught through analysis and imitation of texts, since students analyze figures of speech

and thought in model texts and practice those same patterns in their own writing.

Delivery and memory are both taught through the steps of memorizing and delivering

texts. Students taught steps of imitation in conjunction with canons of rhetoric find that

all parts of both processes are important, but that the parts may change order and be

repeated several times while creating and refining a text.

Imitation offers some key benefits for students not had in modern process

instruction. First, analysis and transformation of models both provide students with a

beginning point; students contend and struggle against a written text, instead of

struggling with a blank page. Second, imitation focuses on writing as a process of

Baxter 144

choices, since students study the best authors, their inventive and stylistic decisions as

well as their choices for arrangement. Students then draft their own texts, patterning

decisions after those of the original author and/ or challenging the author’s decisions.

Third, presentation to peers and teacher gives students a chance to perform their work,

observe audience reception, and receive feedback from classmates and instructor.

Presentation of texts lets students experience text as action in a social sphere. Oral

presentation also connects speaking and writing, which connection is important, as

Quintilian explains when he says that students who are taught to read and write but not to

speak are left “brooding over hoarded treasure,” unable to make full use in life of what

they have learned in study.

The progymnasmata answer the concern of modern process instruction that

students sometimes see elements of prewriting, drafting, and revising as unnecessary or

added steps. In writing the progymnasmata, the goal is to create a quality written

exercise worthy of presentation. The student knows he will have to invent and arrange

matter, pay attention to style, and deliver the exercise in front of the class. Memory acts

as an aid in all parts of the process—there are no unnecessary steps in the process. The

extent to which the student will engage in each part of the process, however, is up to the

student. A student does not complete more processes than he feels necessary. It is

probably important to note here that, while the steps of imitation benefit students in vital

ways, it is perhaps unnecessary to go through all of the steps of imitation with every one

of the progymnasmata. Sometimes the instructor will choose model texts to be studied in

class, and sometimes students may select and analyze their own models. Instructors and

students should use judgment in determining what is best in each situation.

Baxter 145

The progymnasmata also answer modern process instruction’s dilemma of

sacrificing quality written products to a concentrated focus on process by retaining a

f ocus on the final product while also teaching process. Writing the progymnasmata

begins and ends with oral performance. Students will end up presenting before the class

that which the student has written, and so the motivation to create a quality piece of

writing is built into the system. While students are taught processes helpful to their

completing the exercises, final evaluation is always of the written and presented work.

Students thereby come to understand that the purpose of both processes connected with

the progymnasmata is to create a good product.

The two processes taught in conjunction with the progymnasmata are both open

enough for students to tailor the processes to their needs. While many parts of both

processes apply in many writing tasks, not all of the steps will be necessary every time.

As progymnasmata are repeated with varying complexity and focus, the process students

go through to complete the exercises will also change. Ultimately this teaches judgment

and a consideration of situation to determine process. In completing the progymnasmata,

students make their own judgments regarding process and repeat parts of their process

until the final product satisfies the student. When students make their own decisions

regarding writing process, processes serve as aids to students completing writing tasks,

rather than becoming added tasks themselves.

Co nc lu s io n

The classical canons of invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery,

along with steps of classical imitation, offer students and teachers a full process that

leaves out no necessary or beneficial step. The canons are built on and emphasize

Baxter 146

purpose, with each part necessary to the success of the text as a whole. The purpose of

the process is to create a good product. When taught together the canons and steps of

imitation emphasize the recursive nature of each. Both the canons and the steps of

imitation present considerations for writing process that benefit students but are not part

of the writing process taught in secondary schools today. Because the progymnasmata

provide these solutions to modern problems in process, considering the preliminary

exercises and their attendant pedagogy can add much to how we currently teach process

in secondary classrooms.

