The appearance of a second volume of the Disputatio series is, in itself, cause for rejoicing. As the successor to the journal of the same name, this series has an announced interest in the intellectual history and culture of the European Middle Ages, especially in the diffusion and reception of texts and ideas. This volume looks specifically at the role of rhetoric in driving change from the time of Abelard (d. 1142) to that of Juan Luis Vives (d. 1540). Professor John O. Ward of the University of Sydney is honored with a collection of twelve essays and an introductory chapter, the collective force of which is to demonstrate the vitality and broad scope of contemporary scholarship on medieval rhetoric.
The division of textual studies into the three arts of the trivium never won a lasting consensus: the boundaries of rhetoric, grammar, and logic never settled. Much of what we now think of as "rhetoric" must be sought in texts on logic and grammar as well. The oft-shifting relationship among rhetoric, dialectic, and logic is indicative of the instability of the categories. The history of rhetoric is, therefore, following a moving target when looking at the medieval centuries. Perhaps this lack of definition is one reason why anthologies that survey the history of rhetoric give so little attention to the centuries between Quintilian and Erasmus. And, as Martin Camargo argues in his introductory essay, "Defining Medieval Rhetoric," nostalgia for a unified discipline, which never existed, led Renaissance humanists and later scholars to theorize medieval fracturing of a classical wholeness, which they attempted to reconstruct.
Camargo's essay surveys the historiography of medieval rhetoric, noting the reductionist tendency to identify it with the study of poetry or ars dictaminis or style and to see it as the Other that disrupted the authentic classical tradition. An exception is Richard McKeon's 1942 "Rhetoric in the Middle Ages." Camargo offers his own outline of McKeon's difficult article and credits McKeon with seeing medieval rhetoric as development rather than detour. A survey of some of the important work done in recent years concludes the introductory essay. Those that follow provide specifics in support of an inclusive definition of medieval rhetoric, one that emphasizes its dynamic role in intellectual culture.
The first section of essays, "Abelard and Rhetoric," begins with Constant Mews's "Peter Abelard on Dialectic, Rhetoric, and the Principles of Argument." Mews argues that Abelard's thinking about rhetoric developed in reaction to the teaching of William of Champeaux and that his interest in logic was in the principles of argument itself and not primarily in universals. Whereas William had subsumed rhetoric, grammar, and dialectic under logic, Abelard, in his commentary of the second book of Boethius'De differentiis topicis, in the Super topica, associates rhetoric with persuasion and motivation, rather than with truth claims. Rhetoric, unlike logic, does not necessarily deal with things that exist in the world. The prologue to Sic et non demonstrates what is at stake in this distinction: patristic texts and the Scriptures themselves are rhetorical texts, offering opinions that dialectic can then test as truth claims. Mews traces Abelard's thinking about rhetoric in a wide range of his writings, from the Dialectica to the Commentaria in Epistolam ad Romanos, wherein he asserts the importance of authorial intention. Mews's essay thus demonstrates that the shifting definitions of trivial subjects were not merely intellectual reconceptualizations but also moves made in service of an agenda.
Abelard's twelve-page excursus on rhetorical argumentation in his gloss on Boethius' De differentiis topicis, one of the key texts used by Mews, is re-edited here by Karin Margareta Fredborg in "Abelard on Rhetoric." Her commentary contextualizes Abelard's digression, which draws from the fourth book of Boethius' work, one which addresses the rhetorical topics as set forth in Cicero's De inventione.
Peter von Moos's "Literary Aesthetics in the Latin Middle Ages: The Rhetorical Theology of Peter Abelard" originally appeared in 1991 in German. It fits well into the present volume because it addresses the relationship of rhetorical and dialectical argumentation. Tracing the development of a medieval concept of literature ("secular fictionality"), von Moos looks to Abelard's theological writings. Biblical and patristic texts are rhetorical according to Boethius' definition: the domain of the particular and specific. Such texts are therefore to be understood as addressing a particular audience, not as making general truth claims. The need for hermeneutical sophistication, for reading beyond the literal, thus provides the groundwork for a theory of fiction as story in need of interpretation.
