Rhetoric Review Apr 2003

The Very Idea of a Progymnasmata

J. David Fleming

Abstract

Progymnasmata are collections of speaking and writing exercises for students of rhetoric. As historians have shown, they played an extremely important role in European education from Antiquity to the beginnings of the Modern Era. Unfortunately, they are treated today, if at all, as an historical curiosity, a relic of the old "school rhetoric." Occasionally, there are attempts to revive the traditional sequence. Both approaches miss what I believe is most valuable about the progymnasmata, the very idea of a unified pedagogical program in the language arts, spanning primary, secondary, and higher education, oriented toward the shaping of rhetorical character, and organized around a sequence of well-defined exercises in verbal analysis and composition.

Journal
Rhetoric Review
Published
2003-04-01
DOI
10.1207/s15327981rr2202_1
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Topics
classical rhetoric rhetorical criticism writing pedagogy
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Cited by in this index (5)

  1. Detweiler (2019)
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  4. Ray (2013)
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  5. Enoch (2010)
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