argumentative speech about poetry

How to Write an Argumentative Essay on Poetry

Nadia archuleta.

Look at condensed language and not only form an interpretation of the words but also argue your position: That is the assignment when writing an essay about poetry. As a reader, you examine and even evaluate the work. As an essayist, you write about your understanding of the piece. Choose a central idea such as figurative language or theme and use the poem itself to support your interpretation.

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Essay Structure
Figurative Language

1 Essay Structure

An argumentative essay about poetry carries the same structure as most essays: introduction, body and conclusion. For the introductory paragraph, use a strong quotation from the poem as the hook, give some background and end the introduction with your thesis statement: one sentence stating your interpretation of the poem. For example, you might write, "Sylvia Plath's exaggerated comparisons in her poem 'Daddy' display her guilt over her father's death." Use a minimum of three paragraphs to support your thesis statement, each with a unique point: the sing-song rhyming, the narrator's identity crisis and her admission of a suicide attempt, for example. End with a conclusion that mirrors the introduction, except instead of a hook, relate your interpretation to concerns in the world outside the poem.

2 Figurative Language

Since poetry uses so few words, each one counts. Poets commonly use figures of speech to enhance meaning. Similes, with their telltale "like" or "as" in the middle of comparisons, are easy to spot. However, look especially for metaphors, the comparison of two things seemingly unalike; their meaning often goes deeper than that of similes. Take, for example, Langston Hughes' "Mother to Son," in which the narrator states that her life is not a set of crystal stairs. Analyzing the effectiveness of the metaphor and interpreting the meaning makes an effective central idea.

Theme provides a common topic for essays about poetry. Analyze the images of the poem for words that relate to love, hate, death and other universal ideas. Consider whether the poem reminds you of historical events, or even refers to them directly. For example, Sylvia Plath's "Daddy" explicitly refers to World War II. Consider what the narrator is trying to accomplish in comparing her father to Nazis and herself to a Jew. For example, the comparison provides a commentary on the theme of father-daughter relationships and the power dynamic involved; in this case, the relationship is difficult and the father holds power like a Nazi over a Jew, according to the narrator.

Writing an argumentative essay about poetry means taking an interpretive position and supporting it with evidence. Use evidence from the poem itself and explain your interpretation of each quotation explicitly. Quotations can be direct or indirect, or you may summarize pieces of the poem. Relate all evidence and explanations to your central idea. It may also be useful to consider the historical or social context of the poem if it bolsters your claim. For example, when writing about Wilfred Owen's "Dulce et Decorum Est," it is important to note that the poem is from the World War I era, as the imagery relates directly to tactics used in that war.

1 Purdue Online Writing Lab: Writing About Poetry
2 Purdue Online Writing Lab: Presentation
3 Purdue Online Writing Lab: Argumentative Essays

About the Author

Nadia Archuleta has a B.A. in English writing. She spent five years working abroad and has traveled extensively. She has worked as an English as a Foreign/Second Language teacher for 12 years.

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Poetry Facts

The Power of Poetry in Speeches

As a poetry lover, I’m sure you understand how influential poetry can be. Throughout history, many great leaders, activists, politicians have brought poetry into their speeches, crafting powerful messages that can (and did) change the world.

In today’s article, we’re going to look at poetry in speeches , why you should use poetry in your next speech, how to go about doing so, and of course, the famous poetic speeches across eras. Let’s dive in!

Why Use Poetry in a Public Speech

Poetry is powerful. That’s why there are many benefits to using poetry in a public speech. What benefits, you ask?

Well, for starter, a poem can really serve as a highlight of a speech, breaking the usual monotony. It adds a fresher element to the speech, and helps to capture the audience’s attention better.

Poetry can also be a very good reference point in your speech. By adding a familiar poem to the audience, the speaker can help the audience understand the subject that he or she is trying to convey better.

A good poem can really add an additional depth to your speech, if you know how to use it right. The audience can’t help but feel a strong influence, and the speaker has a much better chance of leaving an impact.

I think all of us can agree that poetry has an air of literary elegance to it. By adding poetry to your speech, you also bring that elegance and a lot of class into your presentation.

Finally, sometimes, poetry can say a lot more with less. Adding a poem at the right moment of the talk can help you being more concise and establish a deep connection with the audience.

So I hope by now I’ve convinced you that it’s a good idea to try adding poetry into your speech. In the next section, we’re going to talk about how to do it.

How to Use Poetry in A Public Speech

It’s pretty clear that poetry can enhance a speech greatly if done right. But it can be tricky if you’re not a poet nor a student of poetry yourself. Here are something to keep in mind if you want to use poetry in your next speech:

1. Choose the right poem

This should go without saying, but if you’re going to use poetry in your speech, make sure that the poem you choose fit within the context of what you’re trying to say. A poem should help you get your point across and make an impression on the audience, not making them confused or worse, zone out. So do your homework.

2. Have a plan

Most people don’t read poetry on a daily basis. This means that you can’t just bring a poem out of nowhere into your speech. You need to provide some introduction to the poem, why do you chose the poem, what’s the background story, etc. Prepare the audience so that they can listen to the poem from the best position possible.

3. Speak like a poet

Ever seen a spoken-word poet perform on stage? If you haven’t, then you should do it because you will learn a lot from them. Writing poetry is an art, but not many people think the same about delivering a poem to an audience that way. You’ll need to learn how to project from the diaphragm, posturing, pacing, etc. Watch a poet perform and try to practice your delivery as best as you can.

4. Don’t think too much

The last tip is kind of counter intuitive, but after all the preparing and practicing, you should not think when you go and perform. Thinking is great when you’re trying to practice, but once on stage, it will likely hinder your performance. Don’t be afraid to make mistakes. After all, that’s how you get better.

5 Famous Poetic Speeches in History

1. i have a dream by martin luther king jr..

This is probably one of the most inspiring speeches of all time. Delivered on the 28th of August, 1963 by American civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., “I have a dream” was a defining speech of the civil rights movement.

In the speech, King used anaphora, a poetic device in which the author repeats an expression at the beginning of a number of sentences. With a single phrase “I have a dream,” Martin Luther King Jr. joined ranks with the men who shaped modern America.

2. We shall fight on the beaches by Winston Churchill

“We shall fight on the beaches” is one of the three major speeches by the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. This speech was delivered to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom on the 4th of June, 1940, warning about a possible invasion attempt by Nazi Germany.

Churchill is known for spending hours working on every minute of his speech. He wrote every word, and carefully crafting them so that the final draft “looks like a draft of a poem,” according to many critics.

3. Ain’t I a Woman? by Sojourner Truth

Sojourner Truth was a well known anti-slavery speaker and one of the most revolutionary advocates for women’s human rights in the 1800s. The speech “Ain’t I a Woman?” was delivered at the 1851 Women’s Rights Convention held in Akron, Ohio, addressing the discrimination of woman and African Americans in the post-Civil War era.

It is a poetic speech that many people have adapted it into a poem itself. Here’s the speech, delivered by Nkechi at a TEDx event in 2013.

4. Still I Rise by Maya Angelou

This one is a legit poem as a speech. “Still I Rise” is a poem written by Maya Angelou, an American poet, memoirist, and civil rights activist. She is well-known for uplifting fellow African American women through her work.

“Still I Rise” is one of Angelou’s most popular poems, inspiring black women everywhere to keep good faith and striving for equality and peace.

Final thoughts

By now, I’m sure we all can understand how much weight that poetry, or even just a poetic device, can bring into a speech. I hope that you’ve learned something new and useful, maybe even some inspirations to incorporate poetry into the next chance you have to deliver a public speech.

Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry

Plato’s discussions of rhetoric and poetry are both extensive and influential. As in so many other cases, he sets the agenda for the subsequent tradition. And yet understanding his remarks about each of these topics—rhetoric and poetry—presents us with significant philosophical and interpretive challenges. Further, it is not initially clear why he links the two topics together so closely (he suggests that poetry is a kind of rhetoric). Plato certainly thought that matters of the greatest importance hang in the balance, as is clear from the famous statement that “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry” ( Republic , 607b5–6). In his dialogues, both this quarrel and the related quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric amount to clashes between comprehensive world-views—those of philosophy on the one hand, and of poetry or rhetoric on the other. What are these quarrels about? What does Plato mean by “poetry” and “rhetoric”? The purpose of this article is to analyze his discussions of rhetoric and poetry as they are presented in four dialogues: the Ion , the Republic , the Gorgias , and the Phaedrus . Plato is (perhaps paradoxically) known for the poetic and rhetorical qualities of his own writings, a fact which will also be discussed in what follows.

1. Introduction

3.1 republic ii, 3.2 republic iii, 3.3 republic x, 3.4 concluding observations about the republic’s “quarrel”, 5.1 rhetoric in the phaedrus, 5.2 rhapsodes, inspiration, and poetry in the phaedrus, 6. plato’s dialogues as rhetoric and poetry, other internet resources, related entries.

A good poem helps to change the shape and significance of the universe, helps to extend everyone’s knowledge of himself and the world around him —Dylan Thomas [ 1 ]

When we think of a philosophical analysis of poetry, something like a treatise on aesthetics comes to mind. At a minimum, we would expect a rigorous examination of the following: the characteristics that define poetry; the differences between kinds of poetry (epic, tragic, lyric, comic, and so forth); and the senses in which poetry is and is not bound to representation, imitation, expression (which are possible meanings of the classical Greek word “mimesis”) and fiction. [ 2 ] These complicated terms themselves require careful definition. Equally rigorous and systematic remarks about the differences between poetry and other art forms, such as music and painting, would be in order, as would reflection on the relation between orally delivered poetry (indeed, if we are to include performance, poetry that is in one way or another enacted) and poetry communicated through the written word. Aristotle’s Poetics is an early, and now classic, philosophical exploration of poetry along these sorts of lines.

Plato’s extensive discussions of poetry frustrate these expectations. He did not write a treatise on the subject—indeed, he wrote no treatises, and confined his thought to “dramatic” dialogues that are themselves shaped poetically—and the remarks he offers us both meander unsystematically, even within a single dialogue, and branch off in what seem like strange directions, such as into discussions about the corruption of self to which poetry allegedly exposes its audience. And yet Plato clearly thought that something of enormous importance hangs on his assessment of poetry, something that goes significantly beyond getting the details of the subject pinned down in a philosophically respectable fashion. One of the most famous lines in the culminating sections of one of his most famous dialogues announces that “there is an old quarrel between philosophy and poetry” ( Rep . 607b5–6), in support of which Plato quotes bits of several obscure but furious polemics—presumably directed by poets against philosophers—such as the accusation that the opponent is a “yelping bitch shrieking at her master” and “great in the empty eloquence of fools”. [ 3 ] Indeed, much of the final book of the Republic is an attack on poetry, and there is no question but that a quarrel between philosophy and poetry is a continuing theme throughout Plato’s corpus .

The scope of the quarrel, especially in the Republic , also indicates that for Plato what is at stake is a clash between what we might call comprehensive world-views; it seems that matters of grave importance in ethics, politics, metaphysics, theology, and epistemology are at stake. He leads up to the famous line about the quarrel by identifying the addressees of his critique as the “praisers of Homer who say that this poet educated Greece, and that in the management and education of human affairs it is worthwhile to take him up for study and for living, by arranging one’s whole life according to this poet” (606e1–5). The praisers of Homer treat him as the font of wisdom. Plato agrees that Homer is indeed the educator of Greece, and immediately adds that Homer is “the most poetic and first of the tragic poets.” Plato is setting himself against what he takes to be the entire outlook—in contemporary but not Plato’s parlance, the entire “philosophy of life”—he believes Homer and his followers have successfully propagated. And since Homer shaped the popular culture of the times, Plato is setting himself against popular culture as he knew it. Not just that: the quarrel is not simply between philosophy and Homer, but philosophy and poetry. Plato has in his sights all of “poetry,” contending that its influence is pervasive and often harmful, and that its premises about nature and the divine are mistaken. He is addressing not just fans of Homer but fans of the sort of thing that Homer does and conveys. The critique is presented as a trans-historical one. It seems that Plato was the first to articulate the quarrel in so sweeping a fashion. [ 4 ] It is noteworthy that in the Apology (23e), Socrates’ accusers are said to include the poets, whose cause Meletus represents.

It is not easy to understand what Plato means by poetry, why it is an opponent, whether it is dangerous because of its form or content or both, and whether there is much of ongoing interest or relevance in his account. Would his critique apply to, say, Shakespeare’s tragedies? To E. E. Cummings’ or T. S. Eliot’s poetry? These questions are complicated by the fact that Plato was not (or, not primarily) thinking of poetry as a written text read in silence; he had in mind recitations or performances, often experienced in the context of theater. Still further, when Socrates and Plato conducted their inquiries, poetry was far more influential than what Plato calls “philosophy.” Given the resounding success of Plato’s advocacy of “philosophy,” it is very easy to forget that at the time he was advocating a (historically) new project in a context swirling with controversy about the relative value of such projects (and indeed about what “philosophy” means). By contrast, poetry seems relatively marginal in today’s large commercial and liberal societies, in spite of the energetic efforts of figures such as the recent American national Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky, whereas media of which Plato knew nothing—such as television, videos, and the cinema, literary forms such as the novel, and information systems such as the World Wide Web—exercise tremendous influence. Television and movie actors enjoy a degree of status and wealth in modern society that transcends anything known in the ancient world. Is Plato’s critique marginalized along with poetry?

In spite of the harshness, and in some ways the bluntness of Plato’s critique of poetry, he not only put his finger on deep issues of ongoing interest, but also leavened his polemic in a number of intriguing and subtle ways—most obviously, by writing philosophy in a way that can, with proper qualifications, itself be called poetic. The “quarrel between philosophy and poetry” is justly famed and pondered: what is it about?

When we turn to the second theme under consideration, viz., rhetoric, we find ourselves even more puzzled initially. What do philosophers have to say about rhetoric? Generally speaking, very little qua philosophers. Like all reflective people, philosophers dislike rhetoric as it is commonly practiced, bemoan the decline of public speech into mere persuasion and demagoguery, and generally think of themselves as avoiding rhetoric in favor of careful analysis and argument. “Rhetoric” tends to have a very negative connotation, and for the most part means “mere rhetoric.” As an object of academic study, the subject of rhetoric seems best left to English professors who specialize in the long history of manuals on techniques of persuasion and such. Consequently, philosophers, especially in modernity, have had little to say about rhetoric. By contrast, Aristotle devoted a book to the topic. And Plato struggles with rhetoric—or sophistry as it is sometimes also called, although the two are not necessarily identical—repeatedly. We recall that Socrates was put to death in part because he was suspected of being a sophist, a clever rhetorician who twists words and makes the weaker argument into the stronger and teaches others to do the same. [ 5 ] Plato’s polemic against the sophists was so persuasive that, in conjunction with a well established and ongoing popular hostility towards sophistry (a hostility of which Socrates was, ironically, also the object), we have come to use “sophist” as a term of opprobrium meaning something like “mere rhetorician.” In Plato’s dialogues there is unquestionably an ongoing quarrel between philosophy on the one hand and rhetoric and sophistry on the other, and it too is justly famed and pondered. What is it about?

Once again, the question is surprisingly difficult. It is not easy to understand why the topic is so important to Plato, what the essential issues in the quarrel are, and whether rhetoric is always a bad thing. We do recognize commendable examples of rhetoric—say, Pericles’ Funeral Oration, Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, or Churchill’s rousing speeches during World War II. These were rhetorical, but were they merely rhetorical, let alone sophistical? Still further, Plato’s Socrates is not above speaking to his interlocutors rhetorically at times, even sophistically (some of his arguments against Thrasymachus in book I of the Republic have been suspected of falling into the latter category, and Socrates’ interlocutors are occasionally reported as feeling that he has played some kind of verbal trick on them). And are not Plato’s dialogues themselves rhetorical in significant senses of the term?

These remarks prompt yet another question. However interesting the topics of poetry and rhetoric may be, when we read Plato, why group them together? Few people today would imagine that there is any interesting relation between poetry and rhetoric. To think of great poets as “rhetoricians” seems bizarre; and most (popular) rhetoricians do not seem to know the first thing about poetry. Yet Plato himself associates the two very closely: at Gorgias 502c he characterizes poetry as a kind of rhetoric. Thus Plato provides our warrant for investigating the topics together. This linkage between poetry and rhetoric is of course controversial, and will be discussed below.

Quite clearly, our themes are very large in scope, and indeed nearly every one of Plato’s dialogues is relevant to one or more of them. The present essay will confine itself to just four dialogues, the Ion , Republic , Gorgias , and Phaedrus . I will discuss them in that order, and in the final section of the essay shall briefly examine the famous question of the poetic and rhetorical dimension of Plato’s own writings.

