Book of the Month May 2022: Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory

 So it turns out that John Quincy Adams (tenth president of the United States, and son of the second) was appointed a professor of Harvard University. The things you learn.

He was named as the inaugural Boylston professor of Rhetoric and Oratory in 1805, when the United States were not yet thirty years old. As one of America's best-educated and foremost public men, he was greatly in demand and could not afford to devote all his time to the school. But when he could get away from his post as Massachusetts's United States Senator, he would journey to Harvard and deliver a lecture or two to the students.

The result was the thirty-six Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory. Adams could not finish his intent for the series because he was named Ambassador to Russia and resigned his professorship to travel to the Baltic. However, the lectures he did give are a lucid and succinct summary of rhetorical practice and theory during the days of the Founding Fathers. If writing and speaking well are skills you want in your toolbox, this is a good summary read.

The most fascinating part of this book was when Adams showed the limitations of the English language when it comes to emphasis. Many languages (including the classical Greek and Latin) can show emphasis by the location of the word in the sentence--particularly by placing it at the beginning or end. English, however, because of its strict requirement of subject-verb-object and massive use of articles (a/an/the) is usually forced to begin a sentence with an insignificant word. That is a limitation that I had never considered, and one that as a speaker and writer, I can now keep in mind. Words are powerful weapons, in storage in the mind. Knowing how to use them is what arms them.