SOURCE: “The Old Rhetoric vs. the New Rhetoric: The Quarrel between the Ancients and the Moderns,” in Communication Monographs, Vol. 49, No. 4, December 1982, pp. 263-76.

In the essay that follows, Warnick seeks to “provide an account of the major issues in the Quarrel as they relate to the function and status of rhetoric in French society” in the eighteenth century.

In his study of eighteenth-century logic and rhetoric in Britain, Howell has distinguished the “old rhetoric” of the seventeenth century and before from the “new rhetoric” of the eighteenth century. The former was limited to persuasive discourse, drew its proofs from the ancient theory of topics, and was characterized by an ornate, intricate, self-conscious style. The new rhetoric, however, focused on expository and didactic discourse, based its proofs on the facts of the matter being discussed, and was couched in a plain, unstudied style.¹ It would appear that the...