I shall look for connections between our four dialogues, though I do not believe that our chosen texts present a picture of poetry and rhetoric that is altogether unified (indeed, this could not be claimed even of the Republic taken by itself). I will put aside the question about which dialogue Plato composed at which time, along with assumptions about the possible “development” of Plato’s views from “earlier” to “later” dialogues. This is an example of an interpretive (or as it is sometimes called, a “hermeneutical”) assumption; every reader of Plato necessarily commits to interpretive assumptions. The debate about which assumptions are best is an ongoing one, but not germane to the present discussion. [ 6 ] It suffices here to state the relevant assumptions made in this discussion.

The identity of “Socrates” is contested; we have no writings by the historical figure, only writings by a number of authors that in some sense or other—and the senses vary a great deal—are either about him or creatively adapt his name and aspects of his story. In referring to Socrates, I shall mean only the figure as represented by Plato; nothing follows, for present purposes, about the historical accuracy of Plato’s depiction. Further, it is not the case that the views Plato puts into the mouth of his Socrates are necessarily espoused by Plato himself; they may or may not be those of Plato. Since Plato did not write a treatise in his own voice, telling us what his views are, it is impossible to know with certainty which views he espouses (at least on the basis of the works he composed). In several cases, one of which will be examined in the final section of this essay, it seems reasonably clear that Plato cannot be espousing without qualification a view that his Socrates is endorsing. With these principles firmly in mind, however, I shall occasionally refer (as I already have) to Plato as presenting this or that view. For as author of all the statements and drama of the dialogues, he does indeed present the views in question; and on occasion it is convenient and simpler to say he is advocating this or that position (for example, the position that there is an ancient quarrel between philosophy and poetry).

Ion is a prize-winning professional reciter of poetry—a “rhapsode”—and of Homer in particular. [ 7 ] Though he speaks his lines with the requisite conviction and emotion, he does not “imitate” his subjects in the sense of act their parts (of course, Homer did not write for the stage). He is a performer but not a (stage) actor. Ion is depicted as superb at making the Iliad and Odyssey come alive, at communicating their drama to his audience and at involving them intimately. We might say that he “represents” or “expresses” the characters, action, and narrative of Homer’s epic poems, and thus in some sense both identifies with his subject and leads his audience to do the same. As he puts it in the dialogue that bears his name: if he has done his job well, he will find himself weeping when reciting sorrowful lines, and expects to see his audience weep along with him (535b1–e6). Both are somehow transported, thanks to Ion’s superb narrative capacity, into the original scene (as Socrates says, Ion is “beside himself” and in the enthusiasm of the moment thinks he is present at the scene he is describing; 535b7–c3).

But Ion thinks himself capable of yet more, for he also claims to be an expert in explaining what Homer means. He’s an exegete (see 531a7) or interpreter par excellence, and this claim especially intrigues Socrates. He does not permit Ion to actually exhibit his skills as a rhapsode, and instead insists that he engage in give-and-take about the abilities Ion claims to possess. This is typical of Socrates’ method; he forces his interlocutor to give an account of his commitments and way of life. As both reciter and exegete, the rhapsode has no exact analogue today. Nonetheless, the implications of the Ion are broad; while Ion is not a poet himself, he bears important traits in common with the poet.

The thrust of Socrates’ initial questioning is revealing. Essentially, he attempts to show that Ion is committed to several theses that are not compatible with one another, unless a rather peculiar, saving assumption is introduced. Ion claims that he is a first rate explicator of Homer; that he is a first rate explicator only of Homer, and loses interest as well as competence if another poet (such as Hesiod) is brought up (531a3–4, 532b8–c2; 533c4–8); and that Homer discusses his subjects much better than do any other poets (531d4–11, 532a4–8). Ion may justly be thought of as one of the “praisers” of Homer referred to in Republic X (see above, and Ion 542b4). Notice that Socrates’s first order of business is to get Ion to agree that a number of claims are being made by him; while this may seem obvious, it is an essential condition for Socrates’ inquiry, and is a distinctive characteristic of the sort of thing Socrates does as a philosopher.

If Ion is an exegete or explicator of Homer’s poems, he must surely understand what the poet means, else he could not explain the poet’s thoughts. This seemingly commonsensical point is asserted by Socrates at the start (530c1–5), and happily accepted by Ion. However, if Ion understands what the poet says about X , and judges that the poet speaks best about X , he must be in a position to assess other poets’ pronouncements about the subject in question. For example, Homer talks a great deal about how war is waged; as an expert on Homer who claims that Homer spoke beautifully about that subject (in the sense of got it right), Ion must be in a position to explain just how Homer got it right and how Hesiod, say, got it wrong, as a series of simple analogies show. If you can knowledgeably (531e10) pick out a good speaker on a subject, you can also pick out the bad speaker on it, since the precondition of doing the former is that you have knowledge of the relevant subject matter. But this seems to contradict Ion’s assertion that he can explain only Homer, not the other poets.

Let us recapitulate, since the steps Socrates is taking are so important for his critique of poetry (it is noteworthy that at several junctures, Socrates generalizes his results from epic to dithyrambic, encomiastic, iambic, and lyric poetry; 533e5–534a7, 534b7–c7). To interpret Homer well, we have to understand what Homer said; to do that, and to support our judgment that he spoke superlatively well, we have to understand the subject matter about which Homer speaks (just as we would in, say, evaluating someone’s pronouncements about health). Further, Homer himself must have understood well that about which he speaks. As interpreters or assessors, we are claiming to be experts judging a claim (in this case Homer’s) to expertise, just as though we were members of a medical examination board considering an application to the profession. So as interpreters we are making claims about the truth of Homer’s teachings about XYZ ; and thus we are assuming that Homer sought to state the truth about XYZ . Given that he discusses the central topics of human and godly life (531c1–d2), it would seem that Homer claims to be wise, and that as his devoted encomiasts we too must be claiming to be wise (532d6–e1). But claims to wisdom are subject to counter-claims (the poets disagree with each other, as Socrates points out); and in order to adjudicate between them, as well as support our assessment of their relative merits, we must open ourselves to informed discussion both technical and philosophical. Technical, because on subjects such as (say) war-making, the general should be consulted about the accuracy of Homer’s description thereof; philosophical because both the method of assessing the whole (the “Socratic method”) and the comprehensive claims about the truth made by interpreter and poet, are properly philosophical preoccupations for Plato.

It is but a step from there to the proposition that neither Ion nor Homer can sustain their claims to knowledge, and therefore could not sustain the claim that the poems are fine and beautiful works. In passage after passage, Homer pronounces on subjects that are the province of a specialized techne (art or skill), that is, a specialized branch of knowledge. But neither the rhapsode nor Homer possesses knowledge of all (or indeed perhaps any) of those specialized branches (generalship, chariot making, medicine, navigation, divination, agriculture, fishing, horsemanship, cow herding, cithara playing, wool working, etc.). Ion attempts to resist this by claiming that thanks to his study of Homer, he knows what a general (for example) should say (540d5). Since he has accepted that this would involve possessing the art of generalship (541e2, techne kai episteme ), his claim is patently indefensible, and Socrates charges that he has failed to make good on his assertion to be “wonderfully wise … about Homer” (542a1).

So Ion, and by extension Homer, are faced with a series of unpalatable alternatives:

They could continue to defend the claim that they really do know the subjects about which they discourse—in the sense of possess the techne kai episteme of them, i.e., a mastery of the subject matter. Yet if they do defend that claim they will be liable to examination by relevant experts.

(b.1) one would amount to saying that while lacking in technical knowledge (knowledge of this or that craft or skill), they do have knowledge of human affairs—something like knowledge of human nature, of how human life tends to go, of the relation between (say) virtue and happiness, as well as of the natures of both virtue and happiness. To this might be added the claim that the poets and their exponents know the nature of the cosmos and of the divine. In the Republic Socrates in effect allows them comprehensive claims to knowledge along those lines, and then attacks across the board, seeking to show that the poets have got it wrong on all important counts.

(b.2) alternatively, they could admit that they do not have either technical or non-technical knowledge of any of the topics about which they sing; rather, they possess the skill ( techne ) of creating beautiful, persuasive, and moving images of the subjects in question. So when Ion claims that Homer speaks beautifully about X, he just means that Homer speaks beautifully in a rhetorical sense even though he (Homer) does not necessarily know what he is talking about. By extension, poets would (on this interpretation) make the same claim about themselves. That would seem to reduce them to rhetoricians, which in effect is what Socrates argues in the Gorgias , with the further proviso that rhetoric as popularly practiced is not even a techne . Poetry-as-mere-rhetoric is not a promising credential for authority either to educate all of Greece or to better one’s audience; (b.2) is not a position that poets or their rhapsodes would, presumably, be eager to adopt.

(b.3) Ion could admit that he knows nothing about the topics Homer addresses, withdrawing his claim to be a knowledgeable exegete, but maintain that Homer himself knows what he’s talking about. Ion would be liable to the question as to how he knows all that , however; and in any case would at best shift Socrates’ attack to the real target, viz. Homer.

(b.4) Socrates provides a seemingly more palatable alternative in the Ion , one that is echoed in the Phaedrus (245a); this is the “peculiar, saving assumption” mentioned above. It consists in the thesis that Ion recites (and Homer composes) not from knowledge but from divine inspiration. Neither knows what he is saying, but is nonetheless capable of speaking or composing beautifully thanks to the divine. They are like the worshippers of Bacchus, out of their right minds (534b4–6). This creative madness, as we might call it, they share with other Muse-inspired artists as well as prophets and diviners (534b7–d1). This is supposed to explain why Ion can recite only Homer beautifully; he’s been divinely inspired only in that area, and that is all he means when he says that Homer is better than his rival poets. Ion has no argument to support what looks like a comparative assessment; it is just a report to the effect that he is “possessed” by Homer’s magic thanks to the work of a god. A poet, further, is not a knower, but a kind of transmitter of a divine spark; he or she is “an airy thing, winged and holy” (534b3–4). The spark is generated by the god, and is passed down through the poet to the rhapsode and then to the audience. In Socrates’ unforgettable simile, the relationship of the god to poet to rhapsode to audience is like a magnetized sequence of rings, each of which sticks to the next thanks to the power of the divine magnet at the start (535e7–536b4), as though they were links in a chain (as we might put it).

This simile helps to answer an important question: why should we care whether or not the poets know what they are talking about, if we enjoy their compositions? Socrates’ answer is that as the last link on this chain of inspiration, we are capable of being deeply affected by poetry. We “spectators” at the recital too lose our minds, to some degree, weeping or laughing as we enter into the narrated scene, seemingly forgetting our real selves and lives (535b2–d9). In the Ion he doesn’t offer a further explanation of how this effect is supposed to happen—for that, we will turn to the Republic —but the important point is that it does happen. It would seem that the audience is transformed by the experience in a way that momentarily takes them out of themselves. Perhaps it does not leave them as they were, for their understanding of what properly elicits their grief or their laughter would seem to be shaped by this powerful experience, an experience they presumably repeat many times throughout childhood and beyond. Perhaps they too start to believe—as Ion and possibly the poet do—that they “know” something thanks to their contact with the divine, such as how war is to be conducted and for what ends, what fidelity in love means, or the character of the gods. None of this would matter much if superb poetry left us unmoved, or in any case as we were. Plato’s critique depends on the assumption that poetry can and does shape the soul.

The “divine inspiration” thesis resolves some problems for Ion (and implicitly for Homer) while postponing others. One problem is indicated by the last few lines of the dialogue, where Socrates offers Ion a choice: either be human, and take responsibility for unfairly avoiding his questions about the nature of his (Ion’s) wisdom; or accept the label “divine” and subscribe to the inspiration thesis. Ion chooses the latter on grounds that it is “lovelier.” It is an invitation to hybris, of course. How easy it would be to confuse divine and human madness (to borrow a distinction from the Phaedrus 244a5–245c4)! And not all of the contenders for the prize Ion has won could be equally worthy of promotion to divine status. By contrast, Socrates characterizes himself in the Apology as not thinking he knows what he does not know, as possessing human rather than divine “wisdom.” [ 8 ] Finally, since the poets and their rhapsodes both present views about how things are and ought to be, and seek to persuade their auditors of the same, they cannot escape responsibility for the implicit claim to wisdom and authority they make. For Plato, this means that they must be held accountable. It is philosophy’s mission to force them to give an account of themselves, and to examine its soundness. This would mean that they are required to engage philosophy on its turf, just as Ion has somewhat reluctantly done. The legitimacy of that requirement is itself a point of contention, it is one aspect of the quarrel between philosophy and poetry. [ 9 ]

3. Republic , Books II, III, X

In order to respond to the famous challenge put to Socrates by Glaucon and Adeimantus, it is necessary to define justice. Socrates suggests that the task would be easier if justice were first sought in a polis, where it is “writ large.” That strategy accepted, the polis must be created in speech. It turns out that philosophic guardians are to rule the polis, and the next question concerns their education (376e2). The critique of poetry in the Republic grows out of a consideration of the proper education (from their childhood on) of the philosopher-guardians in the “city in speech.” The context for the critique is therefore that of the specific project of the Republic , and this raises a question as to whether the critique is meant to hold whether or not the “city in speech” is possible or desirable.

The concern in book II is very much with the proper education of a citizen, as befits the project of creating a model city. The “myth makers” (377b11; Bloom translates “makers of tales”) who supply the governing stories of the day are like painters (377e2) who make pictures of heroes and gods, and indeed of the relations both among and between the two. From the outset, Socrates treats the poems (those by Hesiod and Homer are singled out, but the critique isn’t meant to be confined to them) as though they contained not just falsehoods, but falsehoods held up as models of good behavior. The poems are taken as educational and thus broadly political texts; persuasion (see 378c7) of a class of the young is very much at stake. The young cannot judge well what is true and false; since a view of things taken on at early age is very hard to eradicate or change, it is necessary to ensure that they hear only myths that encourage true virtue (378d7–e3). The pedagogic motivation in question certainly extends beyond the specific “city in speech” the Republic creates. Thus while the critique of poetry in book II and beyond is in this sense shaped by the contextual concerns, it is not limited to them.

Further, Socrates takes aim at the content of several particularly influential poems, and his arguments against that content do not depend, here, on the project of creating the “best city.” One of his first targets is what he calls their “theology” (379a5–6). Whether in epics, lyrics or tragedies, whether in meter or not (379a8–9, 380c1–2), god must be described accurately, and that turns out to be as unchanging; as good and the cause of only good; as incapable of violence; and as “altogether simple and true in deed and speech,” for god “doesn’t himself change or deceive others by illusions, speeches, or the sending of signs either in waking or dreaming” (382e8–11). For “there is no lying poet in a god” (382d9). In short, the gods accurately conceived are remarkably similar to what Socrates will subsequently call, in Republic V-VII, the “Ideas.” Quite obviously, the dominant “theological” foundation of the world-view prevalent in fourth and fifth century Greece—and also any theological view that does not meet the strictures Socrates specifies—must be abandoned. The scope of the critique is breathtaking.

Along the way Socrates makes yet another point of great importance, namely that the poets ought not be permitted to say that those punished for misdeeds are wretched; rather, they must say that in paying a (just) penalty, bad men are benefited by the god (380b2–6). Socrates is starting to push against the theses that bad people will flourish or that good people can be harmed. The cosmos is structured in such a way as to support virtue. Socrates is attempting to undermine what one might call a “tragic” world view (note that in book X, he characterizes Homer as the “leader” of tragedy; 598d8).

In book III Socrates expands the argument considerably. The concern now is squarely with poetry that encourages virtue in the souls of the young. Courage and moderation are the first two virtues considered here; the psychological and ethical effects of poetry are now scrutinized. The entire portrait of Hades must go, since it is neither true nor beneficial for auditors who must become fearless in the face of death. Death is not the worst thing there is, and all depictions of famous or (allegedly) good men wailing and lamenting their misfortunes must go (or at least, be confined to unimportant women and to bad men; 387e9–388a3). The poets must not imitate (see 388c3 for the term) gods or men suffering any extremes of emotion, including hilarity, for the strong souls are not overpowered by any emotion, let along any bodily desire. Nor do they suffer from spiritual conflict (391c). The rejection of the “tragic” world view becomes explicit: neither poets nor prose writers should be allowed to say that “many happy men are unjust, and many wretched ones just, and that doing injustice is profitable if one gets away with it, but justice is someone else’s good and one’s own loss.” Anybody pronouncing on any of these topics—poetically or not—must say the opposite (392a13–b6). In expanding the scope of the relevant discourse so broadly, Socrates in effect lays down requirements for all persuasive discourse—for what he elsewhere calls “rhetoric”—and makes poetry a subsection thereof.

