Martin Camargo The Waning of Medieval Ars Dictaminis T he five essays in this special issue grew out of papers presented at the Twelfth Biennial Conference of the Inter­ national Society for the History of Rhetoric (Amsterdam, July 1999), at the session entitled "What Killed the Ars Dictaminis? and When?" four of them ably chaired by Emil Polak. That session originated in a conversation I had with Malcolm Richardson inl997, at the previous ISHR conference, in Saskatoon. We had just discov­ ered that his research on practitioners of vernacular letter writing and mine on teachers of Latin letter writing in late-medieval Eng­ land independently suggested that in England the ars dictaminis had experienced something like what paleontologists call an "extinction event" around 1470. We wondered whether the suddenness of the demise was unique to England. Beyond that, we wondered why the most widely diffused and influential variety of practical rhetoric dur­ ing the later Middle Ages, an art that was highly teachable, adaptable to almost any institutional setting, aligned with key disciplines such as grammar and the law, should have disappeared at all. Having served the communication needs of a broad range of professionals throughout Europe since the late eleventh century, had the ars dic­ taminis simply worn itself out or had new needs arisen to which it could no longer respond? With good reason, more scholarship has focused on the origins of the ars dictaminis than on its demise. It is much simpler to identify the first medieval treatise that teaches how to compose letters than to decide which letter-writing treatise is the last in that tradition. Few of the surviving ancient treatises on rhetoric provide any explicit instruction on letters: in the Latin tradition, the brief chapter on letters that concludes the Ars rhetorica of Julius Victor (fourth century AD) is virtually unique.1 While some such pedagogy clearly existed in 5 Ed. Karl Halm, Rhetores Latini Minores (Leipzig, 1863), pp. 447-48.© The International Society for the History of Rhetoric, Rhetorica, Volume XIX, Number 2 (Spring 2001). Send requests for permission to reprint to: Rights and Permissions, University of California Press, Journals Division, 2000 Center St, Ste 303, Berkeley, CA 94704-1223, USA 1 136 RHETORICA ancient times, as it did in the early Middle Ages, the transmission of that pedagogy in textbooks, at least in the Latin West, seems to have been an invention of the late-eleventh and early twelfth centuries. By contrast, letter-writing manuals continued to be produced in great numbers through the end of the Middle Ages, throughout the Renaissance, and up to the present day Thus, to locate the "end" of the medieval tradition is to engage with all the problems attendant on drawing a clear boundary between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Not surprisingly, scholars of medieval and Renaissance epistolography and rhetoric disagree on the sharpness with which such a boundary can be drawn. The most influential proponent of an overlap between medieval ars dictaminis and Renaissance humanism has been Paul O. Kristeller, who argued that a disproportionate number of the early humanists made their living as practitioners and even teachers of the ars dictaminis.2 Their humanistic interests were distinct from their professional duties, and they saw no conflict between writing letters that followed the rules of dictamen in their public capacity even as they imitated the familiar letters of Cicero when writing to their fellow humanists. In a series of important articles and a recent book, Ronald Witt has done more than anyone to develop and extend Kris­ teller's insight, documenting the gradual displacement of medieval dictamen at all levels of letter writing, a process that was not com­ pleted in Italy before the end of the fifteenth century.3 Most scholars agree that medieval practices coexisted with the new learning for a long time. If medieval ars dictaminis did eventually "die", it generally did not do so in the way implied by the title of the original conference session: hence I have adapted the title of Johann Huizinga's famous book in order to describe more accurately the picture that emerges from the papers published here. In attempting to trace and explain the...

