Frantic forensic oratory: Poe's "The Tell-Tale Heart" by Brett Zimmerman."The Tell-Tale Heart," while usually read as a confession, can be seen more accurately as a defense--a specimen of forensic oratory. The narrator employs four of the six parts of a classical speech. His exordium (introduction) attempts to condition the audience through praeparatio and a friendly concession (paromologia) as part of his ethical appeal (eunoia). The second part, the narratio (statement of the case), features the defendant's explanation of the events and their causes through expeditio, aetiologia, and necessum. He skips the third part of the classical speech (divisio) but combines the traditional fourth and fifth parts (confirmatio, refutatio), and a central device of this section is paradiastole, the narrator's revaluation of values--a sure sign of his schizophrenic split between thought and feeling. Poe presents a fascinating but pathetic spectacle, a "jarring collocation": insanity employing principally the Aristotelian rhetorical appeal to logos (reason) within a classical framework.
