12 Matching Annotations
  1. Feb 2019
  2. Mar 2017
    1. Such set speeches were often delivered before large assemblies, as at the Olympic Games, where competition between or-ators provided a welcome complement to the at~-letic contests. On such occasions, the only deci-sion that the audience was called upon to make concerned the talent of the orator, by awarding the crown to the victor.

      Okay, so setting aside the claim that oratory was a "welcome complement to the athletic contests," I was still surprised by this claim that the Olympics used to include competitions in oratory. I tried to look into it, but I only found sketchy sources that claimed "The original Olympics featured competition in music, oratory, and theater performances as well," but that phrase appeared word-for-word in several hits, so I am not inclined to trust it's veracity. Does anyone know about this? Was oratory really an Olympic sport at one point?

  3. Feb 2017
    1. "Behold, I make all things new;" "the letter killeth, the spirit giveth life."

      Building on my annotation on this as a section title. Given the etymology of a word like spirit, which can suggest breathe, there is yet another connection to oratory here and the preference for it over literacy. Oratory breathes life into discourse where print would kill it to make it stand still.

  4. Oct 2013
    1. Such is undoubtedly the case unless we suppose, perchance, that a regular structure and smooth combination of words is requisite only in poems and songs, and is superfluous in making a speech; or that composition and modulation are not to be varied in speaking, as in music, according to the nature of the subject.

      Interesting use of vocal music as an exercise or means of training an orator. When I consider any number of vocalists, a commonality among them is the ability to speak well (and pleasantly). I'm having a hard time recalling any vocalist with a flat, monotone voice (among other unpleasant speaking qualities).

    2. In oratory, accordingly, the raising, lowering, or other inflection of the voice tends to move the feelings of the bearers. We try to excite the indignation of the judges in one modulation of phrase and voice (that I may again use the same term), and their pity in another, for we see that minds are affected in different ways even by musical instruments, though no words cannot be uttered by them.

      Ok, this is all fascinating stuff. Even when we speak it tends to be in some sort of music scale, or at the very least we don't speak in dissonant tones.

    1. that oratory is the art of speaking well, since when the best definition is found, he who seeks for another must seek for a worse
    2. With this character of it, the definition that oratory is the science of speaking well agrees excellently, for it embraces all the virtues of oratory at once and includes also the character of the true orator, as he cannot speak well unless he be a good man

      He seems hesitant to commit to one definition

    1. or oratoria will be taken in the same sense as elocutoria, oratrix as elocutrix, but the word rhētorikē, of which we are speaking, is the same sort of word as eloquentia, and it is doubtless used in two senses by the Greeks. 3. In one acceptation, it is an adjective, ars rhetorica, as navis piratica: in the other a substantive, like philosophia or amicitia.

      Key concept--the words are not as interchangeable as I thought

  5. Sep 2013
    1. In urging his hearers to take or to avoid a course of action, the political orator must show that he has an eye to their happiness. Four definitions (of a popular kind: as usual in the Rhetoric, and some fourteen constituents, of happiness.

      tenants of political oratory

    2. The subjects of Political Oratory fall under five main heads: (1) ways and means, (2) war and peace, (3) national defence, (4) imports and exports, (5) legislation. The scope of each of these divisions.

      5 divisions of political oratory

    3. There are three kinds of rhetoric: A. political (deliberative), B. forensic (legal), and C. epideictic (the ceremonial oratory of display).

      divisions, or three kinds of rhetoric