The Rhetoric of Cicero in Its Medieval and Early Renaissance Commentary Tradition - (History) Annotated by Virginia Cox & John Ward (Paperback)

About the Book

This volume examines the transmission and influence of Ciceronian rhetoric from late antiquity to the fifteenth century, examining the relationship between rhetoric and practices as diverse as law, dialectic, memory theory, poetics, and ethics. Includes an appendix of primary texts

Book Synopsis

This multi-authored volume, by an authoritative team of international scholars, examines the transmission of Ciceronian rhetoric in medieval and early Renaissance Europe, concentrating on the fortunes, in particular, of the two dominant classical rhetorical textbooks of the time, Cicero's early De inventione, and the contemporary 'pseudo-Ciceronian' Rhetorica ad Herennium. The volume is unprecedented in range and depth as a presentation of the place of classical rhetoric in medieval culture, and will serve to revise views of a period seen until recently as largely indifferent to the values of 'eloquence'. The main body of the volume is composed of a series of ground-breaking studies of the relationship between Ciceronian rhetoric and a wide range of intellectual traditions and cultural practices, including dialectic, law, conduct theory, memory, poetics and practical composition teaching, preaching, ars dictaminis, and political oratory. Also included are important contextualizing essays on the commentary tradition of the Ciceronian juvenilia, on the textual history and manuscript transmission of Cicero's rhetorical works, and on the Latin and vernacular traditions of Ciceronian rhetoric in Italy. The volume concludes with an annotated appendix of illustrative texts containing extracts from the commentary tradition on Ciceronian rhetoric, most of which have not been previously available in print.

Originally published in hardcover

About the Author

Virginia Cox, Ph.D. Cambridge University (1990), is Professor in the Department of Italian, New York University, and the author of numerous studies on late-medieval and Renaissance Italian literature and history of rhetoric, including The Renaissance Dialogue (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
John O.Ward, Ph.D. Toronto University (1972), Honorary Associate of the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Sydney, has published widely in medieval intellectual and ecclesiastical history, including Ciceronian Rhetoric in Treatise, Scholion and Commentary (Brepols 1995).