Abstract
The present project focuses on one of the most influential practices devised by the Greco-Roman educational tradition, namely the production of persuasive speeches known as declamations. For nearly six centuries, the composition of these speeches was the capstone of education throughout the Roman empire. Recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of declamation in shaping the cultural milieu of the ancient world; we aim at tracing the presence of this practice from antiquity to our days: we will study the training path of rhetorical exercises (progymnasmata) that was devised to teach ancient students how to master the art of persuasion; we will explore the evolution of this training through the centuries; and assess the contribution that the soft skills elicited by ancient declamation may give to our own didactic strategies. Our ultimate goal is to exploit the study of the educational tradition based on classical rhetoric in the aim of defining innovative strategies suitable to foster in students of our time the skills indispensable to the formation of reflective societies, as defined by the European Horizon programs, and to improve the quality of our democracy, which is a goal of PNR2021-27. We will investigate, first, the foundations of ancient rhetorical education, and will gather in a thematically organized database the surviving topics that provided ancient students with the tools needed for their training. We will then assess the circulation of declamation through specific moments of late antiquity and the Middle Ages, investigating the reception of techniques and commonplaces of declamation in a significant sample of the literary production of the times. We will follow the evolution of declamation through the Renaissance, assessing the production of original declamations by the Humanists and the legacy of the dialogue between ancient and modern discourses. We will then turn to the presence of declamation in the educational system laid out in the Jesuitic Ratio studiorum, so as to assess how the precepts of ancient rhetoric were incorporated in the earliest school method standardized on a global scale. Our research will yield a deeper understanding of the educational practices that for centuries shaped the European culture and will provide us with a wealth of didactic strategies suitable to be implemented in our educational system: guided discussion and debate have earned growing importance in contemporary pedagogy and several projects across Europe (but not yet in Italy) have initiated experiments based on the application of the principles of ancient rhetoric in current higher education. We will orient our research toward a direct application in high schools, as well as in academic legal programs, so as to create a link between the practices of the past and the current teaching strategies aimed at training students to voice successfully their opinions in different spheres of social life.
Results achieved
The project pursued two closely interconnected objectives. On the one hand, it advanced historical and literary research on ancient declamation and its reception from Antiquity to the early modern period; on the other, it explored the potential of the rhetorical tradition for contemporary educational practice, particularly in secondary schools and university teaching. These two strands were developed in constant dialogue, combining philological investigation with pedagogical experimentation and fostering collaboration among scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds. The project has significantly expanded current knowledge of ancient declamation. Although declamation is now recognised as a privileged source for understanding the cultural values of Greco-Roman society, scholarship has traditionally focused on the surviving collections of speeches, often treating them as isolated literary texts. The research addressed this limitation by reconstructing declamation within the broader framework of ancient rhetorical education, paying particular attention to its relationship with the progymnasmata and the progressive acquisition of argumentative and persuasive skills. Rather than approaching declamation as an autonomous literary genre, the project has repositioned it within a wider educational ecosystem connecting rhetorical training, literary production, legal culture, and the long-term transmission of pedagogical practices, offering a more comprehensive model for investigating the legacy of classical rhetoric and its role in the formation of civic culture. The project has also made a substantial contribution to the study of the reception of rhetorical education. While the importance of classical rhetoric for later European culture has long been acknowledged, the mechanisms through which this educational tradition was transmitted had never been investigated in a systematic way. By examining the reception of declamation in medieval and early modern literature, the research has clarified the continuity between classical rhetorical education and later literary, educational, and intellectual traditions. These investigations provide a solid basis for future research on the transmission of cultural heritage and contribute to a deeper understanding of the dialogue between classical antiquity and the formation of European intellectual culture. A further major outcome has been the implementation and publication of the Database of Imaginary Speeches, which represents an important digital resource for the study of ancient rhetoric and one of the most significant long-term research infrastructures generated by the programme. By making a large body of material systematically accessible, the database contributes to the digital preservation and dissemination of cultural heritage while supporting new forms of comparative and interdisciplinary research. Together with the commented edition of the Declamationes minores 293-339 and the project's other publications, it forms part of the principal scientific output of the research. The database is freely accessible at https://dis.ficlit.unibo.it/ Alongside its historical and philological achievements, the project explored the practical applicability of the rhetorical tradition to contemporary education. Building on the theoretical results of the research, innovative teaching methodologies were developed and tested in different educational contexts, in collaboration with secondary schools, demonstrating how declamation and rhetorical exercises can foster critical thinking, argumentative competence, communication skills, and civic awareness, while strengthening cooperation between universities, schools, and regional educational institutions and contributing to sustainable models for educational innovation. A parallel line of experimentation was developed at university level through the adaptation of ancient rhetorical methods to the education of law students. Graduate seminars explored the contribution of rhetorical training to the development of analytical, interpretative, and communicative competences required in legal professions. The relevance of this initiative for legal education was further confirmed by the subsequent award, to members of the research team, of a Jean Monnet project devoted to the relationship between rhetoric and legal education. Taken together, these activities have strengthened interdisciplinary dialogue between specialists in Classical Studies, medieval and humanistic literature, pedagogy, and legal history, demonstrating the value of integrating historical research with educational innovation. The pedagogical experiments have shown that rhetorical practices developed in antiquity remain highly effective tools for promoting active learning, critical reflection, and responsible citizenship, confirming the enduring value of the humanities in addressing contemporary educational challenges. The project also generated an extensive programme of dissemination and international collaboration, including numerous publications alongside seminars, workshops, public engagement initiatives, and international conferences organised by the participating institutions. Two major milestones were represented by the panels presented at the XXV Biennial Conference of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric (Copenhagen, 2025) and by the final international conference Dicendo discitur (Genoa, 2025), which brought together leading international scholars to discuss the project's findings. Additional invited lectures and conference presentations in Europe and South America further enhanced the international visibility of the research, while many of the principal outputs have been published, or are being published, in Open Access. Beyond the immediate scientific outputs, the project has created a durable interdisciplinary research network bringing together scholars from different institutions and fields of expertise. This collaboration has already generated new national and European initiatives, including projects on citizenship education and legal rhetoric, demonstrating the long-term scientific and societal impact of the research. Overall, the project has provided new knowledge on the history of rhetorical education, innovative digital resources, experimentally validated teaching methodologies, and a robust methodological framework for future investigations into the transmission and contemporary relevance of the classical rhetorical tradition. Further information about the project is available on the project website: https://celd.unige.it/DicendoDisciturDettagli del progetto
Responsabile scientifico: Elisa Dal Chiele
Strutture Unibo coinvolte:
Dipartimento di Filologia Classica e Italianistica
Coordinatore:
Università degli Studi di GENOVA(Italy)
Contributo totale Unibo: Euro (EUR) 40.354,00
Durata del progetto in mesi: 24
Data di inizio
17/10/2023
Data di fine:
28/02/2026
