The Rhetorical Education of William Jennings Bryan: Isocrates, Character, and Imitation

Advances in the History of Rhetoric Sep 2017

The Rhetorical Education of William Jennings Bryan: Isocrates, Character, and Imitation

Christopher J. Oldenburg ; Adam E. Enz

Abstract

ABSTRACT In the late American nineteenth century, oratory was de rigueur. Institutionally, liberal arts colleges sought to distinguish themselves by teaching moral character. Such an ethotic education was sine qua non for any student of political oratory. This essay argues that such an emphasis on character and oratory, coupled with Illinois College’s rhetorical curriculum and extracurricular events, afforded a kairotic and didactic moment for William Jennings Bryan to learn and practice Isocrates’ brand of rhetorical paideia. Taught primarily through the use of paradigm cases and imitation, Isocrates emphasized the import of a speaker’s ethos over the art itself. Bryan shared this perspective. Drawing from both “Against the Sophists” and “Antidosis,” we conduct a comparative analysis by reading Isocrates’ ethotic-based rhetorical theory alongside of Bryan’s 1881 graduating oration entitled “Character.”

Journal: Advances in the History of Rhetoric
Published: 2017-09-02
DOI: 10.1080/15362426.2017.1371654
CompPile: Search in CompPile ↗
Topics: rhetorical theory argument

Citation Context

Cited by in this index (0)

No articles in this index cite this work.

Cites in this index (2)

Papillion (1995)

Isocrates’ <i>techne</i> and rhetorical…

Rhetoric Society Quarterly
Benoit (1991)

Isocrates and Plato on rhetoric and rhetorical education

Rhetoric Society Quarterly

Also cites 18 works outside this index ↓

Baskerville (1952)

Principal Themes of Nineteenth-Century Critics of Oratory

Speech Monographs ↗
Beale (1990)

Richard M. Weaver: Philosophical Rhetoric, Cultural Criticism, and the First Rhetorical A…

College English ↗
Benoit (1984)

Isocrates on Rhetorical Education

Communication Education ↗
Berquist (1959)

Isocrates of Athens: Foremost Speech Teacher of the Ancient World

The Speech Teacher ↗
Chase (2009)

Constructing Ethics through Rhetoric: Isocrates and Piety

Quarterly Journal of Speech ↗
Clark (1957)

Rhetoric in Greco-Roman Education.

↗
Connors (1997)

Composition–Rhetoric: Backgrounds, Theory, and Pedagogy.

↗
Crocker (1938)

Robert Green Ingersoll’s Influence on American Oratory

Quarterly Journal of Speech ↗
Guthrie (1948)

The Development of Rhetorical Theory in America 1635–1850

Speech Monographs ↗
Hariman (2004)

Isocrates and Civic Education

↗
Harpine (2001)

Bryan’s ‘A Cross of Gold:’ The Rhetoric of Polarization at the 1896 Democratic Convention

Quarterly Journal of Speech ↗
Hostetler (1998)

William Jennings Bryan as Demosthenes: The Scopes Trial and the Undelivered Oration, on E…

Western Journal of Communication ↗
Johnson (1959)

Isocrates’ Methods of Teaching

The American Journal of Philology ↗
Leff (1986)

Genre and Paradigm in the Second Book of De Oratore

Southern Speech Communication Journal ↗
Maddux (2013)

Fundamentalist Fool or Populist Paragon? William Jennings Bryan and the Campaign against …

Rhetoric & Public Affairs ↗
Moran (1994)

Eighteenth-Century British and American Rhetorics and Rhetoricians: Critical Studies and …

↗
Poage (1928)

College Career of William Jennings Bryan

The Mississippi Valley Historical Review ↗
Poulakos (2004)

Isocrates and Civic Education

↗

CrossRef global citation count: 0 View in citation network →