Epistemology
The word "epistemology" is derived from the ancient Greek "epistēmē" meaning "knowledge" and the suffix "-logy", meaning "logical discourse" (derived from the Greek word "logos" meaning "discourse"). It is analogue to the German "Wissenschaftslehre" (literally, theory of science) which was introduced by philosophers Johann Fichte and Bernard Bolzano in the late 18th century. The word first appeared in English in 1847 as a translation of the German in New York's "Eclectic Magazine" review of a philosophical novel by German author Jean Paul:
Epideictic
The philologist Ernst Curtius provides an account of its history, and many examples, in "European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages". Praise and blame were "reduced" to praise by Aristotle, he wrote; and recently another author called it a "blameless genre". He and Lockwood seem to say that what was in the past called rhetoric was later called literature. Curtius believed that misinterpretations of medieval literature occur because so much of it is epideictic, and the epideictic is so alien to us today. During the Middle Ages it became a "school subject" as the sites for political activity diminished in the West, and as the centuries went on the word "praise" came to mean that which was written. During this period literature (more specifically histories, biographies, autobiographies, geographies) were called praise(s).