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SoSe 17: The Art of Public Speaking – Literature and Rhetoric

Claudia Olk

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How empty a thing is Rhetorique? (and yet Rhetorique will make absent and remote things present to our understanding). How weak a thing is Poetry? (and yet Poetry is a counterfeit Creation, and makes things that are not, as though they were). John Donne, Sermons, ed. Simpson & Potter, vol. 4, p. 87. John Donne, the great poet and theologian of the 17th century used the creative powers of language and speech in magnificent and quite unprecedented ways. Today, in times of unsettling change, we also acutely witness how rhetoric influences the ways in which we engage with the world – in the social, the political, and the academic sphere. The primary goal of this course is to strengthen the capacity of each student to critically analyse rhetorical strategies in public speeches in literature and beyond. It is also intended to help students to prepare speeches and to them to deliver them in front of an audience. The course will follow a broad historical trajectory, starting from classical instructions to rhetoric such as Quintillian’s Institutio Oratoria, via Renaissance theories and practices of public oratory, dramatic monologues in Shakespeare and others until we will extensively discuss uses of rhetoric in current politics and the so-called social media. We will look at a variety of examples, articles, speeches and videos that focus on a number of topics such as: speaking in difficult leadership situations and crisis communication, rhetorical techniques of political persuasion, and, finally, ceremonial speaking in tributes and eulogies. Course materials: A detailed syllabus will be distributed in the first session. close