Medieval Rhetoric Research Articles

The medieval rhetoric of identification: A Burkean reconception

As Sharon Crowley claims, first question asked of any research is 'What use is it in the classroom?' (Politics 7). Knowledge of the history of rhetoric should enable us to lecture persuasively, to convince our students of the significance of the rhetorical texts which we and our colleagues research. This essay will address the challenges in teaching the Latin rhetoric of the Middle Ages compellingly. Despite the astounding productivity of scholars in medieval rhetoric-despite the discoveries of new manuscripts, editions of pedagogical glosses and theorization of medieval precepts for communication-unfortunately, in many American survey courses, medieval Latin rhetoric is still presented with Elizabethan disgust.' It is typically introduced as wrongheaded excursion away from classical principles toward the slavish study of rhetorical formulae. While evaluating trends in scholarship on rhetoric's history, Kathleen Welch implies one reason for the dismissal of medieval rhetors: a nostalgia for the perceived golden past in the classical world. . (85). Here, I am proposing that, in order to cultivate greater understanding and respect, we must find other lectern generalizations than those current about medieval Latin rhetoric in history of rhetoric surveys. I suggest one alternative: that many of the accomplishments of medieval rhetoric correspond to the Burkean theory of identification. The Generals of History

Affiliation of children: Immathchor nAilella 7 Airt

This is an edition and translation of an Old-Irish legal text, dating probably from c.700, and describing a lawsuit on the assignment of twins, after their mother Sadb had been repudiated by their father Ailill Aulomm. A decision is reached on the basis of principles governing marriage and an ordeal is avoided. The legal proceedings are represented as being conducted in a highly artistic style, commonly called rosc or retoiric in Irish studies, and deriving from late antique and medieval rhetoric.

A Medieval Rhetoric Goes to School—and to the University: The Commentaries on the Poetria nova

A Medieval Rhetoric Goes to School—and to the University: The Commentaries on the Poetria nova

The Garments of Torah: Essays in Biblical Hermeneutics (review)

Hebrew Studies 31 (1990) 135 Reviews as the branches of the myrtle" (1. 58). The variations on the root letters .c.ID.:l and .ID.R.' are seen in n. 5-6: If cloud this be. it pours out spicy odors And from the myrtle tops the droplets fall. and in 11. 69-70: c'clD:Jn 1'''''' C':JJJin C'O'O""' c'o,n 'IDR"'lC' And the pomegranates in the garden of lilies. l.jR' 11D'1D ll:l C'nlJ" Behold. with studs of clove are they fastened. C'~:ln CID:l m"'1ClDc '1DR':l Was Ibn Ezra aware of his own structuring pattern? From his writings on poetics (in the KJt~b al-mukh~dara wal-mudh~kara, trans. and ed. by A. S. Halkin [Jerusalem, 1975]) it would appear that he was principally concerned with the broad theoretical issues relating to medieval rhetoric and paid scant attention to topics and figures. The intention of the author, however, does not deter the Romantic critic for whom the work of art is an organic form with a life of its own the moment it sees the light of day. And to paraphrase the Russian Formalist Yuri Tynianov: "What was the distinctive feature of the 'poem' in the middle ages is no longer so in the 20th century" (cf. T. Todorov, The Poetics ofProse [Ithaca, 1977], p. 249). Yael Feldman is to be commended for utilizing the modem critical tools that help us "bridge the generations." The need to do this was eloquently argued by 1:1. Schirmann (in his "Problems in the Study of Post-Biblical Hebrew Poetry" [Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 2 (1967):228-236]), even as he cautioned "to proceed carefully ...since a mechanical transfer of foreign concepts to the sphere of Hebrew writing is liable to lead to a distortion of its image." Leon J. Weinberger University ofAlabama Tuscaloosa. AL 35486 THE GARMENTS OF TORAH: ESSAYS IN BIBLICAL HERMENEUTICS . By Michael Fishbane. Indiana Studies in Biblical Literature. Pp. xi + 155. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1989. Cloth. In The Garments of Torah Michael Fishbane sets out to demonstrate how "cultures renew themselves hermeneutically" (p. ix). Specifically. his Hebrew Studies 31 (1990) 136 Reviews intent is to show how ancient biblical, rabbinical, and modem Jewish culture is renewed through a process of exegesis which revives and "reforms " the texts and their interpreters "in each other's image." For Fishbane, such exegesis is a "process of symbolic immortality" for "text cultures," in which "the umbilical cord of hermeneutics is at once a lifeline to one's matrix in the past and a death-defying act of the imagination in the present" (p. ix). Fishbane illustrates this dramatic notion of interpretive activity in a series of ten essays, five of which are based on publications which appeared between 1975 and 1988. These writings were chosen because they "might make aspects of the issues accessible to the nonspecialist reader..." (p. x). The fust nine essays are grouped into three sections and the tenth forms the conclusion. Part 1, "The Hermeneutics of Scripture in Formation," begins with a discussion of inner-biblical exegesis, a phenomenon which Fishbane has been analyzing with great precision for many years, most extensively in his 1985 book, Biblical Interpretation in Ancient Israel. Here he surveys scribal and legal exegesis and strategic revision in the Bible in order to suggest some of the ways by which the Hebrew Bible "not only sponsored a monumental culture of textual exegesis but was itself its own first product" (p. 4). Chap. 2 deals with extra-biblical exegesis. Fishbane begins by arguing that midrash played a dynamic role in rabbinic exegesis "as both a conserver and converter of tradition" (p. 21). His discussion highlights the explicit and implicit use of the "al tiqre hermeneutic" (p. 26). The "al tiqre imperative is a midrashic instruction not to read what is the traditional reading of Scripture" (p. 22). When the procedure is used implicitly, "hermeneutical strategies of substitution" disclose "more hidden scriptural meanings" (p. 23). The al tiqre hermeneutic shows that midrash is not so much a rewritten Bible (like the book of Jubilees) as a...

