Abstract

Reviews 333 L'inventaire final, plus large que la matière traitée (il englobe même les"histoires" qui ne servent pas d'exemples) complète admirablement l'exposé, en trois étapes: les exemples sont d'abord classés, selon l'ordre traditionnel des oeuvres de Grégoire, avec tous les critères de nature rhétorique exploités dans les deux premières parties; une deuxième liste suit l'ordre alphabétique, en distinguant matériau biblique et matériau "païen"; une troisième obéit à l'ordre traditionnel de la Bible. Un livre majeur, donc, sur l'oeuvre de Grégoire de Nazianze, et un livre exemplaire, pour des enquêtes analogues sur d'autres auteurs. Alain Le Boulluec Transmundus, Introductiones dictandi, ed. and trans. Ann Dalzell (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1995) x + 254 pp. Considering how few among the hundreds of medieval arts of letter writing have been printed at all, the appearance of such a text in a critical edition is in itself an important event. Ann Dalzell's edition of Transmundus' Introductiones dictandi is especially significant because it is the first edition of an ars dictandi to be accompanied by a modern English translation of the Latin text. As Dalzell points out, the treatise merits editing and translating for several reasons: (1) it provides a comprehensive introduction to the ars dictaminis, (2) its use of classical rhetoric illuminates the "state of classical learning in the late twelfth century and contemporary attitudes toward it," and (3) its author's service as protonotary of the paper chancery invests its contents with unusual authority (pp. ix-x). An additional attraction is that the treatise is presented in the form of a letter and frequently observes the rules for the Roman cursus and the other precepts of style that it teaches. Like Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova, with which it is exactly contemporary, the Introductiones dictandi is at once about the art of letter writing (de arte) and an example of that art (ex arte). 334 RHETORICA Dalzell provides a substantial introduction in which she treats under separate headings the life of Transmundus, as well as the composition, the sources, the style and syntax, the manuscripts, the editing, and the translating of the Introductiones dictandi. Like the equally full commentary that follows the edition and translation, the introduction not only provides the essential information about the text being edited but also about its generic context. In fact, the comprehensiveness of the text itself, the richness of the commentary, and the presence of a translation combine to make Dalzell's book an ideal introduction to the genre of the ars dictandi for advanced students of rhetoric. Among the most important scholarly contributions of the introduction is its precise description of the treatise's complex transmission. According to Dalzell, two versions of the introductiones dictandi survive. The earlier version is preserved in four copies, each of which differs from the others in significant ways. Dalzell believes that this version was composed while Transmundus was still at the papal chancery, possibly as early as the 1180s, and was subsequently revised at Clairvaux, after Transmundus had joined the monastic community there. Sometime after 1206 but still early in the thirteenth century, a second version was produced by Transmundus or someone else, probably at Clairvaux. This later, revised and expanded version is preserved in at least twelve copies, which exhibit greater consistency among themselves than do the copies of the first version. Although Version II almost certainly contains material not contributed by Transmundus, it is the version of the treatise that was most widely used and hence is the one edited and translated by Dalzell. To illustrate the relationships among the four copies of Version I and between Versions I and II, she also edits and translates the initial treatment of Style (appositio) from each copy of Version I in an appendix. Version II of the Introductiones dictandi, Dalzell further shows, is itself divided into an elementary course and an advanced course. The elementary course (sections 1-11, in her edition) sketches the basic rules on epistolary style and the parts of a letter; the advanced course is...