Having covered the issue of content, Socrates turns to the “style” (“lexis,” 392c6), or as we might say, of the “form” of myth tellers or poets (Socrates again runs these two together). He does so in a way that marks a new direction in the conversation. The issue turns out to be of deep ethical import, because it concerns the way in which poetry affects the soul. Up until now, the mechanism, so to speak, has been vague; now it becomes a little bit clearer. Poetic myth tellers convey their thought through a narrative ( diegesis ) that is either “simple” ( haplos ) or imitative (that is, accomplished through “mimesis”). The notion of mimesis , missing from the Ion , now takes center stage. When the poet speaks in his own voice, the narrative is “simple”; when he speaks through a character, as it were concealing himself behind the mask of one of his literary creations, the narrative is imitative or mimetic. For then the poet is likening himself to this character, and trying to make the audience believe that it’s the character speaking. Some poetry (comedy and tragedy are mentioned) proceeds wholly by imitation, another wholly by simple narration (dithyrambs are mentioned), and epic poetry combines the two forms of narrative.

What follows this classificatory scheme is a polemic against imitation. The initial thesis is that every person can do a fine job in just one activity only. Consequently, nobody can do a fine job of imitating more than one thing (for example, an actor cannot be a rhapsode, a comic poet cannot be a tragic poet, if any of these is finely done). Imitation is itself something one does, and so one cannot both imitate X (say, generalship) well and also do the activity X in question (394e-395b). It has to be said that this thesis is set out with little real argument. In any case, the best souls (the guardians, in this case, in the city in speech) ought not imitate anything.

And were they to imitate anything, every care must be taken that they are ennobled rather than degraded as a result. Why? If imitations “are practiced continually from youth onwards,” they “become established as habits and nature, in body and sounds and in thought” (395d1–3). Unlike simple narrative, mimesis poses a particular psychic danger, because as the speaker of the narrative one may take on the character of literary persona in question. It is as though the fictionality of the persona is forgotten; in acting out a part one acts the part, and then one begins to act (in “real life”) as the character would act. One does not actually take oneself to be the fictional character; rather, the “model” or pattern of response or sentiment or thought one has acted out when “imitating” the character becomes enacted. There is no airtight barrier between throwing yourself (especially habitually) into a certain part, body and soul, and being molded by the part; no firm boundary, in that sense, between what happens on and off the stage. By contrast, Socrates argues, a simple narration preserves distance between narrator and narrated.

Before passing onto critiques of music and gymnastic, Socrates concludes this section of his critique of poetry with the stipulation that a poet who imitates all things (both good and bad) in all styles cannot be admitted into the good polis. [ 10 ] However, a more “austere” poet and myth teller is admissible, for he confines himself to imitating decent people (when he imitates at all, presumably as infrequently as possible), thus speaking pretty much in the same tone and rhythm, and who accurately represents the nature of the gods, heroes, virtue, and other issues discussed in books II and III (398a1–b4). [ 11 ]

This critique of mimetic poetry has struck not a few readers as a bit strange and obtuse, even putting aside the question of the legitimacy of censorship of the arts. It seems not to distinguish between the poet, the reciter of the poem, and the audience; no spectatorial distance is allowed to the audience; and the author is allowed little distance from the characters he is representing. All become the speakers or performers of the poem when they say or think the lines; and speaking the poem, taking it on as it were, is alleged to have real effects on one’s dispositions.

In book II the critique of poetry focused on mimesis understood as representation; the fundamental point was that poets misrepresent the nature of the subjects about which they write (e.g., the gods). They do not produce a true likeness of their topics. In book III, the focus shifts to mimesis understood as what one commentator has called “impersonation”; participating in the “imitation” by taking on the characters imitated was viewed as corrupting in all but a few cases of poetic mimesis. [ 12 ] Surprisingly, in book X Socrates turns back to the critique of poetry; even more surprisingly, he not only mischaracterizes the results of the earlier discussion (at 595a5 he claims that all of poetry that was imitative was banished, whereas only part of it was banished; 398a1–b4), but recasts the critique in very different terms. This is due in part to the fact that the intervening discussion has seen the introduction of the “theory of Forms,” a more elaborate analysis of the nature of the soul, and a detailed description of the nature of philosophy. The renewed criticism leads up to the famous statement that there exists an ancient quarrel between poetry and philosophy.

Book X starts us off with a reaffirmation of a main deficiency of poets: their products “maim the thought of those who hear them.” And by means of the following schema, this is now connected to a development of the allegation (repeated at 602b6–8) that poets do not know what they are talking about. Socrates posits that there are Forms (or Ideas) of beds and tables, the maker of which is a god; there are imitations thereof, namely beds and tables, produced by craftsmen (such as carpenters) who behold the Forms (as though they were looking at blueprints); thirdly, there are imitators of the products of the craftsmen, who, like painters, create a kind of image of these objects in the world of becoming. The tripartite schema presents the interpreter with many problems. [ 13 ] Certainly, Socrates does not literally mean that poets paint verbal pictures of beds and tables. Subsequently, the scheme is elaborated so as to replace the craftsmen with those who produce opinion in the city (legislators, educators, military commanders, among others), and the painters with “the first teacher and leader of all these fine tragic things” (595b10–c2), that is, Homer. The poets are therefore “at the third generation from nature” or “third from a king and the truth” (597e3–4, 6–7).

Let us focus on one of the implications of this schema, about which Socrates is quite specific. The poets don’t know the originals of (i.e., the truth about) the topics about which they discourse; they appear to be ignorant of that fact; and even worse, just as a trompe-l’oeil painting can deceive the naïve onlooker into believing that the imitation is the original, so too those who take in poetry believe they are being given truth. Imitation now starts to take on the sense of “counterfeit.” [ 14 ] Unequipped to put claims to knowledge to the test, the audience buys into the comprehensive picture of “all arts and all things human that have to do with virtue and vice, and the divine things too” that the poet so persuasively articulates (598b-599a). The fundamental point is by now familiar to us: “For it is necessary that the good poet, if he is going to make fair poems about the things his poetry concerns, be in possession of knowledge when he makes his poems” (598e3–5). Even putting aside all of the matters relating to arts and crafts ( technai such as medicine), and focusing on the greatest and most important things—above all, the governance of societies and the education of a human being—Homer simply does not stand up to examination (599c-600e). All those “skilled in making” ( tous poietikous ), along with this educator of Greece and leader of the tragic poets, are painted as “imitators of phantoms of virtue and of the other subjects of their making” (600e4–6).

And what, apart from their own ignorance of the truth, governs their very partial perspective on the world of becoming? Socrates implies that they pander to their audience, to the hoi polloi (602b3–4). This links them to the rhetoricians as Socrates describes them in the Gorgias . At the same time, they take advantage of that part in us the hoi polloi are governed by; here Socrates attempts to bring his discussion of psychology, presented since book III, to bear. The ensuing discussion is remarkable in the way in which it elaborates on these theses.

The example which introduces the last stage of Socrates’ critique of poetry prior to the famous announcement of the “quarrel” is that of deep human suffering; specifically, a parent’s loss of a child (603e3–5). How would a decent person respond to such a calamity? He would fight the pain, hold out against it as much as possible, not let himself be seen when in pain, would be ashamed to make a scene, and would “keep as quiet as possible” knowing that none of “the human things” is “worthy of great seriousness.” Being in pain impedes the rule of reason, which dictates that when we are dealt misfortunes, we must be as unaffected by them as possible, preserving the harmony of our souls (603e-604e). Socrates sketches the character of the decent and good person this way: “the prudent and quiet character, which is always nearly equal to itself, is neither easily imitated nor, when imitated, easily understood, especially by a festive assembly where all sorts of human beings are gathered in a theater. For imitation is of a condition that is surely alien to them” (604e). This may be a sketch of Socrates himself, whose imitation Plato has produced. [ 15 ]

By contrast, the tragic imitators excel at portraying the psychic conflicts of people who are suffering and who do not even attempt to respond philosophically. Since their audience consists of people whose own selves are in that sort of condition too, imitators and audience are locked into a sort of mutually reinforcing picture of the human condition. Both are captured by that part of themselves given to the non-rational or irrational; both are most interested in the condition of internal conflict. The poet “awakens this part of the soul and nourishes it,” producing a disordered psychic regime or constitution ( politeia , 605b7–8; compare this language to that of the passages at the end of book IX of the Republic ). The “childish” part of the soul that revels in the poet’s pictures cannot distinguish truth from reality; it uncritically grants the poet’s authority to tell it like it is. Onlookers become emotively involved in the poet’s drama.

Another remarkable passage follows: “Listen and consider. When even the best of us hear Homer or any other of the tragic poets imitating one of the heroes in mourning and making quite an extended speech with lamentation, or, if you like, singing and beating his breast, you know that we enjoy it and that we give ourselves over to following the imitation; suffering along [‘sympaschontes’, a word related to another Greek word, ‘sympatheia’] with the hero in all seriousness, we praise as a good poet the man who most puts us in this state” (605c10–d5). So the danger posed by poetry is great, for it appeals to something to which even the best—the most philosophical—are liable, and induces a dream-like, uncritical state in which we lose ourselves in the emotions in question (above all, in sorrow, grief, anger, resentment).

As one commentator aptly puts it, “on the one hand, poetry promotes intrapsychic conflict; on the other, it keeps us unconscious of that conflict, for the irrational part of our psyche cannot hear reason’s corrections. That is why poetry, with its throbbing rhythms and beating of breasts, appeals equally to the nondescript mob in the theater and to the best among us. But if poetry goes straight to the lower part of the psyche, that is where it must come from.” [ 16 ] Further, the picture of the gods that the Greek poets painted was a projection of the tumultuous and conflictual lower parts of the soul, one which in turn gave sustenance and power to those very same parts of the soul.

The worry, then, is that in experiencing the emotions vicariously—by identifying, so to speak, with the drama—we release emotions better regulated by reason, and become captive to them in “real” life. In a psychological sense, drama supplies what today we would call “role models.” Socrates’ point is not that we think the drama is itself real, as though we cannot distinguish between what takes place on and off the stage; but that “the enjoyment of other people’s sufferings has a necessary effect on one’s own.” Why? “For the pitying part [of the soul], fed strong on these examples, is not easily held down in one’s own sufferings” (606b). [ 17 ] And this applies to comedy as well; we get used to hearing shameful things in comic imitation, stop feeling ashamed at them, and indeed begin to enjoy them (606c). [ 18 ] Socrates quite explicitly is denying that aesthetic “pleasure” (606b4) can be insulated from the ethical effects of poetry. To put the point with a slight risk of anachronism (since Plato does not have a term corresponding to our “aesthetics”), he does not think that aesthetics is separable from ethics. He does not separate knowledge of beauty and knowledge of good. It is as though the pleasure we take in the representation of sorrow on the stage will—because it is pleasure in that which the representation represents (and not just a representation on the stage or in a poem)—transmute into pleasure in the expression of sorrow in life. And that is not only an ethical effect, but a bad one, for Plato. These are ingredients of his disagreements on the subject with Aristotle, as well as with myriad thinkers since then. [ 19 ] He is asserting, though without filling out the psychological mechanisms in the detail for which one would wish, that from childhood up, mimesis shapes our images and our fantasies, our unconscious or semi-conscious pictures and feelings, and thereby shapes our characters, especially that part of our nature prone to what he thinks of as irrational or non-rational.

The poets help enslave even the best of us to the lower parts of our soul; and just insofar as they do so, they must be kept out of any community that wishes to be free and virtuous. Famously, or notoriously, Plato refuses to countenance a firm separation between the private and the public, between the virtue of the one and the regulation of the other. What goes on in the theater, in your home, in your fantasy life, are connected. Poetry unregulated by philosophy is a danger to soul and community. [ 20 ]

The argument in book X cuts across all forms of “poetry,” whether tragic, comic, lyric, in meter or not; indeed, the earlier distinction between imitative and narrative poetry too seems irrelevant here. The conclusion is the same: “We are, at all events, aware that such poetry mustn’t be taken seriously as a serious thing laying hold of truth, but that the man who hears it must be careful, fearing for the regime in himself, and must hold what we have said about poetry” (608a6–b2). So sweeping a conclusion makes many assumptions, of course, one of which is that there is such as thing as “truth” out there, and the theory of Forms or Ideas is part of the metaphysical foundation of that view. The poets have been characterized as making claims to truth, to telling it like it is, that are in fact—contrary to appearances—little more than the poet’s unargued imaginative projections whose tenability is established by their ability to command the applause of the audience. That is, the poets are rhetoricians who are, as it were, selling their products to as large a market as possible, in the hope of gaining repute and influence.

The tripartite schema of Idea, artifact, and imitator is as much about making as it is about imitation. Making is a continual thread through all three levels of the schema. The Ideas too are said to be made , even though that is entirely inconsistent with the doctrine of Ideas as eternal expressed earlier in the Republic itself (and in all the other Platonic dialogues). The suggestion is arguably that the poets are makers (see also 599a2–3, where we are told that poets “produce appearances,” as one might translate), that they move in a world permeated by making. The word “poetry” in Platonic Greek comes from the word “to make” ( poiein ), a fact upon which Socrates remarks in the Symposium . [ 21 ] Making takes place in and contributes to the world of becoming. Philosophers, by contrast, are presented as committed to the pursuit of truth that is already “out there,” independently of the mind and the world of becoming. Their effort has to do with discovery rather than making. Thus stated the contrast is crude, since poets also reflect what they take their audience to (want to) feel or believe—they “imitate” in the sense of represent as well as express—and philosophers make speeches and (as Socrates himself says) they too imitate. [ 22 ] Nonetheless, the distinction suggests an interesting possibility, viz. that the quarrel between poetry and philosophy is finally, in Plato’s eyes, about the relative priority of making and discovery. The making/discovery distinction chimes with a number of the dichotomies upon which we have touched: imagination vs. reason, emotion vs. principle, becoming vs. being, artifacts vs. Forms, images vs. originals.

Nowhere in the Republic does Socrates mention the poet’s claim to inspiration. Indeed, that claim is pointedly omitted in the passage in which Socrates talks about the beginnings of the Iliad (392e2–393a5; see Bloom’s note ad loc ). Socrates implicitly denies the soundness of that claim here. Given his conception of the divine as Idea, such a claim could not be true, since the Ideas do not speak, let alone speak the things which Homer, Hesiod, and their followers recount. The result is that the poets are fabricators even of the appearance of knowing what they are talking about; this is not inconsistent with the Ion ’s characterization of poetry as inspired ignorance.

Does the critique of poetry in the Republic extend beyond the project of founding the just city in speech? I have already suggested an affirmative answer when discussing book II. The concerns about poetry expressed in books III and X would also extend beyond the immediate project of the dialogue, if they carry any water at all, even though the targets Plato names are of course taken from his own times. It has been argued that the authority to speak truth that poets claim is shared by many widely esteemed poets since then. [ 23 ] It has also been argued that the debate about the effects on the audience of poetry continues, except that today it is not so much poets strictly speaking, but the makers of others sorts of images in the “mass media,” who are the culprits. Controversies about, say, the effects of graphic depictions of violence, of the degradation of women, and of sex, echo the Platonic worries about the ethical and social effects of art. At least in cases such as these, we retain Plato’s skepticism about the notion of “aesthetic distance.” [ 24 ]

The Gorgias is one of Plato’s most bitter dialogues in that the exchanges are at times full of anger, of uncompromising disagreement, plenty of misunderstanding, and cutting rhetoric. In these respects it goes beyond even the Protagoras , a dialogue that depicts a hostile confrontation between Socrates and the renowned sophist by the same name. [ 25 ] The quarrel between philosophy and rhetoric shows itself as an ugly fight in the Gorgias .

What is the fight about? Socrates asks Gorgias to define what it is that he does, that is, to define rhetoric. And he asks him to do it in a way that helps to distinguish rhetorical from philosophical discourse: the former produces speeches of praise and blame, the latter answers questions through the give and take of discussion ( dialegesthai , 448d10) in an effort to arrive at a concise definition, and more broadly, with the intent to understand the subject. The philosopher is happy to be refuted if that leads to better understanding; wisdom, and not just striving to “win” the argument, is the goal (457e-458a).

Gorgias is forced by successive challenges to move from the view that rhetoric is concerned with words (speeches) to the view that its activity and effectiveness happen only in and through words (unlike the manual arts) to the view that its object is the greatest of human concerns, namely freedom. Rhetoric is “the source of freedom for humankind itself and at the same time it is for each person the source of rule over others in one’s own city” (452d6–8). This freedom is a kind of power produced by the ability to persuade others to do one’s bidding; “rhetoric is a producer of persuasion. Its whole business comes to that, and that’s the long and short of it” (453a2–3). But persuasion about what exactly? Gorgias’ answer is: about matters concerning justice and injustice (454b7). But surely there are two kinds of persuasion, one that instills beliefs merely, and another that produces knowledge; it is the former only with which rhetoric is concerned. The analogy of this argument to the critique of poetry is already clear; in both cases, Socrates wants to argue that the speaker is not a truth speaker, and does not convey knowledge to his audience. As already noted, Socrates classifies poetry (dithyrambic and tragic poetry are named) as a species of rhetoric. Its goal is to gratify and please the spectator, or differently put, it is just a kind of flattery. Strip away the rhythm and meter, and you have plain prose directed at the mob. It’s a kind of public speaking, that’s all (502a6–c12).

