Abstract
Abstract Cognitive philosophy in recent years has made conversation central to the experience of emotion: we recognise emotions in dialogue. What lesson can be drawn from this for understanding Erasmus’ Colloquies? This work has often been rifled for its treatment of ideas and opinions, but it also offers a complex and highly imaginative treatment of conversation, originating as rhetorical exercises in De copia. This essay reconfigures the Colloquies in such terms, especially those involving female interlocutors, drawing on the riches of ancient interest in conversation in Plato, Cicero and Quintilian, and also on the vogue for dialogue in Renaissance Italy from Leonardo Bruni to Castiglione.
Highlights
Le plus fructueux et naturel exercice de nostre esprit, c’ est à mon gré la conference
What lesson can be drawn from this for understanding Erasmus’ Colloquies? This work has often been rifled for its treatment of ideas and opinions, but it offers a complex and highly imaginative treatment of conversation, originating as rhetorical exercises in De copia
‘There can be no debate without contradiction’, it appears; it is worth noting that Montaigne fails to quote the remainder of Cicero’s sentence: ‘it is impossible to debate properly with ill-temper or obstinacy’.2. This passage in De finibus is, well known to Erasmus, who agreed with the latter sentiment as much if not more than with the first
Summary
Rhetoric is the art of speaking as well as writing well. This is what makes it so general a form of enquiry: it covers, Peter Mack observes, ‘the use of voice and gesture, the ways to discover and present arguments, the arousal of emotions, self-presentation, selections of vocabulary, the organization of a speech, Cicero, Tusculan Disputations, 2.4.10. Arnoldus may refer to the Arnoldus Bostius of Ep. 53. Cummings for her careful usage (elegantia).[50] In Brutus, it is used as a synonym for a dialogue, or to refer to discussion in the senate.[51] In the dialogue between Laelius and his sons-in-law, De amicitia, Cicero chooses sermo as a term to reflect an author’s intention in rendering character, ‘to create the impression that they are present and speaking in person’.52. It is a commitment of living speech to memory, so that the actors are on stage before us. The highest form, he says, is dialogue itself: ‘in which we supply each person with utterances appropriate to his age, type, country, way of life, cast of mind, and character’.60
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