Baxter 147

CHAPTER SIX

CONCLUSION

The progymnasmata teach many of the things we want to teach well at the

secondary level—like strategies for inventing and arranging, creativity and confidence in

writing, a process that is useful, practice in many genres, methods of deep text analysis

and self-evaluation, and a modus operandi for both participation in and critique of social,

political, and economic arenas. Along with these, the progymnasmata teach reason and

judgment. The progymnasmata are structured to teach rhetorical genres, large conceptual

frameworks for reasoning through matters, and by teaching these genres prepare students

to think through life situations of varying complexity. When coupled with the facility in

reading, writing, and speaking the progymnasmata also teach, this ability to reason

enables students to act well in public, academic, social, familial, and personal spheres and

situations of daily life. The progymnasmata prepare students for various situations they

will encounter, or do encounter already, in their day-to-day experience—situations like

making decisions and discussing issues. Of the progymnasmata as a whole, Quintilian

writes, “These are, in a sense, weapons always to be kept ready, to be used as the

occasion demands” (II.1.12).

Alt hough the exercises are very old, the progymnasmata and how they are taught

add valuable methods and understanding to current approaches in teaching composition.

The progymnasmata provide answers to problems in modern composition approaches,

including problems of formula and a limited modes approach in current-traditional

rhetoric, problems of restricted teaching of genres and refusal to teach elements of

writing in expressive pedagogy, problems of aligning theory with practice in social

Baxter 148

epistemic genre theory, and problems of formulism and devaluation of product in modern

adaptations of cognitive research. The progymnasmata provide solutions for each of

these problems and offer a theory and a pedagogy that are sound, encompassing, and

time-tested.

I cannot say the progymnasmata are perfect or that they can replace all of what

modern composition approaches do and teach in the classroom. I have not proven that

argument. Rather, this thesis provides evidence that the progymnasmata measure up

positively in comparison with modern composition approaches. The thesis offers a

theoretical foundation for teachers to begin to teach the progymnasmata in their

classrooms, perhaps in conjunction with parts of other composition approaches, to see if

teaching the exercises provides positive results. The rationale for such implementation is

based on evidence provided in this thesis that the progymnasmata and their pedagogy

provide solutions and better alternatives to problems in modern composition approaches.

The progymnasmata may and should be adapted to suit the needs of modern secondary

school instruction, as long as that adaptation is thoughtful and does not eliminate

important elements of what the progymnasmata teach.

Adapting Exercises for Modern Needs

Chapters three and four of this thesis make suggestions for possible adaptation of

the progymnasmata to meet modern needs and align with modern values. For example,

chapter three points out it may be appropriate to add to or adapt original progymnasmata

to include more kinds of personal writing. The idea of adding or allowing personal

examples in any of the assignments is possibly a modern idea; however, George A.

Kennedy points out that the classical instructor Theon allowed students to write about

Baxter 149

their own experiences (x). Nothing in the progymnasmata themselves prohibits

including personal examples in writing where appropriate. The progymnasmata also

encourage individual creativity, and this can be highlighted in the way we teach the

exercises. Chapter four likewise suggests combining genre theory’s critique of social and

political values of discourse groups made apparent in patterns of genres with classical

rhetoric’s critique of psychological, moral, and behavioral grounds of individuals made

apparent in patterns within texts. In ancient Greece and Rome, explicit critique of social

and political structures was somewhat suppressed for reasons of personal safety.

However, social and political critique is often implicit in critique of literary works (which

works often depict common social, cultural, and political beliefs) accomplished through

the confirmation and refutation exercises. Looking at both texts and genres and also

learning to work within a variety of formal genres can be important for students today.

Also important for teachers today is the possibility of expanding curricula to

include modern genres. Classical rhetorical theory, because applicable to all kinds of

interaction, is a good framework in which to instruct students in new, existing, and future

forms of discourse. Because of its breadth, the classical tradition can guide analysis of

forms of interaction not yet discussed to a large extent in the composition class, including

visual, cinematic, and electronic communicative acts. The broad genres and principles of

classical rhetoric apply in these types of action. Principles of imitation will also help

students seeking to develop fluency in newer written and spoken genres available (online,

among other places), and developing fluency in these new genres will allow students to

interact in a variety of social settings, including the emerging global community.

