ABSTRACT
The Greco-Roman progymnasmata were graduated exercises in speaking and writing designed for boys before they took up the formal study of rhetoric. In form and content, they remained largely unchanged until around 1700, when the exercises disappeared suddenly from the pedagogical scene in Europe and England (Clark, “Rise and Fall”). In the twenty-first century, however, the progymnasmata are enjoying a renaissance, in arenas ranging from first-year composition to the classical education (e.g., Bauer), classical Christian education (e.g., Wilson), and home-schooling movements. While the motives and philosophy of the alternative educational systems, in particular, may prove surprising to historians of rhetoric, it is possible to construct a rhetorical genealogy for emerging uses of the progymnasmata in literacy education. In hypothesizing such a genealogy, I group together various classical education philosophies and programs, and, in turn, separate them from appropriations of the classical progymnasmata for composition pedagogy. I then analyze the cultural work performed by the classical progymnasmata in classical, Renaissance, and contemporary paideia and speculate on their cultural function at the present time.
