Style and Culture

     Ramus's not exactly egotistical. It's more of a "if you don't agree with me by now, you're an idiot." Maybe he's just tired of people burning his books.

     Ignoring his (seemingly) arrogance, I'm extremely interested in his claim. He knows and accepts that morality may aid arts (rhetoric being one of these), but doesn't want virtue directly tied to rhetoric. It's almost like he doesn't want one art (rhetoric) to be virtuous and for the others to be left out. He wrote, "I shall not object to your opinion that moral virtue is undoubtedly useful and suitable for the use of all arts, but in no way shall I admit that any art is a moral virtue" (686).
     I like this. It's not his entire argument - and I don't agree with everything - but this I like. I just got out of my creative writing class (yea, Sabrina's going to talk about CW again!). We were talking about a TS Elliot essay in which he claims the poet's own emotions and experience don't affect the art; the method and format do. Is that not the same exact thing?
     I like the argument because it makes any writer focus on the words they are actually writing instead of dismissing sound in place of emotion (i.e. Nicholas Sparks). If the reader feels something, it should be as a result of the poetics, the style. Zack Bean, the creative writing professor, used an example today of writing "profound sadness" on a piece of paper and expecting the reader to feel profound sadness. It doesn't work.
     I also think, though, Ramus ignores the time dependent culture in which Quintilian wrote. Ramus claimed, "The grammarian is defined as skilled in speaking and writing correctly; he is not defined as skilled in speaking, writing, and singing. Why not? Because grammar provides no precepts about the last" (683). In classical times, the wider variety of knowledge, the more wise the man, right? But I'm confused by Ramus because the Renaissance man was the same, was he not? Ramus could perhaps be lost in that gray area between the medieval and renaissance the introduction discussed, but he doesn't match my expectation of renaissance in any case.