Isidore of Seville's "Etymologies II"

Isidore of Seville's (c. 560-636) definition of rhetoric in Etymologies II:

"Rhetoric is the science of speaking well on civil questions; eloquence is the flow of words, designed to persuade people to the just and good."

This quote is featured in The Rhetoric Canon, edited by Brenda Deen Schildgen, who says the following about the seventh-century late antique/early medieval author:

"He defined rhetoric as training in citizenship in which practice in eloquence and ethics are joined for the benefit of society. As canonizer and canonized, Isidore contributed to the history of rhetoric and rhetorical practice by restating and so disseminating in brief form what the 'canonical' rhetoricians and rhetorical theorists of antiquity--Gorgias, Aristotle, Hermagoras, Cicero and Quintilian--had earlier argued" (13).

Schildgen adds that Isidore literally created a rhetorical canon by not only defining rhetoric and recording its history, mostly drawn from the Greeks, but also by creating a particular list of rhetors and connected the study of eloquence with law and mapped out tropes, which made Isidore the "authorative source for rhetorical practice" (13).

From what I have read, Isidore was born in and died in Spain. Interesting that he is not part of Bizzell and Herzeberg's The Rhetorical Tradition. Hmmmmm.....????

Hasta la proxima...

Citation: The Rhetoric Canon. Brenda Deen Schildgen, ed. (Wayne State University Press, 1997).

PS

Currently listening to:



Ely Guerra's "Sweet & Sour. Hot Y Spicy"

(Yes, I'll marry you, Ely.)