Final answer:
The type of verbal arts that has received the most study and attention is literature, which includes fiction, drama, poetry, and prose. Literature uses language to replicate life experiences and convey emotions, while also encompassing rhetoric, the art of persuasion through words.
Step-by-step explanation:
The type of verbal arts that has received the most study and attention is literature. This encompasses a range of artistic expressions such as fiction, drama, poetry, and prose. Literature represents language communication, using words as a system of arbitrary symbols to convey thoughts and feelings. It is an art that imitates life through language alone and can be expressed through different mediums including prose or verse, and these can take various forms like iambic or elegiac metre. Within the scope of literature, rhetoric is also significant as it is the craft of persuading through writing or speaking. Communicative situations contain elements of rhetoric, which can be observed, processed, and analyzed to understand forms, intent, and effectiveness of communication. Visual arts such as painting and sculpture have also been highly valued, particularly in Western and East Asian cultures. However, literature uniquely relies on the imagination to construct a narrative without the need for visual representation, making it a central subject of study in verbal arts.