Through the majority of the readings this week the idea of
cultural dialectic seemed to dominate. As noted in RT, the Medieval period is a
time of rhetorical stagnation (in the western world at least). But more than
that is that it is a time of cultural isolation. With the dawn of Christianity
as an organized system of religion and government came oppression of dissenting
viewpoints. Before Augustine the Classical teachings of Plato and Aristotle
were thought to be opposition to the Church so they were denounced. As the
Byzantine Empire spread, they did their best to destroy Greco-Roman culture.
St. Jerome’s divine vision included the destruction of secular texts.
Ironically the doctrine of intolerance is ultimately what led to the end of the
Dark Ages. The othered groups (the pagans) began invading. Here I am looking at
the act of warfare as a sort of cultural dialectic—albeit a hostile one. This
sparked the Crusades—a terrible event that put two isolated cultures in contact
with each other. As the RT goes on to explain, this eventually gave way to the
founding of the university and scholasticism.
On
a more micro level, we have Augustine trying to reconcile the classical
rhetoric with Christianity. And once he proved its usefulness, it was
assimilated (as was he). Out of the readings this week perhaps the most
striking example of cultural dialectic comes from Patrick. Here we have a
kidnapped British teenager who is essentially forced to assimilate into the
Celtic culture over the course of several years. This assimilation included
learning the language, customs and legends/myths of Ireland. Then, after
returning to Briton, he decides to go back to the place of his captivity.
[Insert joke here about how bad Briton must be in comparison to Ireland.] He
effectively goes about converting many of the Druids by putting Christian
rhetoric in conversation with the Druid rhetoric. As Sheehan-Johnson notes, the
Burkean principle of identification is used as opposed to persuasion in order
to convert the Druids (14). Sheehan also goes about drawing parallels between
the Irish themes of “courage, generosity, loyalty and beauty” and the Greek ideas
of ethos, logos and pathos (8). Later, Sheehan also draws comparisons between
the Christian Trinity and the mythic god figures present in Celtic culture
(14). Patrick managed to draw these comparisons and effectively convert the
Druids, not by following the rules laid out in Herrenium or the structured
systems of Quintilian or Cicero. He did it by dialoguing (in a literal and rhetorical
sense) with the Druids. [Note: I claim “Dialoging with the Druids” as a band
name. You can’t have it.] Patrick understood his audience on a personal
level—something that is lacking in the Classical schema. As Sheehan humorously
notes, Augustine and his rhetorical flourishes would have likely been killed
(15).
Then,
of course, there is the invention of letter writing—a sort of dialogue carried
out in written form. What’s important here is the idea that the manuals for
letter writing became, as RT puts it, “encyclopedic” in scope with appendices
for proverbs and allusions (444). But there is also a sort of historical
dialectic going on when we see preaching (the spread of God’s word) framed as curing
the disease of sin (445). When put into context, the metaphor would obviously
resonate with the audience—a peoples whose daily life dealt with plague and
death from disease. The effective rhetoric takes on the conversations of its
environment. [This reminds me of Edward’s “Sinners in the Hand of an Angry God”
which invokes the fire metaphor in a time when women’s clothing and “domestic duties”
made fire a leading—and very visible—cause of death.]
More
effective than the rules of language, which comprise large swaths of Roman
writing, is the dialectic that forms between cultures. To form a false binary, I
would say that isolation—the refusal to dialogue with other cultures and
instead concentrate on formulating rules and grammar—was more detrimental to
rhetoric.
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