Bakhtin's Theory of Dialogic Discourse, Medieval Rhetorical Theory, and the Multi-Voiced Structure of the Clerk's Tale

(1989). Bakhtin's Theory of Dialogic Discourse, Medieval Rhetorical Theory, and the Multi-Voiced Structure of the Clerk's Tale. Exemplaria: Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 461-488.

Bakhtin's Theory of Dialogic Discourse, Medieval Rhetorical Theory, and the Multi-Voiced Structure of the Clerk's Tale

Bakhtin's Theory of Dialogic Discourse, Medieval Rhetorical Theory, and the Multi-Voiced Structure of the Clerk's Tale

Music as Drama

whatever the cause, the absence of humane music criticism ... seems particularly striking against the fact that music has, among the arts, the most, perhaps the only, systematic and precise vocabulary for the description and analysis of its objects. Somehow that possession must itself be a liability; as though one undertook to criticize a poem or novel armed with complete control of medieval rhetoric but ignorant of the modes of criticism developed in the past two centuries.1

Twain's Critique of Malory's Romance: Forma Tractandi and a Connecticut Yankee

itD E S P I T E Mark Twain's ostentatious societal concerns, his greater and more literary task in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court is to challenge medieval, specifically Malorian romantic, storytelling techniques by an initial parody which evolves into an ambiguous compliment to this medieval literary form. The sociological, political, and religious comparisons abundant on the surface of A Connecticut Yankee are quickly exhausted by Twain's rapidly categorizing and startlingly clever mind, and the reader is left with the illusion that caricature is the substance of the book. Mark Twain's admiration of, inquiry into, and even competition with some of the tenets of medieval narrative have been neglected by his students. Twain tries to emulate Malorian romance and at the same time discuss its problems for the nineteenth-century reader. He accomplishes this by having his own romance hero personify and articulate his century's objections to medieval narrative conventions. A Connecticut Yankee's structure, the forma tractatus of medieval rhetoric, is that of an Arthurian romance; the style orforma tractandi is that of a nineteenth-century, rationalistic anti-romance. Or so it is in the beginning, for as the book progresses Hank Morgan changes and finds that although he is drawn to it, he (and

