Page 85 - Beholding Liberty!

PERISTYLE
1.2.11
Vikentios Damodos
Act in brief about the rhetorical interpretations
Pesti: In the Printing House of T. Ioannis Trattner, 1815 Library of the Hellenic Parliament
VIKENTIOS DAMODOS, born in 1700 on the island of Kephalonia, studied in the Flangin- ian College of Venice and was a student of known scholars of the time. He received a doctorate in «both laws» (regular and civil) from the Univer- sity of Padua. Despite his excellent studies in the West, he returned to his island and dedicated his life to his teaching and writing work. Withdrawn to Chavriata, he founded a School, where he taught a circle of philosophical lessons in the demotic lan- guage, considered to be the initiator of Descartes’ philosophy into Greek intellectual life. In parallel, he also acquired great renown as teacher of Rhetoric, since in his School pupils were regularly trained in rhetoric exercises, one of which features on page 39 of his work Πράξις κατά συντομίαν εις τας ρητορικάς ερμηνείας/Act in brief on the rhetoric interpretation, where the assertion «Young people should practice fasting» is exemplified as a starting point for the argumentative reasoning process.
1.2.12
Adamantios Korais
Forewords in various authors published by Korais (second edition) s.l. 1815
Library of the Hellenic Parliament
THE ISSUE OF LANGUAGE was a con- stant concern for the great scholar and Enlighten- er Adamantios Korais (1748-1833). On pages 64- 65 of the Prefaces, referring to the phenomenon of the change in language, Korais comments that in different periods it is possible for the same na- tion to have a different manner «of speaking and writing its language». When eventually a complete barbarization occurs, then the language becomes «odd» and «altered», remote from the rules of
the old Grammar and «blemished» by anomalies. In this «stuffy» environment, even scholars fail to compile effective grammar textbooks – this fail- ure, as far as the Greek language is concerned, is attributed by Korais to three reasons: 1) the rules of the grammarians are written in Ancient Greek, resulting in the pupils being disgusted by all this, 2) they are too meticulous, 3) they are without meth- od, namely not conforming to a specific teaching methodology.
THE AWAKENING OF HELLENISM From Enlightenment to Patriotism 85