Shakespeare and the Critics

Shakespeare and the Critics Free Online Research Papers Shakespeare is possibly the greatest play writer of our time. One of his more famous plays â€Å"Hamlet† tells the story of a man, Hamlet, who is misunderstood by everyone. It is very easy for one to project his or her own faults onto someone else, and this is exactly what happens in the play. Hamlet does many strange things and each thing is blamed on a different reason. This is similar to when a critic analysis a piece of work. They tend to compare the play to something they have gone through in their life. T.S. Elliot’s essay â€Å"Hamlet and His Problems† is a perfect example that critics are narrow minded. They only see things in the way they want and they do not have an open mind about anything. Hamlet seems mad and acts very strange in some cases this causes the main debate that critics talk about; KING: How is it that clouds still hang on you? Hamlet: Not so, my lord. I am too much in the sun.† Even though Hamlet is only saying he is mad to fool the king, many people think that he has really gone mad out of frustration for the tragedy that occurred. Hamlet also seems to be a liar by blaming his appearance on coincidence rather than the tragedy that took place. The first argument is a more recent argument and T.S. Elliot’s quotes Professor Stoll of the University of Minnesota saying that: Critics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries knew less about psychology than more recent Hamlet critics, but they were nearer in spirit to Shakespeares art; and as they insisted on the importance of the effect of the whole rather than on the importance of the leading character, they were nearer, in their old-fashioned way, to the secret of dramatic art in general.† The modern critics all think he has gone mad. Clearly they never experienced a tragedy themselves; otherwise they would know what the experience could do to someone. When he throws off the king’s question he is not doing it because he doesn’t want to talk to the king he is doing it because he can’t handle all the questions. This is perfectly normal. Critics who have never been a situation like this are unable to think outside the box, and understand what someone else is going through. Other critics misunderstand Hamlets behavior by saying he is a homosexual. This is a misunderstanding of the fact that Hamlet can’t trust any man. Therefore, he advises Ophelia to trust no man. The only man she can trust is Jesus. The only way a critic can see the real issues here would be if they went through the same thing that Hamlet did. If a woman went through a terrible divorce and then tells her friends not to trust any man, does this make her gay? No, this just means that she went through a trauma that no one can understand unless they went through the same thing. The difference between a good critic and a bad critic is one that understands his own boundaries. If a critic can realize that he is not always able to understand what the character is going through and that he must think outside of the box in order to understand it, he will be a good critic. I agree with Elliot’s critic on the critics of Hamlet he understands like I do that you cannot judge a situation until you were put in it yourself. Research Papers on Shakespeare and the CriticsComparison: Letter from Birmingham and CritoHonest Iagos Truth through DeceptionBringing Democracy to AfricaCanaanite Influence on the Early Israelite ReligionEffects of Television Violence on ChildrenMind TravelAssess the importance of Nationalism 1815-1850 EuropePersonal Experience with Teen PregnancyArguments for Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS)Capital Punishment

