Medieval rhetoric and poetic to 1400 : $b Interpreted from representative worksBaldwin, Charles Sears
History
Medieval rhetoric and poetic to 1400 : $b Interpreted from representative works
Baldwin, Charles Sears
Literature, Medieval -- History and criticism; Poetics -- History -- To 1500; Rhetoric, Medieval
Bonaventure does not use the word _dialectica_. His word for this,
not for the whole Trivium,[56] is _logica_. Though his _movendum_ and
_motivam_ suggest association of rhetoric with morals, and remind one of
Aristotle’s conception, and Cicero’s, and Quintilian’s, he is content
to give rhetoric the narrow and barren field of _ornatus_, assigning
_docendum_ and _verum_ to logic.
4. The _Trésor_ of Brunetto Latini
The Old French _Trésor_ of Brunetto Latini[57] devotes a far larger
proportion of space than Vincent’s _Speculum_ to rhetoric. Book I,
surveying the seven arts,[58] includes history, geography, and the
zoölogy of the bestiaries. Book II adds to Aristotelian ethics a
collection of moral apothegms.[59] Book III opens politics with rhetoric.
Here begins the third book of the _Treasure_, which speaks of
the teachings of good speech and of the government of towns and
cities.... Cicero says that the highest lore for governing a
city is rhetoric.[60] 467.
They are mistaken who think that to tell fables or old stories
... is matter of rhetoric.... [Rather rhetoric is concerned
with] what is said by word of mouth or sent by letter to induce
belief, to praise or blame, to advise ... in something that
demands decision. 471.
The following chapters present the ancient division into five parts and
the lore of _status_ and _quæstio_.[61] But at this point the distinctive
ancient function of rhetoric begins to fade. After saying that the main
division of all expression is into prose and rime, he adds that “the
teachings of rhetoric are common to both,” save for the restrictions of
meter.[62] The section on _dispositio_, the ordering of a speech, takes
from Martianus Capella not his sober survey, but a single passage which
Brunetto perverts by subdivision and by transfer to narrative.
To exploration of the material [of a speech], with discernment
of its value for persuasion, is to be joined the ordering of
the points, which is the part commonly called _dispositio_....
The scheme may be either the natural order or devised by the
orator’s artifice; natural, when after the beginning comes the
statement of facts, then the division, proposition, proof,
conclusion and epilogue; by the orator’s artifice, when the
things that must be said have been distributed through the
parts of the speech.[63]
Here Martianus is apparently extending to the whole plan of a speech the
commonplace of ancient rhetoric that the _narratio_ (statement of facts)
might be either continuous as a single, distinct part, or distributed for
the sake of giving salience to its separate items. Brunetto’s further
extension is not his own; it is common stock of the contemporary _artes
poeticæ_.[64] These manuals make much of “natural” and “artificial”
order, subdivide each, and apply both to narrative. Brunetto is typical.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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