The
Trivium
:
The Liberal Arts of Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric
Sister Miriam Joseph
Edited by Marguerite McGlinn
Take a Moment and read an excerpt from this book.
The Trivium guides the reader through a clarifying and rigorous account of logic, grammar, and rhetoric. A thorough presentation of general grammar, propositions, syllogisms, enthymemes, fallacies, poetics, figurative language, and metrical discourse — accompanied by lucid graphics and enlivened by examples from Shakespeare, Milton, Plato, and others — makes The Trivium a perfect book for teachers, students, writers, lawyers, and all serious users of language.
"Trivium" means the crossroads where the three branches of language meet. In the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, students studied and mastered this integrated view of language. Modern language teaching keeps the parts without the vision of the whole. Inspired by the possibility of helping students "acquire mastery over the tools of learning" Sister Miriam Joseph and other teachers at Saint Mary's College designed and taught a course on the trivium for all first year students. The Trivium resulted from that noble endeavor. The Paul Dry Books edition of The Trivium provides new graphics and notes to make the book accessible to today's readers.
"Is the trivium, then, a sufficient education for life? Properly taught, I believe that it should be." —Dorothy L. Sayers
"The Trivium is a highly recommended and welcome contribution to any serious and dedicated writer's reference collection." —Midwest Book Review
Attention liberal arts graduates!
Can you name the liberal arts? Do you know the difference between induction and deduction? Can you define rhetoric? Can you list the components of rhetoric
according to Aristotle? Do you remember what a syllogism is? What about an enthymeme?
Attention lovers of the classics!
Did you know that Shakespeare used the hypothetical proposition in his dramas to state important problems? On page 170 of The Trivium, we learn that Hamlet uses a hypothetical proposition when he says of Claudius: "If his occulted guilt/ Do not itself unkennel in one speech,/ It is a damned ghost that we have seen." See page 171 to learn how Shakespeare used the disjunctive.
Attention lovers of arcane knowledge!
Would you like to read a funny story that Sir Thomas More related to illustrate the consequence of incorrectly converting a hypothetical proposition? Would
you like to know the Latin mnemonic that enumerates the valid moods of the four figures of the syllogism? Can you explain the retained object in passive voice? Maybe you would like to read Thomas H. Huxley's
quintuple enthymeme in defense of liberal education. If so, you will find it on page 142 of The Trivium. Do you know the difference between the post hoc ergo hoc fallacy and the fallacy of false cause?
Attention Home Schoolers and Classical Christian teachers!
This book presents the trivium in its authentic form. It is the only book available that does so.
Attention those who think The Trivium is not for them!
Can you outline the steps in scientific method? Do you know Aristotle's definition of a verb? Would you like a brief guide to effective writing?
Wouldn't you like to have the most thorough guide to brainstorming ever created? Do you know how John Milton used logical obversion to characterize Satan in Paradise Lost? When's the last time you saw the square
of opposition or the Tree of Porphyry?
"Lovers of language who want to articulate its necessities and possibilities for themselves, teachers who want to explain its ways to their students, students who like the comfort of decisive clarity—all these will find this book a good companion, for Sister Miriam Joseph is one of those lovingly remembered teachers who arouses our critical abilities by offering us her firm but friendly learning. Her teaching is traditional. She fits language into the liberal arts, sets out the classical elements of grammar, explains Aristotelian logic, and gives solid advice on good writing, fleshing it all out with revealing examples." —Eva Brann (Eva suggested that we publish The Trivium, which has become our bestselling book)
Sister Miriam Joseph Rauh, C.S.C., (1898–1982) earned her doctorate from Columbia University. A member of the Sisters of the Holy Cross, Sister Miriam was professor of English at Saint Mary's College from 1931 to 1960. She was also the author of Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of Language and many articles on Shakespeare and on the trivium.
Marguerite McGlinn is an editor and writer whose essays and short stories have appeared in English Journal, the New York Times, the Sun-Sentinel, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and the Los Angeles Times. She is a former English teacher.
Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of LanguageSister Miriam JosephNow available in paperback
Hardcover,
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Grammar-school students in Shakespeare's time were taught to recognize the two hundred figures of speech that Renaissance scholars had derived from Latin and Greek sources (from amphibologia through onomatopoeia to zeugma). This knowledge was one element in their thorough grounding in the liberal arts of logic, grammar, and rhetoric, known as the trivium. In Shakespeare's Use of the Arts of . . . [read more] |
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Why do so many writing courses, with their earnest handbooks and narrow focus on "clarity," bore students and fail to teach them how to write well? Richard Lanham provides answers, and an antidote, in the seven witty and provocative chapters of Style: An Anti-Textbook. 1. THE PROSE PROBLEM AND "THE BOOKS" 2. THE USES |