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celebrate and communicate the truth by decking it in ceremonial
garb, the various formulas and ornamental designs of public
discourse, whether spoken or written” (23) and, furthermore,
“ideas exist prior to language, […] content of a discourse is
wholly independent from its form, […] knowledge is fixed and
stable, the possession of a master who passes it on to students,
and […] writing is largely a ceremonial act” (23-4). In the
end, classical rhetoric should be left to molder in antiquity
because its perspective that “writing is merely a vehicle for
transmitting the known to those who don’t yet know” (24) was
utterly incompatible with this Post-Modern Age, which not only
welcomes but celebrates the not wholly known – Uncertainty.
But other rhetorical theorists also with their critical eye
upon rhetorical theories of the classical era and an importing
of them to contemporary classrooms would seem to disagree
vigorously with Knoblauch and Brannon’s appraisal. In her book
The Methodical Memory, the crux of Sharon Crowley’s reinterpretation
and re-evaluation of classical rhetoric would
seem to rest with “invention,” which, “[f]rom a practical point
of view […] can be defined as the division of rhetoric that
supplies speakers and writers with instructions for finding the
specific arguments that are appropriate to a given rhetorical
situation” (2). However, for Crowley, it is much more
significant to rhetoric than that. For her:
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