John Quincy Adams from Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory
John Quincy Adams Lectures on Rhetoric and Oratory: Delivered to the Classes of Senior and Junior Sophisters in Harvard University, by John Quincy Adams. Vol 1. Cambridge: Hilliard and Metcalf, 1810. While best known as President lectures be published. In 1810, Adams (1824-28), John Quincy Adams held, in wrote in his diary that “I shall never, 1806, the chair of Boylston Professor of unless by some special favor of Heaven, Rhetoric and Oratory at his alma matter, accomplish any work of higher elevation.” Harvard. As part of the responsibility of However, the lectures failed to make much his position, Adams was required to public impact. deliver a series of lectures on rhetoric Still, when read today, the Adams “based upon the models of the ancients.” lectures give a solid, informative summary When Adams was first notified of of much that has been written about his appointment in 1805, he was still various rhetorical forms. The section here serving as senator of Massachusetts. He is included to give you more ideas about immediately set to work on the lectures. your own deliberative speech. There is We know that he read and studied many also a sense in which Adams is writers on rhetoric, including Quintilian, specifically American in his formation of Cicero, Bacon, and George Campbell. He rhetoric; he offers a public, presented thirty-six lectures between 1806 straightforward, clear and practical guide and 1809. (You will read number eleven, to public debate and discussion. It is on deliberative rhetoric.) While the overall precisely what you might expect to hear reaction to the lectures was lukewarm, from a member of one of the founding when students heard that Adams was families of the Revolution, one who was leaving Harvard to become United States witness to the evolution of the American Minister to Russia, they asked that the public speech.
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