Reviews 335 begins. And she never fully answers the question posed by the structure of the book. How does a revised understanding of rhetoric as an "art of intervention" help us to rethink current humanities institutions, canons, or curricula? The title and structure of the work invite us to expect some lines of inquiry that don't appear. Anyone looking for specific applications of rhetoric as techne to an emancipatory or interventionist pedagogy might be disappointed. But those looking for careful readings, particularly of Aristotle—in the Rhetoric and other works like the Analytics and the Nicomachean Ethics—that bear upon the relations between theoretical, practical and productive arts will be well repaid. Atwill shows the incommensurability in Aristotle between theory, whose end is static contemplation, and rhetoric (like all techne) whose end is realized only in the exchange between rhetor and audience. She is careful not to overstate the emancipatory goals of Protagoras or Isocrates, who were no more interested in redistributing political power or cultural capital than was Plato. And her focus on this ancient debate between theoria and techne helps us to see current debates within the humanities, as well as well-known ancient texts, in a new light. JAMES FREDAL The Ohio State University Mervin R. Dilts and George A. Kennedy eds, Two Greek Rhetorical Treatises from the Roman Empire: Introduction, Text, and Translation of the Arts of Rhetoric Attributed to Anonymous Seguerianus and to Apsines of Gadara, Mnemosyne Supplement 168 (Leiden: E. J. Brill 1997) xxvii + 249 pp. Prior to this new book by Dilts & Kennedy (hereafter DK), the most satisfactory scholarly edition of either the Anonymous Seguerianus (AS) or Apsines was to be found in the Rhetores Graeci of Spengel/Hammer (Leipzig: Teubner 1894). What we have now is a superb presentation of both treatises, in a carefully edited 336 RHETORICA Greek text furnished with critical apparatus, an accurate en face translation, and a running commentary. DK also provide historical and textual introductions and a bibliography. There is something for everyone here: the philologist will spend many happy hours burrowing into the extensive apparatus criticus; the Greekless reader may read the treatises in modern English translations; and the rhetorical theorist will find much to ponder, in both text and comments. Readers of Kennedy's earlier work will already know about these ancient treatises. Kennedy had signaled the importance of both, as early as The Art of Rhetoric in the Roman World (1972), and again in Greek Rhetoric under Christian Emperors (1983) and A New History of Classical Rhetoric (1994). These late-antique Greek treatises form part of the didactic tradition of declamation cultivated in the Second Sophistic. Both begin by demonstrating allegiance to what Solmsen labeled the moria logou tradition; that is, their disposition of the material is based on the parts of the oration: proem, narration, pisteis or proofs, and epilogue.1 This in fact is a fair skeletal outline of the AS, which does, however, show some Aristotelian and Stoic influence as well. The treatise is especially valuable as a compendium of the work of various theorists of the period, including Alexander son of Numenius, [?Aelius] Harpocration, the followers of Apollodorus of Pergamum, and one Neocles. The AS is of course anonymous, but we know2 something more about the author of the second treatise in DK. Valerius Apsines of Gadara is praised by Philostratus (2.628), and may be dated to the late second/early third century CE. His treatise, more than the AS, is intended specifically for the instruction of declamation. His list of the moria logou is more elaborate than that in the AS, as it includes proem, prokatastasis (preparation for the proof), narration, enthymemes, kephalaia ("headings"), and epilogue. The Greek texts in DK are superbly careful and accurate. It is an apt adjudication of their quality, in fact, to say that they are a Friedrich Solmsen, The Aristotelian Tradition in Ancient Rhetoric", American Journal ofPhilology 62 (1941) pp. 35-50,169-190. Or thought we knew: for a dissenting voice see Malcolm Heath, "Apsines and Pseudo-Apsines", American Journal ofPhilology 119 (1998) pp. 89-111. Reviews 337 significant improvement over the already good texts of Spengel/Hammer. Fresh manuscript...

In the Christian society and culture of England before the Norman Conquest literary education was centred on grammar. The extant texts reflect an educational system which by no means neglected rhetorical education—but the classical ars bene dicendi was apparently basically unknown. Anglo-Saxon England thus provides a test case for the continuation and elaboration of alternatives for classical rhetorical teaching. It is argued that, besides the influence of pedagogical considerations and Germanic poetical devices, the background of Anglo-Saxon rhetorical strategies is to be sought in an extended grammatical curriculum. Instruction in the praeexercitamina may have been included in this curriculum. The figures and tropes contained in the grammars for the purpose of text interpretation were certainly studied, and they were also employed in the production of literature. Of utmost importance was the creative use of rhetorical techniques which were deduced from model texts by way of grammatical enarratio.

