Retorica in de antieke klas: vergeten hefboom voor taal- en literatuuronderwijs vandaag

This article deals with ancient rhetoric, a discipline central to ancient education.As is well known to classicists but perhaps less so to other language professionals, this discipline provided important, conceptual foundations for an area much larger than mere speech-writing. I illustrate this observation by exploring the basics of the so-called progymnasmata, preliminary exercises in writing and composition, and by showing how these exercises were intimately connected with the gradual development of writing skills, comprehension of texts and literary criticism. I argue that, since progymnasmatic theory both drew upon and was later consolidated in various literary traditions (in Antiquity and beyond), its conceptual toolkit remains relevant in modern-day teaching of languages and literatures, both ancient and modern. To show this, I focus on two progymnasmata in particular (ethopoeia and ecphrasis) and discuss examples from ancient fiction, tragedy, late antique hagiography, Shakespeare and a novel from the French Renaissance.