At the beginning of class, Prof. Evans asks us if we have heard about Helen f Troy. She then goes into depth about her story and how rhetoric got started in Sicily. She explained the different philosophies of rhetoric throughout history. After passing out Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, she then proceeds to read it to us. At the end of the speech it says, “diversion to myself,” basically saying that the author wasn’t there, so he doesn’t know what happened. So should he ultimately be trusted? After that, everyone was put into groups to discuss the speech and certain parts assigned.
We discussed the love, gods, words, and rape aspects of this speech. The love was compared to a mental illness. People who have ever been in love would be like this, in today’s society. When you’re in love, you want to spend all of your time with the other person and when you’re alone, it seems pathetic how much you miss them. For the rape portion, anyone who is against rape would be willing to listen to the argument. The god’s control the people’s destiny and anything you do can’t be held against you because of that. But if you didn’t believe in god(s), then this wouldn’t pertain to you. He’s demonstrating word usage through this speech and by influencing or persuading the audience. For the rest of the class period, she let us decide on what we wanted to analyze and we discussed it with her.
No comments:
Post a Comment