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“Pure intellectual stimulation that can be popped into the [audio or video player] anytime.†—Harvard Magazine “Passionate, erudite, living legend lecturers. Academia’s best lecturers are being captured on tape.†—The Los Angeles Times “A serious force in American education.†—The Wall Street Journal THE GREAT COURSES® Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westfields Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, VA 20151-2299 USA Phone: 1-800-832-2412 www.thegreatcourses.com Course No. 2031 © 2010 The Teaching Company. Cover Image: NASA. PB2031A Professor John R. Hale University of Louisville Course Guidebook Professional Topic Communication Skills Subtopic The Art of Public Speaking: Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History Professor John R. Hale, Director of Liberal Studies at the University of Louisville, is an archaeologist, distinguished scholar, and master storyteller. Throughout his career he has worked on ancient sites in Greece, Turkey, and other countries. Professor Hale has received numerous awards for his distinguished teaching of archaeology and ancient history. Among these are the Panhellenic Teacher of the Year Award and the Delphi Center Award. PUBLISHED BY: THE GREAT COURSES Corporate Headquarters 4840 Westï¬ elds Boulevard, Suite 500 Chantilly, Virginia 20151-2299 Phone: 1-800-832-2412 Fax: 703-378-3819 www.thegreatcourses.com Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2010 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. i John R. Hale, Ph.D. Director of Liberal Studies University of Louisville Professor John R. Hale, Director of Liberal Studies at the University of Louisville, is an archaeologist with ¿ eldwork experience in England, Scandinavia, Portugal, Greece, Turkey, and the Ohio River Valley. At the University of Louisville, Professor Hale teaches introductory courses on archaeology and specialized courses on the Bronze Age, the ancient Greeks, the Roman world, Celtic cultures, Vikings, and nautical and underwater archaeology. Archaeology has been the focus of Professor Hale’s career, from his undergraduate studies at Yale University to his research at the University of Cambridge, where he received his Ph.D. The subject of his dissertation was the Bronze Age ancestry of the Viking longship, a study that involved ¿ eld surveys of ship designs in prehistoric rock art in southern Norway and Sweden. During more than 30 years of archaeological work, Professor Hale has excavated at a Romano-British town in Lincolnshire, England, as well as at a Roman villa in Portugal; has carried out interdisciplinary studies of ancient oracle sites in Greece and Turkey, including the famed Delphic oracle; and has participated in an undersea search in Greek waters for lost À eets from the Greek and Persian wars. In addition, Professor Hale is a member of a scienti¿ c team developing and re¿ ning a method for dating mortar, concrete, and plaster from ancient buildings—a method that employs radiocarbon analysis with an accelerator mass spectrometer. Professor Hale published Lords of the Sea: The Epic Story of the Athenian Navy and the Birth of Democracy in 2009. In addition, he has published his work in Antiquity, Journal of Roman Archaeology, The Classical Bulletin, and Scienti¿ c American. Most of Professor Hale’s work is interdisciplinary and involves collaborations with geologists, chemists, nuclear physicists, historians, zoologists, botanists, physical anthropologists, geographers, and art historians. ii Professor Hale has deep experience as a public speaker, having given thousands of talks in his career. He has received numerous awards for his distinguished teaching, including the Panhellenic Teacher of the Year Award and the Delphi Center Award. He has toured the United States and Canada as a lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America and has presented lecture series at museums and universities in Finland, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand. Professor Hale is the instructor of three other Great Courses: Exploring the Roots of Religion, The Greek and Persian Wars, and Classical Archaeology of Ancient Greece and Rome. Ŷ iii Table of Contents LECTURE GUIDES INTRODUCTION Professor Biography ............................................................................ i Course Scope .....................................................................................1 LECTURE 1 Overcome Obstacles—Demosthenes of Athens ................................2 LECTURE 2 Practice Your Delivery—Patrick Henry ...............................................5 LECTURE 3 Be Yourself—Elizabeth I to Her Army .................................................8 LECTURE 4 Find Your Humorous Voice—Will Rogers .........................................11 LECTURE 5 Make It a Story—Marie Curie on Discovery .....................................14 LECTURE 6 Use the Power of Three—Paul to His People ..................................18 LECTURE 7 Build a Logical Case—Susan B. Anthony.........................................22 LECTURE 8 Paint Pictures in Words—Tecumseh on Unity ..................................26 LECTURE 9 Focus on Your Audience—Gandhi on Trial .......................................29 LECTURE 10 Share a Vision—Martin Luther King’s Dream ...................................32 Table of Contents iv LECTURE 11 Change Minds and Hearts—Mark Antony ........................................36 LECTURE 12 Call for Positive Action—Lincoln at Gettysburg ................................40 SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIAL Bibliography ......................................................................................44 Credits ..............................................................................................45 1 The Art of Public Speaking: Lessons from the Greatest Speeches in History Scope: How should one go about learning how to write and present a speech, no matter the occasion? Why not study lessons from history’s greatest speeches and speakers? This unique course explores the greatest speeches in history and sets out practical tips that we can use for any public speaking situation. Our historic speechmakers include Demosthenes, Saint Paul, Queen Elizabeth, Patrick Henry, Tecumseh, and Abraham Lincoln. The lectures use historical case studies to glean insight into every aspect of public speaking, from topic and style to opening and closing. The power of a call to action: Abraham Lincoln’s oration at Gettysburg. The power of presentation: 55-year-old Queen Elizabeth delivering a stirring call to arms in the ¿ eld—“to live or die amongst you allâ€â€”among soldiers on the eve of battle with the Spanish Armada. The power of sharing a vision: Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream†speech. We