Medieval Grammar and Rhetoric: Language Arts and Literary Theory, AD 300-1475 demonstrates comprehensively the role of the medieval arts of language in the history of literary theory. This book brings together essential sources in the disciplines of grammar and rhetoric, materials that were instrumental for understanding literary form and composing in prose or verse. Grammar and rhetoric, the language sciences, were the basis of any education from antiquity through the Middle Ages, no matter what future career a student was going to pursue. Because literature itself was a key subject matter of grammatical teaching, and because rhetorical teaching focused on literary form, these were the disciplines that prepared students to interpret all kinds of texts. These arts constituted the abiding theoretical toolbox for anyone engaged in a life of letters.
Northwestern University Press is pleased to announce the release of a new volume in its journal addressing late medieval culture (ca. 1300-1550). Discourses of Power: Grammar and Rhetoric in the Middle Ages provides an exhaustive treatment of its subject by scholars representing various nations, approaches, and disciplines. Supported by a multinational editorial board, the editors have selected scholarly articles, inclusive review essays, and an extensive bibliography.
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
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.
This book has a twofold purpose. First, it seeks to define the place of vernacular translation within the systems of rhetoric and hermeneutics in the Middle Ages. Secondly, it examines the way that rhetoric and hermeneutics in the Middle Ages define their status in relation to each other as critical practices. --introd.