One Historian's Educations

I T would be accurate to say that I stumbled into the study of history. As an undergraduate at the University of Michigan I wound up majoring in English because I loved literature and was all thumbs in the chemistry laboratory, where originally I had expected to spend my life. I took enough credits in education to qualify for a teacher's certificate but only one history course-the obligatory year's survey of English history. course, thorough and fact-crammed, touched no interest of mine. When I could not obtain a high school teaching job in I939, my university mentor recommended me for a teaching assistantship at Penn State, where a graduate program was being developed in English composition. At that time there, the study of English was divided between two departmentscomposition and literature. I taught five sections of freshman composition for each of two years at seventy-five dollars per month and free tuition. I studied ancient and medieval rhetoric, Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, English prose style, and even the American short story. Research took me to such entertaining volumes as Studies in Philology. My master's essay was called The Prose Style of Laurence Sterne, surreptitiously subtitled Oft Was I Weary When I Toiled at Thee. I think that I was the only one, however, who found something to laugh about in a library carrel. Sterne's sly wit saved my sanity. I taught composition and literature for two years while beginning a family and, after a two-year stint in the infantry, returned to teaching freshman composition to the best students I have ever had, World War II veterans. Before plunging in, I sought out a professor of English at the University of Chicago to ask whether I could go on teaching without further graduate work. He depressed me with his warning that a Ph.D. would be absolutely necessary for continuing at the college level. I could not bear to consider more advanced work like that I had already been through. A colleague at Iowa State told me about a developing new study-American civilization. He thought that I ought to go to Harvard, but that distinguished institution thought otherwise. I have been grateful ever since that Brown was willing to take a chance. In entering its American civilization program I hoped to make the study of literature more palatable, but I ran into Ed Morgan and a term paper he assigned in my very first semester of colonial history. I was soon digesting all the printed documents available relating to Leisler's Rebellion and was amazed to find that there were few certainties. What witnesses could one believe? Did history reduce itself to gossip? Anyway, it was far better than measuring the length of Sterne's dashes. In a history seminar I had an

As much modesty as cunning"; Maurice Scève's use of a Renaissance commonplace in the escort sonnets to Microcosme

"As much modesty as cunning"; Maurice Sceve's use of a Renaissance commonplace in the escort sonnets to Microcosme I have chosen Hamlet's words to the Players as a title for this paper because they sum up two apparently contradictory aspects of Renaissance poetry that characterise particularly Maurice Sceve's escort sonnets to his long poem Microcosme, and that give these sonnets an interest and complexity that have been too little recognised. Individually and in isolation the sonnets have been acknowledged as fine examples of the sonnet form. Until recently, however, they have been inadequately treated by commentators on the long poem with regard to their locative function; that is, as proper accompaniments to the long poem. When they are mentioned in discussion of Microcosme, they are usually dismissed as a melancholic attenuation of the optimism of the long poem. This critical negligence is in large part the result of the initial non-acceptance, or, at the most, grudging acceptance, of the obvious poetic convention that Sceve is employing: the assumed modesty of the confident author. The modesty formula is clearly outlined by Curtius as one of those devices of classical and medieval rhetoric that persisted until well into the eighteenth century. That the formula was an accepted commonplace in the Renaissance is recognised not only by modern critics, but also by poets of the time. At the two extremes in their use of the modesty formula lie Ronsard and Theodore de Beze. Ronsard pays lip service to the convention when he is not assuming, with barely concealed arrogance, that through poetic frenzy he is in a special and privileged position, an attitude that was to characterise his "Epistres aux Lecteurs" throughout his career. At the other end of the scale is Beze who, after his final acceptance of the Reforme, continually criticised the doctrine of poetic frenzy ("ceulx qui proposent leurs resveries c o m m e certaines regies que tout le monde doibt ensuyvre") and spoke in all humility of "ce mien petit labeur". W e find throughout Renaissance criticism the assumption that long and arduous study was necessary for the writing of an epic poem worthy of the name. Poetry was a branch of learning, and modesty was an aspect of that necessary decorum that a writer should observe when offering his work to the public. Once again Hamlet's words are apposite: "Suit the action to the word, the word to the action; with this special observance, that you o'erstep not the modesty of nature" (III, ii). Curtius lists the usual ways in which the writer expressed his modest presence as submissiveness before the reader, (which later merged with a Christian humility before both God and the reader, most clearly seen in BSze); an assertion that the writer is only complying with a superior's command to write (used especially in dedicatory poetry); and the expressed desire of the writer that he wishes to spare his 206 B. Garlick readers satiety or boredom. W e shall see the ways in which Sceve uses the standard expressions of the modesty formula with the cunning and skill of the mature poet. Once his "modesty and cunning" are jointly acknowledged, the sonnets convey not pessimism but a total serenity in the knowledge of poetic power, which is a fitting tribute to the long poem. Although Sceve's awareness of age and his expression of carpe diem is more apparent in the escort sonnets than in Microcosme, these sonnets do not thereby convey a sense of autumnal melancholy, but rather an assertion of ScSve's consciousness of his poetic abilities, which is a reaffirmation of the two levels on which the long poem itself works, as testament and as creative act. The sense of "temporal urgency" that Quinones sees as characteristic of the Renaissance,7 is here resolved by the emphasis on the completed work and the wholeness of the present. The most noticeable feature of each sonnet is its air of confessional intimacy which contrasts markedly with the elevated tone of the long poem. The assumed modesty which the poet feels is necessary in any presentation of a literary work to the reading public is here expressed...