Reviews 97 mystics and celebrated preachers in Spain during the sixteenth century. This is the first rhetorical treatise intended for missionaries converting people from the East and West Indies. Studies of other rhetorical guides are found in the chapters on Fray Diego Valadés (ch.3), Bartolomé de las Casas and José de Acosta (ch.4) and José de Arriaga (ch.6). The study of Bernardino de Sahagún's General History of New Spain is one of the most important chapters of this book. Sahagún's text inserts a considerable range of reflections of the spiritual conquest of New Spain, and also reveals to the western world a survey of all aspects of Mexican religion, society and natural philosophy. The Amerindian contribution to the rhetorical tradition in Latin America is found in the huehuehlahtolli. These were the speeches delivered by the learned men, "the speeches of the elders". Abbot also studies the use and influence of the European rhetorical tradition in the readings and interpretations by this historian of the huehuehlahtolli. Abbot provides a much needed comprehensive and detailed examination of the theories and practice of rhetoric during the sixteenth and seventeenth century in Spanish America. He is successful in two important tasks: finding the points of contact and rupture between the European rhetorical tradition and the new emerging ideas about writing, oratory, and theory in the New World, and linking rhetorical theory to experiential knowledge and cultural understanding provided in colonial texts. SANTA ARIAS Florida State University Robert Crawford ed., The Scottish Invention of English Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) 259 pp. This collection of articles presents a counter-narrative to previous histories of English Studies that have ignored the crucial role of Scotland in the institutionalization of English as a modem discipline. As the title suggests, the twelve articles in the volume use a variety of approaches to develop the thesis that "English Literature as a university subject is a Scottish invention" and to 98 RHETORICA explore the implications of this thesis in the context of issues such as national identity, cultural politics, and gender in Scotland, England, America, and Australasia. Robert Crawford introduces the volume by situating it within the context of recent accounts of the development of university English. He then addresses the establishment of courses in Rhetoric and Belles Lettres at St. Andrews, focusing in particular on the career of Robert Watson, who was appointed Professor of Logic, Rhetoric and Metaphysics in 1756. In the second article, Neil Rhodes continues Crawford's discussion of the curriculum at St. Andrew's by detailing the influence of Ramus on the teaching of Belles Lettres. Rhodes argues that it was the dissemination of Ramist pedagogy through the work of Roland Macllmaine at St. Andrews which led in the eighteenth century to the "redescription of Rhetoric as Criticism", first in the lectures of Watson and later in the work of Lord Karnes (p. 31). Joan Pittock focuses on the Scottish development of English Studies by examining the curriculum at Aberdeen. In her article, she illustrates the philosophical approach to Belles Lettres in the works of Aberdonian scholars such as David Fordyce, Alexander Gerard, and James Beattie, as well as the critical connections these scholars make between the concept of taste and the social and ethical development of students. The important social function of English Studies is also taken up by Paul Bator in his discussion of the novel in the Scottish university curriculum. Bator demonstrates the rise of the novel as a serious genre of study through careful analysis of lecture notes from Professors of Rhetoric at St. Andrews and Aberdeen Universities, acquisition and library borrowing records, and activities of the Edinburgh Belles Lettres Society. He argues that for Scottish professors of rhetoric in the eighteenth century "the novel provided a unique and unstoppable vehicle by which their students could observe and learn vicariously the manners of their English brethren" (p. 90). The new genre, then, functioned as a form of conduct literature through which the values of mainstream British culture were perpetuated in Scotland. Bator's analysis of the Edinburgh Belles Lettres Society, however, indicates that the study of the novel in the Scottish universities...

Reviews 445 L. L. Gaillet ed.z Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences (Mahwah, N.J.: Hermagoras Press, 1998) xviii + 238pp. Scottish Rhetoric and Its Influences, edited by L. L. Gaillet and introduced by Winifred Bryan Horner, offers up an eclectic collection of conference papers on eighteenth and nineteenthcentury rhetoric delivered originally at the 1995 ISHR meeting in Edinburgh. Save one, the contributors to this handsome volume in Jerry Murphy's Hermagoras Press Series all represent North American colleges and universities. The chapters are divided somewhat unevenly into two parts, thirteen papers on "Reexamining Influential Figures" and four papers on "The Rhetoric of North American Composition". Among the papers that stand out in the first grouping is Susan Jarratt's "Ekphrastic Rhetoric and National Identity in Adam Smith's Rhetoric Lectures". Applying ekphrasis as the "verbal descriptions of visual representations", Jarratt looks at Smith's own example of historical description, Jan Steele's Het offer van Iphigenia (The Sacrifice of Iphigenia), in order to illustrate Smith's rhetorical lesson in lecture 16 as "a reiteration of the use of visual arts by ancient rhetoricians". Constrained from supplying full responses to a series of critical cultural identity questions that launch the essay, Jarratt nevertheless supplies an imaginative portrayal of Smith's belief in what Jarratt characterizes as the "usefulness of visual theories for interpreting rhetorical texts". Herman Cohen's "Rhetoric and Freedom in the Scottish Treatment of the History of Rhetoric" and Linda FerreiraBuckley 's "'Scotch Knowledge' and the Formation of Rhetorical Studies in 19th-Century England", serve this volume title well in terms, respectively, of explicating Blair's rhetorical appraisal of "Roman rhetoric" and "Greek eloquence" in succinct contrast to that of Charles Rollin's appraisal at the College Royale in Paris, and in terms of demonstrating the careful results of archival investigation into the curriculum at University College, London, results which detail the "formative influence of Scottish education...on post-secondary English studies in England". Murray Pittock, the lone U.K. representative, weaves an enjoyable essay that frames a broad enlightenment context for the importance and impact of Scotland's student debating clubs and 446 RHETORICA societies as well as speculates briefly upon the ripple-effect upon modern speech curricula in the States. Also noteworthy in Part I are Don Abbott's findings on Blair's reception "abroad", Gary Lane Hatch's careful consideration of Blair's students' notes, and Sandra Sarkela's cogent analysis of sermons delivered in opposition to colonial independence. Notable in Part II, Beth Hewett and Andrea Lunsford, respectively, re-assess the impact of Samuel P. Newman's A Practical System of Rhetoric and Alexander Bain's rhetorics upon pedagogical practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in U.S. colleges and universities. Although arguing that Newman exhibits "a more modern understanding of composition pedagogy" than we might expect, Hewett acknowledges his modest "influence". Lunsford's depiction of Bain's impact is extended here with revealing reconsideration of Bain's autobiography that reinforces his "devotion to students' access to education". The terrain covered in this collection will appear familiarly to scholars in the field. Students of the subject will gain a foothold understanding of the broad impact of Scottish rhetoric that should lead to further discussion and inquiry. Unfortunately, there is no colloquy between or among authors of these chapters to spark further debate, for example, about competing channels of influence upon rhetoric in the early American colleges. Paul Bator Stanford University ...

