7. Language and Rhetoric: Texts
- Thucydides: Pericles’ Funeral Oration from book 1 of The Peloponnesian War
This famous speech by Athens’s ruler during much of the classical period gives both an excellent example of Greek rhetoric and an overview of democratic Greek culture. It is relevant to selections in this chapter by Plato and Aristotle.
- Gorgias: “Encomium on Helen”
This famous speech by Socrates’ adversary in Gorgias praises Helen of Troy, widely seen as culpable for a disastrous war, and, in the process, makes a statement about rhetoric. Helen, Gorgias argues, should not be held accountable for her deeds because she was under the spell of persuasion.
- Gertrude Buck: “The Present Status of Rhetorical Theory” (PDF)
This key article by a well-known nineteenth-century rhetorician contrasts the Sophistic and Platonic views of rhetoric on moral and ethical grounds.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt: “The Four Freedoms” from the 1941 State of the Union Address
This speech inspired Norman Rockwell’s Four Freedoms paintings, including Freedom from Want and Freedom of Speech