Medieval Rhetoric

Reviewed in: BUKSZ--Budapesti Könyvszemle (Beatrix F. Romhányi), Catholic Historical Review (Katherine L. Jansen), Collectanea Franciscana (Aleksander Horowski), Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters (Veronika Lukas), Hungarian Historical Review (Dorottya Uhrin), Il Santo (Eleonora Lombardo), Quellen und Forschungen aus italienischen Archiven und Bibliotheken (Ralf Lützelschwab), Revue d’histoire ecclésiastique (Michael Robson), Speculum (Thomas F. Luongo)

Referência: 2. SANTOS, Selene Candian dos. O Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem de Bernardo de Claraval e a Espiritualidade no Século XII. In: JORNADA DE ESTUDOS ANTIGOS E MEDIEVAIS E CICLO DE ESTUDOS ANTIGOS E MEDIEVAIS DO PARANÁ E SANTA CATARINA, 11. e  9., 2012, Maringá. Anais da Jornada de Estudos Antigos e Medievais. Maringá: [s.n.], 2012. Disponível em: CD-ROM.

Na década de 1120, Bernardo de Claraval escreveu o Apologia ad Guillelmum abbatem, no qual se posiciona contra monges da Ordem Cisterciense que alegadamente eram detratores da Ordem de Cluny e admoesta os cluniacenses no que diz respeito à sua superfluidade e imoderação. A análise dos argumentos agenciados por Bernardo de Claraval nesse documento, levando em consideração seu gênero discursivo, possibilita a identificação de como seu posicionamento se articula com as transformações no campo da espiritualidade na época. Assim, pretende-se com este artigo analisar de que forma Bernardo de Claraval não só é informado pela valorização de novos aspectos da vida cristã, mas também contribui para essa valorização.
Após a análise do documento, verifica-se que existem ao menos três práticas cristãs que Bernardo destaca em sua importância e que parecem ser características da espiritualidade no século XII: a preeminência da humildade como virtude, das atitudes interiores em comparação às exteriores e da personalização da vida religiosa; a identificação da Igreja primitiva, da vida dos apóstolos e, em específico, dos primeiros monges, como a perfeição de vida cristã e de obediência à Regra; e a valorização crescente da pobreza material ascética em contraposição ao luxo e à riqueza.

Geoffrey of Vinsauf's Poetria nova must be studied as a poem in its own right as thoroughly as it has been studied as a technical rhetorical treatise; although many scholars have acknowledged the brilliance of his style, few analyses thereof exist. This imbalance in criticism limits our understanding of his ideas and the appeal they held for medieval poets. This study, therefore, focuses on two images in the section on ornatus graves, or weighty ornamentation, the category of figures defined by its reliance on transumptio. In describing its moving effects, Geoffrey uses the imagery of a pilgrimage (peregrinatio) and of a “clear cloud” (nubes serena). Both help him explain how transumptive language at first displaces or hides meaning beneath something that is deceptively ordinary. When that meaning becomes clear to the reader, however, the recognition can be delightful, intoxicating, or even wondrously transporting. The images are not original to Geoffrey, nor are they drawn from the discourse of formal rhetoric. Rather, peregrinatio and the nubes serena have a rich history in liturgical drama, biblical commentary, and iconography where they signify a kind of spiritual transport remarkably similar to Geoffrey's conception of transumptio in terms of process and quality. Thus, the Poetria nova leverages the spiritual significance of the images to make a decisively literary point about the wondrous power of subtle, transumptive language. Only by recognizing the resonance of these images can we fully appreciate just how highly Geoffrey values transumptio. Approaching the Poetria nova with a poet's eye expands the range and scope of likely influences on the treatise and, more importantly, deepens our appreciation for his remarkable commitment as a poet to the affective potential of transumptive language.

This is an advance copy. Please contact me if you are unable to access the final version of the paper.

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.

Examines the concept of rhetorical 'ductus' as the way(s) in which a work guides you through itself. This ancient idea was greatly extended and developed during the Middle Ages, when works were conceived often as journeys with paths and routes that invited audiences into and through themselves. Thus art, architecture, literature, and music-- even gardening-- presented a highly interactive, engaged experience modeled as a 'way' with 'guides' signaled by variously changing modes of style and medium.