Research Article| August 01 1998 Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of james j. Murphy Winifred Bryan Homer and Michael Leff eds. Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of james j. Murphy (Mahwah, NJ: Elrhaum, 1995) 337pp. Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard Department of English, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40506-0027, USA. Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (1998) 16 (3): 305–307. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1998.16.3.305 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard; Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of james j. Murphy. Rhetorica 1 August 1998; 16 (3): 305–307. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.1998.16.3.305 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. Copyright 1998, The International Society for the History of Rhetoric1998 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

RHETORICA 308 these six essays demonstrate the breadth, status, and versatility of rhetoric as a field of inquiry, study, and practice. In their introductory essay, Bennett and Leff remark, "Working quietly against the grain of a specialized [academic] culture, Murphy has opened a conduit between historical scholarship and the classroom" (4). A lengthy bibliography of Murphy's publications and work in progress, contributed by Winifred Horner, follows the Preface. Like Murphy's own contributions to the field, the essays collected in Rhetoric and Pedagogy successfully "hold historical scholarship and current pragmatic interests in a useful relationship to one another" (4). By their own interest in bridging historical scholarship and current teaching practice, the contributors to this Festschrift honor Murphy's legacy and continue his work. Cynthia Miecznikowski Sheard Ian Worthington ed. Persuasion: Greek Rhetoric in Action (London: Routledge, 1994) xi+277pp. This collection of twelve essays is interesting for three reasons. First, it constitutes one more sign that rhetoric is undergoing a veritable renaissance. Second, it shows that classics, a discipline once indifferent or hostile to the rhetorical enterprise, is now willing to join other disciplines in recognizing rhetoric as a major force in the shaping of western culture (nine of the contributors to this collection are classicists). Third, and most important, this volume does not concern itself with rhetoric in isolation. Rather, it examines its many intersections with such genres as politics, history, law, epic, tragedy, comedy and philosophy. The various treatments of the particular intersections combine traditional and new insights, and open the path to many provocative questions. Likewise, they generally invite reflection and criticism. More importantly, however, the collection as a whole points to a maximalist project that takes rhetoric beyond the orators, who practised it and the philosophers, who discussed Reviews 309 it. In so doing, it suggests that richer understandings can be had when placing rhetoric at the center of the Hellenic culture and crossing it with other genres (i.e. epic, tragedy, comedy, history). In this regard, the collection recommends itself in its entirety much more than any one of its chapters. The common framework that all contributors share comes from the distinction as well as the connection between rhetoric as the study, and oratory as the practice of persuasion. According to the editor, "The aim of this book is to bring together...discussions of the relationship of Greek oratory and rhetoric to a variety of important areas and genres, at the same time reflecting new trends and ideas now at work in the study of rhetoric" (ix). In the first chapter, "From orality to rhetoric: an intellectual transformation", Carol Thomas and Edward Webb trace the emergence of rhetoric along the orality-literacy continuum. Relying on but also refining the work of George Kennedy, Eric Havelock, Walter Ong and Thomas Cole, the authors point out that even though rhetoric benefited from the contributions of literacy it nevertheless retained its initial oral character. This chapter examines rhetoric along the registers of composition, delivery, and analysis, and pays attention to four features: uses, persuasive intent, magical aura, and the speaker's esteem. In chapter 2, "Rhetorical means of persuasion", Christopher Carey argues that of the three Aristotelian pisteis, pathos and ethos are more indirect while the third, logos, is a more direct means of persuasion. Carey illustrates the uses of pathos and ethos in the actual speeches of orators such as Demosthenes, Aeschines and Lysias, and concludes that Aristotle's distinctions are considerably "neater" than their actual use shows. In chapter 3, "Probability and persuasion: Plato and early Greek rhetoric", Michael Gagarin seeks to minimize the Platonic influence on our understanding of classical Greek rhetoric. His thesis is that Plato's widely accepted claim that the orators prefer probability over the truth is demonstrably wrong. Gagarin reviews the uses of probability arguments in the surviving speeches of orators and sophists and finds no evidence supporting Plato's claim. Gagarin's study shows convincingly that the orators generally value truth; however, they resort to probability when RHETORICA 310 the truth of a case is unknown, unclear, or subject to differing interpretations. In chapter 4, "Classical rhetoric and modem theories of discourse", David Cohen takes a brief but...

