Book Review| August 01 2021 Review: Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Classroom, edited by Marjorie Curry Woods Marjorie Curry Woods, Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Classroom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. 200 pp. ISBN: 9780691170800 Jordan Loveridge Jordan Loveridge Mount St. Mary's University Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2021) 39 (3): 344–346. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2021.39.3.344 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jordan Loveridge; Review: Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Classroom, edited by Marjorie Curry Woods. Rhetorica 1 August 2021; 39 (3): 344–346. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2021.39.3.344 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search nav search search input Search input auto suggest search filter All ContentRhetorica Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2021 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2021The International Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

Reviewed by: Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Classroom by Marjorie Curry Woods Jordan Loveridge Marjorie Curry Woods, Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Classroom. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. 200 pp. ISBN: 9780691170800 At the small liberal arts school where I teach, all students take a history course in which they read, among other common texts, Virgil’s Aeneid. A popular assignment for many of the professors teaching this course, myself included, is to assign students a speech where they compose in character what Aeneas might have said to Dido upon leaving Carthage, or, alternatively, the words Dido might have said to Aeneas. While each semester some students invariably choose to speak as Aeneas, my observation is that Dido is by far the more popular choice, regardless of students’ gender identity. Upon reading Marjorie Curry Woods’s Weeping for Dido: The Classics in the Medieval Classroom, I am struck by the parallels between my experience and the account of medieval pedagogy that Woods offers. Weeping for Dido explores the role that emotion, particularly women’s emotions, played within the classical texts that constituted the curriculum of the average medieval classroom. Since the medieval classroom was a space dominated by young male students, the focus of Weeping for Dido invites several [End Page 344] interesting questions about gender, identification, rhetorical delivery, and performance, all of which are taken up by Woods at various points within the text. Working with an impressive array of manuscript evidence, Woods demonstrates that “while women were overwhelming absent from [the] schoolboy classical world except in texts, their [women’s] emotions permeated and sometimes dominated the classroom experience” (10). This argument is advanced not through an analysis of the texts in medieval libraries, or through a comparison of rhetorical treatises by known figures associated with medieval education, but rather through close attention to and comparison among manuscript commentaries, glossing, notation, and other codicological elements. The results of this analysis are impressive and provide an illuminating view of medieval pedagogical practices. For instance, in the first chapter, which focuses on manuscripts of the Aencid, Woods shows how familiar elements of rhetorical terminology from sources such as Cicero De inventione and the anonymous Rhetorica ad herennium were used to help young students understand Virgil’s epic poem. One manuscript identifies Dido’s flattery of Aeneas upon his initial arrival in Carthage as a captatio benevolentiae, “the rhetorical term from letter-writing manuals for capturing the goodwill of the listener” (Woods 17); another identifies Dido’s speech to her sister Anna explaining her feelings for Aeneas as ”Oratio Insinuntiua,” “Insinuative discourse” (Woods 20). These techniques, traceable to traditions such as letter-writing manuals (ars dicta-minis) and Ciceronian commentary respectively, are placed within a classroom context, showing that such theories had pedagogical currency beyond their presumed function. While the Aeneid is central to Weeping for Dido, Woods also engages other “Troy Stories,” notably the Achilleid of Statius, which tells of Achilles’b mother stealing him away and hiding him in women’s clothes to keep him from dying in the Trojan war, and the Ilias latina, a Latin retelling of the Illiad. Both were used in elementary medieval education; “they are on almost every medieval list of what students should read, and they figure prominently in the consensus of what modern medievalists believe medieval students did read” (54). Perhaps unsurprisingly, these elementary texts exhibit completely different habits of glossing than copies of the Aeneid, revealing “what teachers thought would amuse or usefully instruct their pupils” (56). Woods shows that the elements brought to bear on the Achilleid were numerous and varied; many manuscripts, for instance, exhibit speeches that are clearly labeled with the Ciceronian partes orationis (Woods 66); others show how the unique valence of medieval Latin terms sometimes influenced the understanding of literary texts, such as in one manuscript where the Ciceronian Attributes of a Person are used to analyze a scene in which Achilles is disguised in women’s clothing. In this section, the term habitus is understood both in its original sense (as a taught manner of being, a physical disposition), but also as a manner of dress (Woods 67–8). Later...