L’articolo presenta una nuova tessera intertestuale a favore dell’interpretazione più antica del «cinquecento diece e cinque» (Purg. XXXIII , 43), ossia quella, abbracciata da tutti gli antichi commentatori, che propone di sciogliere l’«enigma forte»convertendo i numerali in cifre romane, a formare la parola DVX. Oltre al parallelo con il «numero della bestia »dell’Apocalisse, sostenuto dai commentatori degli ultimi secoli e certamente importante in questi ultimi canti del Purgatorio, ipotizzo che un precedente per questa modalità di enigmistica dantesca possa essere un indovinello piuttosto fortunato nel Medioevo, specialmente in ambito retorico: lo attestano una dozzina di manoscritti, ed è presente come esempio di«enigma» nell’ Ars poetica di Gervasio di Melkley, autore forse non ignoto a Dante.

This paper offers a new intertextual reference in support of the earliest interpretation of the «cinquecento diece e cinque» (Purg. XXXIII, 43), the one unanimously endorsed by the ancient commentators: the «enigma forte» is solved by converting the three numbers intoRoman numerals, so as to form the word DVX. Besides the parallel with the Apocalyptic«number of the beast», affirmed by commentators in recent centuries and certainly pivotal for these last cantos of the Purgatorio, I suggest that a precedent for this kind of enigma may be a riddle that was fairly popular in the Middle Ages, especially in the field of rhetoric; testified in a dozen manuscripts, the riddle is employed to exemplify «enigma» in an Ars Poetica written by Gervasius of Melkley, an author who was perhaps not unknown to Dante.

"This article discusses the authorial drafts in Rudolf von Ems’s “World Chronicle”.The frequently problematised blending of creative action and text production is reconstructed as an effect of rhetorical allusion. The article develops the theory that
the tense rhetorical system of the prologue as a whole is underpinned by a secular understanding of authorship which allows the reader to choose between a number of different readings.

Der Beitrag diskutiert die Autorentwürfe in Rudolfs von Ems „Weltchronik“. Die häufig problematisierte Überblendung von Schöpfungshandeln und Textproduktion wird als ein anspielungsrhetorischer Effekt rekonstruiert. Es wird die These entwickelt, dass der spannungsreichen rhetorischen Anlage des Prologs insgesamt ein profanes Verständnis von Autorschaft unterlegt ist, das unterschiedliche Lektüre-Angebote
zur Wahl stellt."

This paper investigates the interest in the theater, the comic performan- ces, the «theatrical» pages of magister artis dictaminis Boncompagno da Signa (especially into the works Boncompagnus and Rhetorica novissima, which were publicly read, the first in 1215 and 1226 or 1227, the second in 1235).

Il contributo è dedicato ai passi della ‘Commedia’ che contengono riferimenti al latte in accezione metaforica. L’indagine è condotta soprattutto alla luce del confronto con testi e fonti iconografiche utili a chiarire genesi e significato dei versi danteschi e a misurare eventuali scarti compiuti dal poeta rispetto alla tradizione precedente. Particolare spazio è riservato alle occorrenze del ‘Paradiso’, in cui l’immagine del latte si arricchisce di profonde valenze simboliche provenienti dalla cultura classica e da quella cristiana (due tradizioni che Dante cerca di fondere, di far coincidere, in un unico immaginario) e alla prima egloga di Giovanni del Virgilio (in cui la metafora in questione trova significativi sviluppi collegabili al poema). Tra i testi portati a riscontro, particolare attenzione è dedicata al filone biblico della metafora, in cui il latte, paragonato alle Scritture, rappresenta il nutrimento spirituale per il cristiano, alla leggenda della ‘Lactatio Bernardi’ e alle rappresentazioni della Filosofia (Boezio), della Grammatica (Alano di Lilla) e della Retorica (Pier delle Vigne) come figure “allatatrici”.

A German paper that gives examples of reuse of XIIIth century Papal letters at the French royal Chancery during the XIVth century. Models were taken from the summae dictaminis of Thomas of Capua and Riccardo of Pofi, and were reworked to form new preambles, using patchwork techniques, or more subtile techniques. Thus the French royal ideology had a lot to do with Papal phraseology during that time...

El articulo tiene como objetivo introducir al lector profano en el ambito de la retorica cristiana y resumir, al mismo tiempo, las líneas de investigacion que se vienen desarrollando en las ultimas decadas a partir de la enumeracion y el comentario de una amplia serie de referencias bibliograticas. Para elIo, la autora se ha centrado esencialmente en dos ambitos de estudio: la retorica bfbIica y la pervivencia de la preceptiva retorica en los autores cristianos. sin dejar de citar los principales estudiosos que desde el siglo XIX han marcado las pautas de tales estudios, distingue, siguiendo a Meynet, dos tipos de analisis retorico: el americano (Rhetorical Criticism) y el europeo.

