Abstract

Reviews 337 The final chapter examines later developments in the air, which the author views as resulting in a general decline in quality, although it may also be the result of a changing aesthetic which valued the simple and natural over the relative complexity of the earlier style. In part this change may have been the result of the popularization resulting from the printed annual anthologies of Ballard, the Airs de different autheiirs (1658-94). In spite of push-back from religious authorities, who decried the pursuit of pleasurable distractions associated with the air, it proliferated in the eighteenth century, albeit in a somewhat simpler, more rustic style. The book is extremely well documented and provides a through bibli­ ography of relevant research. It furnishes extensiv e and accurate translations of all the texts under discussion. Robert A. Green Bloomington Eric MacPhail, The Sophistic Renaissance (Travaux ¿'Humanisme et Renaissance 485), Geneva: Droz, 2011,155 pp. ISBN: 978-2-600-014670 55 This ingenious small book combines a careful but sprightly appraisal of the sophistic sources av ailable to Humanist scholars and a persuasive analysis of the influence of these sources on the writings of major literary figures of the Renaissance. Eric MacPhail manages adroitly the double focus of his study. Scholars of early modern history and literature will doubtless find his appreciation of the linkage between the two an inspiration for further studies. Divided into two parts, the book begins with an engaging bibliographi­ cal account of the "fragmentary fortunes" of the sophists from their notoriety in the literature of late fifth century Athens to their resurgence in the writ­ ings of renaissance humanists. The aim of the author is to uncover who the sophists were. Much scholarship has been devoted to the sophists already, but MacPhail's aim is to engender a new appreciation of the effect of their oratorical methods and their relativist philosophy on renaissance literature. He selects from among the sophists mentioned in classical texts, seven who appear to have made the greatest impression on both ancient and renaissance commentators—Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Thrasymachus, Hippias, An­ tiphon, and Critias. Seen as relishing arguments on both sides of an issue and delighting in exhibitions of their inventive powers, few commentators spoke in their favor. And as teachers for hire, they provoked disdain, not only from fifth century critics, but from one of their arch imitators, Montaigne, as well. Yet he was indebted to them for the subversive energy of his essays, MacPhail claims, dubbing him "the champion of sophistic reasoning" (92)." Erasmus, too, owed the satirical character of his Praise ofFolly to the sophists. 338 RHETORICA McPhail places the blame for the disrepute of the sophists on Plato's di­ alogues. The philosopher excoriated their argumentative strategies as being based solely on opinion, on what appears to be true. Protagoras exemplified their stance in his claim that all opinions are true and that man is the measure of all things. Aristotle, MacPhail remarks, although less pejorative than Plato in the Art of Rhetoric, distinguished sophists from rhetors by their focus on dynamis (prowess), rather than proairesis (moral purpose). One drawback, however, of the compact nature of this study is the omission of any discus­ sion of the emergence of the art of rhetoric in the same period and its relation to sophistry. Although MacPhail references Aristotle's Rhetoric and treats the "second sophistic" period briefly, noting the writings of Cicero and Quin­ tilian, he does not address the nature of argumentative strategies in terms of subject matter, contingences, or audiences. Sophists, after all, were not the only sages to realize that contingencies required multiple probable answers. The battle of the sophists for recognition of their contributions to knowl­ edge versus the claims of philosophers to own truth continues to surface throughout the work. Paradoxically (and fittingly), the bad reputation of the sophists seems to have ensured their survival. They shocked and fascinated humanists by their skill in demonstrating the truth of opposites. They could, indeed, make the weaker case the stronger. In part two, devoted to what he calls "the antagonism of speech," MacPhail's erudition coupled with a detective's acumen enables him to un­ cover...