{"id":18342,"date":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leithart.level2d.com\/?p=101"},"modified":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T00:00:00","slug":"learning-like-a-tudor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/leithart\/2016\/09\/learning-like-a-tudor\/","title":{"rendered":"Learning Like a Tudor"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

S<\/span>cott Newstok urges students to learn like Shakespeare in a convocation address at Rhodes College<\/a>. That means learning rhetoric: \u201cin the Renaissance, rhetoric was nothing less than the fabric of thought itself. Because thinking and speaking well form the basis of existence in a community, rhetoric prepares you for every occasion that requires words. That\u2019s why Tudor students devoted countless hours to examining vivid models, figuring out ways to turn a phrase, exercising elaborate verbal patterning.\u201d <\/p>\n

Clear speech and writing come only through practice: You take it for granted that Olympic athletes and professional musicians must practice relentlessly to perfect their craft. Why should you expect the craft of thought to require anything less disciplined? Fierce attention to clear and precise writing is the essential tool for you to foster independent judgment. That is rhetoric.\u201d<\/p>\n

And rhetoric is learned by inventio<\/em>, which means, first, taking inventory and, only secondarily, invention: <\/p>\n

Renaissance thinkers\u2014aptly, looking back to the Roman Seneca, who himself looked back to the Greeks\u2014compared the process of imitation to a bee\u2019s gathering nectar from many flowers and then transforming it into honey. . . . [the] honey metaphor corrects our na\u00efve notion that being creative entails making something from nothing. Instead, you become a creator by wrestling with the legacy of your authoritative predecessors, standing on the shoulders of giants. . . . when rhetoricians spoke of inventio<\/em>, they meant the first step in constructing an argument: an inventory of your mind\u2019s treasury of knowledge\u2014your database of reading, which you can accumulate only through slow, deliberate study.\u201d If students are going to be creative, they need to work within a tradition: \u201cYou simply cannot transform tradition (a creative ideal) without first knowing it (a conserving ideal).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Shakespeare was trained in the art of disputation, which enabled him to sympathize with different viewpoints and enabled him to master \u201cthe verbal give-and-take that constitutes the heart of drama.\u201d Newstok advises his students to develop the critical thinking to \u201cspeaking truth plurally.\u201d<\/p>\n

Learning of this sort takes place through apprenticeship, which was \u201ccrucial for skilled labor in Renaissance Europe. It required an exacting, collaborative environment, with guidance from people who knew more than you did. When Shakespeare arrived on the London theater scene, he entered a kind of artistic studio, or workshop, or laboratory, in which he was apprenticing himself to experienced playwrights. Note that playwright is not spelled w-r-i-t-e; it\u2019s spelled w-r-i-g-h-t: a maker\u2014like a wheelwright, who crafts wheels, or a shipwright, who crafts ships. A playwright crafts plays.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scott Newstok urges students to learn like Shakespeare in a convocation address at Rhodes College. That means learning rhetoric: \u201cin the Renaissance, rhetoric was nothing less than the fabric of thought itself. Because thinking and speaking well form the basis of existence in a community, rhetoric prepares you for every occasion that requires words. That\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3021,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1264,578],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18342","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberal-arts","category-shakespeare"],"yoast_head":"\nLearning Like a Tudor<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Scott Newstok urges students to learn like Shakespeare in a convocation address at Rhodes College. 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