Baxter 150

Also, with modern technology and newer venues of communication, social

contexts within which students may share their works may be expanded. In classical

times and in the Renaissance, students shared their written works orally with teacher and

peers, and the classroom as an available social scene should, in modern times, not be

undervalued. The classroom provides a context where students practice speaking, hear

and see how ideas are received, and gain immediate feedback from persons with multiple

viewpoints. However, students, even in ancient times, were encouraged to experience

contexts outside of the classroom, including the forum, so their ideas of social interaction

would not be limited to what goes on in schools. Students today should be enabled to

share their ideas within as many social contexts as are available. Students can publish

their works in student publications, write pieces for a local newspaper, or post on blogs.

Students may also be introduced to scholarly works that, together, form conversations in

academic or business settings in which students will one day participate. Allowing

students to present their ideas in varied social situations will help students see ways their

writing represents them and also see writing and speaking as relevant outside of school.

Some modern instructors will be concerned that the progymnasmata will seem

antiquarian and esoteric to the modern student, or that the “places” of the exercises are

ancient and obscure for modern purposes. Many theorists have feared the same and have

never actually written the exercises to see how that would change their perspective. Only

through actually writing the exercises may some students (and teachers) possibly see that

the exercises are not antiquarian and esoteric, but rather that they are enjoyable and, at

the same time, very instructive. Students writing the exercises will write on topics of

interest to them, expand, transform, and critique modern sayings, stories, and literary

Baxter 151

works, examine modern questions and propose laws relevant to modern situations. The

fact that Renaissance teachers and students wrote the progymnasmata over a thousand

years after the exercises were used in Greece and Rome shows that the exercises are

adaptable to fit various cultural, social, religious, political, and educational settings.

The places of the progymnasmata are also understandable if students know

rhetorical terms. However, where necessary, teachers could present the places of the

exercises in a way that is accessible to their students. For example, in preparing a

refutation exercise as an assignment for eighth grade students, I wrote the following:

Refute a False Assertion in a Literary Work

This exercise will allow you to critique assertions made in a significant

literary work. We have studied, as a class, George Orwell’s Animal Farm

and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter. Choose a major assertion

e it her Orwell or Hawthorne makes in his literary work that you feel you

may challenge, and write an essay refuting that assertion. The assertion

you choose to focus on should not be something clearly true nor utterly

impossible, but something between those extremes. You will discuss your

ideas for this paper in class with a group and also meet with me on

________ to assess the feasibility/ appropriateness of topic selections.

In refuting your chosen assertion, follow these guidelines, adapting them

to suit your purpose:

1. State first the false assertion you will refute

2. Explain, describe, and give examples of how the author makes this

assertion

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3. State and/or explain why the assertion is:

• Unconvincing

• Impossible

• Inconsistent

• Improper

• Irrational

You may use examples in the novel, personal examples, and statements

from authorities and experts to support your critique. We will also study

several similar examples of criticism in class that will give an idea of how

to accomplish this exercise.

Although all essential elements of the classical refutation exercise are present in this

particular assignment example, wording and formatting have been changed to be more

familiar to students today.

In adapting exercises for modern needs, teachers need to be aware that if we

oversimplify the progymnasmata or take the exercises out of their rich context, we will

lose the benefits the progymnasmata offer. Experience with other composition

approaches suggests that teachers sometimes formalize and simplify. As pointed out

earlier in this thesis, the progymnasmata can be simplified, but simplifying also

eliminates important benefits. Only within their full rhetorical contexts, those explained

in chapter one, will the progymnasmata benefit students in all the ways described in this

thesis.

Modern teachers will also want to know how teaching the classical

progymnasmata will fit with a grading scale, and how time is to be made for each student

Baxter 153

to present a work orally every time an exercise is completed. To be sure there may be

many ways for teachers to work out grading of exercises and presentation schedules.

One idea is that the exercises be taught in sections, one exercise per session or the teacher

may group some exercises to create nine or ten sections. At the end of each section, the

teacher chooses at random four or five students to present their work to the class, thus

each student presents three or four times throughout the year or term. Because students

don’t know when they will be called to present, all exercises will have to be prepared in a

way that they are presentation worthy. Possibly students could also be assigned

presentations or could volunteer to present as well. For reasons of fairness, I would

probably require my students to turn in a portfolio at the end of the year with what they

consider to be their four best exercises that they did not present orally. That portfolio

would be graded and would count, along with grades from the oral presentations, for a

percentage of the final grade. Such a process would hopefully prevent the instructor from

being overwhelmed with grading, while simultaneously increasing the quality of student

written works. Teachers will have to determine what works best for their situation and

plan accordingly. Harp’s example of progymnasmata taught in an integrated humanities

course is an excellent example of teaching the exercises to meet student needs and fulfill

broader academic goals.

