Writing Instruction in Nineteenth-Century American Colleges

Book excerpt: Defining a rhetoric as a social invention arising out of a particular time, place, and set of circumstances, Berlin notes that "no rhetoric--not Plato's or Aristotle's or Quintilian's or Perelman's--is permanent." At any given time several rhetorics vie for supremacy, with each attracting adherents representing various views of reality expressed through a rhetoric. Traditionally rhetoric has been seen as based on four interacting elements: "reality, writer or speaker, audience, and language." As the definitions of the elements change or as the interactions between elements change, rhetoric changes. In this interpretive study Berlin classifies the three nineteenth-century rhetorics as classical, psychological-epistemological, and romantic--a uniquely American development growing out of the transcendental movement. In each case studying the rhetoric provides insights into society and the beliefs of the people: what is appearance, and what is reality.