The Grand Style and the ‘<i>genera dicendi</i>’ in Ancient Rhetoric

Abstract

The standard, and practically the only, study of the genera dicendi in classical rhetoric, ‘The Origin and Meaning of the Ancient Characters of Style,’ was published in 1905 by G. L. Hendrickson. In it Hendrickson argued that the plain style or genus tenue originated in and remained firmly associated with philosophical dialectic, while the oratorical style (including both the genus grande and genus medium ) descended from sophistic and, in particular, Isocratic prose. The effect of this paper has been two-fold: a simultaneous exaltation of the plain style as the only rhetorical expression of serious and original thought and the conflation of the other two genera, these being criticized on the grounds that they appealed to the ear rather than the mind and were designed to exploit the emotions rather than inform reason. This effect can be observed most clearly in the subsequent scholarship on English prose style, particularly in the seminal essays of Morris Croll, who (to simplify a good deal) basically treats Renaissance prose style as the triumph of an introspective, searching, plain style over the musical formalism of Ciceronian concinnitas. Since Croll, the term plain style has generally become an honorific appellation in English scholarship at the expense of an inadequately differentiated grand and middle style (these in turn being identified with Ciceronianism).