Progymnasmata in the Future

The work of this thesis has been to carefully look at the progymnasmata to

discover and describe what value these ancient preliminary exercises have for today’s

teachers looking for sound ways to teach their students. At the very least, these chapters

lay open the progymnasmata for closer consideration and scrutiny. There is more work

Baxter 154

that may be done. My hope has been to create interest among instructors and theorists in

the exercises and show how they are of worth in education now.

Because the progymnasmata are not presently taught in many schools, it is

difficult to compare actual practice of teaching the progymnasmata with actual practice of

the other approaches; however, there is evidence from ancient times as well as the present

of the success of these exercises. We have as evidence of the efficacy of the exercises

their longevity—that they were taught for hundreds of years over wide geographical areas

in Greece, Rome, and Renaissance Europe demonstrates that teachers and students found

the exercises to be of worth. We also have more modern evidence of the success a few

schools are having teaching this curriculum today. For example, in Kansas City,

Missouri, students grades four through nine at Whitefield Academy are taught the

progymnasmata, which training helps the students write with greater cohesion and focus,

and score well on national writing exams (whitefieldacademy.org). The Wilberforce

School in Princeton, New Jersey also teaches the progymnasmata as part of their classical

curriculum, and reports the exercises improve student writing. Because of lack of

extensive data, what is described in this thesis regarding the progymnasmata is an ideal;

however, evidence of past and modern-day success teaching the exercises suggests that

there is real potential for students and teachers who write and teach these exercises today.

I end by reiterating my advocacy of teaching the progymnasmata in modern

secondary classrooms. The progymnasmata are good exercises. I have written them and

have spoken with others who have written them. I have also examined the works of great

authors and ordinary students trained in this curriculum. The works are extraordinary, in

some cases, and in others, still encompass the qualities of good writing. In the

Baxter 155

progymnasmata, I find a strong base for my own teaching. The exercises and their

surrounding pedagogy offer a beginning point on which to build a teaching theory and

methodology. They offer pedagogical methods on which to build and from which to

move forward. In doing so, I can spend time teaching things that will be valuable to my

students, and build on, rather than reinvent the past.

Edward P. J. Corbett writes of his own work with classical rhetoric,

All “my work” [in rhetoric] is really somebody else’s work. I have stolen

all of it from wiser heads than mine will ever be…

What I have appropriated from others is indeed ‘goods.’ In fact, it is good

goods. This much at least can be said for me: I was shrewd enough to

recognize valuable property when I saw it. Others of my contemporaries

had gone to the fountainheads before me. Apparently, many of them did

not realize the value of what they found there. Even before I had sluiced

the streams, I detected the golden grains suspended there in solution. (“My

Work in Rhetoric” 288)

Corbett, who floundered, as many of us do, in his first teaching assignment, discovered

classical rhetorical texts that “gave [him] hope—and something of a method” (288).

Classical rhetoric does give hope, and especially method—methods that work—f or

teaching at any level. The progymnasmata are especially suited for the secondary school

level, and because they provide strong answers for questions of instruction at this level,

they prove themselves to be, in Corbett’s words, “good goods.”

The progymnasmata provide solutions for and alternatives to a modern

composition situation that is less than satisfactory. They constitute an important part of

Baxter 156

the classical past Murphy encourages teachers today to build on, “reshaping old

principles to fit modern needs” (“Rhetorical History” 10). Murphy acknowledges that

such building and reshaping will require “curricular courage” among educators. Where

courage is needed to bring classical theory and practice into modern classrooms, that

courage is enabled by evidence that the classical curriculum and classical preliminary

exercises fill in gaps where modern theories and methods fall deficient. If modern

composition approaches fall short in teaching students, and if the classical tradition and

progymnasmata can enable students in ways modern approaches cannot, exploring the

possibilities of teaching progymnasmata in secondary schools is worthwhile.

Baxter 157

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