在古典修辞学中，由罗马政治家、演说家西塞罗和一世纪拉丁语文本《赫里尼厄姆修辞学》的匿名作者所定义的修辞学经典是修辞学过程的重叠部分或分支。修辞的五大经典是：

• 发明（希腊语，heuresis），发明
• 处置（希腊语，出租车），安排
• Elocutio（希腊语，词汇），风格
• 记忆（希腊语，mneme），记忆
• 行动（希腊语，伪善），交付

五经

虽然西塞罗通常被认为是发展了五大修辞经典，但这位著名的罗马人物承认，他并没有真正发明或创造这个概念。

"In De Inventione, Cicero advances what is probably his best remembered contribution to the history of rhetoric: his five canons of oratory. He admits, however, that these divisions are not new with him: 'The parts of [rhetoric], as most authorities have stated, are Invention, Arrangement, Expression, Memory, and Delivery.' Cicero's canons provide a useful means of dividing the work of the orator into units." — James A. Herrick, "The History and Theory of Rhetoric." Allyn and Bacon, 2001.

虽然西塞罗，也许是罗马最伟大的演说家，并没有发明五大经典的概念，但他肯定传播了这一概念，并帮助将演说家的作品分成了特定的部分——这一有用的想法流传了数千年。

西塞罗论五大经典

与其依赖其他人来定义西塞罗的意思以及五大经典在公众演讲中的重要性，不如了解这位著名演说家本人对这一主题的看法。

"Since all activity and ability of an orator falls into five divisions ... he must first hit upon what to say; then manage and marshal his discoveries, not merely in orderly fashion, but with a discriminating eye for the exact weight as it were of each argument; next go on to array them in the adornments of style; after that keep them guarded in his memory; and in the end deliver them with effect and charm." — Cicero, "De Oratore."

在这里，西塞罗解释了这五部经典如何帮助演讲者不仅将一个口头论点分成几个部分，而且还描述了每个部分的“确切权重”。演讲是演讲者说服他人的努力；西塞罗的经典有助于演讲者以最有效的方式构思其有说服力的论点，以达到这一目的。

修辞的不连贯部分

几个世纪以来，五大修辞学经典更多地被视为一种文体工具，而不是一种以有序、合乎逻辑的方式组织演讲部分的方式。根据一些学者的说法，正是在逻辑研究中，对一个论点的“关注点”需要精心设计。

"Over the centuries, various 'parts' of rhetoric were disconnected and linked to other branches of study. For example, during the 16th century it was common to view the province of rhetoric as exclusively style and delivery with the activities of invention and arrangement transferred to the realm of logic. The impact of this shift still can be seen today in the tendency of many European scholars to view rhetoric as the study of tropes and figures of speech, disconnected from more substantive concerns such as argument (there are, of course, exceptions to this tendency)." — James Jasinski, "Sourcebook on Rhetoric: Key Concepts in Contemporary Rhetorical Studies." Sage, 2001.

在这里，贾辛斯基解释说，许多学者将经典视为一种用来创造巧妙华丽的措辞的手段，而不是构建连贯、有说服力的论点的基础。如果你从字里行间看，很明显，詹辛斯基的观点恰恰相反：正如西塞罗在2000年前提出的那样，詹辛斯基暗示，这五部经典不仅仅是构建巧妙短语的一种方式，而是结合起来形成有效的论证。

当代应用

一些学者指出，今天，在实际应用中，许多教育家关注一些经典，而忽视了其他经典。

"In classical education, students studied the five parts, or canons, of rhetoric—invention, arrangement, style, memory, and delivery. Today, English language arts educators tend to focus on three of the five—invention, arrangement, style—often using the term prewriting for invention and organization for arrangement." — Nancy Nelson, "The Relevance of Rhetoric." Handbook of Research on Teaching the English Language Arts, 3rd ed., edited by Diane Lapp and Douglas Fisher. Routledge, 2011.

西塞罗强调，你真的需要使用所有五个经典来构建一个连贯的、逻辑的和有说服力的演讲，尽管其中一些比其他的更重要。Nelson指出，许多教育者只使用三个经典——发明、安排和风格，并将它们用作教学工具，而不是构建有说服力演讲的整体方法。

丢失的佳能

近几十年来，记忆和发明这两大经典似乎已经“消失”，它们可能是构建有说服力演讲的最重要因素。西塞罗可能会说，这两部经典通常应该得到最大的重视。

"The academic rediscovery of rhetoric in the 1960s did not include much of an interest in the fourth or fifth canons of rhetoric, as Edward P.J. Corbett notes in his Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student (1965). Yet these two canons probably contribute the most to any understanding of a cultural and cross-cultural rhetoric, especially rhetorical memory and its relation to invention. Unlike historical traditions of rhetorical studies, memory receives little attention in schooling today, and unfortunately the subject has been largely given over by English and rhetoric departments to biology and psychology studies." — Joyce Irene Middleton, "Echoes From the Past: Learning How to Listen, Again." The SAGE Handbook of Rhetorical Studies, ed. by Andrea A. Lunsford, Kirt H. Wilson, and Rosa A. Eberly. Sage, 2009.

米德尔顿似乎在哀叹，她认为最重要的两大经典在修辞学研究中已经丢失了。因为所有的修辞都是建立在记忆的基础上的，因此，模仿那些在忽略这些内容之前出现的书籍、思想和演讲，可能会剥夺学生通过研究受人尊敬的作家和演讲者的作品来找到自己内心声音的机会。其他思想家只是简单地说，五大经典共同构成了修辞学的核心。

"The canons of rhetoric are a model, to my mind the most efficacious, for any interdisciplinary study." — Jim W. Corder, "Uses of Rhetoric." Lippincott, 1971.

科德明确表示，你不能，或者至少不应该，无视五大经典中的任何一条，因为它们构成了数百年来构建一个合乎逻辑的口头论证的最佳基础，并说服你的听众相信你所做论证的正确性。