MEDIEVAL RHETORIC AND POETIC MEDIEVAL RHETORIC AND POETIC (to 1400) INTERPRETED FROM REPRESENTATIVE WORKS BY CHARLES SEARS BALDWIN PROFESSOR OF RHETORIC IN COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY Gloucester, Mass. PETER SMITH 1959 COPYRIGHT, 1928 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY _Reprinted, 1959 by permission of_ MARSHALL W. BALDWIN SANCTO THOMÆ AQVINATI PHILOSOPHO POETÆ ARTEM ILLIVS SÆCVLI RHETORICAM ATQVE POETICAM REDINTEGRATAM COMMENDAT INTERPRES PREFACE The rhetoric and the poetic of any age, as the complementary theories of composition, are indicative of its habits in education and in literature. Thus their medieval history concerns all students of the middle age. For consecutive interpretation in this single aspect both supplements the more comprehensive surveys and adds significance to many special studies. Whether for initiation, for review, or for suggestions of further inquiry, medieval rhetoric and poetic offer a directly literary guide. As in my preceding volume, _Ancient rhetoric and poetic_, conciseness has been sought by proportion. Space is given to those salient tendencies which mark the literary course. Minor relations and collateral studies, indicated no less carefully, are relegated to the notes, but included in the index. Detailing the actual theory and the actual practise of composition, often for the first time, I have tried no less to show their bearing, to make medieval rhetoric and poetic available by interpreting them in historical sequence. Thus are interpreted the tasks of the schools, the poetic developments of and from the hymns, the habits of prose rhythm, the encroachment of logic upon rhetoric and of rhetoric upon poetic, the progress of verse narrative.