Camelot or Corbenic?: Malory’s New Blend of Secular and Religious Chivalry in the “Tale of the Holy Grail”

C A M E L O T O R C O R B E N I C ? : M A L O R Y ’ S N E W B L E N D O F S E C U L A R AN D R E L I G I O U S C H IV A L R Y IN T H E “ T A L E O F T H E H O L Y G R A IL ” M U RR A Y J . EV AN S University of Winnipeg _Lhe nature of Malory’s treatment of the Grail story remains a matter of critical controversy, particularly since Eugène Vinaver’s comment in 1929 that “the ultimate debate is not between the ideals of Camelot [Arthur’s secular civilization] and the ideals of Corbenic [the Grail castle]. Faced with two main themes and forced to subordinate one, Malory made Cor­ benic a province of Camelot.” 1 In his “ Sankgreal,” “Malory is primarily concerned with ‘erthly worship,’ not with any higher purpose, and his one desire seems to be to secularize the Grail theme as much as the story will allow.” Thomas C. Rumble, too, speaks of Malory’s “persistent secular­ ization of the Grail episodes.” Opposed to Vinaver’s and Rumble’s positions is Charles Moorman who argues that although Malory trims the religious matter of his source, La Queste del Saint Graal, he keeps its doctrinal core.2 Between these two extremes there lie a variety of critical positions which discern some balance of Camelot and Corbenic in Malory’s Grail story. Larry D. Benson affirms that in Malory “ the quest becomes an Arthurian adventure as well as a spiritual one, and earthly worship remains a positive value.” C. S. Lewis argues that the point of Malory’s quest is to forsake not knighthood itself, but wicked knighthood, in favour of a chivalry founded on patience and humility. P. E. Tucker describes the relationship of Camelot and Corbenic as an interpenetration, Charles W. Whitworth, as a union, and Mary Hynes-Berry, as an identity.3 The matter of re-assessing Malory’s Grail story is complicated by the larger problem of analysing any piece of medieval literature. Critics such as Vinaver, D. S. Brewer, Larry Benson, Robert M. Jordan, and Arthur K. Moore have variously argued that novelistic, Coleridgean, or “universal” conventions of literary criticism are inappropriate for illuminating the pecu­ liar structure and meaning of medieval literature in general, and/or Malory in particular. According to Brewer, Benson, and Moore, the critic’s analysis of medieval texts must be informed by sorely needed paradigms of medieval literary unity and structure.4 E n g l is h S t u d ie s in C a n a d a , vm, 3, September 1982 Medieval literary theory is a sensible place to look for these paradigms; an increasing number of studies have made it clear that the literary theory of the period is medieval rhetoric. The more recent of these studies have established a clear relationship between medieval rhetoric and literature well beyond a descriptive cataloguing of rhetorical figures in particular works, a relationship not necessarily dependent on direct influence, but on a poetic tradition common to both rhetorical theory and literature.5 Rhetorical treatises important for the age of Chaucer include Cicero’s De Inventione, the pseudo-Ciceronian Rhetorica ad Herennium (hereafter Rhetorica ), Quintilian’s Institutio Oratoria, Horace’s Ars Poetica, and the twelfth- and thirteenth-century rhetorics of Matthew of Vendome and Geoffrey of Vinsauf (Payne, 35-36). Although no substantial study exists on rhetoric in the fifteenth century, Malory’s period,6 there is considerable evidence to support Richard Schoeck’s assertion concerning medieval rhetoric “ that from the late thirteenth century to the end of the fifteenth, for all of the changes and developments, there is an essential continuity.” 7 Not only do Chaucer’s suc­ cessors and imitators persist in referring to him (whom we call poet) as a rhetorician,8 but the survival of over two hundred and fifty manuscripts of the Poetria, and its continual reprintings into the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, underscore its importance beyond Chaucer’s period...