unlock the secrets of history’s greatest speeches in a course that is as practical as it is fascinating. Each of the 12 lectures offers take-away points that are illustrated with a presentation of the featured speech, including background on the speaker and the context of the speech. Additional insights are provided by references to many other historic speakers. We will consider how their lessons apply to everyday modern situations—eulogies, reports, political addresses, legal arguments, business proposals, toasts, conferences, pregame speeches, sermons, classroom lectures, and “how-to†explanations—in which you may ¿ nd yourself called upon to speak in public. Ŷ 2 Le ct ur e 1: O ve rc om e O bs ta cl es — D em os th en es o f A th en s Overcome Obstacles—Demosthenes of Athens Lecture 1 Rhetoric is as noble an art as exists on this planet; rhetoric is the art of clothing in words and in gestures and in presentation to a group the ideas that you have in the most effective way possible. Winston Churchill once said, “There is nothing like oratory,†and to paraphrase him, he said, “It is a skill that can turn a commoner into a king.†I believe that’s true; I believe that public speaking is a skill that everyone should try to acquire. We’re going to have 12 guest lecturers in the course of our time together: I want to share this podium with the likes of Demosthenes of Athens, Queen Elizabeth I of England, Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi, Abraham Lincoln, and many others. They will each be featured in a speech or set of speeches that made a difference to the world and to them, but more important, speeches that make a point about public speaking. I hope that you will end this course with a greater understanding of what makes good public speaking, a greater appreciation of what an important part of your life public speaking can become, and greater incentive to tackle the challenge of getting over your obstacles and starting to speak in public yourself. The genius of rhetoric that I would like to have lead us into this world of speechmaking is Demosthenes of Athens, who lived in the 5th century B.C. Demosthenes was a genius who, at a time when Athens’s fortunes were sinking, tried to revive his city’s power through his own speeches. But nobody would have guessed from looking at him as a boy that it could have happened. Demosthenes was born to a rich family, but his father died when he was very small. He was brought up by the womenfolk in the family, outside the public sphere. He did not go to the gymnasium with the other boys; he did not toughen himself up. He grew up alone with books. One of his books was The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, another Athenian. Demosthenes had a copy that he read eight times; he memorized lots of it, and what he was memorizing in many cases were speeches. 3 Demosthenes’s ¿ rst step was to try to become a good speaker by opening up scrolls, reading somebody else’s speech, and committing it to memory; because in Athens, if you were speaking in a law court of the public Assembly, you had to speak from memory. Demosthenes soon learned that he had some serious problems to overcome: Physically, he was weak; he walked around stooped-shouldered with a frown all the time. He had a speech impediment; we don’t know exactly what, but it may have been a lisp. People laughed at him when he spoke as a boy, and he knew he was going to have to get over that if he intended to have a career as a public speaker as a man. When Demosthenes turned 18, he discovered that his guardians had embezzled all of his inheritance from his father. The only way that he would be able to get it back was to go to court, where he would have to speak for himself. So he went down to the seashore where he could be completely alone and began a course of self- improvement to make him a man that people would listen to in a court of law. He used a little prop, a little aid, that he invented himself as a method for improving elocution: a pebble. To get over his speech impediment, he would put a pebble in his mouth, and he would then speak, working to get his tongue and to get his palate and to get his lips around that pebble so that he could be understood even with that stone in his mouth. He would take those speeches by Thucydides and others and train his own speaking apparatus—tongue, palate, lips—so that even with the pebble, he could still be clearly understood. In this way, Demosthenes overcame the ¿ rst of his obstacles: the speech impediment. Second, he was aware of his weakness of breath. He began to run up hills, declaiming speeches that he’d memorized until he got to the point that his wind was so good, he could run and speak the speech and not sound out of breath. Finally, he practiced speaking at the seashore, trying to outshout the waves themselves so that when he got up in front of that jury of 501 people or in front of the entire Assembly of Athens, everybody would be able to hear him. There has never been such a concentrated attack on the art In polite conversation, it’s supposed to be a bad thing to talk about yourself; in public speaking, most of the time it’s essential. 4 Le ct ur e 1: O ve rc om e O bs ta cl es — D em os th en es o f A th en s of rhetoric as young Demosthenes undertook while still a teenager. He went to the court and won his case. Then his vision grew wider: He wanted to speak in public; he wanted to share the idealism that he had acquired from reading Thucydides’s history about the glorious days of Athens in his own time of decadence and decay. By this time, Demosthenes had become a sea captain, in charge of a warship. This had a powerful effect on his credibility; he could speak from personal knowledge. I urge you to do that in every speech you make. If you’re toasting a wedding couple, talk about your personal knowledge of them; if you’re lecturing on a subject, talk about your own experiences with that subject. In polite conversation it’s supposed to be a bad thing to talk about yourself; in public speaking, most of the time it’s essential. Demosthenes used his new experience as a sea captain in crafting metaphors and images, painting pictures with words. People remembered his words until their dying day; and that’s another thing for you to consider as you plan your public speeches, be they short or long: Someone out there may ¿ nd in what you say the words that crystallize a feeling, an event, a moment and remember them as the words of Demosthenes were remembered by his fellow countrymen. Ŷ 1. Make up your mind that you can and will overcome fears and obstacles. 2. Practice, practice, practice every aspect of public speaking. 3. Use cross-training in acting, sports, and other ¿ elds to improve your skills. 4. Work on memorization. 5. Accept early failures, and persist with your efforts. Take-Away Points
