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THE BOURGEOIS SUBJECT AND THE DEMISE OF RHETORICAL EDUCATION The moral sense is not only itself a taste of a superior order. by which. in characters and conduct. we distinguish between the right and the wrong, the excellent and the faulty: but it also spreads its influence over all the most considerable works of art and genius. -Alexander Gerard, An Essay On Taste Opening the second book of De Inventione, Cicero recounts the story of Zeuxis and the five virgins. It seems that the famous sculptor planned a portrait of Helen, and the citizens of Croton-hoping that one or more of Zeuxis's works would wind up in their temple-allowed him to search among their young people for models. In Cicero's version of the story, Zeuxis, who is anxious to meet pretty young women, is first taken to see some handsome young men. The Crotoniats tell him that the bodies of the young men represent strength and athleticism (the Latin text suggests "dignity" and "manliness"). Cicero makes it clear that the young men's bodies also represent the city to outsiders such as Zeuxis. The sculptor is then taken to see the sisters of the young men. As the story goes, Zeuxis determines which parts of these women are beautiful and which are defective. He then amalgamates the beautiful parts, and from this amalgam he fashions a portrait of Helen. I am interested in Cicero's story of Zeuxis and the virgins because it can be read to illustrate a difference in the way rhetoricians and philosophers think about art. Reading with Cicero, I understand that art is valued for religious reasons: the Crotoniats want to place a worthy work in Juno's temple. There is also a touch of civic pride at work, insofar as possession of a sculpture created by a famous artist gains stature for the city. In other words, art exerts rhetorical force in a community; it transacts religious or civic business. Rhetoricians are also interested in the production or composition of art. 30 THE BOURGEOIS SUBJECT +>- 31 In the context of De lnventione, the story of Zeuxis and the virgins functions as a metaphor for Cicero's composing process: "In a similar fashion when the inclination arose in my mind to write a text-book of rhetoric, I did not set before myself some one model which I thought necessary to reproduce in all details, of whatever sort they might be, but after collecting all the works on the subject I excerpted what seemed to me to be the most suitable precepts from each, and so culled the flower of many minds" (2.1.4). Even though the notion of surveying the field is an ancient commonplace (Aristotle also used it, as Cicero notes), the importance of discrimination and selection as ancient means of composition should not be overlooked. In fact, Cicero analogized his own powers of discrimination to those of Zeuxis, noting that these powers guided him as he selected excellences from the many treatises on invention available to him. The story of Zeuxis and the virgins allowed Cicero to meditate on authorship, on the issues faced by a composer who wishes to gain control of the available materials. Now, if I were to read this text as philosopher, reading with Plato, perhaps , I would notice the series of hierarchized representations that animates the story.' Zeuxis's gaze first falls upon the specific, sensuous bodies of young men. But these men's bodies are important insofar as they represent the city's values: strength, manliness, valor. The bodies of their sisters, on the other hand, do not so much represent civic virtue directly as they stand in for their brothers' bodies. In other words, their bodies represent civic virtue indirectly, as it is manifested in their families' good breeding. To fashion yet another representation, Zeuxis will select parts of the women's bodies and reassemble them to represent the beauty of Helen, herself represented in story and song as the most beautiful woman who ever lived. Of course, Helen's body moldered away long before Zeuxis thought of travelling to Croton, so that her imagined, perfect, beauty can conveniently be thought to exist aside and apart from actual living, breathing, women's bodies. Reading as a philosopher, then, I notice the relation of the real to the abstract, the material to the ideal. In philosophy, the point of knowing is to abstract the ideal from the real, to move away from...

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