REVIEWS Winifred Bryan Horner and Michael Leff eds, Rhetoric and Pedagogy: Its History, Philosophy, and Practice: Essays in Honor of James J. Murphy (Mahwah, NJ: Elrhaum, 1995) 337pp. This commemorative volume honoring James J. Murphy is an eclectic collection of essays authored by scholars from around the world, colleagues and former students of Murphy whose own contributions to rhetorical history are well known. The collection pays tribute to Murphy's career as scholar and teacher and celebrates historical texts and figures for their cross-disciplinary and cross-cultural contributions to rhetorical history and pedagogy. Beth S. Bennett and Michael Leff's Introduction praises Murphy for his commitment to the history of the rhetorical tradition—both discipline and profession—through his integration of teaching and scholarship as well as his role in the founding of the International Society for the History of Rhetoric. They note that ISHR, in addition to publishing the field's premier journal, Rhetorica, has held biennial conferences since 1977 leading to the publication of important articles and edited volumes on Western rhetorical history and historiography "from the end of the Roman Empire through the 16th-century" (3). The intellectual status of rhetorical studies was thus elevated through Murphy's efforts. The collection's eighteen chapters are grouped chronologically into four sections: I. Theory and Pedagogy in the Classical and Medieval Traditions, II. Renaissance Textbooks and Rhetorical Education, III. Continuity and Change in 18th-Century Rhetorical Education, and IV. Rhetoric and Culture from the Renaissance to the Present. The Introduction forecasts the recurrence of three themes throughout the volume: "(a) Murphy and his work are 305 RHETORICA 306 ahead of their time; (b) Murphy not only studies rhetoric but also uses it to promote a communal effort; and (c) Murphy adopts a comprehensive view that opens an old tradition to future inquiry" (2). Bennett and Leff describe the ways in which each of the essays that follows illuminates one or more themes. They also advocate reading "across" chapters to trace the ways in which certain topics and controversies have evolved and enduring throughout rhetorical history. This way of reading, they suggest, can yield "the sense of unity in diversity" (16) that exemplifies Murphy's teaching and scholarship. The six essays in part one concern such topics as Aristotle's enthymeme as a doxastic rather than syllogistic form of reasoning (Lawrence D. Green), Cicero's criticism of philosophers (Robert Gaines), distinctions between Cicero's published court speeches and their oral presentation (Jerzy Axer), attitudes toward textual authority and ownership of ideas into the Christian era (George A. Kennedy), the use of poetry in the teaching of rhetorical tropes during the Middle Ages (Marjorie Curry Woods), and the contrasting missions and pedagogical practices at the universities of Oxford and Bologna in the late Middle Ages (Martin Camargo). Against long-held misperceptions of the "medieval fragmentation" of the classical rhetorical tradition, this first group of essays re-envisions the rhetorical tradition's passage from a "golden" to a "dark" age. Rather than "confused and confusing" (Woods 73), this early period in the history of rhetoric is rehistoricized as a period in which the study and practice of rhetoric flourished in new and various shapes, "each appropriate for its particular time and place" (Camargo 94). The second group of essays, the most esoteric in the collection, extends discussions of pedagogy into the Renaissance. John Ward s essay on Guarino da Verona includes lengthy discursive notes and references to primary texts as well as Latin excerpts for the specialized reader of Renaissance rhetoric. As scholar, teacher, and rhetor, Guarino contributed "toward the definition of 15th-century Italian paideia ...educative of the whole man", capable of developing his human, moral, social, and civic potential (101). Jean Dietz Moss's essay on Ludovico Carbone follows, offering a summary of the contents and significance of Carbone s On the Nature of Rhetoric and Eloquence", the first Reviews 307 book of his De arte dicendi (On the Arts of Speaking), a work organized as a series of disputations with classical rhetoricians. William A. Wallace's essay on Antonio Riccobono and rhetorical pedagogy in 16th-century Padua shows the persistence of such issues as whether rhetoric is an...