Early Medieval stylistic rhetoric

According to the well-known expert on medieval rhetoric, James J. Murphy, the three typical medieval forms of rhetoric are the art of letter writing, the art of preaching and the art of poetry (Murphy, 1971, p. xv). In this paper we are concerned only with the second of these arts, namely, the rhetoric of preaching. Though the perceptive treatises on the rhetoric of preaching, the so-called artes praedicandi, did not originate before the thirteenth century, pulpit rhetoric was very much alive in the earlier part of the Middle Ages and fine examples of this kind of eloquence can be quoted.

Cortes'Amor in Medieval Texts

Previous articleNext article No AccessCortes'Amor in Medieval TextsJoan M. FerranteJoan M. Ferrante Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Speculum Volume 55, Number 4Oct., 1980 The journal of the Medieval Academy of America Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.2307/2847660 Views: 26Total views on this site Citations: 5Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1980 The Medieval Academy of AmericaPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Elizabeth Aubrey Vernacular Song I : Lyric, (Aug 2018): 382–427.https://doi.org/10.1017/9780511979866.013César Domínguez, Anxo Abuín González, Ellen Sapega A Comparative History of Literatures in the Iberian Peninsula, XXIX (Oct 2016).https://doi.org/10.1075/chlel.xxixMichelle Bolduc Medieval Rhetoric and the Commedia, Pedagogy 13, no.11 (Jan 2013): 49–57.https://doi.org/10.1215/15314200-1814170William D. Paden The Troubadour's Lady as Seen through Thick History, Exemplaria 11, no.22 (Jul 2013): 221–244.https://doi.org/10.1179/exm.1999.11.2.221 C. Stephen Jaeger The Courtier Bishop in Vitae from the Tenth to the Twelfth Century, Speculum 58, no.22 (Oct 2015): 291–325.https://doi.org/10.2307/2848256

An Application of Medieval Rhetorical Invention to Dramatic Composition: Matthew of Vendôme's "Ars versificatoria" and "Milo"

An Application of Medieval Rhetorical Invention to Dramatic Composition: Matthew of Vendôme's "Ars versificatoria" and "Milo"

Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric ed. by James J. Murphy

REVIEWS As John Gardner stated in The Complete Warks of the Gawain-Poet (Univ. of Chicago Press, 1965), p. 68, Cleanness "comes full circle-as the poems of the Gawain-poet invariably do: Belshazzar is a type of the false priest mentioned in the opening lines." It seems also that Professor Morse overplays, at times, the aspect of penance in Cleanness. For example, she calls the poem "an exhortation to all to return to Christ through penance" (p. 152), which is a statement that echoes one she had made at the start of her book: "The primary message of the poem, that men should repent, is not obscure" (p. 2). Penance is important in the plan of Cleanness, but it appears that the poet's main purpose in composing his verse homily was to warn the mem­ bers of his audience against falling into deadly sin, not to tell them to repent afterthey have succumbed. However, in considering a book as excellenf as Professor Morse's is on an overall scale, one should be wary of probing too deeply for negative aspects. Her Epilogue is a fitting conclusion to a major contribution to medieval literature, made by a scholar who has displayed a wide knowl­ edge of the field in general, full comprehension of the Queste del Saint Graal and Sir Thomas Malory's use of it in his Tale of the Sankgreal, and, most important for those scholars interested in the Age of Chaucer, deep insight into Cleanness. She has shown that both the Queste and Cleanness "belong among the most serious and representative artistic achievements of the High Middle Ages" (p. 207). WlLLIAM VANTUONO Essex County College JAMES J. MURPHY, ed., Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric. Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: Uni­ versity of California Press, 1978. Pp. xii, 354. $16. "This volume," writes Professor Murphy, "provides within one cover a survey of basic medieval rhetorical theories, together with some of their applications in various literatures of the Middle Ages" (Preface, p. xi). Part One, "The Theory of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages," consists of six essays: Michael C. Leff, The Logician's Rhetoric: "Boethius' De differentiis topicis, Book IV" (pp. 3-24); John 0. Ward, The Com- STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER mentator's Rhetoric: "From Antiquity to the Renaissance: Glosses and Commentaries on Cicero's Rhetorica" (pp. 25-67); Ernest Gallo, The Grammarian's Rhetoric: "The Poetria nova of Geoffrey of Vinsauf" (pp. 68-84); Charles B. Faulhaber, The Letter-Writer's Rhetoric: "The Summa dictaminis of Guido Faba" (pp. 85-01); Margaret Jennings, C.S.J., The Preacher's Rhetoric: "The Ars componendi sermones of Ranulph Higden" (pp. 02-26); and M. B. Parkes, The Impact of Punc­ tuation: "Punctuation, or Pause and Effect" (pp. 127-42). Part Two, "The Practice of Rhetoric in the Middle Ages," contains eight essays: Calvin B. Kendall, Rhetoric in Early Medieval Latin: "Bede's Historia ecclesiastica: The Rhetoric of Faith" (pp. 145-72; Jackson J. Campbell, Rhetoric in Old English Literature: "Adaptation of Classical Rhetoric in Old English Literature" (pp. 173-97); James J. Murphy, Rhetoric in Early Middle English: "Rhetoric and Dialectic in The Owl and the Nightingale" (pp. 198-230); Douglas Kelly, Rhetoric in French Litera­ ture: "Topical Invention in Medieval French Literature" (pp. 231-51); Aldo Scaglione, Rhetoric in Italian Literature: "Dante and the Rhetorical Theory of Sentence Structure" (pp. 252-69); Robert 0. Payne, Rhetoric in Chaucer: "Chaucer's Realization of Himself as Rhetor" (pp. 270-87); Samuel Jaffe, Rhetoric in German Literature: "Gottfried von Strassburg and the Rhetoric of History" (pp. 288-318); and Josef Purkart, Rhetoric in Later Latin: "Boncompagno of Signa and The Rhetoric of Love" (pp. 319-31). There is an Appendix of Manuscripts Cited (pp. 333-34) and a Concordant Index (pp. 335-54). "While," as Professor Murphy notes (p. 335), "the authors in the volume range over many subjects, covering a vast period of time and a broad geographical area," they all address themselves to "a single central subject-rhetoric-in its varied European manifestations during the Middle Ages." Indeed, this very diversity of authors, works, languages, periods, and places treated points up...

Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61 by M. B. Parkes, Elizabeth Salter