The rhetorician is a maker of beliefs in the souls of his auditors (455a3–4). And without that skill—here Gorgias begins to wax at length and eloquently—other arts (such as medicine) cannot do their work effectively (456b ff.). Rhetoric is a comprehensive art. But Gorgias offers a crucial qualification that turns out to contribute to his downfall: rhetoric should not be used against any and everybody, any more than skill in boxing should be. Although the rhetorician teaches others to use the skill justly, it is always possible for the student to misuse it. This is followed by another damaging admission: the rhetorician knows what justice, injustice, and other moral qualities are, and teaches them to the student if the student is ignorant of them (460a). It would follow that, in Socrates’ language, the true rhetorician is a philosopher; and in fact that is a position Socrates takes in the Phaedrus . But Gorgias is not a philosopher and does not in fact know—cannot give an account of—the moral qualities in question. So his art is all about appearing, in the eyes of the ignorant, to know about these topics, and then persuading them as is expedient (cf. 459d-e). But this is not something Gorgias wishes to admit; indeed, he allows himself to agree that since the rhetorician knows what justice is, he must be a just man and therefore acts justly (460b-c). He is caught in a contradiction: he claimed that a student who had acquired the art of rhetoric could use it unjustly, but now claims that the rhetorician could not commit injustice.

All this is just too much for Gorgias’ student Polus, whose angry intervention marks the second and much more bitter stage of the dialogue (461b3). A new point emerges that is consistent with the claim that rhetoricians do not know or convey knowledge, viz. that it is not an art or craft ( techne ) but a mere knack ( empeiria , or experience). Socrates adds that its object is to produce gratification. To develop the point, Socrates produces a striking schema distinguishing between care of the body and care of the soul. Medicine and gymnastics truly care for the body, cookery and cosmetics pretend to but do not. Politics is the art that cares for the soul; justice and legislation are its branches, and the imitations of each are rhetoric and sophistry. As medicine stands to cookery, so justice to rhetoric; as gymnastics to cosmetics, so legislation to sophistry. The true forms of caring are arts ( technai ) aiming at the good; the false, knacks aiming at pleasure (464b-465d). Let us note that sophistry and rhetoric are very closely allied here; Socrates notes that they are distinct but closely related and therefore often confused by people (465c). What exactly their distinction consists in is not clear, either in Plato’s discussions of the matter, or historically. Socrates’s polemic here is intended to apply to them both, as both are (alleged) to amount to a knack for persuasion of the ignorant by the ignorant with a view to producing pleasure in the audience and the pleasures of power for the speaker.

Socrates’ ensuing argument with Polus is complicated and long. The nub of the matter concerns the relation between power and justice. For Polus, the person who has power and wields it successfully is happy. For Socrates, a person is happy only if he or she is (morally) good, and an unjust or evil person is wretched—all the more so, indeed, if they escape punishment for their misdeeds. Polus finds this position “absurd” (473a1), and challenges Socrates to take a poll of all present to confirm the point. In sum: Plato’s suggestion is that rhetoric and sophistry are tied to substantive theses about the irrelevance of moral truth to the happy life; about the conventionality or relativity of morals; and about the irrelevance of the sort of inquiry into the truth of the matter (as distinguished from opinions or the results of polls) upon which Socrates keeps insisting. Socrates argues for some of his most famous theses along the way, such as the view that “the one who does what’s unjust is always more miserable than the one who suffers it, and the one who avoids paying what’s due always more miserable than the one who does pay it” (479e4–6). And if these hold, what use is there in rhetoric? For someone who wishes to avoid doing himself and others harm, Socrates concludes, rhetoric is altogether useless. Tied into logical knots, Polus succumbs.

All this is just too much for yet another interlocutor in the dialogue, Callicles. The rhetoric of the Gorgias reaches its most bitter stage. Callicles presents himself as a no-holds-barred, bare-knuckled, clear-headed advocate of Realpolitik , as we would now call it. Telling it like it is, he draws a famous distinction between nature and convention, and advances a thesis familiar to readers of Republic books I and II: “But I believe that nature itself reveals that it’s a just thing for the better man and the more capable man to have a greater share than the worse man and the less capable man. Nature shows that this is so in many places; both among the other animals and in whole cities and races of men, it shows that this is what justice has been decided to be: that the superior rule the inferior and have a greater share than they” (483c8–d6). This is the “law of nature” (483e3; perhaps the first occurrence in Western philosophy of this famous phrase). Conventional talk of justice, fairness, not taking more than is your share, not pursuing your individual best interest—these are simply ways by which the weak seek to enslave the strong. The art of rhetoric is all about empowering those who are strong by nature to master the weak by nature.

Callicles’ famous diatribe includes an indictment of philosophy as a childish occupation that, if pursued past youth, interferes with the manly pursuit of power, fosters contemptible ignorance of how the real political world works, and renders its possessor effeminate and defenseless. His example is none other than Socrates; philosophy will (he says prophetically) render Socrates helpless should he be indicted. Helplessness in the face of the stupidity of the hoi polloi is disgraceful and pathetic (486a-c). By contrast, what would it mean to have power? Callicles is quite explicit: power is the ability to fulfill whatever desire you have. Power is freedom, freedom is license (492a-c). The capacity to do what one wants is fulfillment in the sense of the realization of pleasure. Rhetoric is a means to that end.

The quarrel between rhetoric and philosophy, thus understood, ultimately addresses a range of fundamental issues. “Rhetoric” is taken here to constitute an entire world view. Its quarrel with philosophy is comprehensive, and bears on the nature of nature; the existence of objective moral norms; the connection (if any) between happiness and virtue; the nature and limits of reason; the value of reason (understood as the rational pursuit of objective purpose) in a human life; the nature of the soul or self; and the question as to whether there is a difference between true and false pleasure, i.e., whether pleasure is the good. It is striking that while Socrates wants to contrast “rhetorical” speech-making with his own approach of philosophical dialogue, in practice the differences blur. Socrates too starts to speak at length, sounds rhetorical at times, and ends the discussion with a myth. Callicles advances a substantive position (grounded in a version of the distinction between nature and convention) and defends it. These transgressions of rhetorical genres to one side, from Socrates’ standpoint the ultimate philosophical question at stake concerns how one should live one’s life (500c). Is the life of “politics,” understood as the pursuit of power and glory, superior to the life of philosophy?

Readers of the dialogue will differ as to whether or not the arguments there offered decide the matter. The nub of the debate is as current today, both in academic and non-academic contexts, as it was in Plato’s day. [ 26 ] Even though poetry is here cast as a species of rhetoric, a good deal of work would have to be done to show that the substantive theses to which poetry is committed, according to the Republic , are the same as the substantive theses to which rhetoric is committed, according to the Gorgias .

Is all of rhetoric bad? Are we to avoid—indeed, can we avoid—rhetoric altogether? Even in the Gorgias , as we have seen, there is a distinction between rhetoric that instills belief, and rhetoric that instills knowledge, and later in the dialogue a form of noble rhetoric is mentioned, though no examples of its practitioners can be found (503a-b). The Phaedrus offers a more detailed explanation of this distinction.

5. Phaedrus

Readers of the Phaedrus have often wondered how the dialogue hangs together. The first “half” seems to be about love, and the second about rhetoric. A slightly closer look reveals that any such simple characterization is misleading, because the first half is also about rhetoric, in several different ways. To begin with, the first half of the dialogue contains explicit reflections on rhetoric; for example, Socrates draws the distinction between what we would call the “form” and the “content” of a discourse (235a). Still further, it consists in part in three speeches, at least the first of which (“Lysias’ speech”) is a rhetorical set-piece. The other two are rhetorical as well, and presented as efforts to persuade a young beloved. All three are justly viewed as rhetorical masterstrokes by Plato, but for different reasons. The first is a brilliantly executed parody of the style of Lysias (an orator and speech writer of significant repute). The second speech simultaneously preserves aspects of its fictional frame (the first was a paradoxical sounding address by a “non-lover” to a “beloved”), develops that frame (the non-lover is transformed into a concealed lover), and deepens the themes in an impressive and philosophically enlightening way. The third (referred to as the “palinode” or recantation speech) contains some of the most beautiful and powerful images in all of Greek literature. It is mostly an allegory cast in the form of a myth, and tells the story of true love and of the soul’s journeys in the cosmos human and divine. That is, the rhetoric of the great palinode is markedly “poetic.” Especially noteworthy for present purposes is the fact that the theme of inspiration is repeatedly invoked in the first half of the dialogue; poetic inspiration is explicitly discussed. [ 27 ]

The themes of poetry and rhetoric, then, are intertwined in the Phaedrus . It looks initially as though both rhetoric and poetry have gained significant stature, at least relative to their status in the Ion , Republic , and Gorgias . I will begin by focusing primarily on rhetoric, and then turn to the question of poetry, even though the two themes are closely connected in this dialogue.

The second “half” of the dialogue does not discuss the nature of love thematically, at any length, but it does in effect propose that discourse prompted by the love of wisdom—philosophy—is true rhetoric. As the conversation between one “lover of speeches” (228c1–2) and another evolves, the three rhetorical speeches of the first part of the dialogue are examined from the perspective of their rhetorical artlessness or artfulness. Poetry is once again cast as a kind of speech making (258b3) and, very importantly, Socrates declares that “It’s not speaking or writing well that’s shameful; what’s really shameful is to engage in either of them shamefully or badly” (258d4–5). [ 28 ] The proffering of discourses is not in and of itself shameful; what then constitutes honorable speech making?

The answer to this crucial question constitutes one of the most famous contributions to the topic. In essence, Socrates argues that someone who is going to speak well and nobly must know the truth about the subject he is going to discuss. The sort of theory Polus and Callicles maintained in the Gorgias is false (see Phaedrus 259e4–260a4). In order to make good on this sweeping claim, Socrates argues that rhetoric is an “art” (techne), and not just artless practice (the equivalent of the “empeiria” for which rhetoric was condemned in the Gorgias ). How to show that it is an art after all? Quite a number of claimants to rhetoric are named and reviewed, and readers who have an interest in the history of Greek rhetoric rightly find these passages invaluable. We are told here that the extant manuals of rhetoric offer the “preliminaries” to the true art of rhetoric, not the thing itself (269b7–8).

Many rhetoricians have artfully and effectively misled their audiences, and Socrates argues—somewhat implausibly perhaps—that in order to mislead one cannot oneself be misled. [ 29 ] An artful speech exhibits its artfulness in its structure, one that—since in the best case it embodies the truth—retraces or mirrors the natural divisions of the subject matter itself. It will not only be coherent, but structured in a way that mirrors the way the subject itself is naturally organized. In one of Socrates’ most famous images, a good composition should exhibit the organic unity of a living creature, “with a body of its own; it must be neither without head nor without legs; and it must have a middle and extremities that are fitting both to one another and to the whole work” (264c1–5). This will not be truly accomplished if it only looks that way; to be that way, a discourse’s unity should reflect the unity of its subject.

At this point we might want to ask about the audience ; after all, the rhetorician is trying to persuade someone of something. Might not the speaker know the truth of the matter, and know how to embody it artfully in a composition, but fail to persuade anyone of it? Would not a failure to persuade indicate that the speaker lacks the complete art of rhetoric? Socrates in effect responds to this question by postulating that the successful speaker must also know the nature of the human soul, else his skill is just “empeiria” (the term from the Gorgias again) rather than “techne” (270b6). Just as an expert physician must understand both the human body and the body of medical knowledge—these being inseparable—so too the expert speaker must understand both the human soul and what is known about the soul. The reader will immediately recall that the great speech (the palinode) in the first half of the Phaedrus was about the soul in its cosmic context—the soul’s nature, its journeys divine and human, its longings, the objects of its longings, its failures and their consequences, were all part of the same story. Thus it is not surprising that when defining the art of rhetoric Socrates suggests that we cannot “reach a serious understanding of the nature of the soul without understanding the nature of the world as a whole” (270c1–2). The consequence of this approach to rhetoric has now become clear: to possess that art, one must be a philosopher. True rhetoric is philosophical discourse.

But what happened to the question about the audience? “The soul” is not the addressee of a rhetorical discourse. Socrates responds that the artful rhetorician must also know what the types of soul are, what sorts of speeches “work” on each type, and be able to identify which type is being addressed on the given occasion. This last demand is a matter of practice and of the ability to size up the audience on the spot, as it were. The requirements of the true art of rhetoric, which Socrates also calls the “art of dialectic” (276e5–6), are very high indeed. (The reader will find them summarized at 277b5–c6).

If the audience is philosophical, or includes philosophers, how would the true, artful, philosophical dialectician address it? This question is not faced head-on in the Phaedrus , but we are given a number of clues. They are introduced by means of a myth—by a kind of “poetry,” if you will—and they help us understand the sort of discourse a philosopher will on the whole wish to avoid, namely that which is written . According to reflections inaugurated by the Theuth and Thamus myth, the written word is not the most suitable vehicle for communicating truth, because it cannot answer questions put to it; it simply repeats itself when queried; it tends to substitute the authority of the author for the reader’s open minded inquiry into the truth; and it circulates everywhere indiscriminately, falling into the hands of people who cannot understand it. Very importantly, it interferes with true “recollection” ( anamnesis , 249c2), that process described at length and (for the most part) poetically in the dialogue’s “palinode,” by which the knowledge latent in the soul is brought out through question and answer (274d-275b). Writing is a clumsy medium, and thus would not match the potential effectiveness of philosophical give and take, the “Socratic dialogue” which best leads the philosophical mind to truth. This desirable rhetoric is “a discourse that is written down, with knowledge, in the soul of the listener; it can defend itself, and it knows for whom it should speak and for whom it should remain silent” (276a5–7). Dialectical speech is accompanied by knowledge, can defend itself when questioned, and is productive of knowledge in its audience (276e4–277a4). Of course, all this raises the question as to the status of Plato’s dialogues, since they are themselves writings; we will return to it briefly below.

Rhetoric is the art of “directing the soul by means of speech” (261a8). Popular rhetoric is not an art, but a knack for persuasion. Artful rhetoric requires philosophy; but does philosophy require rhetoric? Why must philosophical discourse—say, as exemplified in “Socratic dialogue”—have anything to do with rhetoric? The Phaedrus points to the interesting thought that all discourse is rhetorical, even when the speaker is simply trying to communicate the truth—indeed, true rhetoric is the art of communicating the truth (notice the broad sweep of the discussion of discourse at 277e5–278b4). Rhetoric is present wherever and whenever people speak (261d10–e4 and context). Even when one is not sure what the truth is, and even when one is thinking through something by oneself—carrying on an inner dialogue, as it were—discourse and persuasion are present. [ 30 ] Of course, a philosopher will question assertions that he or she ought to persuaded of X; but that questioning too, the Phaedrus suggests, is part of a process aimed at warranted persuasion, and inevitably involves a mix of the “persuadability” of the philosopher on the one hand, and the truth (or falsity) of the claims on the other. The bottom line is that there is no escaping from persuasion, and so none from rhetoric—including of course from the very problem of distinguishing between warranted and unwarranted persuasion. Self-deception is an ever-present possibility (as Socrates implies here, and notes at Cratylus 428d). That is a problem about which the philosopher above all worries about. It is always a question of “directing the soul by means of speech,” even where it’s a matter of the soul directing or leading itself (or to use a phrase from earlier in the dialogue, moving itself (245e)). [ 31 ]

The Gorgias’ notion that the struggle between (popular) rhetoric and philosophy—or as we might say, unphilosophical and philosophical rhetoric—is one between comprehensive outlooks is clear from the Phaedrus as well. The “great speech” or palinode of the dialogue illustrates the character and range of views upon which the project of philosophical rhetoric (of philosophy, in short) is built. The speech is quite explicitly a retraction of an outlook that does not espouse these views; ordinary rhetoric moves in a very different moral, metaphysical, psychological, and epistemic world. It is an interesting fact that Plato deploys certain elements of poetry (such as myth, allegory, simile, image) in drawing the contrast between these outlooks.

That poetry is itself a kind of persuasive discourse or rhetoric has already been mentioned. It comes as no surprise to read that Socrates indicts rhapsodes on the grounds that their speeches proceed “without questioning and explanation” and “are given only in order to produce conviction” (277e8–9). This echoes the Ion ’s charge that the rhapsodes do not know what they are talking about. But what about the rationale that the poets and rhapsodes are inspired?

Inspiration comes up numerous times in the Phaedrus . It and the related notions of Bacchic frenzy, madness, and possession are invoked repeatedly almost from the start of the dialogue (228b), in connection with Phaedrus’ allegedly inspiring recitation of Lysias’ text (234d1–6), and as inspiring Socrates’s two speeches (237a7–b1, 262d2–6, 263d1–3). These references are uniformly playful, even at times joking. More serious is the distinction between ordinary madness and divine madness, and the defense of the superiority of divine madness, which Socrates’ second speech sets out to defend. In particular, he sets out to show that the madness of love or eros “is given us by the gods to ensure our greatest good fortune” (245b7–c1). The case is first made by noting that three species of madness are already accepted: that of the prophets, that of certain purifying or cathartic religious rites, and the third that inspiration granted by the Muses that moves its possessor to poetry (244b-245a). As noted, it begins to look as though a certain kind of poetry (the inspired) is being rehabilitated.