Если понимать под формулами некие модели, лежащие в основе организации всех текстов определенного типа, равно как и повторяющихся фрагментов этих текстов (ср. «формула мотива» у А.Н. Веселовского), понятие «формульность» оказывается вполне уместным, применительно к любым текстам, характеризующимся стереотипизацией, основанной на некоторых моделях. Такая, вне всякого сомнения, традиционная стереотипизация рассматривается в статье на материале средневековой религиозной прозы. Данная традиция предполагает ориентацию создателей текстов на общие для всей традиции образцы и композиционные правила — канон — независимо от того, пишут ли они под своим именем или анонимно.

Продуктивные модели традиционного языка, безусловно, риторически маркированы. Знание о некотором количестве моделей и о способах их комбинации между собой формирует код традиции. Хотя в средневековых риториках не было создано нормативного описания именно мистической речи (sermo mysticus), тем не менее, по-видимому, существовало четкое представление о характерных для нее «моделях речи» (modi loquendi).

Воплощение языковых моделей в тексте в качестве конкретных образцов, реализующихся в виде вариантов, относится к сфере речи. В самой же стереотипной модели на базовую синтаксическую схему накладываются смысловые ограничения в виде определенных логико-семантических структур и топосов.

Традиционная языковая модель представляет собой проекцию некоего стандартного элемента смысла на повторяющуюся в рамках традиции типовую структуру. Данная проекция оставляет, однако, некоторое пространство для внутреннего варьирования отдельных элементов модели, благодаря чему она и остается продуктивной функциональной единицей языка традиции, не застывая в качестве клише или цитаты.

The volume gathers 15 among the most relevant papers about medieval grammar and rhetoric written by Gian Carlo Alessio,
formerly full Professor at Ca’ Foscari (chair: Medieval Latin Literature and Philology). In the field of grammatical and rhetorical studies he reached the most important goals of his
research and teaching career; and precisely the latter is summarized here by a wide choice of papers which were published between 1979 and 2006 and seem now especially exemplary of Prof. Alessio’s working methods and research outcomes. In the studies which are reprinted here the following subjects stand out: classical rhetoric in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance (especially Cicero, De inventione and the Rhetorica ad Herennium), medieval rhetoric, ars dictaminis and speculative grammar; in every paper a key role is always played by the attention to masters and/or specific cultural contexts (e.g. above all Bologna). The book is completed by 2 indexes (names; manuscripts).

Referência:
SANTOS, Selene Candian dos.  El 'De Administratione' de Suger de Saint-Denis: Historia del Arte y Retórica. In: SIMPOSIO INTERNACIONAL DE JÓVENES MEDIEVALISTAS, 2013, MAR DEL PLATA, 1, 2013, Mar del Plata (Argentina). Actas del I Simposio Internacional de Jóvenes Medievalistas, Mar del Plata, 2013. Mar del Plata: GIEM-UNMdP y Sociedad Argentina de Estudios Medievales, 2013. p. 49-62. Disponível em:  http://www.saemedargentina.net/inc/APSJM.pdf. Acesso em: 10 out. 2014.

En la década del 1140, Suger de Saint-Denis escribió el documento 'De rebus in administratione sua gestis' (Sobre lo que se hizo bajo su administración), en el que describe cuestiones relacionadas al aumento de las rentas advenidas de las cercanías de Saint-Denis, a las reformas realizadas en el edificio de la iglesia abacial y a los ornamentos confeccionados y adquiridos para la abadía. El objetivo de este artículo es discutir la forma como la Historia del Arte leyó este documento y sugerir una nueva hipótesis de lectura a partir del análisis de sus categorías discursivas.
Erwin Panofsky tradujo al inglés los documentos de Suger que consideró más relevantes, incluso el 'De Administratione'. Peter Kidson afirma que esa traducción y publicación de Panofsky tuvieron gran influencia sobre toda una generación de historiadores del arte interesados en arte y arquitectura medieval. Sin embargo, Peter Kidson refuta la hipótesis que identifica en Panofsky, argumentando que Suger no escribió los documentos teniendo en mente Bernardo de Claraval como principal interlocutor, tampoco formaría parte de un movimiento intelectual de cuño neo-platónico. La relectura de ese capítulo de Panofsky a la luz de las críticas de Kidson lleva a un cuestionamiento relacionado a la motivación de Suger para escribir dicho documento. Para que ese cuestionamiento pueda desarrollarse, se propone un análisis del documento en sus categorías discursivas.
A lo largo del documento, Suger utiliza la 'descriptio', trayendo la reforma y los ornamentos delante de los ojos de su interlocutor, y crea argumentos asociados a la belleza y a la utilidad de la reforma y de los ornamentos. Suger utiliza esos argumentos para inducir sus monjes a posiblemente concluir, pero, sobre todo, mantener su obra.