REVIEWS One of the most refreshing features of Medieval Eloquence is the gen­ erosity with which its authors point the way to future work in a vineyard that seems still very lush.Faulhaber (p.85) notes "the absence of editions of key works" by the dictatores. Parkes (p.139) suggests that "the key to the understanding of medieval punctuation lies . . . in the concern of the scribe or corrector to elucidate the text transmitted to him according to the needs of his own audience....This hypothesis is offered tentatively to stimulate further, more detailed investigations of the practices of in­ dividual scribes and correctors in medieval manuscripts." Jackson J. Campbell (p.197) reports that "careful study of Old English literature from the point of view of classical rhetoric has little more than begun." Aldo Scaglione (p.269) concludes his essay by observing that "Dante's style, both Latin and vernacular, both in prose and verse, still remains largely unexplored...." And Robert 0.Payne (p.271) offers an explora­ tion of Chaucer's poetry that "may open some new possibilities for future work on Chaucer and the rhetoricians." This is, altogether, an excellent volume. It will enjoy good company with Professor Murphy's Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: A History of Rhetorical Theory from Saint Augustine to the Renaissance and his edition of Three Medieval Rhetorical Arts. RrcHARD L. HoFFMAN Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University M. B. PARKES and ELIZABETH SALTER, introd. , Troilus and Criseyde: A Facsimile of Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61. Cambri�ge: D.S.Brewer, Ltd., 1978. Pp.xxiv, 302. £65. Chaucerians can only welcome with enthusiasm and gratitude this handsome facsimile of one of the three pre-eminent mss of the Troilus and Criseyde. Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS. 61 is of interest not only because it provides the text (a gamma, according to Root's classification) upon which most editions, whether rightly or wrongly, have been based, and because it boasts one of the most handsome and famous frontispieces in medieval literature, but because it is a splendid example of late medieval book-making which is frozen, as it were, after most of the preparation had been completed but before the finishing, STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER except for the frontispiece, had been done. With the projected facsimiles of the Campsall (Pierpont Morgan Library MS. M. 817) and the St. John's College Cambridge MSS. of Troilus which are to be produced in the course of the Variorum Chaucer, scholars will be in an entirely new and highly advantageous position in their studies of the text of the great­ est of Chaucer's poems. D. S. Brewer, Ltd., and the Scalar Press are to be congratulated for their achievement by which a valuable ms is well photographed and the facsimile clearly produced, and the book provided for a scholarly audience at a reasonable price. Had Corpus Christi 6r been finished, it would probably have surpassed the Ellesmere in its overall beauty and lavishness (the frontispiece is, of course, far superior to any single piece of work in Ellesmere). As it was left, it presents a strange appearance, with its glowing frontispiece followed by colorlessness, except for the red incipits and explicits at book divisions. The two scribalhands are solidly professional and legible, their littera quadrata so precise a textura as to make even the hair-line strokes nearly always clearly visible in the photographs. The hands are in harmony, differing primarily in size, the second hand being smaller and rather more square than the first, in which the bulk of the poem is written. Legibility suffers, for readers of the facsimile, only occasionally when the scribe is writing on the hair side of the membrane and the fine strokes get lost in the rough surface. The unfinished state of the ms raises a number of interesting questions which are discussed by M. B. Parkes in his section of the introduction. Parkes' introduction is valuable, in no small part due to the fact that his has been among the most important work in recent paleographical an­ alysis and classification. Parkes and A. I. Doyle have, in recent years, been the most active scholars in investigating...

Book reviews

Medieval Eloquence: Studies in the Theory and Practice of Medieval Rhetoric. Edited by James J. Murphy. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978; pp. xii + 354. $16.00. Averroes’ Three Short Commentaries on Aristotle's “Topics,” “Rhetoric,” and “Poetics.” Edited and translated by Charles E. Butterworth. Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 1977; pp. xi + 206. $30.00. Government and the Mind. By Joseph Tussman. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977; pp. viii + 175. $8.95. Speaking Out: Two Centuries of Kentucky Orators. By Gifford Blyton and Randall Capps. Winston‐Salem, N.C.: Hunter Publishing Co., 1977; pp. v + 282. $10.00. Form and Genre: Shaping Rhetorical Action. Edited by Karlyn Kohrs Campbell and Kathleen Hall Jamieson. Falls Church, Va.: Speech Communication Association, 1978; pp. 189. $5.95; SCA members, $4.95.

Rhetoric and feminism in theCárcel de Amor1

In the debate between misogyny and feminism in fifteenth-century Spain, Diego de San Pedro's Carcel de Amor unequivocally and uncompromisingly comes to the defence of the female sex.2 The most obvi...

Medieval Rhetorical Arts in England and the Manuscript Traditions

Medieval Rhetorical Arts in England and the Manuscript Traditions

Boethius and the history of medieval rhetoric

In Boethius’ view, rhetoric was clearly subordinate to dialectic, and rhetorical topics derived their force from the inference rules contained in dialectical logic. Early medieval rhetoricians were not influenced by this conception of rhetoric, but it came to play an important role in rhetorical theory after the tenth century A.D.