And yet when Socrates comes to classify kinds of lives a bit further on, the poets (along with those who have anything to do with mimesis ) rank a low sixth out of nine, after the likes of household managers, financiers, doctors, and prophets (248e1–2)! The poet is just ahead of the manual laborer, sophist, and tyrant. The philosopher comes in first, as the criterion for the ranking concerns the level of knowledge of truth about the Ideas or Forms of which the soul in question is capable. This hierarchy of lives could scarcely be said to rehabilitate the poet. The Phaedrus quietly sustains the critique of poetry, as well as (much less quietly) of rhetoric.

Plato’s critique of writing on the grounds that it is a poor form of rhetoric is itself written. Of course, his Socrates does not know that he is “speaking” in the context of a written dialogue; but the reader immediately discerns the puzzle. Does the critique apply to the dialogues themselves? If not, do the dialogues escape the critique altogether, or meet it in part (being inferior to “live” dialogue, but not liable to the full force of Socrates’ criticisms)? Scholars dispute the answers to these well-known questions. [ 32 ]

There is general agreement that Plato perfected—perhaps even invented—a new form of discourse. The Platonic dialogue is a innovative type of rhetoric, and it is hard to believe that it does not at all reflect—whether successfully or not is another matter—Plato’s response to the criticisms of writing which he puts into the mouth of his Socrates.

Plato’s remarkable philosophical rhetoric incorporates elements of poetry. Most obviously, his dialogues are dramas with several formal features in common with much tragedy and comedy (for example, the use of authorial irony, the importance of plot, setting, the role of individual character and the interplay between dramatis personae ). No character called “Plato” ever says a word in his texts. His works also narrate a number of myths, and sparkle with imagery, simile, allegory, and snatches of meter and rhyme. Indeed, as he sets out the city in speech in the Republic , Socrates calls himself a myth teller (376d9–10, 501e4–5). In a number of ways, the dialogues may be said to be works of fiction; none of them took place exactly as presented by Plato, several could not have taken place, some contain characters who never existed. These are imaginary conversations, imitations of certain kinds of philosophical conversations. As reader, one is undoubtedly invited to see oneself reflected in various characters, and to that extent identify with them, even while also focusing on the arguments, exchanges, and speeches. Readers of Plato often refer to the “literary” dimension of his writings, or simply refer to them as a species of philosophical literature. Exactly what to make of his appropriation of elements of poetry is once again a matter of long discussion and controversy. [ 33 ]

Suffice it to say that Plato’s last word on the critique of poetry and rhetoric is not spoken in his dialogues, but is embodied in the dialogue form of writing he brought to perfection.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Nicola Moore for her help with the Bibliography, and to Richard Kraut, Marina McCoy, and Stephen Scully for their excellent comments on drafts of the text. I would also like to thank David Roochnik for his help with various revisions along the way.

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Why Teaching Poetry Is So Important

The oft-neglected literary form can help students learn in ways that prose can't.

16 years after enjoying a high school literary education rich in poetry, I am a literature teacher who barely teaches it. So far this year, my 12th grade literature students have read nearly 200,000 words for my class. Poems have accounted for no more than 100.

This is a shame—not just because poetry is important to teach, but also because poetry is important for the teaching of writing and reading.

High school poetry suffers from an image problem. Think of Dead Poet’s Society 's scenes of red-cheeked lads standing on desks and reciting verse, or of dowdy Dickinson imitators mooning on park benches, filling up journals with noxious chapbook fodder. There’s also the tired lessons about iambic pentameter and teachers wringing interpretations from cryptic stanzas, their students bewildered and chuckling. Reading poetry is impractical, even frivolous. High school poets are antisocial and effete.

I have always rejected these clichéd mischaracterizations born of ignorance, bad movies, and uninspired teaching. Yet I haven’t been stirred to fill my lessons with Pound and Eliot as my 11th grade teacher did. I loved poetry in high school. I wrote it. I read it. Today, I slip scripture into an analysis of The Day of the Locust . A Nikki Giovanni piece appears in The Bluest Eye unit. Poetry has become an afterthought, a supplement, not something to study on its own.

In an education landscape that dramatically deemphasizes creative expression in favor of expository writing and prioritizes the analysis of non-literary texts, high school literature teachers have to negotiate between their preferences and the way the wind is blowing. That sometimes means sacrifice, and poetry is often the first head to roll.

Yet poetry enables teachers to teach their students how to write, read, and understand any text. Poetry can give students a healthy outlet for surging emotions. Reading original poetry aloud in class can foster trust and empathy in the classroom community, while also emphasizing speaking and listening skills that are often neglected in high school literature classes.

Students who don’t like writing essays may like poetry, with its dearth of fixed rules and its kinship with rap. For these students, poetry can become a gateway to other forms of writing. It can help teach skills that come in handy with other kinds of writing—like precise, economical diction, for example. When Carl Sandburg writes, “The fog comes/on little cat feet,” in just six words, he endows a natural phenomenon with character, a pace, and a spirit. All forms of writing benefits from the powerful and concise phrases found in poems.

I have used cut-up poetry (a variation on the sort “popularized” by William Burroughs and Brion Gysin) to teach 9th grade students, most of whom learned English as a second language, about grammar and literary devices. They made collages after slicing up dozens of “sources,” identifying the adjectives and adverbs, utilizing parallel structure, alliteration, assonance, and other figures of speech. Short poems make a complete textual analysis more manageable for English language learners. When teaching students to read and evaluate every single word of a text, it makes sense to demonstrate the practice with a brief poem—like Gwendolyn Brooks’s “We Real Cool.”

Students can learn how to utilize grammar in their own writing by studying how poets do—and do not—abide by traditional writing rules in their work. Poetry can teach writing and grammar conventions by showing what happens when poets strip them away or pervert them for effect. Dickinson often capitalizes common nouns and uses dashes instead of commas to note sudden shifts in focus. Agee uses colons to create dramatic, speech-like pauses. Cummings of course rebels completely. He usually eschews capitalization in his proto-text message poetry, wrapping frequent asides in parentheses and leaving last lines dangling on their pages, period-less. In “next to of course god america i,” Cummings strings together, in the first 13 lines, a cavalcade of jingoistic catch-phrases a politician might utter, and the lack of punctuation slowing down and organizing the assault accentuates their unintelligibility and banality and heightens the satire. The abuse of conventions helps make the point. In class, it can help a teacher explain the exhausting effect of run-on sentences—or illustrate how clichés weaken an argument.

Yet, despite all of the benefits poetry brings to the classroom, I have been hesitant to use poems as a mere tool for teaching grammar conventions. Even the in-class disembowelment of a poem’s meaning can diminish the personal, even transcendent, experience of reading a poem. Billy Collins characterizes the latter as a “deadening” act that obscures the poem beneath the puffed-up importance of its interpretation. In his poem “Introduction to Poetry,” he writes: “all they want to do is tie the poem to a chair with rope/and torture a confession out of it./They begin beating it with a hose/to find out what it really means.”

The point of reading a poem is not to try to “solve” it. Still, that quantifiable process of demystification is precisely what teachers are encouraged to teach students, often in lieu of curating a powerful experience through literature. The literature itself becomes secondary, boiled down to its Cliff’s Notes demi-glace. I haven’t wanted to risk that with the poems that enchanted me in my youth.

Teachers should produce literature lovers as well as keen critics, striking a balance between teaching writing, grammar, and analytical strategies and then also helping students to see that literature should be mystifying. It should resist easy interpretation and beg for return visits. Poetry serves this purpose perfectly. I am confident my 12th graders know how to write essays. I know they can mine a text for subtle messages. But I worry sometimes if they’ve learned this lesson. In May, a month before they graduate, I may read some poetry with my seniors—to drive home that and nothing more.

Writing to Change: Non-Traditional Argument (Grade 12 English): Spoken Word: Speeches, Podcasting, & Slam Poetry

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Argument Writing

An argumentative speech is a persuasive speech in which the speaker attempts to persuade his audience to alter their viewpoints on a controversial issue. While a persuasive speech may be aimed more at sharing a viewpoint and asking the audience to consider it, an argumentative speech aims to radically change the opinions already held by the audience.

Famous Persuasive Speeches

40 Most Famous Speeches In History | HighSpark Across eras of calamity and peace in our world's history, a great many leaders, writers, politicians, theorists, scientists, activists and other revolutionaries have unveiled powerful rousing speeches in their bids for change. In reviewing the plethora of orators across tides of social, political and economic change, we found some truly rousing speeches that brought the world to their feet or to a startling, necessary halt.

613 Topics for Argumentative Speeches

613 Original Argumentative Speech Essay Topics Ideas [Updated March 2023 ] An argumentative speech is a persuasive speech in which the speaker attempts to persuade his audience to alter their viewpoints on a controversial issue. While a persuasive speech may be aimed more at sharing a viewpoint and asking the audience to consider it, an argumentative speech aims to radically change the opinions already held by the audience.

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Using poetry to sharpen students' claims for argument writing

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Colorful human hands hold pencil, pen and brush. Scribble lines

Sometimes I hear teachers and students talk about poetry as if the only purpose for writing a poem is to bare your soul, to go deep and dark; this illuminates another reason why poetry can be such an uncomfortable genre for teachers and students to approach in class. “I just feel funny asking kids to write poems because some of them feel awkward sharing that much of themselves with the world,” a teacher told me once.

SONGS FOR THE PEOPLE by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper Let me make the songs for the people, Songs for the old and young; Songs to stir like a battle-cry Wherever they are sung. Not for the clashing of sabres, For carnage nor for strife; But songs to thrill the hearts of men With more abundant life. Let me make the songs for the weary, Amid life’s fever and fret, Till hearts shall relax their tension, And careworn brows forget. Let me sing for little children, Before their footsteps stray, Sweet anthems of love and duty, To float o’er life’s highway. I would sing for the poor and aged, When shadows dim their sight; Of the bright and restful mansions, Where there shall be no night. Our world, so worn and weary, Needs music, pure and strong, To hush the jangle and discords Of sorrow, pain, and wrong. Music to soothe all its sorrow, Till war and crime shall cease; And the hearts of men grown tender Girdle the world with peace.

“Songs for the People” by Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Originally appeared in Poems, George S. Ferguson Company, 1896. Public domain.

After reading this as our poem of the day, I might ask students one or several questions to get them thinking about argument:

What is she arguing here?
What need does she identify?
What stand does she take?

That second-to-last stanza sums it up nicely: “Our world, so worn and weary,/ Needs music, pure and strong.” If I do not get a response to my initial questions, I might ask students to identify which stanza contains the main “point” of the poem.

I share that this poet was an abolitionist and a temperance and women’s suffrage activist, yet here she pauses to argue that the world needs music. This is a poem of hope, a poem that argues it is important to confront present suffering while also envisioning better things beyond it. It calls for making the music that will help usher in that brighter future. We can certainly read the word music figuratively here too: creating harmony, making noise, stirring the heart to action. This is a resonant argument even today.

While argument writing in its other forms — editorial, essay, comic, photojournalism or speech — must be grounded in fact and reason and 18th-century Enlightenment logos, the very best arguments, whatever form they take, also help us to feel deeply alongside the writer, to unsettle our complacency or open space for empathy. Poetry lets us bring a little bit of extra pathos, the more 19th-century notion of the “wild west wind” that Percy Shelley famously conjures. He begs of that wind, “Drive my dead thoughts over the universe/ Like wither’d leaves to quicken a new birth!” Argument, whether published as a poem or embedded as a bit of verse in the writer’s process for another genre, has kinetic energy. It drives away dead thoughts and clears a place for new ones.

Poetry Pause: Sharpening a Claim

My favorite classroom anecdote about the power of poetic claims begins with a bit of poetry from 13th-century Persian poet Rumi.

I needed a super short Poem of the Day to share so we could move along with a lengthier lesson, and I chose this little snippet of verse:

Raise your words not your voice. It’s rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

Public domain.

My student, whom I will call Mike to preserve his privacy, angled his tall torso back in his chair and abruptly said, “Wow! I love that one!”

Mike was not a student known to do this. He was a caring friend to his peers with a reputation for being polite. He was also known for a casual attitude toward academic work and often viewed deadlines, even entire assignments, as optional. So his sudden engagement caught my interest even more when he said, “Can I write it down to keep?”

“Sure, Mike!” I said and carried on with our planned brief discussion about what the poet means and how the metaphor enhances that meaning.

A week later came the real shock. The door flew open, shaking our modular classroom a little bit, and Mike entered, just before the bell as the rest of the class was settling in. “I have to tell you something!” he announced, loud enough for everyone to hear. “I used a poem yesterday!”

“That’s great . . .” I said, half distracted with attendance-taking. “Have a seat and you can tell us about it.”

He began, “So my mom and dad were getting mad at each other about something last night, and they were starting to argue, you know getting louder and angrier. And that poem we did a few days ago popped in my head, about the rain and the thunder.”

Suddenly I felt my eyes widen just a little bit as I began to fast-forward. Uh oh! Where is this story going? Did he quote this poem to his parents mid-argument??? Because my first thought here is that this is a good way to get both parents to turn on a kid, right? I mean, who wants to hear Rumi when you’re fighting with your spouse?

“So I said to them,” he continued, “Mom, Dad: ‘Raise your words not your voice. It’s rain that grows flowers, not thunder.’ And it worked. They stopped and we all sort of talked about it.”

I paused, tentative. “About the poem?”

“Yeah! And how it means you get farther talking about things calmly like rain instead of loudly like thunder.”

I should stop here to say that I still think the more common outcome of quoting poetry to an angry parent would be far less positive, so this story will stick with me for my entire career. A succinct argument in verse written centuries ago had instantaneous relevance in a household dispute, and a 14-year-old knew it could. It presented an argument that stopped the other kind of argument, the more painful kind, in its tracks. Wow. Just, wow.

Of course, not all argument writing negotiates family peace. Some is meant to stir us up, to motivate readers, to poke at our conscience and provoke action. Willie Perdomo (2020) refers to the “lyrical machete” a poem can wield (p. 1). There is a sharpness to a good argument, an edge, a ferocity, a danger. And like a machete, it can open a new path through our viny, wild, confusing world. We want students to feel this as they craft argument pieces, but too often they end up recycling opinions they have already heard in words others have used to make the same point. They may shy away from taking a stand, sometimes because they lack a thorough understanding of a topic, sometimes because they lack a real passion for it, and sometimes because they want to avoid being divisive.

A simple poem like Rumi’s verse can provide a mentor for sharpening a claim into a few words and a single figurative image. Look at how the poem moves.

Line 1: Do this (Raise your words)

Line 2: Not this (not your voice).

Lines 3–4: Here’s a metaphor to make that point visual (It’s rain that grows flowers,/ not thunder).

This format could be used to write about any topic. Instead of just using this particular poem when I need something quick, I now use it to help us sharpen our claims.

“So think about that format,” I tell my students. “Let’s see how this pattern could work for your topic. Tell someone what to do and what not to do. Maybe it’s replacing an old habit with a better one, like this poem. Maybe it’s choosing the tougher-but-better path instead of the easy-but-problematic one.”

I continue, “Then comes the trickier part. Can you make this visual with a metaphor? See how it’s that last twist that makes Rumi’s poem so memorable and enduring? If you disagree with his point at first, the imagery in that metaphor makes it clear . . . yeah, gentleness can coax good results, whereas loud thunder doesn’t really make anything grow or make anything better. It just thunders, making lots of noise. Try to imagine a quick, simple scenario that fits your topic and does the same.”

Once students have had a few minutes to give this a try, ask them to share in a group of four so that they hear three other variations on this model written around three other topics.

“Of course, this is not going to work directly as a claim for your essay,” I continue. “But there are some bits we can use here. The poem is short but potent and it gets its point across without muddying it up with lots of words. In fact, it states the main point in just a few words. Let’s see if we can do that with our claims.”

After students draft a claim to develop, we address the other part of the poem. “The second half is really just a metaphor. But metaphors work just as well in essays as they do in poems. Look at your metaphor. Would you see this as something you could use in the beginning of your essay to pique a reader’s appetite for your ideas? Or does it develop a point so well that it belongs in the heart of the essay to make some key evidence stand out? Or is this metaphor so close to your main point that it really needs to be in the last line or two, that final, memorable image to lock the point in your reader’s mind? Jot the idea for where this might go in your writer’s notebook. And remember, it’s OK to change your mind later.”

Writing a claim does not have to be intimidating, and it is not too early to consider what imagery or figurative language might complement that claim right from the outset of an argument writing project. Students may leave this activity with the sense that they have uncovered something clear and beautiful, which can give them energy for the work ahead: developing support for their claim.

Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments

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Instructional Plan
Related Resources

Traditionally, teachers have encouraged students to engage with and interpret literature—novels, poems, short stories, and plays. Too often, however, the spoken word is left unanalyzed, even though the spoken word has the potential to alter our space just as much than the written. After gaining skill through analyzing a historic and contemporary speech as a class, students will select a famous speech from a list compiled from several resources and write an essay that identifies and explains the rhetorical strategies that the author deliberately chose while crafting the text to make an effective argument. Their analysis will consider questions such as What makes the speech an argument?, How did the author's rhetoric evoke a response from the audience?, and Why are the words still venerated today?

Featured Resources

From theory to practice.

Nearly everything we read and hear is an argument. Speeches are special kinds of arguments and should be analyzed as such. Listeners should keep in mind the context of the situation involving the delivery and the audience-but a keen observer should also pay close attention to the elements of argument within the text. This assignment requires students to look for those elements.

"Since rhetoric is the art of effective communication, its principles can be applied to many facets of everyday life" (Lamb 109). It's through this lesson that students are allowed to see how politicians and leaders manipulate and influence their audiences using specific rhetorical devices in a manner that's so effective that the speeches are revered even today. It's important that we keep showing our students how powerful language can be when it's carefully crafted and arranged.

Common Core Standards

This resource has been aligned to the Common Core State Standards for states in which they have been adopted. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, CCSS alignments are forthcoming.

State Standards

This lesson has been aligned to standards in the following states. If a state does not appear in the drop-down, standard alignments are not currently available for that state.

NCTE/IRA National Standards for the English Language Arts

3. Students apply a wide range of strategies to comprehend, interpret, evaluate, and appreciate texts. They draw on their prior experience, their interactions with other readers and writers, their knowledge of word meaning and of other texts, their word identification strategies, and their understanding of textual features (e.g., sound-letter correspondence, sentence structure, context, graphics).
4. Students adjust their use of spoken, written, and visual language (e.g., conventions, style, vocabulary) to communicate effectively with a variety of audiences and for different purposes.
5. Students employ a wide range of strategies as they write and use different writing process elements appropriately to communicate with different audiences for a variety of purposes.
7. Students conduct research on issues and interests by generating ideas and questions, and by posing problems. They gather, evaluate, and synthesize data from a variety of sources (e.g., print and nonprint texts, artifacts, people) to communicate their discoveries in ways that suit their purpose and audience.

Materials and Technology

ReadWriteThink Notetaker
Teacher Background and Information Sheet
Student Assignment Sheet
List of Speeches for Students
Queen Elizabeth I’s Speech with Related Questions
Historical Speech Research Questions
Peer Response Handout
Essay Rubric

This website contains audio of the Top 100 speeches of all time.

Included on this site is audio of famous speeches of the 20th century, as well as information about the speeches and background information on the writers.

The "Great Speeches Collection" from The History Place are available here in print and in audio.

This website includes information on finding and documenting sources in the MLA format.

Preparation

Review the background and information sheet for teachers to familiarize yourself with the assignment and expectations. Consider your students' background with necessary rhetorical terms such as claims, warrants, the appeals (logos, pathos, ethos), and fallacies; and rhetorical devices such as tone, diction, figurative language, repetition, hyperbole, and understatement. The lesson provides some guidance for direct instruction on these terms, but there are multiple opportunities for building or activating student knowledge through modeling on the two speeches done as a class.
Check the links to the online resources (in Websites section) make sure that they are still working prior to giving out this assignment.
Decide whether you want to allow more than one student to analyze and write about the same speech in each class.
Look over the List of Speeches for Students to decide if there are any that you would like to add.
Look over the suggested Essay Rubric and determine the weights you would like to assign to each category. For example, you might tell students that Support and Research may be worth three times the value of Style. Customize the Essay Rubric to meet the learning goals for your students.
Reserve the library for Session Three so the students can do research on their speeches.
President Obama’s Inauguration Speech.
Former President Bush’s Defends War in Iraq Speech.
Former President Bush’s 9/11 Speech.
Former President Clinton’s “I Have Sinned” Speech.

Student Objectives

Students will

analyze a speech for rhetorical devices and their purpose.
identify an author’s purposeful manipulation of language.
identify elements of argument within a speech.
write an analysis of a speech with in-text documentation.

Session One

Begin the lesson by asking students what needs to be present in order for a speech to occur. Though the question may seem puzzling—too hard, or too simple—at first, students will eventually identify, as Aristotle did, the need for a speaker, a message, and an audience.
The class should discuss audience and the importance of identifying the audience for speeches, since they occur in particular moments in time and are delivered to specific audiences. This is a good time to discuss the Rhetorical Triangle (Aristotelian Triad) or discuss a chapter on audience from an argumentative textbook. You may wish to share information from the ReadWriteThink.org lesson Persuasive Techniques in Advertising and The Rhetorical Triangle from The University of Oklahoma.
Next distribute Queen Elizabeth’s speech to the troops at Tilbury and use the speech and its historical context as a model for the processes students will use on the speech they select. Provide a bit of background information on the moment in history.
Then, as a class, go over Queen Elizabeth’s speech and discuss the rhetorical devices in the speech and the purpose for each one. Adjust the level of guidance you provide, depending on your students' experiences with this type of analysis. The questions provide a place to start, but there are many other stylistic devices to discuss in this selection.

Discuss the audience and the author’s manipulation of the audience. Consider posing questions such as

This is a successful speech. Why?
Elizabeth uses all of the appeals – logos, pathos, and ethos – to convince all of her listeners to fight for her from the loyal follower to the greedy mercenary. How?
The tone shifts throughout the selection. Where? But more importantly, why?

Martin Luther King, Jr. uses an appeal to pathos in his “I Have a Dream” speech through his historical allusion to Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation: “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.” This is particularly effective for his audience of people sympathetic to the cause of African American men and women who would have been especially moved by this particular reference since it had such a significant impact on the lives of African Americans.

Session Two

Continue the work from the previous session by distributing the Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments handout and discussing the assignment and what it requires. See the background and information sheet for teachers for more details.
Tell students they will be getting additional practice with analyzing a speech as an argument by showing a short 10-minute clip of a presidential speech . Ask students to think about how the particular moment in history and the national audience contribute to the rhetorical choices made by the speaker.
Lead a discussion of the speech as an argument with regard to purpose and intent. Work with students to identify warrants, claims, and appeals.
Ask students to consider how the author manipulates the audience using tone, diction, and stylistic devices. What rhetorical devices aided the author’s manipulation of his audience? Discuss a particular rhetorical device that the President used and the purpose it served.
Share the Essay Rubric and explain to students the expectations for success on this assignment.
Allow students to select a speech from the List of Speeches for Students . If they wish to preview any of the speeches, they can type the speaker's name and the title of the speech into a search engine and should have little difficulty finding it.

Session Three

Take the students to the library and allow them to research their speeches. They should locate their speech and print a copy for them to begin annotating for argumentative structure and rhetorical devices.
What was the speaker up against? What is the occasion for the speech?
What did the author have to keep in mind when composing the text?
What were his or her goals?
What was his or her ultimate purpose?
What was his or her intent?
Remind students that the writer of the speech is sometimes not the person who delivered the speech, for example, and this will surprise some students. Many people assume that the speaker (president, senator, etc.) is always the writer, and that’s not always the case, so ask your students to check to see who wrote the speech. (They might be surprised at the answer. There’s always a story behind the composition of the speech.)
Help students find the author of the speech because this will challenge some students. Oftentimes, students assume the speaker is the author, and that’s sometimes not the case. Once the speechwriter is identified, it is easier to find information on the speech. Help students find the history behind the speech without getting too bogged down in the details. They need to understand the climate, but they do not need to be complete experts on the historical details in order to understand the elements of the speech.
If they wish, students can use the ReadThinkWrite Interactive Notetaker to help them track their notes for their essays. Remind them that their work cannot be saved on this tool and should be printed by the end of the session so they can use it in future work.
For Session Four, students must bring a thesis, an outline, and all of their research materials to class for a workday. Remind them to refer to the Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments , the Essay Rubric , and any notes they may have taken during the first two sessions as they begin their work.
The thesis statement should answer the following question: What makes this speech an effective argument and worthy of making this list?

Session Four

Set up students in heterogeneous groups of four. Ask students to share their outlines and thesis statements.
Go around to check and to monitor as students share their ideas and progress. The students will discuss their speeches and their research thus far.
Have students discuss the elements of an argument that they plan on addressing.
Finally, have students work on writing their papers by writing their introductions with an enticing “grab” or “hook.” If time permits, have students share their work.
For Session Five, students should bring in their papers. This session would happen in about a week.

Session Five

In this session, students will respond each other's drafts using the Peer Response Handout .
Determine and discuss the final due date with your students. Direct students to Diana Hacker’s MLA site for assistance with their citations if necessary.
Remind students that their work will be evaluate using the essay rubric . They should use the criteria along with the comments from their peer to revise and polish their work.
During the process of analyzing Queen Elizabeth I’s Speech , consider showing the related scene from the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age . Though the text of the speech is drastically cut and altered, seeing one filmmaker's vision for the scene may help reinforce the notion of historical context and the importance of audience.
Allow students to read and/or perform parts of the speeches out loud. Then, they can share some of their thinking about the argumentative structure and rhetorical devices used to make the speech effective. This activity could happen as part of the prewriting process or after essays have been completed.
Require students to write a graduation speech or a speech on another topic. They can peruse print or online news sources to select a current event that interests them. Have them choose an audience to whom they would deliver an argumentative speech.

Student Assessment / Reflections

After peer response has taken place, use the essay rubric to provide feedback on student work. You may change the values of the different categories/requirements to better suit the learning goals for your classroom.
Calendar Activities
Lesson Plans
Student Interactives
Strategy Guides

Students explore the ways that powerful and passionate words communicate the concepts of freedom, justice, discrimination, and the American Dream in Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech.

While drafting a literary analysis essay (or another type of argument) of their own, students work in pairs to investigate advice for writing conclusions and to analyze conclusions of sample essays. They then draft two conclusions for their essay, select one, and reflect on what they have learned through the process.

Useful for a wide variety of reading and writing activities, this outlining tool allows students to organize up to five levels of information.

This strategy guide clarifies the difference between persuasion and argumentation, stressing the connection between close reading of text to gather evidence and formation of a strong argumentative claim about text.

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Kindergarten K

Argumentative Speech Topics and ideas: A Complete Guide

An argumentative speech is a persuasive speech. Here, speakers try to encourage audiences to alter their views on a controversial issue.

Though they are alike in some manner, persuasive and argumentative speech contains different goals.

A persuasive speech focuses on sharing a perspective and asking the public to think it over. An argumentative speech aims to alter the viewpoint already detained by the audience.

This type of speech is challenging. So, the speaker should pick up the topic that he is confident at and come up with a strong argument.

When you are involved in debates with family or friends, you obviously tend to win or lose. The way you argue shows your capability to compel facts and concepts in support of a topic.

While losing an argument, chances are you only used the standpoint supporting your situation. In a perfect argumentative speech, there should be a strong claim and the points to support it.

For an argumentative speech, find a concrete and controversial argument to use as your foundation. These speeches generally focus on the topics discussed at the moment by society. Most of the topics of argumentative speech are derivative of political discussion.

This is most commonly noticed in the media. The selected topic might be social, religious, ethical, or political by nature. The public must be confident to revise their long-held values. They might ask to change detained convictions relevant to the recent evidence.

In fact, picking up a topic that is debatable is important to develop good speech. The topic should not include something which is already demonstrated or verified.

Instead, it should be logical enough to convince the audience. The speaker should come up with a strong opinion to make his speech realistic to the audience.

To be able to argue in a reasonable and logical way is a fine life skill. It helps to stand up for what you think is correct and let others give attention to your viewpoints.

For instance, if the topic includes “eating egg and milk affects your healthiness”. You evaluate the opponent and create your own topic like “Eating egg and milk does not affect your health”. Yet, you have to give strong points to support your answer.

Table of Contents

Terms to Present Argumentative Speech

Claims of fact, claims of value, claims of policy, 1. pick up debatable topic, 2. take a strong standpoint, 3. give some supportable arguments, 4. refute alternate positions, tips for delivering an argumentative speech:, 1. look for your topic, 2. recognize your standpoint, 3. carry out the research, 4. know who your opposition is, 5. know the facts, 6. choose the topic of your interest, list of argumentative speech topic, argumentative speech topics about economy, argumentative speech topics about science, argumentative speech topics about environment, argumentative speech topics about family, argumentative speech topics about technology, argumentative speech topics about health, argumentative speech topics about history, argumentative speech topics about politics, argumentative speech topics about religion, argumentative speech topics about sports, argumentative speech topics about relationships, argumentative speech topics about law, argumentative speech topics about life, argumentative speech topics about ethics, conclusion.

These are some terms that help you to present an ideal argumentative speech:

Claim – This is the main term that you should focus on. Try to give a strong standpoint. Support on the point, position, and the issue you are talking about. Do not forget the main purpose of the speech.
Grounds – Grounds are the key information or the facts that you use to make your point more powerful and reliable. Make sure that the details you give are an appropriate reason for your claims in the initial place.

Argumentative Speech is based on:

It starts with the reality relevant to the evidence. For an instance, you drink too much alcohol and do not exercise. Then, you will surely put up the weight. If you control your drinks, then you can maintain the weight.

Claims of value include the belief something is correct or incorrect, good or bad. For an instance, punishing children is wrong. It does not improve the habits of your children.

Here you can also state “Punishing children is right”. They will think properly before doing anything wrong

Claims of the policy are taken from the course of action. For an instance, you should be able to vote through a driving license. There is a precise rule for the policy. It is realistic and superior compared to the current system.

Every child should learn different languages in school. It is vital to introduce teachers to the value of beginning foreign language experience.

While initiating the argumentative speech, get ready with strong arguments. You desire to give an influential impact right in front. Also, you might wish to leave a good impression on the audience hearing your speech.

Stay away from personal attacks. If you make the argument too boring, there will be a higher chance of losing your audience.

Besides, argumentative speech needs a powerful viewpoint on the topic that you are delivering. Remember, the goal is not to win your audience but to win the argument. You have to stand on your own point with an appropriate reason.

Essential components of an Argumentative speech:

The main goal of an argumentative essay is to influence others in your opinions. Generally, an argumentative speech addresses an audience with opposite opinions on a specific subject.

Here are four essential elements to focus on when developing an argumentative essay:

While picking up a topic, you should select the topic with more than a single side. For an instance, there is no way to discuss the topic of human smell with the nose. It is familiar fact that has no other strong points to discuss against.

While preparing for an argumentative speech, take a strong standpoint. Try to stick with the stance. This makes your speech powerful. Make sure you do not confuse the audience with any irrelevant points.

A good argument needs to have reasonable and convincing evidence. Better support your statement with information, figures, examples, and some relevant opinions. Also, argumentative speech does not contain unproven opinions. Make sure you research and present the argument that is a relevant argument.

At the end of a strong argumentative speech, you have to refute alternate positions. By dealing with the opponent, make some powerful arguments. Try to work on some common and stronger viewpoints.

Look for a concrete and controversial argument to use as your base.
Arrange your points properly. Arranging the points can be helpful while planning your thoughts and presenting them
Give most of your time for research. Better research on your topics along with the topics which your opposition is likely to pick up.

How to develop an effective Argumentative Speech?

After picking up a fine controversial topic, you should work on some powerful points. Those points must make your speech influential. Start developing an outline that translates into better argumentative speech.

These are some points to consider while working on an argumentative speech:

From absorption to health, you can find many types of topics that you feel comfortable presenting.

At first, think about the topic that you are supporting. Are you supporting abortion or speaking against it? Most of the speaker loves to speak against abortion but should be confident to speak on the topic.

Better verify and try to prove the facts using some examples or supportive words. This makes your speech more powerful and interesting. Consider determining whether you are attempting to take the topic.

You can definitely find the people who have worked for or else against the topic that you picked up earlier.

For this, you have to carry out the research well. But, this does not mean you have to copy from them. Just take your idea and use them in a better way. This helps to know what step you should take to move forward to make a good flow of the argument.

Each argumentative speech contains both for and against the side. The best probable approach that you can use is to know your opponent. Knowing how your opponent thinks and the points they use makes you easy to perform.

An argumentative speech might be weak if you do not provide any facts. For a good outcome, you need facts supporting your argument on the controversial topic. If you ignore this you might be in a problem while presenting the speech.

Be sure, you know and give the facts, and make your points strong. These facts reduce your risk of looking unprepared and unprofessional.

You cannot give a better outcome without passion. To present superior argumentative speech, you should have an interest in the topic. Better select the topic of your interest. This helps you to work and perform better. If you do not trust yourself and your topic, no one will as well.

Deciding on an arguable topic is essential to developing an effective argumentative speech. Better do not pick up the topic which needs great logic for convincing the audience.

You should have an extreme desire in the topic with a deep opinion on the subject. If he cannot fulfill these criteria, he might not provide influencing arguments.

