The Rhetoric of Encomiums

The speech of commemoration, which is also known as an encomium and a panegyric, is one of the oldest forms of addresses in western civilization, dating back to Ancient Athens. Thucydides described them. Demosthenes delivered them. Aristotle formalized them.

How does a Memorial Day address relate to democracy in York County? How did the death of an individual, a soldier in the Civil War, and other veterans become an occasion to praise the county of York?

An event in Glenville, PA (Codorus township) began at the cemetery in Stone Church in 1894 and continued to the present. 

A little over a decade ago, Dr. Charles Glatfelter delivered the 117th Memorial Day address. “The task before us today is enormous, he told an audience of about 400 on May 29, 2011.  

Encomiums are necessary to build community. Memorial Day can become hollow without remembering that the future “rests not in congress, not in a president, and not in the supreme court,” said Glatfelter. Whether we like it or not, the future is ours to make and build. It is a bit of a paradox that an encomium, which is for the dead, is the very thing that calls us to the business of living. At the Soldier’s National Cemetery in Gettysburg in 1863, Abraham Lincoln said so, but if he used the word “earth.” The future, therefore, is the entire earth. 

So speeches matter. 

I study rhetoric to pause, reflect, and see the new earth.