RHETORICA 236 Thomas P. Miller, The Formation of College English: Rhetoric and Belles Lettres in the British Cultural Provinces, (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1997), x + 345 pp. Thomas Miller's excellent work The Formation of College English examines a strand in the development of English studies—the civic domain of rhetoric—neglected in other important histories of the discipline: Gerald Graff's Professing English Literature: An Institutional History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), Franklin Court's Institutionalizing English Literature (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992), and Robert Crawford's Devolving English Literature (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992). In the role of respondent to the 1997 Conference on College Composition and Communication session "Octalog II: The (Continuing) Politics of Historiography", Miller stressed the "civic sense of the work that lies before us" as historiographers of the discipline of composition and rhetoric. In particular, he praised historical research based on a "civic philosophy of teaching that links critical understanding with collaborative action toward social justice" and applauded archival work "that take[s] up the project of reconstituting the experiences of those who have been erased from accounts of the dominant tradition." In The Formation of College English, Miller "takes up" the little examined "provincial traditions that introduced modem history, politics, rhetoric, literature, and science into the college curriculum as case studies of how the teaching of culture functions as a means of social reproduction and transformation" (p. 19). He offers a comprehensive and unique treatment of territory introduced in recent institutional accounts of the development of American classes in rhetoric/composition, including Nan Johnson's Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric in American Colleges (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1992) and Winifred Bryan Homer's Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric: The American Connection (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). Miller asks "from a historical perspective, what then are the practical values of rhetoric and composition?" (p. 285). The answer: studying parallels between "historical situations" leads to Henry Giroux's conception of "teachers as transformative intellectuals" who strive for self-awareness and view "education as a public discourse" (p. Reviews 237 288). Beginning with an examination of the "civic domain, where rhetoric concerns itself with popular values in political action," Miller applies key concepts defining Antonio Gramsci's rhetorical theory ("civil society," "cosmopolitanism," "organic and traditional intellectuals") to his exploration of "how the humanities can prepare students to become productively involved in political debates over popular values in practical action" (p. 7). In the first chapter, Miller points to print economy and the resulting expansion of the reading public as the driving force responsible for effacing rhetoric: "Professors...de-emphasized the composition of public discourse and concentrated on teaching taste to adapt higher education to the mission of instilling a common culture in the reading public" (pp. 60-61). In chapter two, Miller examines the role of professors at the elite English universities, the "antiquarians who divorced the learned tradition from the needs of contemporary learners", in an attempt to preserve English culture against change (p. 64). Conversely, the utilitarian approach to education characteristic of the dissenting academies and subsequently the provincial colleges introduced modem culture into higher education. The new pedagogy at these institutions was based on the belief that "free inquiry would advance liberal reform, economic progress, and rational religion" (p. 85). The next three chapters closely examine the development of the "new rhetoric" at: the Dissenting Academies, which encouraged students to assume a critical perspective on received beliefs; the provincial Scottish Universities, which reformed the university curriculum against a critical reexamination of classicism; and the colonial Irish "contact zones", where outsiders had to teach themselves the proprieties of English taste and usage. Miller's investigation of the classical tradition in Ireland, focusing on the elocutionary movement and English studies outside the university, represents a novel and fascinating contribution to rhetorical studies of this period. Miller devotes the following chapters to closely appraising the contributions to rhetorical theory and practice of perhaps the three most influential figures and movements of the period—Adam Smith and the rhetoric of a commercial society, George Campbell and the "science of man", and Hugh Blair and the rhetoric of belles lettres. In the final chapter, Miller examines the expansion of higher...

Abstract: In On Invention, Cicero discusses both induction and deduction. In regard to the latter, Cicero presents a controversy between those who advocate a five-part analysis of deductive reasoning and those who prefer three parts. The issue is not practical or pedagogical, but conceptual in nature. Cicero himself prefers analysis into five parts, and rather confusingly he presents the argument of the advocates of five parts as if it were his own. The argument is striking in that it makes elaborate use of mixed hypothetical syllogisms in order to argue for five parts. Cicero claims that the five-part analysis has been preferred by all who take their start from Aristotle and Theophrastus. A survey of what Theophrastus is reported to have said concerning the hypothetical syllogism renders Cicero's claim intelligible. That is not to say that Theophrastus himself advocated a five-part analysis. Most likely the association with him derives from his known interest in hypothetical syllogistic. Later rhetoricians who identified themselves with the Peripatos made the cormection with the founders of the school, thereby gaining authority for a controversial analysis.

