A Conceptual Framework for Rhetorical Pedagogy - Bridging the Cultural Divide between Medieval Texts and Contemporary Students
A Conceptual Framework for Rhetorical Pedagogy - Bridging the Cultural Divide between Medieval Texts and Contemporary Students

Summary/Abstract: This article addresses the pedagogical challenge of teaching rhetoric using high-context Medieval texts to contemporary university students accustomed to low-context communication styles, following the definition of Edward. T. Halll. Foundational texts from figures like Hrabanus Maurus, Hugh of St Victor, and John of Salisbury are essential to rhetorical history but remain largely unaccessible to modern readers. These texts rely heavily on unspoken, implicit, collective intellectual background (Christian theology, classical history, scholastic philosophy). In contrast, modern communication is overwhelmingly low-context. Influenced by digital media, global diversity, and secular education, contemporary students seek explicit, fragmented, and immediate information. The high-context nature of Medieval rhetoric is thus often dismissed as opaque, irrelevant, or simply too demanding of sustained attention and cultural inference. To bridge this divide, this article proposes a pedagogical framework centered on Martindale, and later Harwick’s development Classical Reception Theory (CRT). Drawing on the work of Gadamer, Jauss and Isner, CRT offers a powerful methodology that deliberately links the student’s horizon of expectation to the historical horizon of the text. This approach avoids training students in historical minutiae; instead, it uses the text as a site for a dialogic encounter leading to a fusion of horizons. The strategy requires instructors to make the difference in context the primary subject of rhetorical analysis—examining what the Medieval author implicitly assumes and why the modern reader requires that assumption to be explicitly unpacked. By implementing this Classical Reception Theory approach, instructors can transform challenging historical texts into dynamic tools for understanding how rhetorical strategy is fundamentally shaped by the cultural and cognitive context of its audience.

• Details
• Contents