Rhetors and Jesters: Rereading the Stand-up Comedians as SophistsBy Jillian Belanger, M.A., N.B.C.T.For the 2015 International Society for Humor Studies Conference

Five canons of rhetoric1. Invention2. Arrangement3. Style4. Memory5. Delivery

Who were the Sophists?Sophists were traveling orators who went city to city, selling speech as their product as they taught the children of wealthy families, around 467 BC in Greece.

Speaking well became particularly important once tyranny was overthrown in Syracuse and law courts and other democratic institutions called for people to be able to speak for themselves in ways they hadn’t before.

An Important Shift

In centuries prior to the fifth, a young man from the aristocratic class would have been “adopted” in an informal way and trained in performance of fitting “words and deeds” by an older male friend of the family… But in the middle of the fifth century, a small number of exceptionally qualified traveling intellectuals began to gather young men able to pay a fee into small “colloquia” or seminar groups for 3 or 4 years of political education.” - Susan C. Jarratt, Rereading the Sophists

Why did the Sophists need to be reread?

Why do stand-up comedians need

to be reread?

Which comedians are we talking

about and why?

Side note…