Classical Communication for the Contemporary Communicator

By Halford Ross Ryan

No Synopsis Available.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1559340339
• ISBN13: 9781559340335
• Release Date: January 1992
• Publisher: Mayfield Pub Co
• Length: 244 Pages
• Weight: 1.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.3" x 0.5" x 6.0"

Customer Reviews

A small gem now lost in the clutter

This tightly written little book provides a crystal-clear exposition of the basic main streams of Greek and Roman rhetoric, and applies them to contemporary speaking processes. As primarily-oral cultures (they had to be, papyrus and wax tablets were much more expensive for them than paper is for us), the Greeks and Romans developed formal public speaking to a very high art, and there's still a great deal to be learned from them, which is cleanly and clearly laid out here. I only gave it four stars because I think it's written at a sub-college level; I wouldn't hesitate to use it with high school freshmen. If you want a quick, mostly accurate (I have quibbles but only quibbles) picture of what Corax, Aristotle, Cicero, Horace, and the gang were all about, and what that has to do with talking in public today, here's your book; grab one while used ones are still available. (Hint to publisher: think about bringing it back!) And for those of you wondering just what a bunch of DWEMs have to do with public speaking today ... well, Corax's speech organization remains a staple in our courtrooms to this day, it's also very common as an organization for scientific and technical papers, and was the favorite organization of people as diverse as Malcolm X, Ronald Reagan, and Richard Nixon; it's subtle and more powerful than it appears. There are seven speeches for study, all Coractian in organization except one: Patrick Henry's Liberty or Death, a Frederick Douglass antislavery address, a Henry Ward Beecher stump speech for women's suffrage, a Harry Emerson Fosdick sermon, Richard Nixon's Checkers speech, Jimmy Carter's defense of the Panama Canal treaties (one of the few good speeches he ever gave), and for some unfathomable reason a non-Corax organization Wellesley commencement speech by Barbara Bush. Ryan's analysis of each of them is sharp and astute and well worth your while if you're studying public speaking in general or classical rhetoric in particular. I also found that Ryan's sections on invention and style were far better than in most contemporary public speaking texts (which mostly just exhort the student to think of good stuff and say it real pretty); the ancient cultures had specific methods of invention and specific ways to ornament a speech, and the students seemed to like the extra guidance. Anyway, overall, it seems like a shame to have this one out of print, even if I wish it were a wee bit more challenging for college freshmen.