This essay considers what might first appear to be a minor theological problem in the major work of Dante’s mentor, and shows that it indeed poses a conundrum and a riddle to be solved. Taking up Augustine’s commentary on Christ’s three resurrection miracles – in the house, outside the gate, and in the sepulchre – I note that in his Tresor Brunetto retains the first of these locations but revises the second to “in the doorway of the house” and the third to “in the street.” Ruling out a traditional “source” for these deviations, I ask: Are these changes of scenery significant – a trivial memory lapse, subtly subversive, or ringing a change? Ultimately, I propose an underlying shift in perspective: from Augustinian biblical topography to a contemporary urban setting – an “update” from a late Classical to a medieval scene, from Hippo to Florence – an “urbanization” of the Augustinian “stages of sin” that gestures towards the streetscape of the Vita nuova.

Latin traditions in southern Italy, especially Beneventan and Norman chant traditions, followed in chant as well as in architecture Byzantine prototypes. Although the historical imagination of the Orthodox Archdiocese Italy and Malta associates the Norman conquest of Byzantine Apulia with the expulsion of Greek traditions, Greek monastic centres were established under Norman rule and Franconorman patrons founded and supported also Greek monasteries, while the process of Latinization continued very slowly.

Though the relationship between Greek and Latin Christians was ambiguous and complex, the richness of local traditions in southern Italy is the result of a long period of exchange. In a comparative study I would like to give some examples of chant and sacral architecture, which may illustrate, how the different traditions could flourish by an exchange in craftship, in science, and in the art of chant.

The main subject of this essay is the conversion of Bari from a Greek into a Latin centre of Christianity. This town located in central Apulia, played a central role in the medieval history of southern Italy, because it was the capital of the Byzantine catepanate which ruled over the three Byzantine provinces (themata) including Calabria, Basilicata and Campania. After the Norman conquest of the catepanate Bari could still hold a key position, the reliquaries of S. Nicola were transferred from Myra in Lycia and turned the capital of Byzantine Italy into a centre of Eastern and Western pilgrimage.

In recent years, humanists and social scientists have shown increasing interest in human-animal relations – to the point where many now speak of an ‘animal turn’ in the humanities and social sciences. Across history, psychology, anthropology, literature, sociology, philosophy, and law, an interdisciplinary field of human-animal studies has been forming. Certain common themes run through this diverse field, not least the reproduction of human-animal difference, and the conditions and the implications thereof.

Despite the long history of language use as a marker of such difference, the academic quest to investigate the boundary between human and nonhuman has, somewhat surprisingly, not taken root within rhetorical studies – at least not until now. For this edited volume, we therefore call for chapters that investigate the place of nonhuman animals in the purview of rhetorical theory; what it would mean to communicate beyond the human community; how rhetoric reveals our ‘brute roots.’ In other words, this book invites contributions which enlighten us about likely or possible implications of the animal turn within rhetorical studies. Would such a turn imply, for instance, that rhetoric needs a nonanthropocentric reconfiguration? The question, perhaps, is this: What difference would it make to the discipline if we assumed that nonhuman forms of communication were as interesting as human ones?

In this talk I will focus on the vegetal allegories that frame the pilgrim’s journey through the three realms of the otherworld. Besides the well-known dark wood where Dante gets lost at the beginning of the poem, pivotal bits of his experience take place in other two different botanic settings that display a strong allegorical meaning. The first one is the Earthly Paradise, where he meets Beatrice and assists to a complex allegorical scene that confirms his prophetic mission. The last one is the celestial rose, composed by the blessed souls, that the pilgrim reaches at the end of his journey through the Heavens.
Although the dark wood has been object of several studies, the three vegetal allegories have never been connected in a detailed enquiry. Therefore, by means of comparing them, my goal is to better characterise the role of allegory in the Commedia. In particular, I demonstrate that Dante’s use of allegories is highly innovative, for it implies on the one hand a very detailed literal ground, that is fundamental in creating a vivid and realistic setting, and on the other hand a symbolic meaning, that draws strength from the poem’s whole structure. Through these allegories and their functional connections, Dante builds a narrative space that is physical and symbolic at the same time: within this space, the pilgrim proceeds not only in his concrete journey, but also in a spiritual path that drives him from pure matter (the dark wood), through the perfect realisation of form and matter (the Garden of Eden), to pure form (the celestial rose).

