Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Speeches
- Photographs
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 To save a republic
- Chapter 2 Speech – the essence of democracy
- Chapter 3 Forum
- Chapter 4 Style
- Chapter 5 Emotion
- Chapter 6 Character
- Chapter 7 Evidence
- Chapter 8 Morality
- Chapter 9 Gettysburg
- Chapter 10 Speechwriter
- Conclusion: The ideal orator
- Appendix Common figures and terms
- Notes
- Index
Chapter 9 - Gettysburg
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Speeches
- Photographs
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- Chapter 1 To save a republic
- Chapter 2 Speech – the essence of democracy
- Chapter 3 Forum
- Chapter 4 Style
- Chapter 5 Emotion
- Chapter 6 Character
- Chapter 7 Evidence
- Chapter 8 Morality
- Chapter 9 Gettysburg
- Chapter 10 Speechwriter
- Conclusion: The ideal orator
- Appendix Common figures and terms
- Notes
- Index
Summary
Every speechwriter knows the feeling…
Having commissioned you with an additional, last-minute job for the next day's campaigning, the chief of staff turns to you as he's leaving your windowless, non-corner office somewhere near the photocopy room and says: ‘Oh, and make it as good as the Gettysburg Address.’ ‘Well, when have you known me not to?’
So why is Lincoln’s famous speech, delivered on 19 November 1863, regarded as the standard by which all others are judged? Most of all because of its significance in redefining what America stood for. But that’s not the whole answer. Let’s bring the preceding analysis together to answer the question.
Classification: The Gettysburg Address is a funeral oration, and a sub-genre of epideictic or display oratory. It follows the accepted convention set in Pericles’ famous example – using the occasion of a funeral to praise the dead for their bravery and commend the way of life and the system of government for which they died.
Forum: The setting was a battlefield and cemetery where the decisive clash of the Civil War had occurred. The audience was not 222 only funeral mourners but also the nation through the newspaper reporters present. The moment was a crucial one: a time of warweariness when those fighting and those paying taxes needed to be reminded why. As a bloody civil war, and therefore a climactic point in the nation’s history, this was the time to define the nation’s essence and uniqueness.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Art of Great SpeechesAnd Why We Remember Them, pp. 222 - 227Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2010