Find here the List of Argumentative Speech Topics. They are great for developing arguments for debates, persuasive speech, and argumentation.

Argumentative Speech Topics about Education

Mobile phones should be banned in schools for both students and teachers.
Exams should be abolished.
Exam scores do not reflect student performance.
Mandatory dress code.
Studying of foreign languages should begin from kindergarten age.
College students should have freedom to choose their own courses.
Sex education should be required in all schools.
Benefits of attending a single-sex school.
Essays do not demonstrate student’s knowledge on a topic.
Home education should only be allowed for medical reasons.
Education should be free to anyone.
Teachers should have mandatory re-training every 5 years.
Testing and choice are undermining education.
Grades are not important.
Bilingual education.
CPR and first aid techniques should be a mandatory course.
State colleges should be free to attend.
Teachers should wear uniforms or obey a dress code.
Why educational computer games should be used in school
Music education should be placed back into schools
Student Debts
Do colleges put too much stock in standardized test scores?
Price of Education and textbooks
Popular literature is not as valuable as classical literature.
Smoking and drinking on campus
Workers should get four weeks paid vacation each year.
The illegal immigrant workforce is good for the economy.
Christmas is just a way for businesses to increase sales.
Rich people should have tax breaks.
Decreasing wealth tax is good for the economy.
Salaries of actors, professional athletes and CEOs should be regulated and capped.
Government aid for students should be based purely on academic performance.
Taxes should be imposed on unhealthy foods to combat obesity.
Paying the waiter hourly rate below minimum wage is unfair.
Mortgage Crisis
Consumer Debt
Outsourcing jobs to foreign countries
Equal pay for equal work
Fuel Prices
How nuclear power shaped the 21st century in electrical generation.
Space exploration is a waste of money.
Genetic Research is destroying humanity.
NASA space landing on the moon was a hoax.
Media’s effect on teen suicide.
Stem cell research and the guidelines that control it.
Hunting is good for the environment.
Food shortage / world hunger.
Crimes against the environment should be tougher.
Vegetarianism is an ecologically thoughtful lifestyle.
Destruction of the world’s forest is justified by a human need for land and food.
Racing industry should be forced to use environmentally-friendly fuel.
Working from home is good for the environment.
Genetically modified food should be the answer to the world’s hunger problem.
The government should support and subsidize alternative energy sources.
Alternative Energy and Hybrid Vehicles can help save our planet.
Nuclear power is better than solar power.
Future of recycling.
Advantages of recycling water.
Alternative Fuels.
Every family with children filing for divorce must go through a mandatory ‘cooling off’ period.
Couples should be banned from adopting overseas.
Future parents should take parenting classes and pass tests before having a child.
Physical punishment is good practice for raising children.
Do curfews keep teens out of trouble?
Does access to condoms prevent teen pregnancy?
Violent video games and toys should not be allowed.
Technology is making people less creative.
Human beings are becoming slaves of modern technology.
Does technology limit creativity?
Technology makes us lose most of our traditions and culture.
New technologies create new problems.
Positive effects of technology on society.
Modern technology has increased material wealth but not happiness.
Social Networking Sites had an impact on changing us for the worse.
Internet censorship is unnecessary.
Whether the internet has made research easier and more convenient.
Life was better when technology was less and more simple.
Online friends are more effective than real friends.
Internet Privacy.
Torrents and internet pirating.
Social networks are killing sincere relationships.
Organ donation should be mandatory.
Health risks of smoking are exaggerated.
Vaccinations should be compulsory.
Veganism is an unhealthy way to raise kids.
Breast-feeding is one of the most important things a mother can give to a child.
Terminally ill patients should be allowed to use heroin.
Knowing your ancestry is important for health.
All farmers should go organic.
Lapses in food safety as a result of a complex interplay of factors.
Music Therapy.
The need of teen depression prevention.
Drug addiction is a sickness.
Running is unhealthy.
Fast food, soda, chips and other unhealthy food should be heavily taxed.
Bread is bad for your health.
Child obesity.
Any products that are believed to cause cancer should have a warning label.
The only difference between normal and organic food is the cost.
Dangers of herbal remedies.
Smoking a pipe is more harmful than smoking cigarettes.
Denying health insurance on a basis of a pre-existing condition is against human rights.
Athletes who are caught using steroids should be banned from the professional sport for life.
Stretching before and after exercise is overrated.
A vegetarian diet is as healthy as a diet containing meat.
Eating meat and dairy is bad for your body.
GMOs are bad for health and should be avoided at any cost.
Why slavery was good for society back in the 1800s.
Adolf Hitler was a great leader.
Slavery and its effects on global economic developments.
Why Reagan’s “War on Drugs” had negative effects.
Many Caribbean people do not understand their heritage and history.
Famous people (actors, athletes) should not be allowed to become politicians.
The War in Iraq was justified.
Invading other countries, as long as for good cause, is justified.
Illegal immigrants should get an asylum.
Democracy is the best form of government.
Why should we trust Official Statistics?
War as an instrument of foreign policy.
Voting should be compulsory for all citizens.
Compulsory military service is good for society and the country.
Voting age should be lowered.
Terrorism is a major issue in the world because innocent people are affected.
The assassination can never be justified.
Why electronic voting is not effective.
Downsides of multiculturalism
Can racial profiling be useful?
Churches should be required to pay taxes.
Racialist blames are often used as a great excuse to shut down dialogue.
The world would be a more peaceful place without religions.
Life after death.
Evolution vs. Creationism.
There should be no religion in schools.
Islamic Fundamentalism.
Religion is a force for evil.
Students should learn about world religions in public schools.
Jehovah witnesses.
Why hockey should allow fights.
Not all great sportsmen can be good coaches.
For athletes: Discipline is more important than talent.
Female athletes train better with female coaches.
Chess is not a sport.
Should players’ jerseys display ads?
Should there be a set age range for basketball players?
Can gambling be legalized as a professional sport?
Spousal Abuse.
Polygamy creates healthy relationships.
Gender equality is a myth.
Having sex with a prostitute is not cheating.
Does age matter in relationships? What age is appropriate for dating?
Men should be forced to take paternity leave from work.
Gender does not affect learning.
Guns should be made illegal.
Minors should be tried for murder at any age.
Social Security and Medical Reform are non-negotiable ways out of the debt crisis.
Gay couples should have the same rights as heterosexual couples.
Plastic surgery should be illegal for anyone under 18.
Identity Theft.
Ban on smoking in public places is undemocratic.
Euthanasia should be legalized.
Prostitution should be legalized.
The taboo on recreational drugs is unjustified.
Driving speed limits should be lifted in areas with low accident risk.
DUI offenders should give up their driver license for a year.
Laws to protect the victims of domestic abuse should be enforced.
Making drugs illegal creates an environment for crime and violence.
Fast Food advertisements and promotions should be banned.
Retirement should be made compulsory at the age of 60.
Cell phones and driving.
Billboards should not be allowed on interstate highways.
Acceptance of all types of people.
Today’s world is a dangerous place to live in.
People don’t enjoy what they have. They constantly seek for more.
Benefits of having friends.
Modern offices should have facilities for an afternoon nap.
Would you rather be lucky, rich, or intelligent?
Reality television makes people stupid and should be regulated.
Has television become out-dated?
Watching television makes people smarter.
Banning some books and movies can help society.
Assisted Suicide.
Genetic Research.
Is human cloning ethical?
The Ethics of Capital Punishment.
Euthanasia is not morally acceptable.
Abortion is inhumane and murder.
Abortions should be legal in cases of rape and incest.
DNA experiments on human embryos are unethical and should not be allowed.
Torture is an acceptable measure to prevent terrorism.
Wearing fur is unethical.
Cultural treasures should be returned to their countries of origin.
Do animals have rights? Using animals for scientific research is inhumane.
Spaying and neutering pets should be mandatory.
Zoos, aquariums, and circus violate animal rights and should be shut down.
Should scientists bring back extinct species through cloning?
Hunting is unethical and should not be allowed.
Doctors are better than Lawyers Are beauty pageants exploitative?
Feminism is bad for society.
The Miss America pageant is sexist.

The above-mentioned topics and tips for argumentative speech should help you prepare and deliver an argumentative speech. If you have any suggestions or feedback, please let me know in the comment below.

Persuasive Writing and Reading

Persuasive Writing : When students construct persuasive arguments they can learn how to Analyze Persuasive Texts .

Analyze Persuasive Passages

Persuasive Statements

Native American Views of Nature

Persuasive Speeches

Remarks by President Barack Obama in Eulogy for the Honorable Reverend Clementa Pinckney

President Barack Obama's Second Inaugural Address

Ain't I a Woman? Sojourner Truth

Frederick Douglass Speech on Women's Suffrage

John F. Kennedy's Remarks in the Rudolph Wilde Platz, Berlin

Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

President Barack Obama's Speech to Students

Governor Deval Patrick's Inaugural Speech

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address

Mayor Harold Washington's Acceptance Speech

Helen Keller Speech about the Blind

Persuasive Poems and Songs

Analyze then Create a Persuasive Song

Interpret African American Spirituals

America the Beautiful

This Land is Your Land

We will overcome!

Consider what difference ! makes.

How much stronger is will than shall ?

How does this song relate to "Yes we can!"

Link to Mother to Son by Langston Hughes

Not in the public domain but accessible at this site.

Liberty Song about Abolition

More resources

Competition Events

Competition Events Guide

Speech involves a presentation by one or two students that is judged against a similar type of presentation by others in a round of competition. There are two general categories of speech events, public address events and interpretive events. Public address events feature a speech written by the student, either in advance or with limited prep, that can answer a question, share a belief, persuade an audience, or educate the listener on a variety of topics. Interpretation events center upon a student selecting and performing published material and appeal to many who enjoy acting and theatre.

Debate involves an individual or a team of students working to effectively convince a judge that their side of a resolution or topic is, as a general principle, more valid. Students in debate come to thoroughly understand both sides of an issue, having researched each extensively, and learn to think critically about every argument that could be made on each side.

To learn more about each event, click on the event name.

Interp events.

Dramatic Interpretation (DI)
Duo Interpretation (DUO)
Humorous Interpretation (HI)
Poetry (POE)
Program Oral Interpretation (POI)
Prose (PRO)
Storytelling (STO)

Public Address Events

Commentary (EXC)
Declamation (DEC)
Expository (EXP)
Impromptu (IMP)
Informative Speaking (INF)
International Extemporaneous Speaking (IX)
Mixed Extemporaneous Speaking (MX)
Original Oratory (OO)
Original Spoken Word Poetry (SW)
Pro Con Challenge (PCC)
United States Extemporaneous Speaking (USX)

Debate Events

Big Questions (BQ)
Congressional Debate (House & Senate) (CON)
Extemporaneous Debate (XDB)
Lincoln-Douglas Debate (LD)
Policy Debate (CX)
Public Forum Debate (PF)
World Schools Debate (WS)

Students are presented with prompts related to societal, political, historic or popular culture and, in 20 minutes, prepare a five-minute speech responding to the prompt. Students may consult articles and evidence they gather prior to the contest. At the National Tournament, students may use internet during preparation. Some other tournaments may not. The speech is delivered from memory and no notes are allowed.

About Declamation

About Dramatic Interpretation

About Duo Interpretation

About Expository

About Humorous Interpretation

About Impromptu

Impromptu is a public speaking event where students have seven minutes to select a topic, brainstorm their ideas, outline and deliver a speech. The speech is given without notes and uses an introduction, body, and conclusion. The speech can be light-hearted or serious. It can be based upon prompts that range from nursery rhymes, current events, celebrities, organizations, and more.

An adapted version of Impromptu, Prepared Prompt Speaking, has been used at online tournaments. In Prepared Prompt, students will be given a list of topics prior to the tournament, select one prompt from the official list, prepare a speech, and submit it through the recording process.

Impromptu is a public speaking event that tests a student’s ability to analyze a prompt, process their thoughts, organize the points of the speech, and deliver them in a clear, coherent manner. Students’ logic is extremely important. They must be able to take an abstract idea, such as a fortune from a fortune cookie, and put together a speech that has a thesis and supporting information.

About Informative Speaking

Informative is a speech written by the student with the intent to inform the audience on a topic of significance. Students in informative may use a visual aid. Informative gives students the unique opportunity to showcase their personality while educating the audience. An Informative is not simply an essay about the topic—it is a well researched and organized presentation with evidence, logic, and sometimes humor to convey a message. Topics are varied and interesting. Whether it be a new technological advance the audience is unaware of or a new take on a concept that everyone is familiar with, Informative is the students opportunity to teach the audience. Types of topics and structure vary greatly.

About International Extemp

International Extemporaneous Speaking, typically called International Extemp, is a speech on current International events with limited preparation time. A student’s understanding of important political, economic, and cultural issues is assessed along with critical thinking and analytical skills. Students report to a draw room (often referred to as Extemp prep) where all of the Extempers gather at tables, set out their files, and await their turn to draw topics. Students may access research brought with them to the tournament during the 30-minute preparation period. Some tournaments, including the NSDA National Tournament, will permit students to use the internet to research during preparation time. When prep time is up, the student reports to the competition room to deliver a 7 minute speech. Students have a lot to do in 30 minutes—they must select a question, review research, outline arguments with supporting materials, and practice at least part of the speech before time expires. Many tournaments prohibit the consultation of notes during the speech in which case speech structure and evidence need to be memorized during prep time as well.

Mixed Extemp

Mixed Extemp combines international and domestic issues (as opposed to two separate events like high school). Mixed Extemp is an event at the NSDA Middle School National Tournament. Students are presented with a choice of three questions related to national and international current events. The student has 30 minutes to prepare a seven-minute speech answering the selected question. Students may consult articles and evidence to help with their preparation. The internet may be used during preparation time at the NSDA Middle School National Tournament, though local events may not allow use of internet.

About Original Oratory

About Original Spoken Word Poetry

The maximum time limit is 5 minutes with a 30-second grace period. The delivery must be memorized, and no book or script may be used. No more than 150 words of the original poetry may be direct quotation from any other speech or writing. A successful performer will craft a piece that elicits critical thought, reflection, or emotion. As opposed to traditional Poetry, Spoken Word Poetry is created to be performed aloud and may feature rhythmic flow, vivid imagery, word play, gestures, lyrical elements, and repetition. Use the Getting Started with Original Spoken Word Poetry guide as a helpful tool to explore ways to express thoughts and experiences through poetry.

About Poetry

Poetry is characterized by writing that conveys ideas, experiences, and emotions through language and expression. Often Poetry is very creative in terms of vocabulary and composition. While Poetry may tell a story or develop a character, more often Poetry’s focus on language and form are designed to elicit critical thought, reflection, or emotion. Students may choose what the National Speech & Debate Association refers to as traditional Poetry, which often has a formal meter or rhyme scheme, or nontraditional Poetry, which often has a rhythmic flow but lacks formal rhyme or meter. Poetry is different than Original Spoken Word Poetry in that students in Poetry will perform works written by others. In Poetry, students may chose to perform one long poem or create a program of poetry from one source or multiple sources.

Pro Con Challenge

Students select the National Tournament topic for CX, LD, or PF or a piece of legislation in the Congressional Debate Docket and write a 3-5 minute affirmative speech and a 3-5 minute negative speech on that topic. This event allows students to explore debate topics in a new and exciting way while showing off their writing, research, and delivery skills.

About Progam Oral Interpretation

About Prose

About Storytelling

Storytelling consists of sharing a story with an audience, performed as if the audience were a group of young children. Some tournaments have themes that the story selection must fit in; the National Tournament does not have a theme, and any story selection is acceptable. The story must not exceed five minutes. Students may use a full range of movement to express themselves and may incorporate a chair in a variety of different ways, though the chair may not be used as a prop during the performance. Students may be seated but most commonly performers use a full range of stage space available to them. As there are so many different types of stories that can be performed, it is important to observe rounds to see what other students and teams are using. The Association has final rounds of Storytelling from both the high school and middle school level to review. Local and regional tournaments may vary in the selection of stories performed.

About United States Extemp

About Big Questions Debate

Time limits.

*Each team is entitled to three minutes of prep time during the round.

About Congressional Debate

About Extemporaneous Debate

About Lincoln-Douglas Debate

Lincoln-Douglas Debate typically appeals to individuals who like to debate, but prefer a one-on-one format as opposed to a team or group setting. Additionally, individuals who enjoy LD like exploring questions of how society ought to be. Many people refer to LD Debate as a “values” debate, as questions of morality and justice are commonly examined. Students prepare cases and then engage in an exchange of cross-examinations and rebuttals in an attempt to convince a judge that they are the better debater in the round.

About Policy Debate

About Public Forum Debate

About World Schools Debate

Hyperbole Definition

What is hyperbole? Here’s a quick and simple definition:

Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations intended to emphasize a point, rather than be taken literally. For example, in the hyperbolic statement, "My backpack weighs a ton ," the speaker doesn't actually think the backpack weighs a ton, nor does he or she intend the listener to think so. The backpack-wearer simply wants to communicate, through the use of hyperbole, that he or she is carrying a very heavy load.