“Most cultural theorists saw network analysis as located squarely in the positivist camp, reducing cultural richness to 1s and 0s and lacking attention to processes of interpretation and meaning-construction.”; thus Ann Mische in 2011 summed up attitudes towards network analysis which are still strong also in many circles of historical studies.  Of course, these verdicts were not entirely unfounded, as Mustafa Emirbayer and Jeff Goodwin pointed out in 1994 in their influential paper on „Network Analysis, Culture, and the Problem of Agency“: “despite its powerful conceptualization of social structure, network analysis as it has been developed to date has inadequately theorized the causal role of ideals, beliefs, and values, and of the actors that strive to realize them; as a result, it has neglected the cultural and symbolic moment in the very determination of social action.”  Although meanwhile various theoretical concepts and models of “relational sociology” have been developed , the cultural dimension is still underrepresented in many works of quantitatively oriented social and also historical network analysis. In this paper, I will present the explanatory value of some of these relational approaches to social reality for historical research and their combination with quantitative network analysis. For various case studies, the actual interplay between the structural and the cultural dimension of social, religious, economic, political or intellectual linkages between individuals, groups, communities, but also cultural concepts will be demonstrated.

With the aid of a series of representative examples, the objective of this article is to highlight the connections between the teaching of, and speculation about, disciplines including grammar, rhetoric and biblical exegesis, and the creation, transmission and assumption of new "extra-official" liturgical repertories at different moments and places during the Middle Ages. Using resources such as ornatus, and with a view to providing a better understanding, composition and proclamation of the truths of Christian faith shown during its celebration, liturgical song (text and/or music) was frequently understood and treated as a genuine liturgical commentary on the very evolution of the liturgy. Thus, the relationship between the old and the new, "sung liturgical commentary" and comments made outside the liturgy, and between the official Gregorian and "extra-official" repertories of tropes, sequences, prosulas, etc., will be examined from the point of view and in the context of liturgical action.

Identified by the Catholic Church as the "Subtle Doctor" (Doctor Subtilis), Blessed John Duns Scotus (1265/66-1308) contributed to the Catholic Intellectual Tradition during the High Middle Ages in areas such as scholastic philosophy and theology. Scotus explored human freedom, universals, the Immaculate Conception , metaphysics, theory of knowledge, moral psychology, and religious communication. 1 Universals refer to a debate that raised questions about how human beings could gain universal concepts (such as "man") of particular things (such as "Socrates") through experience. This argument featured realists who claimed the existence of real universals before or in the particular thing, the conceptualists who suggested that universals only exist as concepts in human cognition, and the nominalists who limit universals to words but not actual things.

In medieval Romance poetry the phenomenon of multilingualism must be studied together with the Latin and Greek prejudice against barbarolexis, the mixing of languages. Thus influences, many medieval grammarians saw multilingualism in poetry as undesirable and unbecoming, and rejected its use, including for artistic purposes. The emergence of Neo-Latin literature, however, resulte in multilingualism at both the vertical (vernaculars vs. classical Latin) and the horizontal (between romance languages) scales. The vernacular grammatical and rhetorical treatises from the 12th to 14th century inform us as to how multilingualism came to be a recognised literary and stylistic practice, expanding beyond the strictly grammatical and down to the poetic-scope.

Ramon Llull is the author of a large and remarkable corpus of proverbs. He wrote five  proverb collections mainly between 1295 and 1302. After contextualizing these texts in the frame  of Llull’s intellectual career, summarising their most relevant features and synthetizing some  aspects of paremiological theory about proverb markers, this paper examines the use of a set of rhetoric figures in the formulation of proverbs, specially personification and parallelism, which is put into relation with the functions and applied contexts that Llull envisage for his own proverbs.

This paper proposes an excerpt of Bartolomeo da San Concordio’s commentary on the Poetria nova (vv. 1-263) on the basis of the two manuscripts that bequeath the work: the Casanatense 311 and the ms. New Haven, Yale University, Beinecke Rare Book Room and Manuscript Library, Osborn fa.6; the first one contains the exegetic text in its entirety, whereas the latter only the initial part. In this paper, the distinctive features of the commentary and the sources used by Bartolomeo are exposed. The potential similarities and relations with other ‘Italian’ coeval commentators of the Poetria nova – especially Guizzardo da Bologna – are examined in order to better define the cultural context in which Goffredo’s work was read and commented on between the thirteenth and the fourteenth centuries in Italy.