Reviews 337 habille d heureuses formules une érudition sans faille. Il intéressera les historiens de la rhétorique et de la philosophie. Mais au-delà du cercle des antiquisants, la démonstration a un enjeu plus large. Car le genus acutum des Stoïciens a eu une importante postérité : il est une des sources vives de toutes les théories de l'« acutezza » et offre des éléments pour mieux comprendre le Cortegiano de Castiglione, YAgudeza de Graciân ou encore le Witz de Freud. Ainsi est soulevé un important problème de l'histoire de la rhétorique. Laurent Pernot Ann Moss, Printed Commonplace-Books and the Structure of Renaissance Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), xvi + 345 pp. The importance of the Renaissance commonplace-book and the theory that underpins it has been acknowledged since the pioneering work of Robert Bolgar and others and reiterated by numerous Renaissance special­ ists ever since. Essential to the theory and practice of imitatio, it impinges on the history not only of rhetoric and dialectic but also of theology, law, and medicine. This book provides us at last with a meticulously detailed account of the origins, flowering, and decline of the commonplace-book in early modern Europe. Ann Moss's approach is broadly chronological. After a lucid, nononsense exposition of the ancient senses of topos and locus (communis) and their permutations in medieval dialectic and rhetoric, she provides a sur­ vey of medieval florilèges and compilations and then proceeds to the early humanist methods of pedagogy which may be regarded as the immediate forerunners of the Renaissance commonplace-book (Rudolph Agricola plays a major role here). Thereafter, the survey moves systematically through the different texts and contexts in which the commonplace method flourished from Erasmus' De copia to the late seventeenth century, when changing cultural practices already prefigure its demise. At each point in the history, individual writers and texts remain firmly in the fore­ ground: many of these are little known, and one of the virtues of Ann Moss's study is that, by refusing to sacrifice them to the big names, it redraws the map of humanist pedagogical practice. One can therefore take one's pick of the many choice items Ann Moss offers: Thomas of Ireland's hugely successful Manipulus florum, John Foxe's do-it-yourself compendium for budding religious controversialists, or the kaleidoscopic 338 RHETORICA Cannochiale aristotélico of 1654, designed by the aptly-named Emmanuele Tesauro to generate witty metaphors and conceits, and already trawled by Umberto Eco. This description might suggest a mere historical repertory, a kind of florilège of florilèges. The sequence is in fact much more subtle than that. Ann Moss is always sensitive to confessional or pedagogical differences, and more generally to the cultural and material history of these books. There are also constant overlaps in the narrative, with cross-references backwards and forwards that indicate the changing fortunes of a single text over several generations and connect different strands to create a mul­ tiple, three-dimensional picture. Thus, through the proliferation of particular texts, one discerns the groundswell of shifting methods and practices, the changes in organiza­ tion (topical, thematic, rhetorical, alphabetical, and so forth), the invention of increasingly efficient indexes and other retrieval systems. At the heart of these is the shift from a manuscript culture to a print culture, which leads first to a rapid increase in the production and use of commonplacebooks , and eventually to a kind of implosion, where the wealth of materi­ als available in print makes it virtually impossible to devise a comprehen­ sive compendium. Indeed, Moss points out the implied analogy between the commonplace-book and "moveable type, capable of both setting a page of text in an apparently immutable form and of rearranging all the elements of that page into other patterns for other meanings" (p. 252); with characteristic prudence, she mentions this analogy only when it finally becomes explicit in one of her later texts, Jean Oudart's Méthode des orateurs of 1668. Yet from the first page of the preface she deploys a running anal­ ogy which would not have been available even twenty years ago...

340 RHETORICA singularly persistent—and, one might add, singularly disturbing in some contexts—would be thoroughly vindicated. Whatever one's perspective, however, no one who is seriously inter­ ested in early modern culture, the history of pedagogy, or the history of ideas can afford to neglect this major contribution. Terence Cave Oratorical Culture in Nineteenth-Century America: Transformations in the Theory and Practice of Rhetoric, eds. Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1993). Gregory Clark and S. Michael Halloran's point of departure for this important collection of essays is Gerald Graff's claim in Professing the University that the collegiate oratorical culture in the first half of the nine­ teenth century linked college curricula with the "literary culture outside" (pp. 2-3). Yet as their introduction makes clear, "the culture outside dur­ ing the early years of the nineteenth century was not 'literary' in our sense of the term, but oratorical. Its most prized symbolic work was that of the orator" (p. 3). In fact, "literary" is just one species of expertise that began to develop during the course of the century. As Clark and Halloran write in their introduction, "both the theory of rhetoric taught in the schools and the practice of public discourse sustained outside them were transformed during the nineteenth century from those of the neoclassical oratorical cul­ ture into those of the professional culture we see characterizing both col­ leges and communities by its end" (pp. 5-6). Clark and Halloran use the Burkean concept of transformation to describe the changes in nineteenthcentury oratorical culture, and though the historiographical stance of the introduction and the collective practices of the nine essays are somewhat at odds, this collection makes a significant contribution to scholarship describing the move from a collective moral authority to an individual authority which became grounded, ultimately, on notions of expertise. Further, the volume contributes to studies of collective reading and writ­ ing practices by positing "oratorical culture" as a concept beside "audi­ ence," "community," "rhetorical culture," and "public" to describe where and how groups analyze and produce discourses collectively. In "Edward Everett and Neoclassical Oratory," Ronald Reid argues that Everett's successes and failures "illustrate the nation's changing Reviews 341 oratorical culture" (p. 29) because "Everett exemplifies the declining repu­ tation of neoclassical oratory" (p. 30). Reid contends that Everett's reputa­ tion declined because he could not adapt the neoclassical oratory in which he was trained at Harvard to the needs of Jacksonian democracy. Thus Reid's essay replaces Clark and Halloran's introductory trope of transfor­ mation with that of paradigm shift—"the old oratorical culture" versus "the new oratorical culture." The tensions among different conceptions of permanence and change within Reid's essay force us to question whether oratorical culture, or any culture, is not always undergoing transforma­ tions and how serviceable the notion of "oratorical culture" is for studying change. The contradictory tendencies inherent in belletristic rhetoric are taken on more directly by Gregory Clark in his essay "The Oratorical Pulpit of Timothy Dwight." Clark's argument centers on how Dwight combined Scottish conceptions of taste with the Evangelical Calvinism of his infa­ mous grandfather, Jonathan Edwards. The combination, which resulted in a distinctive theory and practice Clark calls "oratorical poetics," empha­ sized "the force of the language of sentiment" in service to "sustaining a common moral and political culture" (p. 58). Though Dwight's lectures on rhetoric are lost, Clark uses edited editions of the lecture notes of two of Dwight's students to reconstruct what Dwight probably taught. Instruction, of course, raises the question of native ability and of who was authorized to instruct whom. Again, Clark emphasizes the contradictions inherent in belletrism and Enlightenment rhetorics of all kinds, and articu­ lates how those contradictions asserted themselves in early nineteenthcentury America in particular. Russel Hirst's essay on Austin Phelps, Bartlett Professor of Oratory in Andover Theological Seminary from 1848 to 1879, is a rich historical study of how individualism and collectivism manifested themselves in the orato­ ry and homiletic theory of a less-known figure in the history of rhetoric. Valuable as it is both historically and for...

