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Progymnasmata is an ancient Greek method of teaching rhetoric to students through a series of fourteen exercises, starting with basic storytelling and ending with argumentation and deliberation. While the syllabus is no longer strictly followed, some aspects are still incorporated into modern courses in rhetoric and composition.
Progymnasmata means “before exercises” in Greek and refers to an ancient classical method of introducing rhetoric to young students. Progymnasmata were designed as a systematic teaching method that would help students learn, over a period of several years, the skills needed to compose and present rhetorical arguments. The precise origin of progymnasmata is unknown, but scholars generally think it was created between the 1st and 4th centuries AD in Greece or Alexandria. In modern times, the syllabus is often not strictly followed, but some aspects of it are still incorporated into courses in rhetoric and composition.
The list of progymnasmata includes the following fourteen exercises: fable, narrative, anecdote, proverb, refutation, confirmation, platitude, praise, vituperation, comparison, personification, description, argument and deliberation. Some of these are self-explanatory, but others may be unfamiliar in modern times. The proverb exercise, for example, requires students to defend or refute a claim made by a common saying. Encomium simply means “praise” and is an exercise in which a student praises the merits of a person or object. Vituperation is the opposite of commendation, in which a student disparages an evil person or object. Deliberation, sometimes called legislation, requires the student to argue for or against a particular law.
In a rigorous progymnasmata course, the ancient student would work through each exercise in turn. He starts with basic story composition skills and gradually moves on to higher level reasoning and argumentation skills. The course may take many years, but eventually the student will have all the skills necessary to prepare and carry out a rhetorical argument. The last exercise – deliberation or legislation – more closely resembles a real-world scenario where rhetoric is likely to be used.
Modern pedagogy does not follow the rigid framework set forth by progymnasmata, although many of its basic principles are still applied. For example, the first type of writing that is often taught to children in primary school is storytelling, or storytelling. High-grade students could be taught to write basic five-paragraph persuasive essays or compare-and-contrast papers similar to those in intermediate steps in progymnasmata. Secondary or college-level students, however, are often asked to construct progressively more complex topics as research papers, which might cover some of the same topics as a deliberation exercise.
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