Depression and Drama in Augustine of Hippo’s Rhetorical Imaginary

ABSTRACT

Studies of Augustine’s rhetoric have been focused on the De doctrina christiana and the Confessions. As a result, these studies have been restricted to questions of Augustine’s reception of Greco-Roman ideas. This article analyzes an underappreciated source, the De catechizandis rudibus, to show that Augustine engaged with a topic that his pagan forebears did not account for, namely rhetorical depression, a condition that tempts speakers to slide into a grim silence. Because rhetorical depression does not admit of a technical solution, Augustine responds to it by locating discourse within a redemptive drama animated by love. The hope of love’s ultimate victory over communicative futility and frustration inspires the depressed speaker to stammer onward rejoicing. Augustine’s placement of rhetoric within a dramatic history can prompt future reflection on the stories and myths found in past handbooks of rhetoric. It may also help us tell stories about rhetoric today that help depressed speakers get up in the morning.

KEYWORDS:

• Augustine
• depression
• drama
• religious rhetoric
• rhetoric

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ Unless otherwise noted, citations are taken from the translation by Raymond Canning.

² Unless otherwise noted, citations are taken from the translation by Henry Chadwick.

³ 2,4. In the Confessions talk of rhetoric is surrounded with the language of scarcity and salesmanship. In the DCR the language of gift and abundance abounds.

⁴ 2,4. Cf. Confessions 4.2.2.

⁵ It has been customary to ignore the DCR entirely (e.g., Baldwin 51–73; Clarke and Berry 148–57; Clavier passim; G. Kennedy 143–52). Murphy spends two pages on the DCR in his still very useful account of Augustine’s rhetoric, but he dubs the DCR a “treatise on pure exposition”—a puzzling categorization, given the work’s focus on feelings (190–91). Conybeare and Kolbet touch on the DCR, but neither sees it as having anything new or important to add to our understanding of Augustine’s rhetoric. For Conybeare, it is a “limited” work on “preaching,” like the De doctrina (304). Strictly speaking, the work is not about preaching but about speaking to inquirers in varied settings. For Kolbet, the DCR is an application of Augustine’s Christianized psychagogic theory to a specific context (154ff).

⁶ Roughly the last eighty years of scholarship on Augustine and rhetoric are bookended with similar answers to the question of whether Augustine’s rhetoric was Ciceronian. In 1936, Riley concluded that Augustine’s sole “contribution to the field of rhetoric” was that “he re-established Ciceronian concepts,” and in 2017 Conybeare concluded that “the framework within which Augustine sets his thoughts on preaching is explicitly Ciceronian” and wondered whether Augustine’s “supposedly vexed relationship with classical rhetoric” had been overplayed (Conybeare 304–05, 309; Riley 577). In the intervening time, others suggest that Augustine modified this or that principle of Ciceronian rhetoric. For an excellent selection of such studies focusing on De doctrina christiana, see Enos and Thompson’s collection. See also Camper’s study of Augustine’s approach to stylistic clarity and obscurity. Conley claims that Augustine seems to have written the DCR with Cicero’s De oratore “if not at his elbow, at least in the back of his mind” (75–76). If this were true, it would be possible to read this text as yet another instance of Augustine modifying pagan tradition. I think the connection is overstated. There are one or two seeming echoes of De oratore in the DCR, although never without significant alterations. For example, at 10.15, Augustine echoes De or. 2.162, but the Roman is there comparing teachers of rhetoric to wet nurses, whereas Augustine is comparing speakers to mothers whose willingness to endure so-called indignities for their little ones’ well-being is an image of the self-renunciation of Jesus for all humankind. In other words, the phrases are doing starkly different rhetorical work in the bishop and the orator’s respective texts.

⁷ Tell and Troup take the rare detour away from the De doctrina christiana and Confessions into De civitas in their respective articles on that work (Tell, “Augustinian Political Theory”; Troup “Augustine the African”). These articles explain how Augustine’s Christian theory of history gave him grounds to critique coercive empire and hold open the possibility for pluralistic public discourse. My argument also shows how Augustine’s thinking about history, especially redemptive history, shaped his approach to the practice of rhetoric.

⁸ For recent examples of how Augustine applied rhetorical concepts to problems in theology, see Gronewoller’s Rhetorical Economy in Augustine’s Theology as well as Clavier’s Eloquent Wisdom. On Augustine’s use of persona in the context of Christology, see also Williams, “Augustine’s Christology” (esp. 182–84).

⁹ An exception is Tell’s “Augustine and the ‘Chair of Lies,’” which argues that Augustine’s resignation from the profession of rhetoric was a response to Manichean loquacity, or empty chatter. Where the Manichees made empty professions in an attempt to overwhelm their audiences, Augustine speaks confessionally in order to “cling to God” (402). This confessional mode is the hallmark of what Tell describes as an Augustinian self in the realm of rhetoric. The argument I present here complements Tell’s by tackling the problem opposite to loquacity; namely, a depression that tempts the speaker to fall silent.

¹⁰ Connoly calls the Rhetorica ad Herrenium and De invention “two treatises exhorting the reader’s faith in the certainty of language” (71).

¹¹ DCR 1,1; cf. 10,14: “[Your complaint] is caused, I am aware, not so much by any defect in your knowledge of what needs to be said (I well know that you are read and equipped in this regard), nor by any lack of eloquence on your part, but by a feeling of inner aversion.”

¹² The same distinction should be made between Augustine’s account of rhetorical depression and Cicero’s thoughts on the uses and virtues of speech anxiety in De or. 1.119–20: “[T]he better a man speaks, the more frightened he feels about the difficulty of speaking.” Cicero thinks the good orator can harness the energy of anxiety to enhance the speech. Augustine never considers this, because he is talking about depression.

¹³ On these stories in Plato more generally, see Annas, “Plato’s Myths of Judgment.”

¹⁴ Settle also understands that hope plays a role in Augustine’s rhetorical thought, but he defines hope as “what the Godhead might choose to do or bring about in relation to a given rhetorical exigence” (52). In the DCR, the hope is not so situation-specific. It looks toward the end.