ENG 530
CLASSICAL RHETORIC
Maureen Daly Goggin

Contextual Reports

You will collaborate with three or four other people in the class to help us situate each of the rhetoricians and their rhetorics we are reading this semester.  As a group, you will decide what kind of information to present and how you will present it to the class.  The goal is to help us understand something about the rhetorician and the times he (they are all “he”) lived in.  You might consider, for example:

•  biographical information on the rhetorician
•  political and cultural information of the times
•  geographical and geo-political information
•  economic information
•  information on contemporary rhetoricians or orators (what were others around the rhetorician doing rhetorically)
•  information on one or more of the orators or rhetoricians mentioned in the work
•  For Plato and Cicero group, you might look at the dramatic date of the work vs. the date it was written  (e.g., De Oratore was written 55 BCE but the dialogue takes place around 91 BCE)
The above list offers suggestions to help you frame a presentation; there is no way one group can cover all of these. You need to pick one or two. Further, as a group you may think of other areas to explore and present.

As a group, decide how you will:

•  negotiate the tasks
•  divide the workload (both for research and presentation)
• communicate with each other
A good starting place for locating contextual information is the editors’ preface to each work and their bibliography as well as Conley; Glenn; Murphy; Ritchie and Ronald. Encyclopedias of rhetoric are also useful starting points.  Databases such as expanded academic index and uncover provide up-to-date scholarship.  CompPile on the Web is also useful. Also consider history databases and bibliographies, and speech communication bibliographies. (See my links to rhetoric resources on the web at http://www.public.asu.edu/~mdg42/Rhetoric.html for useful websites devoted to rhetoric.)

In-Class Presentation:  Your group will have one hour of class on the day the context report is due to present the information in any format you decide (e.g., individual short reports, small group or whole class activities, handouts, overheads, maps, bibliographies, etc.).  In short, you have free reign to decide how best to help us understand the contextual forces surrounding the rhetorician and the work.

Your group will also field questions from the class (either by answering them, researching them, or pointing the class to resources where they can research themselves).  You will also have time in subsequent classes to provide any follow-up information you like.

September 23 Contextual Report on Plato
September 30 Contextual Report on Aristotle
October 28  Contextual Report on Cicero
November 18 Contextual Report on St. Augustine
 

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