The concluding contribution to the section on Abelard, Juanita Feros Ruys's "Eloquencie vultum depingere: Eloquence and Dictamen in the Love Letters of Heloise and Abelard," examines Letter 49 of the Epistolae duorum amantium. Ruys makes an argument for seeing in this letter the influence of Abelard's refusal to equate ethics and eloquence. After a survey of Abelard's writing about his preference for a plain style, Ruys reads Letter 49 as recording Heloise's partial acquiescence to his precepts. The article concludes with an argument for the significance of Heloise's attempt to integrate eleventh-century ideals with twelfth-century thinking about language. This first section of essays, devoted to Abelard, is especially cohesive and demonstrates the value of examining more closely the use of rhetorical theory to shift authority to new textual practices.
Section II, "Voices of Reform," is less cohesive, including Rodney M. Thomson's "Satire, Irony, and Humour in William of Malmsbury," Michael Winterbottom's "The Language of William of Malmsbury," Cary J. Nederman's "The Origins of 'Policy': Fiscal Administration and Economic Principles in Later Twelfth-Century England," and John Scott's "William of Ockham and the Lawyers Revisited." The writers under study had different objects of reform, but the articles do share an interest in the intersection of rhetoric and politics. Thomson examines William's style as an expression of his view of human nature and human history, as well as its suitability to a detached critique of the failings of the mighty in England. Winterbottom makes a claim that William chose to write in Latin in order to bring English history to a wider European audience, and not because he found English barbaric. The article looks closely at William's Latin, its sentence construction, rhyme, rhythm, and word choice in relation to rhetorical precepts and possible models, and Winterbottom notes areas where fruitful research could yet be done.
Nederman looks at texts on politics and government produced in twelfth-century England and sees there the origins of 'policy,' understood as the linking of economic questions and public affairs. He looks specifically at the Policraticus of John of Salisbury and the Dialogus de Scaccario of Richard FitzNigel. Both of these writers develop a rationale for government managing the commercial interests. Rapid commercial growth prompted the creation of such texts, and the form of argumentation they employ is noteworthy: FitzNigel, for example, supports his claims with his own experience rather than received wisdom or philosophical argument.
William of Ockham, in contrast, relied on a "rhetoric of truth," which John Scott defines as a belief that fair and reasonable people will make the right judgment when given the arguments in a case. Scott relates this belief to the specific rhetorical choices Ockham made in his efforts to discredit both papal authority and that of the canonists, giving instead to the theologians the right to determine what was heretical. Scott's article makes a fitting conclusion to this section, illustrating as it does just how much could be at stake in arguments over the definitions of intellectual disciplines.
The last section, "Rhetoric in Transition," includes Rita Copeland's "Wycliffite Ciceronianism? The General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible and Augustine's De doctrina Christiana," Virginia Cox's "Ciceronian Rhetorical Theory in the 'Volgare': A Fourteenth-Century Text and its Fifteenth-Century Readers," James J. Murphy's "Rhetoric in the Fifteenth Century: From Manuscript to Print," and Nancy S. Struever's "Political Rhetoric and Rhetorical Politics in Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540)." Copeland notes that the General Prologue to the Wycliffite Bible includes an extended exposition of hermeneutics that derives from Ciceronian rhetorical theory, something uncommon in the vernacular. Tracing the influence back through Augustine to Ciceronian legal theory, she demonstrates how the Ciceronian hermeneutics accorded with the Wycliffite preference for a literal reading of scripture and the extension of Bible reading to a lay audience.
Also focusing on vernacular Ciceronianism, Virginia Cox examines a mid-fourteenth-century anonymous Tuscan translation of the Rhetorica ad Herennium. The many examples added to the text serve to illustrate how its precepts could be applied to the public speaking of its Italian readers in law courts and, primarily, in the communal councils. An appendix gives excerpts. Whereas the Copeland and Cox articles illustrate ways in which the new lay and vernacular readership appropriated rhetorical theory for its purposes, Murphy's essay looks at which rhetorical texts were chosen for printing before 1500 and suggests that the technology of moveable type not only made titles much more available but also changed the market (e.g., the growing popularity of compendia).
Fittingly, Struever concludes the volume with an essay that examines Vives' view of rhetoric as a pragmatic political tool and questions received descriptions of the distinctions between medieval and renaissance rhetoric.
The contributors to this collection seem to have had slightly different ideas of who the reader would be: some have assumed a reader who needs no translation of the Latin excerpts and quotations, and some have imagined a reader who would be grateful for a little help. We can all be grateful for the appearance of this volume, which will be essential to anyone working in medieval rhetoric and valuable to anyone who wants a greater understanding of medieval textual practices.