ABSTRACT
Of the three rhetorical genres, epideictic - or panegyric - oratory is, on the surface, the least concerned with the art of persuasion. Consequently, epideictic has tended to be seen as closer to literature than to the manly pursuits of deliberative or judicial oratory. What the author particularly interested in, is the question of audience response, the psychological effect of a formal speech of praise on its listeners, and in persuasion as the creation of a shift in the audience's feelings about or perception of the topic. Chaim Perelman argues that rhetorical argumentation of all types aims at a shift in the audience's perspective, rather than at the type of conclusive demonstration that is the domain of dialectic, or science. Perelman's insight into the fundamentally rhetorical nature of epideictic balances the more usual perception of it as an anomalous type of rhetoric.