Definition and Discussion of Classical Rhetoric

Definition and Discussion of Classical Rhetoric Definition The expression classical rhetoric refers to the  practice and teaching of rhetoric in ancient Greece and Rome from roughly the fifth century B.C. to the early Middle Ages. Though rhetorical studies began in Greece in the fifth century B.C., the practice of rhetoric began much earlier with the emergence of Homo sapiens. Rhetoric became a subject of academic study at a time when ancient Greece was evolving from an oral culture to a literate one. See the observations below. Also see: Definitions of Rhetoric in Ancient Greece and RomeAn Overview of Classical Rhetoric: Origins, Branches, Canons, Concepts, and ExercisesRhetoric Review QuestionsDialecticDissoi LogoiGlossary of Rhetorical TermsLetteraturizzazioneOrality Oratory  and  The Parts of a Speech PraxisSophistsStoic GrammarTechneWhat Are the Five Canons of Rhetoric?What Are the Progymnasmata?What Are the Three Branches of Rhetoric? Periods of Western Rhetoric Classical RhetoricMedieval RhetoricRenaissance RhetoricEnlightenment RhetoricNineteenth-Century RhetoricNew Rhetoric(s) Observations [T]he earliest surviving use of the term rhetorike is in Platos Gorgias in the early fourth century BCE. . . . [I]t is likely, although impossible to prove definitively, that Plato himself coined the term.(David M. Timmerman and Edward Schiappa, Classical Greek Rhetorical Theory and the Disciplining of Discourse. Cambridge University Press, 2010) Rhetoric in Ancient GreeceClassical writers regarded rhetoric as having been invented, or more accurately, discovered, in the fifth century B.C. in the democracies of Syracuse and Athens. . . . [T]hen, for the first time in Europe, attempts were made to describe the features of an effective speech and to teach someone how to plan and deliver one. Under democracies citizens were expected to participate in political debate, and they were expected to speak on their own behalf in courts of law. A theory of public speaking evolved, which developed an extensive technical vocabulary to describe features of argument, arrangement, style, and delivery . . . .Classical rhetoriciansthat is, teachers of rhetoricrecognized that many features of their subject could be found in Greek literature before the invention of rhetoric . . .. Conversely, the teaching of rhetoric in the schools, ostensibly concerned primarily with training in public address, had a significant effect on written composition, and thus on literature.(George Kennedy, A New History of Classical Rhetoric. Princeton University Press, 1994) Roman RhetoricEarly Rome was a republic rather than a direct democracy, but it was a society in which public speaking was as important to civic life as it had been in Athens . . ..The ruling elite [in Rome] viewed rhetoric with suspicion, leading the Roman Senate to ban the teaching of rhetoric and close all the schools in 161 BC. Although this move was partially motivated by strong anti-Greek sentiments among the Romans, it is clear that the Senate also was motivated by a desire to eliminate a powerful tool for social change. In the hands of demagogues like the Gracchi, rhetoric had the potential to stir the restless poor, inciting them to riots as part of the endless internal conflicts among the ruling elite. In the hands of skillful legal orators like Lucius Licinius Crassus and Cicero, it had the power to undermine Romes traditionally rigid interpretation and application of law.(James D. Williams, An Introduction to Classical Rhetoric: Essential Readings. Wiley, 2009) Rhetoric a nd WritingFrom its origin in 5th century BC Greece through its flourishing period in Rome and its reign in the medieval trivium, rhetoric was associated primarily with the art of oratory. During the Middle Ages, the precepts of classical rhetoric began to be applied to letter-writing, but it was not until the Renaissance . . . that the precepts governing the spoken art began to be applied, on any large scale, to written discourse.(Edward Corbett and Robert Connors, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student. Oxford University Press, 1999) Women in Classical RhetoricThough most historical texts focus on the father figures of classical rhetoric, women (though generally excluded from educational opportunities and political offices) also contributed to the rhetorical tradition in ancient Greece and Rome. Women such as Aspasia and Theodote have sometimes been described as the muted rhetoricians; unfortunately, because they left no texts, we know few details about their contributions. To learn more about the roles played by women in classical rhetoric, see Rhetoric Retold: Regendering the Tradition from Antiquity Through the Renaissance, by Cheryl Glenn (1997); Rhetorical Theory by Women Before 1900, edited by Jane Donawerth (2002); and Jan Swearingens Rhetoric and Irony: Western Literacy and Western Lies (1991). Primary Rhetoric, Secondary Rhetoric, and LetteraturizzazionePrimary rhetoric involves utterance on a specific occasion; it is an act not a text, though subsequently it can be treated as a text. The primacy of pri mary rhetoric is a fundamental fact in the classical tradition: through the time of the Roman Empire teachers of rhetoric, whatever was the real situation of their students, took as their nominal goal the training of persuasive public speakers; even in the early Middle Ages, when there was reduced practical opportunity to exercise civic rhetoric, the definition and content of rhetorical theory as set forth by Isidore and Alcuin, for example, show the same civic assumption; the revival of classical rhetoric in Renaissance Italy was foreshadowed by renewed need for civic rhetoric in the cities of the 12th and 13th centuries; and the great period of neoclassical rhetoric was the time when public speaking emerged as a major force in church and state in France, England, and America.Secondary rhetoric, on the other hand, refers to rhetorical techniques as found in discourse, literature and art forms when those techniques are not being used for an oral, persuasive purpose. . . . Frequent m anifestations of secondary rhetoric are commonplaces, figures of speech, and tropes in written works. Much literature, art and informal discourse is decorated by secondary rhetoric, which may be a mannerism of the historical period in which it is composed. . . .It has been a persistent characteristic of classical rhetoric in almost every stage of its history to move from primary to secondary forms, occasionally then reversing the pattern. For this phenomenon the Italian term letteraturizzazione has been coined. Letteraturizzazione is the tendency of rhetoric to shift focus from persuasion to narration, from civic to personal contexts, and from speech to literature, including poetry.(George Kennedy, Classical Rhetoric and Its Christian and Secular Tradition, 2nd ed. University of North Carolina Press, 1999)