It is not typically the bent of infrastructure to be continually responsive in a way that is expansive and inclusive; instead, for newcomers or those with alternative histories, aims, vision, values, and perspectives, the inertia of infrastructure is more likely to be experienced as infrastructural breakdowns. We ask: What might wisdom look like in these “structured” encounters? That is, what is the intellectual work of rhetoric on those thin ledges where institutional chronos shapes and limits possibilities for knowledge work and working relationships among people who likely would not have otherwise met? In response, we advance a framework for a constructive approach to infrastructure—one that prizes deliberation over rationalization and actively attends to the warrants underlying calls for public engagement. We first consider the relationship between infrastructure, rhetorical wisdom, and the imagination of possibilities, then lay out a framework for cultivating rhetorical wisdom in response to infrastructure breakdowns.

Book Review| May 01 2020 Invention and Authorship in Medieval England, by Robert R. Edwards Robert R.Edwards, Invention and Authorship in Medieval England (Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture), Columbus: The Ohio State Press, 2017. 230 pp. ISBN 9780814213407 Jordan Loveridge Jordan Loveridge Jordan Loveridge Departments of Communication and English Mount Saint Mary's University 16300 Old Emmitsburg Rd. Emmitsburg, MD 21727 Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Rhetorica (2020) 38 (2): 232–234. https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2020.38.2.232 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 Jordan Loveridge; Invention and Authorship in Medieval England, by Robert R. Edwards. Rhetorica 1 May 2020; 38 (2): 232–234. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/rh.2020.38.2.232 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. © 2020 by The International Society for the History of Rhetoric. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for permission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press's Reprints and Permissions web page, http://www.ucpress.edu/journals.php?p=reprints.2020The International Society for the History of Rhetoric Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

232 RHETORICA concludes it is the definitive guide to the Menexenus that the back cover pro­ mises, there is something here for everyone who wants to think critically about the dialogue and its problems. Peter A. O'Connell The University of Georgia Robert R. Edwards, Invention and Authorship in Medieval England (Interventions: New Studies in Medieval Culture), Columbus: The Ohio State Press, 2017. 230 pp. ISBN 9780814213407 It is a philological distinction commonly invoked by historians of rhetoric that invention, rhetoric's first and arguably foremost canon, has something of a double meaning. The Latin invenire can mean "to find" or "to come upon," or it can mean "to create" or "to contrive." In Invention and Authorship in Medieval England, Robert Edwards shows how medieval authors invented (in both senses of the term) authorial identities that wor­ ked within accepted traditions of literary production and interpretation, and also sometimes questioned or subverted those traditions, showing that "authorship is at once rhetorical and literary, historical and poetic" (xi). Yet, while Edwards observes that rhetorical theory was an important ele­ ment of literary production and of identification with distinct traditions, the relationship between the literary, the rhetorical, and distinct models of authorship remains comparatively underexplored. The result is a deep and compelling literary analysis of canonical English authors such as Marie de France, Chaucer, Gower, and Lydgate, but a somewhat incom­ plete discussion of the intersection of rhetoric and poetics in English literary culture. This incompleteness, however, should not dissuade the prospective reader from engaging with this text. Edwards' deep knowledge of classical and medieval culture is evident throughout all of the chapters of Invention and Authorship in Medieval England. Indeed, the relationship of each literary figure to classical and vernacular traditions is of paramount concern to Edwards, as he notes that "the agency . . . working in medieval English texts consciously foregrounds the decision to write within traditions and conventions" (xv), meaning that authors only achieve authorship by "consciously placing themselves through their works within the interpretive structure of a literary system" (xvi). Each chapter, then, endeavors to place each literary figure within such a liter­ ary system. Chapter 2, for instance, demonstrates how Marie de France "exer­ cises agency to revise her received materials [e.g. primarily those of Ovid] from popular and learned sources and to create a hybrid classicism in which she operates as a counterpart and conscious alternative to a Latin auetor" (34). In general, Edwards' claims in regard to such systems are well-defended; for instance, he thoroughly defends his assertion that "in Ovid's Book Reviews 233 erotodidactic poems . . . Marie finds a topic and conceptual frame for invention and authorship rather than rhetorical adornment and learned allusion" (40). This assessment is itself valuable, as it counters common readings of Marie (and indeed, many other medieval authors) that reduce their receptions and appropriations of classical literary culture to derivate borrowings, as Edwards himself observes (39). Likewise, Edwards' discus­ sion of Gower and his use of elements of scribal and textual culture—such as the accessus,- prologues, paratexts, and others (63-104)—is well-supported and fascinating. Yet, some other chapters, such as the section on Chaucer, do not fully account for the potential influence of contemporary theories of rhetoric and poetics that would have been instrumental for defining attitudes toward lit­ erary authorship. This omission is striking, first, because Edwards observes the connections between literary authorship and rhetoric in the introductory chapters of his text, and second, because his incorporation of scholarship by historians of rhetoric such as Rita Copeland and James J. Murphy suggests a knowledge of this sub-field and how it may have influenced English literary attitudes. For example, while Edwards observes that Chaucer is associated with a catalogue of works by his contemporaries, as well as that these works are largely "generated through forms of poetic imitation," (110) it was sur­ prising to see that he made little connection to the tradition of the medieval artes poetriae (aside from a reference in a footnote citing Murphy, which men­ tioned Geoffrey of Vinsauf and Matthew of Venddme). Arguably these artes represent an early example of the codification of contemporary medieval poets such as Alan of...

