The essays in this volume deal with the history of rhetoric and education for the thousand years from the early Middle Ages to the European Renaissance. They represent the author's pioneering efforts over four decades to piece together a kind of mosaic which will provide elements necessary to construct a history of that thousand years of language activity. Some essays deal with individual writers like Giles of Rome, Peter Ramus, Gulielmus Traversanus, or Antonio Nebrija, some focus on the influence of Cicero and Quintilian and other ancient sources. The essays dealing specifically with education open up different inquiries into the ways language use was promoted, and by whom. Others explore the relations between Latin rhetoric and medieval English literature and, finally, several deal with the impact of printing, a subject still not completely understood.

Follows the threads of ancient rhetorical theory into the Middle Ages and examines the distinctly Medieval rhetorical genres of perceptive grammar, letter-writing, and preaching. These various forms are compared with one another and placed in the context of Medieval society. Covering the period 426 A.D. to 14.

The essays in this volume, presented in honour of John O. Ward, explore the role of rhetoric in promoting reform and renewal in the Latin West from Peter Abelard (1079-1142) to Juan Luis Vives (1492-1540). Ward, who has taught for many years at the University of Sydney, has been an influential and creative force in medieval and Renaissance studies both in Australia and internationally. This volume opens with a personal memoir and bibliography of Ward's publications, as well as an overview of the study of medieval rhetoric. The first of the three sections, 'Abelard and Rhetoric', relates Abelard's rhetoric to his logic, his theology, and his relationship to Heloise. A second section, 'Voices of Reform', considers various writers (William of Malmesbury, John of Salisbury, Richard FitzNigel, and William of Ockham) who bring rhetorical techniques to bear upon analysis of social conditions. A third section, 'Rhetoric in Transition', deals with the evolution of rhetorical theory between the late fourteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The volume will be of interest not just to specialists in rhetoric, but to all concerned with issues of reform and renewal in European culture during the period 1100-1540.

With an unusually broad scope encompassing how Europeans taught and learned reading and writing at all levels, Classroom Commentaries: Teaching the Poetria Nova across Medieval and Renaissance Europe provides a synoptic picture of medieval and early modern instruction in rhetoric, poetics, and composition theory and practice. As Marjorie Curry Woods convincingly argues, the decision of Geoffrey of Vinsauf (fl. 1200) to write his rhetorical treatise in verse resulted in a unique combination of rhetorical doctrine, poetic examples, and creative exercises that proved malleable enough to inspire teachers for three centuries. Based on decades of research, this book excerpts, translates, and analyzes teachers' notes and commentaries in the more than two hundred extant manuscripts of the text. We learn the reasons for the popularity of the Poetria nova among medieval and early Renaissance teachers, how prose as well as verse genres were taught, why the Poetria nova was a required text in central European universities, its attractions for early modern scholars and historians, and how we might still learn from it today. Woods' monumental achievement will allow modern scholars to see the Poetria nova as earlier Europeans did: a witty and perennially popular text central to the experience of almost every student.

Classical Rhetoric in the Middle Ages: The Medieval Rhetors and Their Art 400-1300, with Manuscript Survey to 1500 CE is a completely updated version of John Ward’s much-used doctoral thesis of 1972, and is the definitive treatment of this fundamental aspect of medieval and rhetorical culture.

No legacy from antiquity to the Latin Middle Ages was more pervasive, or more enduring, than that of grammar and rhetoric. Cicero's son would have felt at home in a Tudor schoolroom, and the classical curriculum is readily recognizable in that of the Tudor schoolroom. And yet, grammatical and rhetorical theory and practice did change during those 1500 years, in ways that continue to demand, and richly reward, investigation. The twelve essays in this book contribute to the rapidly growing body of knowledge about the teaching and uses of grammar and rhetoric in the Latin West from late antiquity to the dawn of a new era in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Since grammar and rhetoric dominated (indeed, almost monopolized) schooling from Cicero's Rome until the twelfth-century revival of Roman law and the rise of universities, clearly a collection of essay examining aspects of these two subjects will, by definition, enrich the larger history of education as well. Contents: 1. Latin Orthopraxes, Paul F. Gehl, The Newberry Library, Chicago 2. Tales Out of School: Grammatical Culture in Fulgentius the Mythographer, Gregory Hays, University of Virginia 3. After the Schools: Grammar and Rhetoric in Cassiodorus, James W. Halporn, Indiana University and Harvard University 4. Grammar and Exegesis: Bede's Liber de schematibus et tropis, Carmela Vircillo Franklin, Columbia University 5. De schematibus et tropis in Italian Garb: A Study of Bamberg Msc. Class. 43, Luciana Cuppo Csaki, Dutchess Day School, New York 6. The Hermeneumata pseudodositheana, Latin Oral Fluency, and the Social Function of the Cambro-Latin Dialogues Called De raris fabulis, Scott Gwara, University of South Carolina 7. The Golden Line: Ancient and Medieval Lists of Special Hexameters and Modern Scholarship, Kenneth Mayer, Assumption College, Massachusetts 8. Medieval Teaching Texts on Syllable Quantities and the Innovations from the School of Alberic of Monte Cassino, Diane Warne Anderson, University of Minnesota 9. Narrative and an Absolutely Fabulous Commentary on Ovid's Heroides, Ralph Hexter, University of California, Berkeley 10. Late Antique Rhetoric, Early Monasticism, and the Revival of School Rhetoric, Mary Carruthers, New York University 11. Ancient Sophistic and Medieval Rhetoric, Rita Copeland, University of Pennsylvania 12. Weeping for Dido: Epilogue on a Premodern Rhetorical Exercise in the Postmodern Classroom, Marjorie Curry Woods, University of Texas at Austin

This collection of essays explores in an innovative way the humanist aspects of medieval and post-medieval intellectual life and their multifarious appropriation during the early modern and modern period.