Some additional key details about hyperbole:

Because of its ability to express larger-than-life emotion, hyperbole is common in novels, poetry, politics and advertising slogans.
The opposite of hyperbole is litotes , deliberate understatement. In a rhetorical context—meaning, in the context of persuasive speaking and writing—hyperbole is sometimes called auxesis while litotes goes by the name meiosis.
Different examples of hyperbole can be structured quite differently as sentences. The key to hyperbole is not how the sentence is structured, but whether, through purposeful exaggeration, it creates strong feelings or impressions or emphasizes a point.

How to Pronounce Hyperbole

Here's how to pronounce hyperbole: hi- per -buh-lee

Hyperbole vs. Simile

It can be hard to tell the difference between hyperbole and simile . A simile is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things in order to make a description more vivid and interesting. Simile, further, is defined by the use of the words "like" or "as," which the writer uses to establish the comparison that he or she wants to make. An example of a simile is:

She was beautiful like a rose.

Now consider this sentence from Richard Brautigan's novel, A Confederate General from Big Sur:

When Lee Mellon finished the apple he smacked his lips together like a pair of cymbals.

At first, the sentence seems like a simile because:

It contains the word like.
It's comparing two unlike things to enliven the author's description (lips and cymbals).

However, Brautigan's comparison also exaggerates the noise of Mellon's smacking lips by comparing it to the clash of cymbals. No matter how bad Mellon's table manners were, it would be impossible for him to achieve the volume of a pair of cymbals clashing with his lips, so isn't this also a hyperbole?

There is a simmering debate as to whether a figure of speech can be considered both hyperbole and simile simultaneously. With this particular example, you could make two arguments.

That Brautigan's main goal is to vividly describe the sound of Mellon's smacking lips by drawing a fanciful comparison between lips and cymbals —the fact that this comparison amplifies the lip-smacking sound in an impossible way is secondary to his purpose. This would mean that you consider the sentence to be a simile .
That Brautigan's main goal is to exaggerate the volume of Mellon's smacking lips, and that he does so in the form of a comparison, which happens to include the word "like." This would mean that you consider the sentence to be hyperbole .

Some grammar experts (and teachers) might ask you to decide on one definition: simile or hyperbole. However, it seems more important to understand the distinction between hyperbole and simile:

Hyperbole focuses on exaggeration in order to emphasize a point.
Simile focuses on a comparison to provide vivid description and make a reader see something in a new way.

That way, if you think a figure of speech is hyperbole and simile simultaneously, you can explain why it's both.

Hyperbole Examples

Hyperbole in literature.

Hyperbole often appears in literature, particularly prose literature like novels and stories.

Hyperbole in Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse Five

Kurt Vonnegut frequently uses hyperbole in his novels, for both dramatic and comedic effect. In this example from Slaughterhouse-Five , Billy Pilgrim emerges from an underground slaughterhouse where he has been held prisoner by the Germans during the deadly World War II firebombing of Dresden:

There was a fire-storm out there. Dresden was one big flame. The one flame ate everything organic, everything that would burn. It wasn't safe to come out of the shelter until noon the next day. When the Americans and their guards did come out, the sky was black with smoke. The sun was an angry little pinhead. Dresden was like the moon now, nothing but minerals. The stones were hot. Everybody else in the neighborhood was dead.

Vonnegut's hyperbolic language, particularly his description of Dresden as "one big flame," helps him convey the enormous devastation left by the bombs. So too does his statement that, "the sky was black with smoke." While smoke from the bombs probably darkened the sky, it's improbable that the sky was completely black with smoke—Vonnegut exaggerates to emphasize the extent of the damage, to capture what the damage felt like.

Hyperbole in Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle

In Cat's Cradle, Vonnegut uses hyperbole to describe his character Felix Hoenikker, a fictional scientist who helped invent the atomic bomb. As in Slaughterhouse Five, hyperbole allows Vonnegut to write about violence on an enormous scale, and to describe the twisted genius who invented the bomb with vividness and emotion. In the following example, the novel's narrator talks with Dr. Hoenniker's former research supervisor in search of clues to Hoenniker's personality:

"I understand you were Dr. Hoenikker's supervisor during most of his professional life," I said to Dr. Breed on the telephone. "On paper," he said. "I don't understand," I said. "If I actually supervised Felix," he said, "then I'm ready now to take charge of volcanoes, the tides, and the migrations of birds and lemmings. The man was a force of nature no mortal could possibly control."

Of course, Dr. Breed isn't actually willing to take charge of volcanoes, tides, and other natural phenomena. He's comparing Felix Hoenikker to these forces of nature to show that Hoenniker is one of them: brilliant, self-contained and impossible to control.

Hyperbole in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice

Elizabeth Bennet, the most free-spirited character in Pride and Prejudice , refuses Mr. Darcy's marriage proposal with a string of hyperbole:

From the very beginning, from the first moment I may almost say, of my acquaintance with you, your manners impressing me with the fullest belief of your arrogance, your conceit, and your selfish disdain of the feelings of others, were such as to form that ground-work of disapprobation, on which succeeding events have built so immoveable a dislike; and I had not known you a month before I felt that you were the last man in the world whom I could ever be prevailed on to marry.

Elizabeth's closing statement, that Darcy is the "last man in the world" whom she would ever marry, is an obvious hyperbole. It's hard to believe that Elizabeth would rather marry, say, an axe murderer or a diseased pirate than Mr. Darcy. Even beyond the obvious exaggeration, Austen's use of hyperbole in this exchange hints at the fact that Elizabeth's feelings for Darcy are more complicated than she admits, even to herself. Austen drops various hints throughout the beginning of the novel that Elizabeth feels something beyond mere dislike for Darcy. Taken together with these hints, Elizabeth's hyperbolic statements seem designed to convince not only Darcy, but also herself, that their relationship has no future.

Hyperbole in Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird

The story of To Kill a Mockingbird takes place during the Great Depression in Maycomb County, Georgia: a sleepy town where nothing much ever happens:

People moved slowly then. They ambled across the square, shuffled in and out of the stores around it, took their time about everything. A day was twenty-four hours long but seemed longer. There was no hurry, for there was nowhere to go, nothing to buy and no money to buy it with, nothing to see outside the boundaries of Maycomb County.

Lee's use of hyperbole to describe the town— nothing to buy, no money to buy it, nowhere to go—links the difficult economic situation to the townspeople's pace of life, as well as to the insular, isolated nature of this community.

Hyperbole in Politics

When described in hyperbolic terms, people and things can seem larger-than-life. For this reason, politicians who want to project a sense of confidence regarding a particular issue, or stir up sentiments for or against something—whether it's a candidate, an opponent, or an idea— often use hyperbole.

Hyperbole in John F. Kennedy's 1962 Nobel Prize Dinner Speech

In his remarks at a dinner celebrating the 1962 Nobel Prize winners, JFK paid them the following hyperbolic compliment:

I want to tell you how welcome you are to the White House. I think this is the most extraordinary collection of talent, of human knowledge, that has ever been gathered together at the White House, with the possible exception of when Thomas Jefferson dined alone.

In stating that all the prize winners' brilliance put together would not match Thomas Jefferson's genius, Kennedy wants to convey his great esteem for Jefferson as well as the prize winners, rather than set up a literal comparison or "battle of the brains."

Hyperbole in Donald Trump's Inaugural Address

In his speech at the inauguration, Donald Trump used hyperbole to describe the severity of the nation's problems, and to emphasize his compassion for those suffering under their impact:

But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exists: Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities; rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation; an education system flush with cash, but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of knowledge; and the crime and gangs and drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now. We are one nation—and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams ; and their success will be our success. We share one heart , one home, and one glorious destiny.

When he calls America's most pressing social issues "carnage," Trump isn't implying that we're living through a literal "massacre." Instead, he's using hyperbole to communicate the severe economic circumstances in certain communities. Similarly, "their dreams are our dreams," and "we share one heart," are both examples of hyperbole that Trump uses to express compassion.

Trump has used hyperbole throughout his career, fully aware of its rhetorical power. In his book The Art of Deal, cowritten by Tony Schwartz, Trump describes how he uses this figure of speech strategically:

“The final key to the way I promote is bravado. I play to people’s fantasies. People may not always think big themselves, but they can still get very excited by those who do. That’s why a little hyperbole never hurts. People want to believe that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spectacular. I call it truthful hyperbole. It’s an innocent form of exaggeration—and a very effective form of promotion.”

Why Do Writers Use Hyperbole?

Hyperbole has been used since the days of ancient Greece, and its use has been criticized for just as long. Aristotle himself pronounced hyperbole worthy of use only by "angry" and "undisciplined" people. Around the year A.D. 95, though, the Roman rhetorician Quintilian wrote the following eloquent defense of hyperbole :

Hyperbole lies, but not so as to intend to deceive by lying. . . . It is in common use, as much among the unlearned as among the learned; because there is in all men a natural propensity to magnify or extenuate what comes before them, and no one is contented with the exact truth. But such departure from the truth is pardoned, because we do not affirm what is false. In a word, the hyperbole is a beauty, when the thing itself, of which we have to speak, is in its nature extraordinary; for we are then allowed to say a little more than the truth, because the exact truth cannot be said; and language is more efficient when it goes beyond reality than when it stops short of it.

Writers and people in general exaggerate accounts of their experiences in an effort to communicate. Hyperbole gives them an opportunity to compensate for the fact that true, lived experiences often can't be satisfactorily reproduced in spoken or written language. Quintilian's defense of this figure of speech is quite profound—he argues that hyperbole isn't intended to deceive, or to express an exaggerated form of the truth, but instead to stand in for truths that are inexpressible.

Other Helpful Hyperbole Resources

The Wikipedia Page on Hyperbole: A brief explanation of hyperbole as a literary device and rhetorical strategy.
The Dictionary Definition of Hyperbole: A basic definition and etymology of the term—it comes from the Greek hyper , "beyond" and ballein, "to throw."
The 10 Greatest Hyperboles of All Time: An article from ThoughtCo listing 10 great hyperboles that span genres and centuries.
The best Disney hyperboles : A video showing examples of hyperbole from Disney movies.

The printed PDF version of the LitCharts literary term guide on Hyperbole

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COMMENTS

Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment
collection. Poems of Protest, Resistance, and Empowerment. Why poetry is necessary and sought after during crises. By The Editors. Illustration by CHema Skandal! Pithy and powerful, poetry is a popular art form at protests and rallies. From the civil rights and women's liberation movements to Black Lives Matter, poetry is commanding enough to ...
PDF POETRY
Poetry is a highly unique event, particularly at the middle school level where it is one of the only events with a norm of creating programs, or multiple pieces spliced together. Programs often feature two, three, four, or more poems depending on length of each. All the poems can revolve around the same theme or be
What Poetry Teaches Us About the Power of Persuasion
Grammar and persuasive argument are essential skills for any student. But if someone is telling you that there is a set and finite way to construct a sentence -- and you're a poet -- you will ...
Speech: "To be, or not to be, that is the…
To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer. The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, Or to take arms against a sea of troubles. And by opposing end them. To die—to sleep, No more; and by a sleep to say we end. The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks. That flesh is heir to: 'tis a consummation.
How to Write an Argumentative Essay on Poetry
Look at condensed language and not only form an interpretation of the words but also argue your position: That is the assignment when writing an essay about poetry. As a reader, you examine and even evaluate the work. As an essayist, you write about your understanding of the piece. Choose a central idea such as ...
The Power of Poetry in Speeches
Well, for starter, a poem can really serve as a highlight of a speech, breaking the usual monotony. It adds a fresher element to the speech, and helps to capture the audience's attention better. Poetry can also be a very good reference point in your speech. By adding a familiar poem to the audience, the speaker can help the audience ...
Poetry and the Civil Rights Movement
The poems collected here revisit the heroic struggles of civil rights activists 50 years later. Poets influenced by the civil rights movement--a ... (June 1963). Martin Luther King Jr. delivers his "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington (August 1963). White supremacists bomb the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham ...
Poetry and Rhetoric: Arguments and Verse
The potential for looking at poetry as argument. Defining an argument as a claim or opinion vs. "a fight" How Amanda analyzes poetry through the lens of The Big Six. What rhetoric and poetry should have in common. Resources. Register for our FREE masterclass, Down With the Reading Quiz. Join Curriculum Rehab. Amanda's Big Six Framework
Plato on Rhetoric and Poetry
Poetry is once again cast as a kind of speech making (258b3) and, very importantly, Socrates declares that "It's not speaking or writing well that's shameful; ... That poetry is itself a kind of persuasive discourse or rhetoric has already been mentioned. It comes as no surprise to read that Socrates indicts rhapsodes on the grounds that ...
Why Teaching Poetry Is So Important
Poems have accounted for no more than 100. This is a shame—not just because poetry is important to teach, but also because poetry is important for the teaching of writing and reading. High ...
LibGuides: Writing to Change: Non-Traditional Argument (Grade 12
Spoken Word: Speeches, Podcasting, & Slam Poetry; Video & Graphics: Public Service Announcements; Argument Writing. An argumentative speech is a persuasive speech in which the speaker attempts to persuade his audience to alter their viewpoints on a controversial issue. While a persuasive speech may be aimed more at sharing a viewpoint and ...
Using poetry to sharpen students' claims for argument writing
Just, wow. Of course, not all argument writing negotiates family peace. Some is meant to stir us up, to motivate readers, to poke at our conscience and provoke action. Willie Perdomo (2020) refers to the "lyrical machete" a poem can wield (p. 1). There is a sharpness to a good argument, an edge, a ferocity, a danger.
Analyzing Famous Speeches as Arguments
From Theory to Practice. Nearly everything we read and hear is an argument. Speeches are special kinds of arguments and should be analyzed as such. Listeners should keep in mind the context of the situation involving the delivery and the audience-but a keen observer should also pay close attention to the elements of argument within the text.
Argumentative Poems
Argumentative Poems - Examples of all types of poems about argumentative to share and read. This list of new poems is composed of the works of modern poets of PoetrySoup. ... Of course I agree with free speech And the right of people to have their say, But why can't people be more reasonable, And see it my way?
Persuasion
Persuasion presents ideas in a logical manner using reason and common sense. Persuasion attempts to convince the reader that what's happening in a novel, short story, poem, play, or even in academic/ non-fiction writing makes sense and can be believed. Writers who effectively use persuasion make their opinions and literary decisions believable.
183 Argumentative Speech Topics & ideas: A Complete Guide
Make sure you research and present the argument that is a relevant argument. 4. Refute alternate positions. At the end of a strong argumentative speech, you have to refute alternate positions. By dealing with the opponent, make some powerful arguments. Try to work on some common and stronger viewpoints.
Logos
Logos, along with ethos and pathos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Logos is an argument that appeals to an audience's sense of logic or reason. For example, when a speaker cites scientific data, methodically walks through the line of reasoning behind their argument, or precisely ...
Persuasive Speeches, Poems and Songs
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's First Inaugural Address. Mayor Harold Washington's Acceptance Speech. Helen Keller Speech about the Blind. Persuasive Poems and Songs. Analyze then Create a Persuasive Song. Interpret African American Spirituals. America the Beautiful. This Land is Your Land. We will overcome!
Figure of Speech
A figure of speech is a literary device in which language is used in an unusual—or "figured"—way in order to produce a stylistic effect. Figures of speech can be broken into two main groups: figures of speech that play with the ordinary meaning of words (such as metaphor, simile, and hyperbole ), and figures of speech that play with the ...
Pathos
Here's a quick and simple definition: Pathos, along with logos and ethos, is one of the three "modes of persuasion" in rhetoric (the art of effective speaking or writing). Pathos is an argument that appeals to an audience's emotions. When a speaker tells a personal story, presents an audience with a powerful visual image, or appeals to an ...
Short Argumentative Poems
Categories: argumentative, how i feel, political, Form: Acrostic. A Short Hypocrocy. Im a little bit of what I see in everyone else. An exasperating inconvenience, ill-. disposed and argumentative. I want to hate you but then I would have to hate. myself. Self-centered, stingy, and stupendously sarcastic.
Competition Events
Speech involves a presentation by one or two students that is judged against a similar type of presentation by others in a round of competition.There are two general categories of speech events, public address events and interpretive events. Public address events feature a speech written by the student, either in advance or with limited prep, that can answer a question, share a belief ...
7 Reasons to Study Poetry
We teach students that poetry is its own language - "the language of pictures and music.". Because of this, to fully explain all that a poem communicates would take pages of writing. Poetry has the unique quality of combining the sounds of the words, the images created by words, and a poem's structure to convey dense meaning. 5 ...
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which a writer or speaker exaggerates for the sake of emphasis. Hyperbolic statements are usually quite obvious exaggerations intended to emphasize a point, rather than be taken literally. For example, in the hyperbolic statement, "My backpack weighs a ton ," the speaker doesn't actually think the backpack ...