With Editorial Bodies: Perfection and Rejection in Ancient Rhetoric and Poetics, Michele Kennerly has produced an erudite contribution to the fields of ancient rhetoric, intellectual history, and c...

This essay argues that medieval bestiaries are dependent on and best understood through a process of rhetorical hermeneutics indebted to Augustine’s theory of interpretation. The essay suggests that texts such as the Aberdeen Bestiary leverage the instability of allegorical and the clarity of tropological representation to blur the line between human and nonhuman, encouraging the reader to reflect on predatory human-animal relationships and act to reduce actions that impact the natural world.

Historians of rhetoric continue to debate the relative degree of transmission and implementation of the progymnasmata during the Middle Ages. This essay intervenes in this debate by analyzing Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (Art of the Versemaker), showing that the treatise emphasizes the construction of probable assertions within a system of rhetorically-informed poetic composition. While past scholarship has shown Matthew's indebtedness to Ciceronian and Horatian rhetoric and poetics, this essay argues that progymnasmata exercises focused on probability and verisimilitude may have also influenced Matthew, suggesting the continued influence of the exercises within rhetorical and grammatical education during the 12th century.

Historians of rhetoric continue to debate the relative degree of transmission and implementation of the progymnasmata during the Middle Ages. This essay intervenes in this debate by analyzing Matthew of Vendôme's Ars versificatoria (Art of the Versemaker), showing that the treatise emphasizes the construction of probable assertions within a system of rhetorically-informed poetic composition. While past scholarship has shown Matthew's indebtedness to Ciceronian and Horatian rhetoric and poetics, this essay argues that progymnasmata exercises focused on probability and verisimilitude may have also influenced Matthew, suggesting the continued influence of the exercises within rhetorical and grammatical education during the 12th century.

Book Review| December 01 2018 Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective. By Richard Flower. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013; pp. x + 284. $99.00 cloth. Jordan Loveridge Jordan Loveridge Arizona State University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2018) 21 (4): 747–749. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.21.4.0747 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Jordan Loveridge; Emperors and Bishops in Late Roman Invective. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2018; 21 (4): 747–749. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.21.4.0747 Download citation file: 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 Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2018 Michigan State University Board of Trustees2018 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

ABSTRACTThis article explores Thomas Aquinas's interrelated views of rhetoric and deliberation, particularly through his commentaries on Aristotle and his Summa theologiae. It argues that while articulating a largely Boethian understanding of rhetoric as consideration of uncertain matters, Aquinas also advances a theory of deliberation indebted to Aristotelian theories of sensation and phantasia. Building from previous work on phantasia in Aristotle's works, I argue that, in Aquinas's view, rhetorical deliberation is dependent on sensory information experienced through phantasia. Gathered through time and experience, sensory information serves as the foundational material for other forms of reasoning, such as deliberation and practical wisdom. In articulating Aquinas's views of rhetoric and deliberation, I suggest that the relationship between rhetoric and logic within Aquinas's system of thought be reconsidered, with rhetoric playing a prominent role in the consideration of variable and human phenomena.

ABSTRACT This essay analyzes the tenth-century pedagogical text Ælfrīc’s Colloquy as an instance of Anglo-Saxon rhetorical instruction in the spirit of the Greco-Roman progymnasmata. Through a comparison of the text with classical sources such as Priscian’s adaptations of Hermogenes and Isidore’s Etymologies, this essay concludes that Ælfrīc knew of the progymnasmata and that these exercises served as the basis for rhetorical instruction that emphasized Benedictine ideals of communal concord through trained speaking and writing. Drawing on the commonplace of the three estates, the Colloquy demonstrated the ideal role of rhetoric in Anglo-Saxon society while modeling traditional progymnasmata exercises such as fable composition, impersonations, and comparisons.