Abstract: The teaching and practice of rhetoric at Trinity College, Dublin, in the eighteenth century have been little discussed in the literature. This article describes the curriculum and pedagogy related to the old and “new rhetoric” of the Scottish enlightenment as disclosed by documents in the archives of Trinity College Library; the published lectures of two Erasmus Smith Professors of Oratory and History, John Lawson and Thomas Leland; and the lectures of Thomas Sheridan on elocution. Minutes of the student historical clubs in which debates and harangues are preserved illustrate the interests of the students, their techniques of debate, and the demonstrative exhortations of their officers. The student orations chronicle the gradual absorption of the principles of the new rhetoric at the College.

Abstract: Among the hundreds of medieval treatises on letter writing (artes dictandi) are at least four that are written entirely in hexameter verse. Moreover, the verse treatises by Jupiter Monoculus and Otto of Lüneburg are preserved in dozens of fourteenth- and fifteenth-century manuscripts, where they are usually accompanied by commentaries. The surprising popularity of these texts is due in part to their curricular association with the most successful general composition textbook of the Middle Ages, Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova, which is also written in hexameters. In addition, they served the same pedagogical functions as the verses that are embedded in many prose artes dictandi: they give pleasure through variety, they provide concise summaries of doctrine, and they facilitate memorization through the use of meter and (often) rhyme.

Abstract: The logic manuals of Peter Ramus (Pierre de la Ramée, 1515-72) enjoyed a wridespread pedagogical sueeess in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, especially in Protestant England. Historians of dialectical studies have judged these manuals, and Ramist dialectic more generally, as purveying a vitiated form of Aristotelian logic because the manuals cite examples frem poetry to illustrate logical principles and axioms. The semantics of Ramist method, however, blurs the neat line between literal and figurative language. A semiotie analysis of Ramist dialectic suggests that the oppesitien between logical discourse and poetic discourse is net stable and that Ramist logie is fundamentally representative or “poetic.”

Abstract: Historians of rhetoric and composition have agreed that the eighteenth century saw the demise of a pedagogy of invention. Bacon's scientific method and faculty psychology together led to the end of the topoi as generational devices and of rhetorical inventio. Invention, dependent on individual genius, could not be taught. However, An Essay on Genius, by eighteenth-century associationist Alexander Gerard, suggests that inventio was less abandoned than transformed. Accordingly, we need to refine our understanding of eighteenth-century thinking about composing to include the notion that rhetoricians were aware that invention was a necessary part of composing and that associationism itself included invention.

Abstract: Eberhard the German's Laborintus, the first of the artes poetriae to be printed, has received comparatively little scholarly attention. Both Kelly and Murphy have noticed that the work conveys a pedagogical emphasis. This essay, however, demonstrates that Laborintusis not merely a manual for teachers of verse. Rather, the work is a delightful maze of verse, grammar, and rhetoric, a labyrinth of learning containing an allegorical account of grammar,poesy, and rhetoric. On one level, the rhetorical figures are used as inventional schemes for the composition of verse in proper meter. However, the examples used in Eberhard's account of the rhetorical figures also contain Christian homilies on faith and action that are exemplary primers for teachers. The homilies in tum underscore Eberhard's pedagogical theory, which is ultimately the key to his labyrinth.