Abstract
Abstract: This study explores the place of Ciceronian rhetoric and the humanist tradition of argument in Anthony Trollope's historical and fictional writing. I argue that although Trollope, for reasons common to the Victorians, expresses significant doubt about the value of Ciceronian inventio in his Life of Cicero , he celebrates the tradition—particularly the role of disputatio in utramque partem (argument on both sides of an issue) and skepticism—in novels such as He Knew He Was Right . In this way, Trollope's fiction features what Thomas O. Sloane characterizes as a rhetorical cast of mind.